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I've received many emails over the months from people who are fans of our games and would like to join up with our team. Most of these emails have been ill conceived. Even though we’re not hiring anyone at the moment, I would like to give some advice about applying to work with us or any other indie developer.
1 - You'll work for free is a terrible sales pitch. We make games and then we sell them. If you’re reliable, skilled, and do good work for us, then you should get paid for it. And if you aren’t, then we don’t want to babysit you. Besides, making video games is hard work. Someone who isn’t getting paid for their work is much more likely to flake out when the fun part of game development is done and the work part has begun.
Now that is not to say that I would be opposed to trying someone promising out on a probational period as an unpaid intern for a month or two with the expectation that we'll hire them full-time after the time is up if everything works out, but ideally, I would prefer to avoid even that and just hire someone qualified right off the bat.
2 - The smaller the company, the more important each hire is. This is even more important for companies where everyone works from home. My company, Zeboyd Games, is currently a two-man operation (plus a couple other individuals that have worked with us on a game by game basis as contractors). That means that if and when we do decide that we want to increase our company size, we’re going to be as strict as possible with the hiring process. A hastily typed email with half a dozen typos isn’t going to cut it. A well written cover letter, resume, references, and portfolio of previous projects are all absolutely required.
3 – Saying “I have a bunch of great game ideas” is the worst possible thing you could say if you want to get hired. Indie game companies are never looking for lead designers. Why? Because generally the reason an indie game company was formed in the first place was because a designer wanted to make their own games! Why on earth would I want to hire someone so that they could take away the most enjoyable part of my own job? Not to mention the fact that during the course of making just one game, we inevitably come up with dozens of great ideas for other games. The last thing we need is more ideas – we don’t have enough time to take advantage of the ideas we already have!
Incidentally, this is why I have no qualms with sharing some of the game ideas I have publicly on twitter and our website - if someone steals one of my ideas and makes a good game out of it, then I get to play it without having to go to the trouble of making it myself!
If you have great ideas and want to turn those ideas into actual games, you have two options – create your own indie company or rise up through the ranks of an existing company. Unless you’ve got insane luck, nobody is going to hire you as a designer right off the bat.
4 – Indie companies aren’t looking for writers. A lot of the big companies with hundreds of employees don’t even bother to hire a writer. Do you think an indie game company with only a handful of people can afford to devote an entire person just to writing? The simple truth of the matter is that unless you’re making a visual novel, writing dialogue and plot is a relatively small amount of the workload in making a game. That’s not to say writing isn’t important (it’s crucial to most RPGs), just to say that it doesn’t require a dedicated person in most cases (hopefully, one of your programmers or artists is also good at writing).
5 – Graphics and code are the core elements needed in just about every video game. As a result, skilled artists and programmers are generally what companies (both indie and otherwise) are most looking for. Other jobs like composer and level designer can be important depending on the project, but good programmers and artists are always in demand. Indie game companies need people who will actually get down to work and MAKE games - not people who just want to talk about them.
6 - Indie game developers tend to have small budgets. Bigger companies can afford to hire someone just because they're awesome even if they don't actually need them at the moment. Indie game companies rarely have that luxury. If an indie game company isn't actually saying that they're looking for someone at the moment, chances are applying for a job with them is an exercise in frustration.
So if I was hiring at the moment (we're not, though there's a good chance we will next year), what would I be looking for?
1 - A strong portfolio. Doesn't need to be filled with impressive credits from AAA productions, but we need to have some way of judging your talent and to see that you can finish projects.
2 - Reliable. We need to be able to count on you to keep us up-to-date on your progress and not drag everyone else down by disappearing when we need you most.
3 - Good communication. Most indie developers don't work together in person so strong communication skills are even more important than usual.
4 - A meaningful contribution to the team. For example, if we already had one programmer or artist on our team and we wanted to hire another, ideally, the new hire would be strong in an area that our existing member wasn't.
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My first indie game is releasing at the end of this month, and at the last moment I decided to invest a small amount of money for a writer, to re-write the boring dialog I have in my talking-head cutscenes. The writer only had about a days worth of work to do, and it only cost me a minimal amount of money, but it had a huge difference on the cutscenes. The banter was a lot more wittier and made the characters come a live just a little bit more. Hiring a writer, even for a small job like writing about 5 pages of cutscene dialog, was worth the money.
Robert, thanks for your clarification about writers. Yeah, indies can't usually hire one full time, but this sentence really stinks: "(hopefully, one of your programmers or artists is also good at writing)."
similarly one could say, "hopefully, one of your programmers can sketch, color, model, and animate." or "hopefully, one of your artists can optimize code for shading and geometry hardware." Writing is a full profession, equally hard as programming and visual arts and music arts, etc.
Your sentence is especially, profoundly bad because is echos and reinforces the mindset of the game industry at large and indies.
- a message from the 'Writers Deserve More Respect in the Game Industry Committee'.
My comment, "hopefully, one of your programmers or artists is also good at writing," was intended as more of a statement on how in indie game development, individual members are frequently called upon to perform multiple tasks. Like for me, I have to design, write, program, do public relations and marketing, plan, coordinate, and more. Writing is important, but it's such a relatively small percentage of my total workload that I could never justify hiring someone full-time as a writer unless our company was substantially larger.
There's another issue though. Since everyone can write, there are many people who think they're great writers when they're not. This goes back to my second point - if you're applying for a job, you need to prove that you're capable for it. If you just say that you're a good writer and expect me to believe you, I'm just going to groan and be annoyed that you're wasting my time. If you say you're a good writer and then tell me that you were an editor at a respectable magazine for X years, can point me to a finished novel (published or not), and give me some well done writing samples that would fit the style of the kinds of games that we make, then I would take your application much more seriously. And though I would probably not hire you even then as a full-time employee since we don't have enough work to keep a full time writer busy, in such a situation, I might consider hiring that kind of individual as a contractor on a project-by-project basis.
Being Audio i've long since stopped pestering posts when they ask for artists. I did it for a few back in the day when I first started, and then I realized that there is always at least three or four pestering audio guys who just don't quit posting on every project. I can see that getting old really fast.
I understand that an indie company may have limited resources, and maybe a writer is not a priority for a small game design, but even though you say its important you give it the old backhand. This is a problem I think the game industry is still having. Story is far more important than much of the industry is giving it credit for. First off stories sell books, thats right, bound pieces of paper. Stories make or break movies. Skyline, decent visuals, decent action, storyline awful, movie awful. Sucker Punch amazing visuals, amazing action, subpar story and a subpar movie. On the otherside there are black and white classic movies with stories so good they are still good today. This is the same for games. Look at the top games around right now. Needless to say, if a company can afford to have at least one writer on staff they need them. I hate to say this, but a programmer who is good at writing, is not a substitute for an actual writer.
Soon I think the industry will come to this conclusion, and realize that there needs to be more positions for writers, including internships for writers to get experience. Wake up game industry, if you want to save money, don't hire a writer, but if you want to make money, then definitely hire one. I don't sit around all day trying to figure out what would be visibly appealing to a reader/gamer, nor do I sit around and say what kind of options can I give my reader/gamer, those are just side effects. When I sit down my goal is to write a story so compelling that the reader's mental and emotional state is changed to the point of life alteration. That's what the movie industry is missing right now, and that's what the game industry is missing.
The article was very informative.
Great article, though :)
EDIT: Ah, I goofed up :P I realized you already mentioned the other skills a member would need... Still, it should be of a higher priority when hiring someone.