I work at a large, well-known game developer. The team I'm on is quite small, with only 10 programmers. I'm 31, and we have 2 leads, age 31 and 37. The other ages on the team are in the 24-35 range. I'd say the average age for a programmer at our studio is in the low 30s. There are a fair number that I'd guess to be around 40. They tend to be the guys with lots of experience working on the coolest tech. I would expect the average age to slowly keep getting higher as the most challenging tech development will be done by people with many years experience. We're seeing this with next-gen development, where the people working on the core tech are the people that have seen through some of these transitions already.

So if you've got 10 years of good coding experience behind you I don't think you'd find yourself old in most game companies, since you'd probably be placed in a position that reflects your experience.

Most of the legends in game industry are rather 'old'
Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux, John Carmack... but I don´t know, how much of a programmer they really are, except for Carmack ;) My impression always was, that Molyneux and Meier were more of the genius guys telling the programmers what they want, which would make them something like game designers?
But, as I am not in any industry yet, I can´t give any real clue how old most game programmers are.
I am 23 and started last year as a hobby.

Hi,

I'm 36 now and about 3 years ago I made a push to move into the games industry (with 15 years systems programming). I got together a good demo and received interest from 2 companies - Headfirst and Rage. The problem for me was that I would have had to drop £10k on my salary. This in itself may not have stopped me but the other side of being older is that I have kids and could not justify denying them lots of things to do this. I was also limited to relatively local companies (to Bristol, UK) as I could not move the kids from their school.

So, the issues for me were my circumstances and I never got any feeling that age was an issue. If you do not have the same ties as I have then you should go for it, however make sure you have got a good demo to show or you won't get any interest whatsoever.

Since I applied, four of the studios have since gone bust and closed down and so that's a factor to consider also. You will need to be flexible with regard to location

Andy

I'm in my forties and I'm working as a games programmer. If you really want to do it, go for it. There are downsides. I took a big pay cut (both in total compensation and per hour worked).

Hi.
Thanks for all the replies.
I think I will forget about getting into this industry.
Firstly, I cannot afford to get paycut. I got family to feed too.
Secondly, learning the rope all over again (even though I have programming experience) would cost me opportunities and with studios going bust, I think the risk might just be too high.
Guess I will just be a gamer. :)

I wouldn't worry about your age (there are plenty of programmers your age already), but as others have said, professional game programming isn't as well paid as many other kinds of programming (and often it's more work).

As for the learning bit, I don't see that being a problem thoug. Someone with 10 years of programming experience should be able to learn everything required pretty quickly.

But of course, the paycut and possibly longer working hours might be a problem. ;)

You could always just do it as a hobby though.