San Francisco (CA) - Game Developer Magazine has published its 7th annual Game Developer Salary Survey, providing us with some insight, how much money changes hands in the video gaming industry and a guideline for young gamers who are planning on working in this field. If you are hoping for a big paycheck, then you should aim at business management, law and marketing.

It is no surprise to us that highest-paid bunch inside the game industry are not programmers, artists, producers or anyone who will actually get his or her hands dirty actual game development. The top paying jobs are ones in the business & marketing departments, or the jobs that are responsible for selling the product. The average salary in this segment is $101,848 (additional compensation is also the highest here). If you work in the field for around six years or more, your paycheck will increase to an average of $132,305.

Programmers follow the B&M departments with a distance - $83,383. Given the fact that programmers are second highest educated group (half of all programmers have bachelor’s degrees and an additional quarter has some graduate work), it appears that additional benchwork does not pay. Your track record and work experience are more important.

The third highest earning group covers production with an average salary of $78,716. Sound designers come in fourth. If you can’t imagine your life if you’re not thinking of that magical music score which would give perfect atmosphere to kill that boss, you’ll be happy to know that average salary in this department averages $73,409. In "I want to buy a Ferrari" terms, we’re talking about 28 months of hard work. The difference between audio and art & animation is about $7000 per year, but this is the group with the highest level of education. 66% have at least bachelor’s degree.

If Game Design is you thing, you are looking at an average salary of $63,649. Community managers are earning around $50,294, which is not too bad for people that have to endure heated discussions, flame wars and criticism on forums, organize promotional community events and similar stuff.

Now, if you are wondering why games are coming out with ton of bugs, the reason may be that most publishers are very stingy when it comes to critical stage of the game development: Squashing bugs. If you want to test games for life, you’ll only earn an average of $39,063. Truth to be told, within six years, your salary will almost double, to $70,658. Being underpaid of course does not mean that the QA department is slacking, but there may be limited interest, motivation and experience.

The anonymous survey included 4860 individuals working in the industry.