I absolutely agree that game dev is some of the most nasty programming that's out there.
Mid-tier game programmers are worse than mid-tier webdevs, though, having bounced between the two subfields a lot. The most difficult stuff is more difficult in games, which is why the 99% people there are actually better than the 99%ers elsewhere, but the median work is meh, and that makes up the bulk of the work. And the devs...the median in games is not very good, the big companies employ a lot of extremely mediocre devs who desperately need the 99%ers closely managing them to get even passable work out of them.
The pay difference is just because it's a more desirable job than doing boring webdev, and young programmers think of it as awesome because they imagine they'll be doing the stuff that Carmack does. But that's what the top folks do. In reality most are going to be writing UI integration code and content-reviewing and fixing up busted PRs from artists.
Mid-tier game programmers are worse than mid-tier webdevs, though, having bounced between the two subfields a lot. The most difficult stuff is more difficult in games, which is why the 99% people there are actually better than the 99%ers elsewhere, but the median work is meh, and that makes up the bulk of the work. And the devs...the median in games is not very good, the big companies employ a lot of extremely mediocre devs who desperately need the 99%ers closely managing them to get even passable work out of them.
The pay difference is just because it's a more desirable job than doing boring webdev, and young programmers think of it as awesome because they imagine they'll be doing the stuff that Carmack does. But that's what the top folks do. In reality most are going to be writing UI integration code and content-reviewing and fixing up busted PRs from artists.