There are a lot of ways to get wealthy in the game industry, but the two big routes most people consider is working up the corporate ladder and doing a start-up.

Either route, getting great compensation for what you’re doing is the first step. If you’re a brilliant producer, engineer, artist, or designer, it’s very smart to have someone negotiate on your behalf — an agent, manager, recruiter, or attourney — because unless you’re very good at negotiation, you’re going to have a great deal of trouble getting away with tooting your own horn without them coming away thinking “that fucking primadonna,” but if no one toots your horn, they’re not going to understand why they need to pay you more. Even if that representation is costing you 10% or more, if he’s even moderately good, just the fact that a third person is pimping you is going to more than pay for his fee.

If you’re working for someone else, you don’t “ask” for anything. You negotiate, and for superstar returns, it’s not gonna be a smiley, friendly conversation. There is going to be fear involved, because you’re going to be actively negotiating at the same time with other companies for a superior deal, and the repercussions of them not giving you close to what you want are that you’re going to take a deal at one of those other companies. If there’s nothing at stake with the person/company you’re negotiating with, then they’re not going to pay you more. You need both the carrot of your talent and relationships and the stick of your potential to go elsewhere, particularly the direct competition.

How your representation negotiates is of the utmost importance. This is where verbal agility and social skills are king. I’ve heard it done incredibly abrasively, in a way that kills deals, and I’ve heard it done very smoothly, in a way that makes the listener so sympathetic to your position that he partially negotiates on your behalf.

If you’re essentially negotiating your compensation as co-founder of a start-up, you can negotiate anything. You can ask for a percentage of the gross company proceeds convertible to stock in a liquidation event; a huge portion of the stock; a buy-sell agreement that lets you sell it back to the company at an advantageous price or to third parties; you name it. If you can make the case, you’re talking directly to the guy(s) who can pull the trigger on it.

Doing a start-up and selling it isn’t the only way to get rich, but the common alternative of climbing a large corporate ladder does not resemble at all why most of us got in the game industry. It can be political and fairly dark, and it can have as much to do with your ability to make or market games as it does your ability to take credit for things you didn’t do, and if you don’t do those dark, back-stabbing, credit-stealing things, the problem is that someone else probably will.

It’s not that there’s something inherently evil about corporations. It’s that the ones you want to be on top of have grown so large that there’s a non-zero percentage of assholes in them who are willing to do the scary things to get ahead that no one else is, and they have an unfair advantage. You can float to the top on incredible performance alone, but if you’re one of these people, odds are good you’ll make even more money doing it for yourself.

Fortunately, whether within a large corporation or a small start-up, there are lots of different routes to making out like a bandit, and they grow every year someone else continues to drop the ball on a severe market need for money, tools, people, products, etc. You hear every year that it’s getting harder to compete in the game industry. Be rest assured that precisely the opposite is true. When you hear this, you’re hearing it from someone who is in an overcrowded market niche that he is apparently unwilling to exit for whatever sad reason.