How much do video game programmers make?

[Tanstalas]

dsgrue3 said:

phnguyen89 said:

dsgrue3 said:
Okay I'm going to school for programming...computer science engineering specifically. You are going to need to be able to do TONS of math.
I have taken Calculus 1-3, Matrix Algebra, Intro to Numerical Methods (it's how they derive a lot of calculus techniques), Prob&Stats for Engineers, Physics 1 & 2

And if you take any form of computer graphics course you NEED to understand matrices, so matrix algebra is very beneficial.

As far as specifically video game programmers I have no idea and would imagine the salary wages vary vastly from company to company, however, with my degree, I believe starting out it's around 55k a year.

Don't give people a false sense of what CS/CE is about.  You do NOT need math at ALL UNLESS you are in graphics/algorithm related fields.

Simply stating my curriculum. As it is all I can contribute to the matter. I agree though, I haven't used much math in many programming assignments, other than built in math functions and calling them. It seems to only be in graphics that math is widely used and you need to understand the matrices for translations and transformations.

 

To the poster who graduated with the same degree, what did your friends end up doing instead? Seems like a huge waste to get a degree and then not use it? Did they have BS or BAs?

Well, a few went into Web Programming/design, we did touch on web stuff (PHP/MySQL/Javascript and Java - if you want to include Java) as well as HTML, CSS and stuff, but there was a seperate whole course for web programming from our software engineering, so I don't count them as doing what "we went to school for". (Our course was very broad in programming languages - we did 3 sometimes 4 languages per semester) plus we always had a math course every semester.  We covered everything from 3 versions of C (4 if you took visual C as an optional course) to RPGIV, COBOL, VB, Java, etc etc

The ones that did go do programming is a friend who is doing programming for Union Gas (in Visual C and VB I believe) , another is programming modules for ACT! (His own company he started), another is doing data backups for a bank, myself I did programming for 2 years after school for sh*t money, so after that I took an easier job doing tech support for a cable company, and now I work in a NOC (Network Operations Center) - still in computer field but the networking side.

And the other 70% just couldn't find jobs in the industry, or after the 4 years in school decided they didn't want to be a code monkey and became a paramedic or something.

It's a tough course as well, we started with 600 1st semester, down to 300 after that semester, down to about 150 after 2nd semester, in 2nd year they put about 100 people who failed a few courses the first year into our "class" as they made up their courses then we lost again about half, and half again, at the end I think 60 graduated, of those 60, probably only 40 of those original 600 we started with.  Funny though, of that 40 probably 30 of us graduated with honors :P