This is like attracted a hot date with the clothes you wear or your physical appearance. What determines if you will have a chance with that date in the future, or "get lucky" with the studio, is if they feel confident in your abilities when they give you the in-person interview with the team. Once they like you, are confident in you, then they will craft a salary based on your years of experience and how bad they feel they need you (this is mostly based on your leverage: having a current job and how hard you negotiate).
I wanted to release this post, because I have worked with too many people in the past who have complained that they did not get a big enough annual raise, or deserve more pay from the start. Checking glassdoor.com constantly, I, myself, have been aiming for at least the average pay for a listed position at a studio (if I were to work there). What you have to take into consideration, though, is the experience level of the team at each studio. Studios that do not pay well have a large number of rookie employees. They are tilting the scale to the bottom. Younger employees also usually negotiate less for their salary and do not have a first job to leverage their new offer. Thus, it is hard to tell this, being an outsider, but one of the main ways to see this is the company reviews on Glassdoor. If there are many people complaining about how low the pay is for a studio, it is guaranteed that the business strategy of the studio is to save money and not hire the "best talent," but to take a chance on candidates straight out of college.
An "Artist" at Valve gets paid an average of $83,000, while an Artist at Disney Interactive Media only will earn $61,000 per year (I say "Artist" at Valve, because they do not use titles like Environment vs. Character, or Lead vs. mid-level, for that matter). I personally know that Disney's strategy is to hire low-cost employees, because they don't focus on games as much as they do for their theme parks, toys, and movies. Thus, the number of years of experience is not taken into account, but is a very important fact to know. Valve only hires people who have tons of experience and have worked for the most prestigious studios. Sure, some prodigy who is more highly talented that people who have had more experience may get in and make that same pay, also, but for the majority of employees it is obvious, through conversations with employees who work there and checking our their LinkedIn profiles, that they are basically the rockstars of the industry.
It would be nice for Glassdoor to segment the salary information based on the experience level of employees. I also surmise that many people are lazy and just choose an existing job title instead of entering their own. So, an associate Artist may want to emotionally consider themselves as mid-level, so they will add their salary to the general Artist's salary, instead of created a new title that may not be existant on Glassdoor yet, for Associate level at that particular studio. There are also contract/hourly employees vs. full-time/salary. There are many options to consider, but what I have been noticing lately is that the cost of living in an area is irrelevant to the average salary a company pays. Someone working in the San Francisco Bay Area--the most expensive area in the US right now,--who works for Glu Mobile, will get paid much less than someone who works for id Software (where someone could buy five houses for the price of one in the Bay Area). This is because everyone who works for id has at least five years of experience and is senior-level, even if their job title is not specifically "senior" yet.
What I am trying to get at here is that do not be upset if your job offer is less than you expected based on your comparison with one of the top AAA studios in the industry. Everyone has to start somewhere, and there is a place for everyone. The best method is to go to Glassdoor, of course, but also download the Annual Game Developer, from Gamasutra: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2014/09/05/GAMA14_ACG_SalarySurvey_F.pdf. This report will tell you the range that you should expect based on your years of experience. You should also look at your linkedIn profile and add up the amount of years you have worked in the industry, and do not expect to breakthrough to the next tier until you are within six months of the experienced required (i.e. If you have 2.5 years of experience, you can expect to be paid a little lower than the average of 3-6 years). Just make sure that before you start interviewing with a company and throwing around desired salary figures, that you know your years of experience and use this as leverage when talking to the recruiter or HR manager.
Happy hunting!
-Ken
