I just looked at EA salaries, and their level III engineers make $98K on average. It's very sad, considering game dev not only requires good programming skills, but also all kinds of math, graphics, sound knowledge.
Game dev is like playing in a rock band, but for computer geeks instead of band geeks. It's low paid because people want to do it -- i do it for nothing (sure, I hope to make money from it).
You know what really pays poorly given the skills and knowledge requires? Classical music.
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/electronic-arts-salary-SRC...