4 minutes ago, Tom Sloper said:

I think you read something that isn't there.

I read people get paid less because they like what they do.

If in the same room/working space, people are equal, this would be not a problem. There should not be in the same room somebody who is being paid much less or much more. This will create conflicts. If other departments are getting paid twice more for twice less job, they should have their own working space in the building.

I think if somebody is too enthusiastic at a job interview, and he says something like: "i would do this for free, because i enjoy it", he could be given much less than the rest of the colleagues. And he will suffer. The self determination and self esteem are very important things. One can not blame nobody else if he sells himself cheap.

Along with the "promises about future promotion" and "the opportunity to work from home", the "you are given the opportunity to do what you like" is yet another excuse to exploit people.

22 minutes ago, Tom Sloper said:

but they are nevertheless valued, and paid well.

Glad to hear this clarification!

Why do gamers often make less than the programmers...

Because 'gamers' are the ones paying the programmers.

1 hour ago, NikiTo said:

I read people get paid less because they like what they do.

While that is true, they are doing something they (hopefully) like doing so it balances out. And it is generally still way above the national averages. Id think of it more as people doing things they don't like doing as much, demand better more in order to do so.

Certainly if I didn't feel my current deal and career options were competitive, I could easily find projects Id be just as interested about elsewhere, which in turn means my employer will offer better terms to retain staff since replacing people that leave with new hires is slow and costs the business a lot.

1 hour ago, NikiTo said:

There should not be in the same room somebody who is being paid much less or much more. This will create conflicts.

That's sort of a reality of any employment, though. Even in a single job role, compensation varies vastly with seniority.

A fresh-out-of-college engineer at a top 10 tech firm earns in the low 6-figures. A veteran engineer on the exact same team earns 3-5x that. They are expected to work together and be impactful in rough proportion to their compensation.

42 minutes ago, SyncViews said:

While that is true, they are doing something they (hopefully) like doing so it balances out

In a certain extent it is reasonable. Accepting to be paid slightly less for doing what you like. But this shouldn't be the reason to be less paid. And if the job interviewer or the job applicant mention the phrase "paid less because doing what you enjoy" one should run. Exploitation is exploitation, and if an employer is mentioning exploitation since the very first meeting, he would use more and more ways lately to exploit the workers.
 

6 minutes ago, swiftcoder said:

Even in a single job role, compensation varies vastly with seniority.

This is understandable. I disagree with this on a personal level. I mean it is fair. But in my case I valuate my own fresh ideas I am bringing to that seniors. If i. as a bad C++ coder can make something look better than the team led by the senior did....how's that? If he is so senior, no newbie should be able to provide something better than him. I can provide fresh ideas and the others can add to that ideas their professional dominance of C++/APIs.

I mean i have a value.

If i am the one giving the money, i would not feed somebody just because of his seniority if he is wasted and brings me not fresh ideas and innovation. I would give him more money, but 5 times more is just crazy to pay only because of his seniority. He has to EARN his salary the same way the cleaner of the building does.

Of course if i sign a contract that makes me obey a senior i will obey him without even complaining, because i signed for it.

A senior somewhere is responsible for a huuuugeee reflection coming from under a building:




 

Like I said, id look at it as getting paid more to do something you don't really want to do. If the deal I got was not significantly better than what the game jobs offered at the time, and other things (location, career opportunities, etc.) were equal, Id leave for a games programming job. Or similarly for something in the tv/film industry, middle ware, or various other things I have seen around. So my employer has to offer a better deal to stop me from doing so.

So I'll preface this by saying that I don't work in the games industry. I currently work in the software industry, and as chance has it, that's currently at an animation studio. So anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my knowledge of the reasons:

There's a couple of components to why the games industry doesn't pay as much as other equivalent programming jobs. First one, as many have noted, is that there's more supply than demand. Secondly, as others have also noted, many studios aren't very stable, especially the smaller you get (though this does include larger studios as well). The industry itself is volatile. Games sometimes make money. Sometimes they don't. That can significantly impact job stability. 

Another thing to note is that pay can sometimes be somewhat less compared to programming jobs in the rest of the industry, but the other thing that gets you is hours. The games industry has a reputation at least of people working long hours, especially near deadlines, and the salary doesn't scale to cover that, meaning that the hours worked beyond the usual 40 per week aren't technically paid for, so as a result, you are earning less per hour in terms of hours worked. This isn't the case everywhere, but it can be another component.

42 minutes ago, SyncViews said:

id look at it as getting paid more to do something you don't really want to do

Yes it is valid. But you should never tell the employer you enjoy the job to the point you would do it for less money. And it is prohibited to say either that you don't like the job. Just keep it to yourself.

You never say things like: "i need the job because i am broke", "i need the job because i have 4 starving kids and am gonna lose the mortgage". You keep things like that behind a poker face on a job interview.

EDIT: (Excuse me @SyncViews , I dont want to start an argument. I am multitasking now, and I just saw it may sound as i am picking an argument. Sorry!)
 

24 minutes ago, deltaKshatriya said:

people working long hours, especially near deadlines, and the salary doesn't scale to cover that, meaning that the hours worked beyond the usual 40 per week aren't technically paid for, so as a result, you are earning less per hour in terms of hours worked.

This sounds like pure exploitation to me....

46 minutes ago, NikiTo said:

If he is so senior, no newbie should be able to provide something better than him

This is a bit of a false road to go down. Even junior engineers are expected to perform at very high levels, but mostly on well defined tasks, involving mostly their own solo efforts. You pay more senior folks the big bucks not because they produce more/better code than a junior (in practice they often produce significantly less), but because they are coordinating a team of 10+ people, spot-checking the rest of the team's work, heading off management before they send impossible product requirements down the chain... Just keeping the office politics from negatively affecting the team is a pretty significant time sink in many tech firms

42 minutes ago, NikiTo said:

But you should never tell the employer you enjoy the job to the point you would do it for less money.

The fact people in the games industry a job do not just reject job offers with such terms, demand changes, or quit existing jobs, already tells the business that the employees are happy with those terms. This is especially true in many development roles where replacing someone that quit has a significant cost to the business, as both finding a suitable replacement and getting them up to speed can easily take months, so a business will seek to avoid high turnover.

And I can certainly say if I got the sort of salaries I saw, or they routinely exercised the contract for unpaid overtime, weekends, etc. I would certainly not stay in my current job. The business knows this and so does offer a good pay deal, perks, and almost never exercises the contract to demand unpaid overtime (for all of their developers and other technical roles).