So a bit of context here: I've trained to be an environment artist for video games. Its what I love, and what my degree is in. Starting salary for enviro artists in games is around 25k, and you'll probably never get above 60-80k at a senior or lead level.
I love making environments and always thought it'd be a dream to be paid to do it. Its notoriously a very difficult role to land your first job in, but I'm confident in my skill level after years of training.
However. Life threw a curveball in the form of a job offer, before I'd even had the chance to apply for any enviornment roles. Still video games, but as a Producer. This means I oversee the dev team and manage their time and tasks, and make sure we hit deadlines.
I took it, thinking I'll apply to enviro jobs with the safety net of already having a job in games. Production is meant to be the haardest role in games to land a job in, ESPECIALLY with no prior experience, so I want to make it clear that me receiving this offer was a one in a million lucky miracle. Its just.. not a miracle I wanted?
So I've been doing it for seven months now and its honestly stupid easy. Like its genuinely ridiculous. My cousin works in game dev as a programmer, but he has insane days and is super stressed a lot of the time. Meanwhile as my position is more management, I get paid more money than any other juniors on the team, yet I just sit around. I spend about two hours a day doing actual work, and the rest of it on hobbies or whatever. Its fully WFH and as long as I can see messages instantly I can do whatever I wish.
As said before, the upper salary for enviro art is 60-80k. Producer role I could definitely hit above 100k one day witu no issue, if I stuck with it.
The big one: my reason to get into games was to make magical, fun experiences that will impact peoples lives. I have always been an artist and taken art related subjects, all the way from high school to uni. I like games because unlike an illustration, people will look at the assets and environments Ive created four hours, sometimes 50+ hours in long games! Crazy.
But I feel like throwing away this easy WFH job would be.. a waste? Especially if we consider that other studios would likely be a lot more on top of the work Im doing, so it'd likely be a lot more involved with less downtime. And the kind of games my current studio are working on are boring mobile pay to win cash grabs, so I have very little passion for it. I wanted to be working on art and grand adventures, but.. 30k to basically draw and nap and build Lego all day ! I can literally do whatever I want, but man, I'm not fulfilled at all.
What would you do? And is there some kind of way to take advantage of this situation that I'm too short sighted to see?