^ Pay scale is going to vary all over the place based on location, their experience level, specific skillsets, demand, their pay negotiating skills, etc.  That's like asking "do artists get paid more than programmers" with zero other context.  There's no concrete answer to that.  Some artists get paid more than some programmers, some programmers get paid more than some artists.  Audio engineering and programming are both fields that have a wide ranging pay scale.

If your question is more of a "which is more valuable", or "which one is more worth throwing money at", etc., then my answer is that if either one is particularly skilled, I would value them equally.

18 hours ago, trjh2k2 said:

If your question is more of a "which is more valuable", or "which one is more worth throwing money at", etc., then my answer is that if either one is particularly skilled, I would value them equally.

Sounds fair. I'll take that answer.

Maybe a better answer is that in 90% of cases that I've been involved in, the audio guy was outsourced and the programmer was an employee.  A large part of that is the fact that game dev is 90% writing software, so there's just not enough work to keep a full time audio guy employed, not at the scale of the places I've been.  If you're an audio engineer, then I'm sure you're familiar with how outsourced/freelance/etc. kinds of audio can end up working- and how there can be a huge range from "we paid some guy $100 to throw some sounds together" to "we booked the studio for a week with an engineer at $50+/hr."  When it comes to game programming, I think it can work a bit the same way: anything from "hey dude, come program a game with me in our spare time for fun (aka zero money)" to high paying engineering jobs.

To get back to your original post though - I've noticed that there's a pretty big overlap in software guys/tech-y-people and musicians.  I play in three bands currently, and one of the bands is more than half made up of software engineers.  Lots of the guitarists I know are also programmers on some level.  It might just be a coincidence though.

I've been making/recording music for over 15 years, I have virtually zero programming ability.

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I'm not an audio professional in games, but my understanding is that there's almost no need for any programming competence for musicians or audio people these days. The various middleware tools and engine facilities make integration a code-free experience

While middleware is great, it doesn't make game audio integration a code-free experience. There's still a lot to do even if you're using something like Unity or UE with "play FMOD event on collision" style UI. Sometimes you need fairly subtle logic to prioritize and call FMOD or Wwise events, which requires coding.

To answer the  original question, I have both music and CS degrees, and I've found that having good programming chops has made more valuable as a game composer/sound designer. It helps to 'speak the language'. I've written up audio specs for programmers, and by putting them into very 'programmer-istic' format, it was easy for the game programmer to understand how I wanted the sounds/music created specifically implemented. And in a couple cases, I've dug into a games code to make sure that the music/sound I was hired to make was being implemented in the game correctly.

Although it isn't really so applicable these days, when I started, I had my own "sound engine" for various arcade, Genesis, SNES, PS1 games I did audio for. If I wanted the engine to have a new feature, I could just add it to my engine.

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oes anyone else here find the design or logic end of the game world just as much fun and intriguing as playing your instrument?

That all said, although I enjoy the logic, etc of programming, if it's not audio programming (which is fascinating), then I find programming to be really uninteresting.

I'm a sound designer and personally love coding although I still have a lot to learn. I think in an indie game environment being able to wear many hats can be quite beneficial and nowadays I see a lot of AAA studios that have basic programming skills for sound designers as a plus. It really helps to understand the development process better and sound designers need to be great technical thinkers as well.