游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

游戏开发者在游戏产业中的真实状况

发布时间:2016-03-03 17:32:09 Tags:,,,,

作者:David Mullich

今天我在洛杉矶电影学校面向游戏制作专业的学生发表了有关游戏产业的演讲。在谈论了几个小时的最新产业趋势,可行的工作类型以及专业性后,我问了他们一个问题。这也是他们想要了解的内容:他们到底能够赚到多少钱。毕竟游戏已经创造了数百亿的收益了不是吗?

所以我使用了一些数字。

根据国际游戏开发协会在2014年关于开发者满足度的调查,48%的开发者表示他们是自由的。即意味着他们要么是自由职业者或者是独立开发者。

独立开发者是指那些独立开发游戏或者无需依靠发行商财政支持并以群组为单位创造游戏的人。除非投资者投资他们的作品或他们还拥有之前工作所剩下的积蓄,否则独立开发者在完成游戏创造,发行游戏并且游戏开始赚钱之前将没有任何收入。但这里也存在一个问题。一个开发者的第一款游戏通常都不可能获得成功。第二款,第三款游戏也很悬。所以独立开发者在真正获得成功之前必须创造出更多游戏(游戏邦注:就像《愤怒的小鸟》便是Rovio所开发的第52款游戏)。

Angry Birds(from sina)

Angry Birds(from sina)

而独立合同工通常都能获得相关的工作报酬,并且不管他所参与的游戏最终成功与否。合同工通常会为自己所递交的内容,如设计文件,游戏关卡,一组动画或网站等工作开出一个固定费用。他们的工作效率可以按照小时,周或月来算。开发商愿意支付给合同工多少钱是取决于合同工的技能和经验以及开发商本身的财政预算。就像游戏测试专员的薪酬通常都不会超过最低工资标准,而美术师或作家每个小时的要价也不能超过20至30美元。而从需求上来看,较高端的程序员每个小时的报价甚至高达100至150美元。

你是否留意到我使用了“通常”这一词?因为一个经费不足的发行商在尝试着与合同工协商报酬时总是会以游戏的成功为基础。有些开发商在合同工提交工作后甚至难以支付给他们报酬。两年前我便接过一些合同工作,但是对方却因为破产而一直未履行合同支付给我12000美元的报酬。

以受薪雇员的身份效劳于游戏工作室或发行商更有安全保障。根据开发者满足度调查,在美国游戏产业中拥有3年以下工作经验的人的平均薪资如下:

程序员:71855美元

制作人:59079美元

游戏设计师:53000美元

美术史和动画师:50000美元

质量检测员:38833美元

有时候这些数值也会因为奖金和股票期权计划而发生改变。如果一家公司运营得好,它可能会基于雇员对公司的贡献将收益的一部分作为红利分给他们。像动视和艺电等上司公司便会提供给雇员一些股票期权,让他们能够购买一定数额的公司股票,即他们可以无需投入任何钱便将手上的股票卖掉。所有的这些收益都可以为开发者增添不少收益。

然而在一家游戏公司上班并非就一帆风顺。Crunch time意味着开发者必须为了按时递交工作而加班工作,这也是游戏开发的痛苦之源。对于游戏开发者来说,每周工作60,80甚至是数百个小时是常有的事,如此他们才有可能按照约定的时间完成游戏。根据开发者满足度调查,45%的开发者能够得到额外的加班补偿,但是这些补偿往往不是以金钱的形式表现出来。在我经常加班的那几年,我便从未收到过加班补偿。相反地,我的雇主会在项目结束后给我一周或两周的假期。如果你是单身的话这可能会是不错的补偿,但如果你有配偶并且对方也在上班或者你有小孩并且他也要上课的话,那么2月或10月的假期时间便不是什么好的补偿了。

当然了,这样的假期肯定比获得永久假期,也就是被解雇好多了。通常情况下开发者会在一个项目结束后并且该项目效益不佳,或者项目卖得不错但不足以弥补公司巨大的财政漏洞,再或者没有其它项目需要他们情况下立刻被解雇。根据调查,在过去五年里,每个开发者平均曾在5家公司待过。他们可能曾以60000美元的薪酬效劳于一家公司1年,之后遭遇解雇并花了3个月时间去寻找新工作,而因为这其中的空档这60000美元的薪酬也就只剩下48000美元了。

在游戏产业中人们能够赚到更多钱的唯一方法便是创立一家公司,然后将其卖掉或上市。就像《我的世界》的创造者Notch在将Mojang以25亿美元卖给微软时他便拥有其中75%的收益。然而他的这种情况是很少见的。就像我最近访问了一家非常有名的游戏开发者并发现他住在一个与我差不多的中等大小的房子里。我们总是会在这里遇到各种起起伏伏。当我卖掉自己所拥有的第一家公司时我赚到了一笔不少的收益,但之后我便将其全部投入于第二家公司里。

所以如果你想进入游戏产业,就不要幻想着自己能在这里发家致富。你可以找到许多足以谋生的简单方法,但说实话,我不能想象自己离开这里会是什么样的情况。请抱着一颗想创造游戏的热情的心来到这里。并始终牢记你是出于爱,而非金钱去创造游戏。

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转发,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

Get Into Game Development For Love, Not Money

by David Mullich

Today I gave my introductory lecture about the game industry to a new group of incoming Game Production students at The Los Angeles Film School. After talking for a couple of hours about the latest industry trends, types of jobs available, and professionalism, I asked them for questions. There was only one thing they all wanted to know: how much money they were going to make. After all, games bring in bajillions of dollars of revenue, don’t they?

