gamasutra salary survey 2014 The game industry is inherently prone to change, volatility, and disruption. But in 2013, we began to see the chaos of prior years settle down just enough to allow game makers to familiarize themselves with the current reality. Whereas 2012 showed us an industry in flux, 2013 was a year of identifying and dealing with transition. These transitions affected the way game developers make a living.


How so? Most obviously, we can no longer consider the democratization of game development an emerging trend -- lower-barrier game development is now a fact of life. While this created the opportunity for many people to make and release games, it also invited a flood of games onto app stores and digital PC storefronts, making it difficult for anyone to actually find -- let alone pay you for -- the game you made.


In triple-A game development, 2013 was a year in which salaried employees adjusted to a release slate made up of even fewer games than the year prior, and competed over fewer jobs, as large publishers came to terms with the transition, often resorting to layoffs. And we also transitioned to a new generation of game consoles, the initial success of which left companies scrambling to serve a market that has proved meaningful even through all of the industry’s fluctuations and changes.