Games is a a glamour industry like music, movies and fashion. In all of those industries you see the same dynamic. Legions of very poorly paid people, lots of p

Games is a a glamour industry like music, movies and fashion. In all of those industries you see the same dynamic. Legions of very poorly paid people, lots of people making literally nothing. They just want to be part of it and to get their shot at the big time. Meanwhile a tiny percentage "make it" and get massively rich. For every person in the Beatles there are massive numbers of people in bands who never make a dime. Similarly for every developer who starts a game company like Id that make serious money there are massive numbers who make little or nothing. >Is it predominately the ultra low-end of programmers or something? Actually the opposite is often true. Certainly those who have any amount of success are often exceptionally good programmers. As one boss at a non-game software company once put it after we hired a former game programmer to make software for oil refineries, they are the jet fighter pilots of programming.