How Much Japanese Game Developers Make

[Lulcielid]

Since this forum is composed of Final Fantasy/Videogame fans I assume most of us are interested in some capacity with Japanese games then this would be of interest to us since this is related to the developers that work on the (japanese) games we like & love to play.

Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association carried out the poll, which can be read here in full here.

A total of 1,808 individuals replied to this average 2015 salary question. Note that not all jobs are directly related to development.

Producer (44 replies): 7,673,000 yen (US$76,600)

Director (111 replies): 5,772,000 yen ($57,600)

Software Engineer (919 replies): 5,129,000 yen ($51,200)

Artist (345 replies): 4,451,000 yen ($44,400)

Technical Artist (53 replies): 5,817,000 yen ($58,000)

Sound Designer (58 replies): 5,443,000 yen ($54,300)

Planner (Designer) (162 replies): 4,364,000 yen ($43,500)

Executive/Management (77 replies): 9,098,000 yen ($90,800)

Domestic Sales (8 replies): 5,900,000 yen ($58,900)

International Sales/Support (5 replies): 6,900,000 yen ($68,900)

PR/Advertising (10 replies): 5,610,000 yen ($56,000)

HR (6 replies): 5,617,000 yen ($56,000)

Corporate Planning (10 replies): 7,240,000 yen ($72,300)

Source: original article from KOTAKU.

 

[hian]

That polling is definitely being heavily pulled by people in the AAA branches of the industry.
Mid-tier 3rd party people don't even come close to this.

Also, to put these numbers into perspective -
If you're in education/childcare in Japan you probably only make between 2,500,000 to 3,500.000 which still makes the legible for car and house loans so those salaries are fairly good.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Wow, those salaries seem very low, given the cost of living in Japan.

 

[Kermitu Kleric Katie]

Wow, those salaries seem very low, given the cost of living in Japan.

I thought they seemed rather high, given your average American only makes about 40,000 a year, but I suppose America's economy and Japan's economy aren't really that comparable. Or maybe they are, I don't know.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

So here's a website on how much Americans can make in the video game business:

http://www.animationarena.com/video-game-salary.html

Designers:
"A video game designer with less then three years of experience will make, on the average $46K a year. With between three and six years experience a game designer can bring home $55,600 a year. Once you have over six years of on the job experience you can average almost $70K a year.

If you are the creative director or lead designer you can bring home $45,000 a year until you have over three years of experience. Then you can start to average $54,000 a year. Lead designers or creative directors with over six years experience will make around $81K a year. The highest reported salary that we were able to find for a lead artist was $180,000 a year. "

Producers:
With over six years of experience you will begin to make an average of $80,000 a year.

Executive producers have been known to make, on the average, $50,000 a year. Once you have over six years of experience you can start to command a salary of almost $82K a year. Executive producers with over six years of experience will receive a six-figure salary. The highest salary we found was $200,000 a year.

Then I looked at a global house price index on The Economist and low and behold house prices have dropped in Japan over the last 15 years - but who knows, maybe prices is Tokyo have skyrocketed while prices in rural areas have fallen significantly since so few people want to live there.

SO maybe I was wrong and they aren't low salaries at all.

 

[hian]

Wow, those salaries seem very low, given the cost of living in Japan.

As I just said earlier in the thread - those salaries are relatively high.
All of these people would be living comfortable middle-class lives, and be eligible for house and car loans no problem what so ever unless they have records of failed/delayed back-payments on earlier loans, taxes etc.

My wife, a qualified worker, earns somewhere around 3,500,000, owns a new car which she no longer pays a loan for, just bought a property, and is now building a house.

The "costs of living" in Japan are highly inflated by high average living costs in down-town areas of large metropolitan centers of Japan such as Tokyo and Osaka, and luxury items/pursuits available in the market.

The fact of the matter though, is that the Japanese market offers an extremely large amount of choices, especially concerning essentials, allowing people to live within relatively good within their means even if they're only working 5 days a week doing un-skilled labor.

On average, any given item (whether it be food or electronics) will cost 1/3 of what it does in for instance any given Scandinavian country.
Eating out, and drinking is cheaper here than most of northern/western Europe (England, Germany etc.).

The country is covered in "100-Yen Shops" that sell pretty much every living essential item you could possibly need in your apartment, with the exception of furniture, for a 100 yen a piece (pluss 8 yen in tax).

Your average new car in Japan (latest model of Honda, Subaru or Mitsubishi) that isn't considered like a luxury or sports model usually sell for around 2,500,000 to 3,500,000,
but you can acquire a working used car for as little as 100,000 yen (and unlike most western used cars it won't require extensive repairs to be a reliable means of transportation).

Japan is not an expensive country to live in if you work here.
Even on minimum salary - you'll still be having an easier time here than pretty much anywhere else in the world (unless you've decided you have to live in down-town Tokyo or Osaka etc.)

Now, just off the top of my head - even those lowest on that list are making more than your average teacher, nurse, and police-officer among other things.
So no, that salary is definitely not low by any stretch of the imagination - housing prices not withstanding.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Yes, I can see that now. It just surprised me that in such a profitable business, people weren't earning six figure salaries.

 

[Tashasaurous]

The salarys in both America and Japan are pretty high. They're still fairly lucky compared what the rest of the world gets. My family and I can only afford buying house supplies, education, work, and paying off bills, not to mention some DVDs and cheap things like that.

On the other hand, people in places like uh, India and somewhere along the lines don't get as much as we all get, but they're still happy with their lifestyles.

Then again, you'd need all that money to even pay for developing games and movies, and imagine the electicity bills. 0~0;

 

[hian]

Yes, I can see that now. It just surprised me that in such a profitable business, people weren't earning six figure salaries.

