Japan pays much, much lower on average than the Western game development industry, so FromSoftware is not a good example. However the only branches of game development likely to push a salary of around $120,000 a year is programming. I know some programmers in the industry who earn more than anyone else on the project outside of the project lead and programming lead.I highly doubt that. Checked open positions at FromSoftware in graphics department. 4 open positions with high qualification requirements (University Grad. or 10 year exp.) and 8h work day pay 22000yen per month for employess and 400000yen for independent contractors. That's about 2000$ and 3800$ respectively, not even close to the "likely 120K a year".