Annual Salary, Salary Range, and Highest Paying States and Industries
Video Game Designers
Video Game Designers design core features of video games. Specify innovative game and role-play mechanics, story lines, and character biographies. Create and maintain design documentation. Guide and collaborate with production staff to produce games as designed.
Table of contents
- Average salary
- Starting salary
- Salary rank
- Salary range
- Highest paying states
- Highest paying industries
Average salary
Starting salary
Entry-level Video Game Designers with little to no experience can expect to make anywhere between $65,210 to $84,020 per year or $31 to $40 per hour. Similar to any other job, their salary will increase as they gain experience.
Salary rank
We wanted to make it easy for our readers to compare the salary of Video Game Designers to all the other careers out there. So we created Salary Rank. We compared the salary of all careers then we gave them a rank of A, B, C, or D depending on where their average salary sit in comparison to other careers.
Salary range
Level | Hourly | Annual |
---|---|---|
Highest (Top 10%) | $82 | $170,100 |
Senior (Top 25%) | $68 | $140,470 |
Middle (Mid 50%) | $53 | $110,140 |
Junior (Bottom 25%) | $40 | $84,020 |
No experience (Bottom 10%) | $31 | $65,210 |
Highest paying states
State | Hourly | Annual |
---|---|---|
WA | $67 | $138,400 |
CA | $66 | $137,620 |
NY | $59 | $122,300 |
MA | $58 | $119,790 |
DC | $58 | $119,630 |
VA | $56 | $116,850 |
DE | $56 | $115,580 |
MD | $55 | $115,190 |
NJ | $54 | $113,220 |
CO | $54 | $112,700 |
Another simple way to increase your salary as a Video Game Designer is to move to a higher paying state. However moving to a higher paying state like WA doesn’t guarantee that you will make more because the expenses at WA might be much higher than where you are currently living at right now.
According to BLS, the highest paid Video Game Designers are in the states of WA, CA, NY, MA and DC.