Game Design

Average salary for designers with 3 or fewer years’ experience: $43,486.

Typically, entry-level game developers—that is, people with no prior experience making games—rarely if ever are hired as game designers off the bat. That said, although few game designers declare themselves as having 3 or fewer years’ experience in the 2005 salary survey, respondents holding the title “game writer” were also counted as designers, which helped round out the data.

“‘Game designer’ is a broad spectrum of a single job,” says McShaffry, noting that designers are not just creative thinkers. Designers can have specialist jobs, like designing levels, or all-encompassing ones, directing different departments toward a single vision while playtesting, tweaking code, and helping to broker publishing deals on the side. Equally broad is the title game writer, a job that could involve creative duties, such as mapping out epic narratives, or more technical ones, like recording documentation.

Game designers overall didn’t see too much change in pay between 2004 and 2005, with the least experienced designers averaging about what they did the year before.