Sound & Picture: The 2017 results of the annual GameSoundCon Audio Industry Survey are in! Just before GameSoundCon, the premier conference for video game composers and sound designers, opens its doors again in the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles on November 7 & 8, the industry survey provides interesting new findings about the income and educational levels of game audio pros.
2 comments:
This was an interesting look at the breakdown of the people working in the sound industry of video games. I was surprised at the number of people with a master’s degree or higher working in the industry. I would have expected it to be only around twenty percent as opposed to thirty five percent. I also wish that they included more information about the elements of virtual reality and the sound design of that variety of games. Especially since VR is on the rise, I would have liked more information on how the number and salary of jobs there relates to the rest of the community. This article seems like it was lacking some information that could have made it more expansive and more helpful. If they also included information about how many of these designers also worked outside of video games that could be cool information to have.
It is interesting to me how even though women have on average worked longer in the industry (9.5 years, mean, compared with the men's 9.2 years, or 8.5 years, median, compared with the men's 8 years), they still earn about 83 percent of what male game audio composers make (mean $63,319 compared with men's $75,911, or median $57,580 compared with the men's $64,000). The survey did acknowledge that women in the game audio industry only make up %12.5 percent of the survey group, but that is another problem. I also thought it was interesting how much composers made with second jobs, considering the ratio of average money made at a second job compared with average salary in general. I think the information they gathered on the education of game audio composers is interesting, but given the trendless data (and also the talent-based nature of music composition), ultimately means little.
Post a Comment