So, I ran the numbers by them.

According to the International Game Developers Association’s 2014 Developer Satisfaction Survey (yeah, I need to update my slides with the latest IGDA survey), 48% of those polled said that they were independent. This means that they either are freelance contractors or working as an indie developer.

Indie developers are those who are developing a game either individually or as a group without the financial backing of a publisher. Unless an investor funding their work or they are living off of profits from previous work, indie developers work without pay until they finish their game, release it, and the money starts rolling in. But here’s the problem. A developer’s first game is usually not successful. Nor their second. Nor their third. An indie developer may have to produce many games before one becomes truly successful. Angry Birds, for example, was the 52nd game developed by its creator, Rovio.

Independent contractors, on the other hand, do usually get paid for their work regardless of the game’s eventual financial success or failure. A contractor may bid a fixed amount for making a specific delivery, such as a design document, a game level, a set of animations, or a website. The contractor may also work out an hourly, weekly or monthly rate with the developer. How much the developer is willing to pay is based on the demand for the contractor’s skills and experience, and the developer’s financial budget. A quality assurance tester would not be paid much more than minimum wage, and a struggling artist or writer may not be able to negotiate more than $20 to $30 an hour. However, an in-demand, high-level programmer might command as much as $100 to $150 an hour.

Did you notice that I used the word “usually” in the above paragraph? An under-financed developer may try to negotiate a deal with a contractor in which payment is contingent on the game’s success. Other developers may fail to pay the contractor after the work is delivered. I did some contract work for a developer two years ago who didn’t pay my final $12,000 invoice because they went out of business, and that’s money I’ll never be able to collect.

There is more security by working for an established game studio or publisher as a salaried employee. The Developer Satisfaction Survey reports these as average wages in the U.S. game industry for those with three years or less experience:

—Programmers: $71,855

—Producers: $59,079

—Game Designers: $53,000

—Artists and Animators: $50,000

—Quality Assurance: $38,833

Now, these numbers are sometimes sweetened by bonus and stock options programs. If a company is doing well financially, it may set aside some of its revenues as profits to be divided among employees based upon their individual contributions to the company. Publicly held companies, such as Activision and Electronic Arts, offer employees at a certain level stock options, the opportunity to purchase company stock at a discount, which they can immediately sell without putting up any money or hold onto. Such benefits can supplement a developer’s income by tens of thousands of dollars.

Still, working at a game company is not all rainbows and unicorns. Crunch time, which means overtime work developers must do to deliver a game on schedule, is the bane of game development. It is not unusual for game developers to work sixty, eighty, even a hundred or more hours per week for months so that they will deliver their finished game on a promised date. Now, the Developer Satisfaction Survey does report that 45% of developers did receive extra compensation for working crunch time; however, that compensation isn’t necessarily in the form of monetary compensation. In all the years I’ve worked crunch time, I have never received overtime payment. Instead, my employer might give me a week or two of vacation time when the project was over. This might be an appreciated benefit if you’re single, but if you have a spouse who is working or kids who are in school, extra vacation time in February or October isn’t that great of a benefit.

Of course, it’s better than receiving a permanent vacation — being laid off. Too often developers are laid off immediately after finishing work on a game because the game didn’t sell well, or it did sell well but it wasn’t enough to get the entire company out of financial hole it was in, or there just wasn’t another project for the developer to work on. According to the Survey, developers have worked for an average of four employers over the past five years. While they might have worked for one employer for a year at a salary of $60K, they then are laid off and spend three months looking for a new job, effectively making that $60K salary worth only $48K due to the downtime between jobs.

The only way people make a lot of money in the game industry is if they have ownership in the company they are working for, and that company gets sold or goes public. Minecraft creator Notch owned 75% of his publishing company Mojang when he sold it to Micrsoft for $2.5 billion, and now he’s the richest developer alive. However, he is an extremely rare exception. I recently visited the home of one of the most famous game developers in the industry and found that he lived in a middle-class home not much different from my own. We may have ups, but we also have downs that even everything out. I made a nice chunk of money when the first company in which I had ownership was sold, but then I lost it all on my second company. C’est la vie!

So, if you are thinking about going into the game industry, don’t do it to get rich. There are a lot easier ways to make a living, but to be honest, I can’t imagine doing anything else. Get into game development because you have a passion to make games. Do it for love, not money.(source:Gamasutra

 


上一篇:

下一篇: