I''m talking from a game studio''s perspective, not necessarily the publisher. A programmer with a base salary of $75K is probably costing the studio around $100K per year - including benefits & overhead. There''s a square-foot cost related to renting the office space where he puts his desk, you are probably going to need some kind of broadband access for them all to use, unemployment insurance, etc. Some of that overhead is gonna cost you whether you have a warm body occupying the desk or not. The $100K was a number I saw in a paper somewhere - it includes all the miscellanious costs related to having a team of programmers working on a game. It probably doesn''t include the cost of support personnel that you''ll need to maintain for the developers, though... an IT guy to keep the network running, an HR person to handle payroll & benefits, possibly an office manager to handle phone calls & supplies. A major studio has a pretty big overhead. If it''s a little over the mark, it''s still not a bad rule of thumb when trying to estimate costs.

As to what I''m doing now - I''m still programming, just not games. The short version is that it seemed like a good career move at the time. Considering the dearth of game development jobs in my area now (many companies have had major RIFs or gone out of business), and my reluctance to relocate, I''d have to say it probably was. Though I do miss writing games for a living.