I know that a lot of people tend to imagine this. At a surface level it seems intuitive due to the large amount of money changing hands throughout the gaming industry. However, let's consider some things.

Even with those salaries, you're looking at a lot of costs for producing a AAA titles, so even with the profits, you're looking at pretty even numbers.

First you have the projects that nowadays can have 100+, to several hundred, individuals working on them - many of which will have to be paid for more than one year of labor.
Then you have rent of offices, monthly bills, equipment, misc. costs, traveling and research costs, marketing costs, physical print and delivery costs, and so on and so on and so on.

Then on top of that, this is all usually money received from company backers/share-holders up-front/during development before the game is turning a profit, which they expect to have paid back, plus interests and additional profit, for personal gain and for future projects - which is the reason they're giving out the cash to begin with.

Let's pretend we have a team of a 100 people, all working for around 45,000 dollars a year, and let's pretend they can get this game done in a year.
4.500.000 dollars in salaries alone, with non of the other associated costs of hiring and maintaining a work-force added to it.
Adding no other production costs what so ever to this title, if the game retails at 45$ (for the sake of simplicity) you now have to sell 100.001 copies just to break even.

But of course, we could easily imagine technology, rent, red-tape and other things necessary to make a game (licensing agreements etc.) easily costing about the same as you pay your team in salaries, and with some additional misc. stuff going on your game now costs 10.000.000 dollars to make.
Then add marketing to that, print and delivery costs etc. and we're more likely looking at some between 15 and 20, but we'll be nice and go with 15.

15.000.000 USD and now you have to sell 332.000 copies or so to break even.
But if you're going to be able to have a job next year as well, this product can't just float itself right, and considering inflation, changes in the market, new expenses due to advances in technology etc. you'll want at least to make more than it cost to make your current game on top of also covering everything it cost to make it.
You also need to earn some money for the investors as well, because that's why they invested in the project to begin with, so now we're realistically more or less looking at something like
35-40 number.

We'll go with 35.000.000 I.E 875.000 copies sold - That's a conservative estimate of the sales of the game, and how much money you'd have to be projected to make developing a game to justify paying one hundred employees the lowest salary provided in the OP.

And if somebody doubts this is conservative - The Witcher 3 cost 81 million USD to make. Eighty. One. Million.
I'm working with 15. So yeah.

If you were to pay most of them six-digit salaries? No AAA game would ever get off the ground.

The people who make the most out of AAA games (when they succeed) are the share-holders and investors, and sometimes producers/directors of titles are share-holders in their own companies (Hideo Kojima whilst working for Konami), which means that not only will statistics controlling only for salary not accurately report how much these people are making, but they will be making tons more than what their salary would lead you to believe.

 

[Tashasaurous]

I knew developing games were expensive, but gee whiz, that's seriously expensive. No wonder it takes a few years(or even a decade) to just make a game. 0~0

 

[hian]

I knew developing games were expensive, but gee whiz, that's seriously expensive. No wonder it takes a few years(or even a decade) to just make a game. 0~0

Those two things are actually not related.

These games are expensive because size of teams, cost of technology, marketing and distribution, more than anything else.

Using a decade to make a game will surely hike up costs, but a game is not going to take longer to make simply because it's more expensive to begin with.
If anything, knowing how expensive it is to produce high-quality games these days, devs and investors have a vested interest in keeping development relatively short by hiring large teams for smaller salaries, because of how expenses would snowball if they had a team of well-payed employes working for several years on a single project.

Games do not make money until they're released, and up until they're released they're black holes sucking money out into the ether for all we know, and so nobody wants their games in production for decades.

Having a game in development for a decade is not only not at all understandable, it's an abject failure in every conceivable regard relating to game development.

 

[Tashasaurous]

I knew developing games were expensive, but gee whiz, that's seriously expensive. No wonder it takes a few years(or even a decade) to just make a game. 0~0

Those two things are actually not related.

These games are expensive because size of teams, cost of technology, marketing and distribution, more than anything else.

Using a decade to make a game will surely hike up costs, but a game is not going to take longer to make simply because it's more expensive to begin with.
If anything, knowing how expensive it is to produce high-quality games these days, devs and investors have a vested interest in keeping development relatively short by hiring large teams for smaller salaries, because of how expenses would snowball if they had a team of well-payed employes working for several years on a single project.

Games do not make money until they're released, and up until they're released they're black holes sucking money out into the ether for all we know, and so nobody wants their games in production for decades.

Having a game in development for a decade is not only not at all understandable, it's an abject failure in every conceivable regard relating to game development.

I get what you're saying, but I was just pointing out on the costs. I mean, the visual effects pretty much use computer technology in both game developments and for movies for special effects, and depending on how many people are working on them, that's gotta be at least a bit pricy.

Plus I wasn't saying that developing games are expensive from the very start(that's just stupid-I'm not calling you or anyone else stupid, before you jump to conclusions). I was just saying on what they use and hope that the game sells well the help pay off the morgage or something like that. It is their job. I don't know how these companies work.

Then they have to ask and pay actors/actresses to voice characters.(Even they can be pricy)

Sorry if I confused you guys. But in Square's case, despite the set downs, they haven't shut themselves down yet and they've been around since the late 80's.

 

[hian]

Tasha you're babbling again.

You said, replying to me :
I knew developing games were expensive, but gee whiz, that's seriously expensive.
No wonder it takes a few years(or even a decade) to just make a game.

That does not follow from what I said about the expenses of a game, and your reply to me here does not meaningfully address what I said there either.

 

[Tashasaurous]

Sorry, my bad. I thought you were talking about how much it actually costs which really surprised me.