Yep, and this makes perfect economic sense. In general, a given job pays roughly just enough to equal the costs of doing it (after all, if it paid more then why

Yep, and this makes perfect economic sense. In general, a given job pays roughly just enough to equal the costs of doing it (after all, if it paid more then why wouldn't new people be joining the market for this job and driving the wage down?). And by costs I of course mean net costs. Not just financial outlays but the intangible benefits of doing the job that offset the financial outlays. And the fact is many people find making a game so intensely enjoyable that the net cost of making it is zero and they do it even when they're making no money or stand to lose money in expectation. Of course, there's huge variance in both directions, for every ten thousand indie game devs there's one Notch! And in reality I'm guessing being an indie game dev is at least slightly profitable in expectation. But the joy of doing it seems to drive their wages down to basically subsistence level.