I see comments like this a lot on HN, and I think the difference is exaggerated. Yes, engineers make more outside of the game industry, but if you look at aver

I see comments like this a lot on HN, and I think the difference is exaggerated. Yes, engineers make more outside of the game industry, but if you look at average salaries for engineers it's not that much lower. That $84K number includes, artists, designers, QA and producers. The average salary in the US for game industry software engineers was $91K in 2013 (http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=10567 http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=10567). According to sources that come up in Google (bureau of labor, indeed, glassdoor, salary.com) the average nation wide software engineer salary is close to that plus or minus $5K. On HN it feels like nation wide game industry numbers are being compared to the salaries of the best engineers at the most successful Silicon Valley\SF tech companies. When you compare against top tier companies we're looking at a $20K+ jump. But if you start comparing against top tier game developers like Valve, Riot or Naughty Dog you get comparable results. I know that salary surveys are understandably taken with a grain of salt on HN, but I feel like it's a better yardstick than the "common wisdom" that gets thrown around.