So is there a big difference in salaries between Dallas and Los Angeles? Cos Dallas/Fort Worth is a big city too.

If a developer needs to cut costs, they can cut salaries without packing up and moving halfway across the country.

I don't think that's true Slimebeast. Maybe for your profession but not in general. I mean look at this site:

http://www.lonestatistik.se/jamfor.asp/sok/1

twestern do you mean $30K before or after taxes?

I think $30K is actually quite a lot of money lol.

As a side note to my post above, I wanted to mention that California isn't at all "special", with regards to taxes pertaining to video games, etc.

Montreal, on the other hand, is. Ubisoft Montreal (and every game studio in Quebec) has about half of their employee salary costs paid by the government. No joke.

This is one of the reasons the number of people working on Ubisoft games always seems so high.  They are an unusual developer, with some unusual strategies.  They favor the "more people" approach over the "more time" approach, thanks to their situation, but it doesn't really have to be that way for them.  They could benefit from the unique advantages Quebec offers them via traditional means, but they have chosen the "throw more people at it" approach.  I think the diminishing returns of that approach bites them, in the end, but... they do make some good games (at least on the HD platforms).

For some professions there's some significant differences, like high level IT business and economics, but I can't see much difference in general browsing some categories on that site.

You're kind of thinking of developers as robots who will put up with that kind of treatment, with this statement.

There is fierce, fierce demand for experienced devs in the games industry.  It has a high burnout rate, and those able to weather the taxing workload long enough to become senior, experienced devs are not folks you can cut the salary on.

Likewise, newbie developers, while they have lots of energy, struggle so much with the details of game development (without guidance from experienced devs), that hiring them alone isn't really a valid option, either.

One theory I have kicked around that addresses this is the concept of "Meccas". An area get established a major economic center in something, and has all the infrastructure and support and other needed elements in place, so the area then becomes the place (a Mecca) for something. It isn't just videogames, but advertising (Madison avenue), plays (Broadway), the NYC garment district, Wall Street, Chinatowns, Gambling (Las Vegas, Atlantic City) and the movie industry (Hollywood). Things from schools to suppliers come together, and you end up with an excess of studios in a given area.  And, looking over this thread, and what I listed, one can see how Meccas can spawn off other Meccas, if they are related.

When an area establishes a Mecca status, then it becomes a lot easier to do things for the community, and fund programs. Up where I am north of NYC, they don't have that, and funding programs, and employment is real challenging.

Oh yeah, DFW is HUGE but that isn't what really decides it.  California is just...expensive.  That's all there really is to it.

Before taxes, and it's only a lot depending on where you live.  Like I said, $30k/year in Texas isn't a big deal and you can live on it fine, it sucks in California.

I think a $20,000 salary cut would be more popular with the developers than a $20,000 salary cut AND moving to Texas.

They would lose employees either way, of course, but if they have to cut costs, they have to cut costs, and better a smaller salary than no job.