游戏产业性别比例与薪资差异编辑本段回目录
在完成了游戏开发者的四月议题讨论后，我们是时候开始进行每年的游戏开发者薪资调查了。不出所料，在上周的GDC上出现了许多有关性别的话题，一些与会者通过薪资调查发现了女性在游戏产业中的收入远远低于同等职位的男性，（不管是基于何种学科）。
首先，作为杂志的编辑，我真的很高兴看到人们能够重视游戏产业中与性别相关的问题，我更高兴的是我们在杂志上所刊登的一些内容能够有效地推动这种关注。值得注意的是，这并不是什么新问题；从早前的薪资调查中我们便可以注意到性别收入差距已经扎根于游戏产业中很久了。所以对这种问题产生不满并支持女性员工的人已不是少数。
Game Developer Salary Survey（from elder-geek）
其次：值得指出的是程序员是个例外，因为这个职位中的女性开发者能够获得上千的收益—-但同时需要注意的是，女程序员只占所有程序员比例的4%，2011年的调查显示女性程序员的收益比男性程序员少1万美元，所以我认为这并不能成为该年产业内部的薪资趋势；这一原始数据是来自494名男性程序员以及22名女性程序员。
最后：在看到游戏产业中如此悬殊的男女薪资差距后，许多人会好奇这种差距是否与产业经验有关系，即男性员工的工资优势是否是因为产业中拥有多年经验的男性员工多于女性员工—-我们想要知道，游戏产业是否会支付给具有同等经验的女性员工一样的薪酬，或者游戏产业会因为这里拥有6年以上经验的男性员工多于女性员工而给予不公平的待遇。
换句话说：这种性别差距是因为性别歧视者的偏见而贬低了女性开发者的价值，还是因为游戏产业中拥有经验的女性开发者的人数较少？
当然了，真正的答案是包含了这两点元素（我似乎离题了）。我们比较了不同性别和学科的经验水平（游戏邦注：只使用美国游戏产业的工资数据，但是需要注意的是薪资调查本身所使用的是来自全世界的数据，除非另有规定），以下是我们的发现。
纵观所有学科，我们所调查的男性都拥有更多经验。623名男性开发者拥有6年以上的产业经验，426名拥有3至6年的经验，而284名拥有不到3年的经验。而女性调查者中只有77名拥有3至6年的产业经验，50名拥有6年以上的经验，以及46名拥有3年以下的经验。从而我们可以看出，拥有更高比例的经验型男性开发者便意味着他们能够获得比女性开发者更高的薪资。而这同时也反映了一个事实，即对于女性而言，这并不是一个特别友好的产业，即意味着他们很难获得与男性同等的回报。
对于女性而言，制作人似乎是最可行的长期职业。拥有6年以上经验的女性制作人的人数是其它学科（19人）的两倍。有趣的是，我们经常能够发现不少拥有3年以下经验的女性美工人员和动画家（17人）。拥有3至6年经验的女性开发者中，有22名制作人，17名美工人员/动画家，15名设计师，11名程序员，10名负责业务和法务，2名从事Q/A，而音频人员却1个都没有。
我们所使用的样本规模并不大。不过我们所参考的调查者的数量与整体薪资调查数量是基于相同的性别比例—-也就是女性调查者占11%。当我们面对较小的群体（游戏开发者）进行调查，然后将数据进一步划分（如只基于女性，薪资，学科或经验水平等），那么这些数据将越变越小，这也意味着我们很难去获得最明确的趋势。
（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者：Patrick Miller）
Gender Gap and the Game Developer Salary Survey
by Patrick Miller
So the April issue of Game Developer is out, which means — you guessed it — it’s time for the yearly Game Developer Salary Survey. And unsurprisingly, coming off of plenty of gender-centered happenings at GDC last week (which were, in turn, preceded by gender-centered happenings elsewhere in tech the week before), a few folks cracked open the Salary Survey to discover that women in the game industry are generally paid significantly less than their male counterparts in any given development discipline.
First off: As the editor of the magazine, I’m really happy to see that people are paying attention to gender-related issues in the game industry, and I’m doubly happy to see that our work on the magazine is helping draw attention to it. (No one writes letters to the editor any more!) It’s worth noting that these issues aren’t particularly new, either; from what I can recall of previous salary surveys, the gender pay gap has stuck around in the games industry for quite some time. So: Props to those who saw these numbers and got “irate” (in the words of one Twitter user) — you’re not the only ones.
Second: It’s worth pointing out that the notable exception is programming, where female devs are paid a few thousand more — but given the fact that women programmers represented only 4% of surveyed programmers overall, and 2011′s survey had women programmers making $10,000 less than men, I’m inclined to think that this year’s result is an outlier rather than indicative of an industrywide trend; the raw data indicates that those numbers came from a pool of 494 male programmers and 22 female programmers. Which leads me to my next point…
Third: Upon seeing the rather shocking pay disparity between men and women in the games industry, many people asked to see how the male/female breakdown related to years of experience in the industry to see whether the male wage advantage was due to having more male devs with more years of experience than female devs — the idea being, presumably, that we want to know whether the game industry is paying men more than an equally-experienced woman, or whether the game industry is paying men more because there are more men with 6+ years of experience in the industry than women.
In other words: Is the gender gap due to sexist biases that devalue women devs, or is it due to the relatively scarce number of experienced women devs in the industry?
The real answer, of course, is probably “both” — but I digress. We compared experience levels to gender and discipline (using only data for U.S.-based salaried devs, mind you — the salary survey itself uses worldwide data unless otherwise specified), and here’s what we found.
Across all disciplines, the men we surveyed are more likely to have more experience. 623 male devs have over six years of industry experience, 426 devs have 3-6 years, and 284 have less than three years. Women were mostly in the 3-6 year range (77), then >6 years (50), then less than three years (46). So, yes, a higher proportion of highly-experienced male devs means we’d expect higher salaries for men than women overall. To me, this seems to reflect what we as an industry already know; it’s not a particularly hospitable industry for women (as indicated by the meager gender ratio), meaning they’re less likely to stick around than men are.
Production seems to be the most viable long-term career discipline for women. Production had over twice as many women respondents with over six years of experience than any other discipline (19). Interestingly enough, women with three years of experience or less are more often found in art and animation (17). Women devs in the 3-6 year range, meanwhile, fell all across the spectrum; 22 producers, 17 artist/animators, 15 designers, 11 programmers, 10 in biz/legal, 2 in Q/A, and 0 audio (audio and QA comprise our two smallest respondent pools, so no surprise there).
The sample size is small. The respondent pool we’re using for this post (U.S.-based salaried devs) has the same gender ratio as the overall salary pool — roughly 11% women. When we survey a relatively small population (game developers) and then slice that data further and further (only women, salaried, in the US, segregated by discipline and level of experience) the numbers are only going to get smaller and smaller, meaning it’s harder to draw very specific trends.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Now, back to work on the May issue! And stay tuned — we’re planning to tackle this topic in more depth in the future.(source:gamasutra)
