Want to make games? Drop out now!

[alexxkay]

Game Developer Magazine's latest issue features the results of their annual salary survey. Although there are caveats involved with any set of self-reported data, I think at least the relationships between different subsets of data are likely to be accurate. And I noticed something that surprised me in the table "Average Salary by Education and Discipline".

In all disciplines, those who completed "Some College" make significantly *more* than those who completed a Bachelor's Degree. Those who went on to "Some Graduate" made even *less* than those with Bachelor's.

Actually *completing* a Master's Degree gets you a salary roughly comparable to "Some College", though in some disciplines it's a bit less, in some a bit more. In none is it *enough* more to suggest being worth the investment.

At the Doctoral level, only Programmers reported anything. "Some Doctoral" makes more money than "Some College" -- but an actual Doctorate makes *less*.

So, if you're a college student who wants a successful career in the games industry, apparently the best thing you can do is drop out!

Comments

[laurion]

As others have said, this indicates to me that a higher than expected number of game designers are starting their dreams while still in school. Either some number of the survey responses are from people who got lucky and dropped out, or got lucky, and might -currently- be in school (that qualifies as 'some', right?).

I seem to recall that in the late 90's, just before the tech bubble popped, it was a popular thing to drop out of school and start working for a game company.