We just posted the results of our 2014 GameSoundCon Game Audio Industry Survey.

The survey covers issues of salary and compensation, contract terms for composers, sound designers, audio directors and just about anyone involved in creating sound or music for games.

We broke the industry into three main groups:

1) large budget games available at retail (eg Xbox, Playstation, "big" PC games, etc)

2) professionally produced casual games

3) indy games.

• Game Music and Sound is predominently a freelance gig (60%)

• Game Music is overwhelmingly "Work for Hire (95%)

• Average Salary (employee): $70,532*

• Average "AAA" per project fee: $76,822**

• Average Indy/Casual per project fee: $9,830**

• Game Audio is overwhelmingly male (96%)

• Most game composers also deliver SFX

• "per unit" royalties rare (<2%)

• Game Soundtrack clauses are rare

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?And here's a finding I was very surprised at:

• Even in "large budget games," most music is 'mostly virtual' (54%)

You can download the full report at www.GameSoundCon.com,

* Salary representes annual wages, excluding bonuses, health care benefits, profit sharing, stock or any non-guarenteed compensation.

** Project fees do NOT include recording or production costs.

This is excellent information. Thank you!

What does this mean? I'm no composer or sound designer so I don't have clue.

I'm guessing virtual music means not using live players. So 54% of music are sample libraries or synths, even on large budget games.

Fantastic - thank you Brian!

Thanks for sharing your results Brian! :)

Yes, tom, a "game soundtrack clause" is something in the contract which specifically allows a composer to either create and release their own soundtrack CD for sale, or specifies that if the game company creates it, that the composer will receive something from it. (a bonus, per-unit royalty, etc.).

Yes, Mussi-- "virtual" means that the music was created using computers & sound libraries, as opposed to using live players.

A lot of game scores are 100% 'virtual', and some are 100% live.

A lot of big budget scores are mainly "live orchestra" but with some virtual.

I arbitrarily defined "mostly virtual" as being created by computer, but with 4 or fewer live players.

By contrast, "live" or "predominantly live" was defined as either 100% live musicians, or "virtual with 5 or more live instrumentalists."