Game programmers are the equivalent of children workers in a sweatshop.
More people need food than games.
More people want to make games than sell street food.
The food business is brutally hard work, and I have a lot of respect for anyone doing it (well). There's no a priori reason why game programmers should be rewarded more than street food vendors.
A new street food vendor only competes with other food vendors in the area. A new game developer competes globally, against both established studios and hobbyists happy to work for free because it's fun. You have people who want to make games so badly they'll fight to get in, knowing fully it's low pay and long hours.
Any way you look at it, the reason game developer salaries are relatively low is because supply for the jobs is higher than the demand.
It's a bit silly to compare the two because the economics are so different (local, non-scalable product vs. global product with zero marginal cost), but I stand by my assertion that there's no inherent reason why game developers should earn more, on average, than food vendors.
The top tiers of any of these industries, however, pay millions. I'm not talking millions because people started their own businesses and got acquired. I mean millions in salary and/or bonus per year, as employees. This is because, as you put it, the supply of extremely talented and skilled workers at the higher tiers is outpaced by demand. (And also because they're hit-driven businesses -- and, absent any real data as to a causal relationship between Superstar A's presence and Supergame B's performance, Superstar A receives the full benefit of correlation).
So you end up with a sort of pyramid structure to the business: lots of workers at the bottom, slightly fewer at the middle, very few at the top, and the compensation flows disproportionately from the top down.
A lot of industries function this way, but the various entertainment industries have especially interesting distributions because they're so inherently attractive to potential applicants.
Given how fast I've been going through potential (literal) burger flipper cooks at my restaurant, I'm not sure that's totally the case. Some people are surprisingly _terrible_ at a job that many people consider to be the lowest of the low.
There is also a never ending demand for food ;)
You miss the key part of the equation though. More people want to make video games than want to sell street food...
It's not sad that the conditions for a street food vendor are better, it's sad that the conditions for a game programmer are so bad.
More people need sex than food, yet we pursue it with greater fervor than food.
More people don't need social networks, yet HN is filled to the brim with new social network or social site.
You got a point about it being a more desirable/glamourous job than selling food.
My point was that people get away with that kind of abuse of employees (and yes I'm aware its due to supply/demand).
Being a game programmer is a choice taken by people with good choices available to them. They could be working less hard and/or earning more elsewhere. They choose not to. I don't see why that's a travesty.
Sweatshop is working is horrible conditions that no one would choose if they had any decent options.
