As far as software developers go, a videogame programmer is generally very poorly paid and works excessively long hours. Larger companies (like EA) will tend to give you a salary which is (more or less) in line with what you could make doing other forms of programming, but you’re generally pretty far separated from doing the kinds of programming that are particularly cool or enjoyable; and many smaller companies will pay you crap with a (theoretically) generous bonus structure, but you will get your hands far more dirty in the challenging/interesting work of being a game developer.

Please note that the above are most likely "salaries" - I know some people in the business and that is inline with what they make, however, they also work 60-80 hour weeks which if you break it down into a per hour job, you would make more per hour doing programming elsewhere.

If you want to do game programming go for it, however, if you want to make $$ as a programmer go into the financial sector (banks and the like)

Oh yeah and for education, you are probably looking at at least 3-4 years, however it is a very hard business to get in, and most people will take another year of strictly video game design afterwards from some place such as digipen (are they still around?) and that one year is usually 20-30grand plus your diploma/degree from post secondary (the 3-4 years I was referring to beforehand)

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.

*IF* you can get a job :)

That is also what I took in school, Software Engineering.  I can tell you that less than 30% of the people I know that graduated with me are doing programming now (6 years out of school)

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

For game programming specifically, you will need to know at least a little math, or making 2d games is as far as you'll get. Most of the programming for 3d games requires at least some math knowledge such as matrices, quaternions, etc.

SO is programming a good field to get into? What are the chances i will be able to find a job after i get my degree?