My Official Indie-Game Developer Blog

okay here's what you do

1. play Chivalry

2. think of how to make it better

3. decide that you can't do better than the Mordhau devs and go ask to work for them

good luck

I have a lot of game ideas and stories in my head, but I just need to find the genre. Rather than make full scale games for each genre, I'm going to make some demo levels for each. With the unconventional mixture, I'll test out the mechanics, but for the others, I want to make sure I can pull of aesthetics and story telling (that includes VR).

Well, I've decided that for game developing, I'm going to be using Unreal Engine. The big reason for that is that I find it to be a bit more beginner friendly than other engines I looked up. With Unreal Engine, I could make my games utilizing Blueprint programming, so I don't have to worry about writing a single block of code. I'll eventually have to learn how to code anyway, but having something to get started with is a big plus. They also have these neat templates based on various game genres like third person or fps, so I have access to the various scripts for the primary controls which I can tweak to create my own thing. I'll try downloading it over the weekend and try my hand at some of the video tutorials, hoping to get comfortable with the interface.

So I had a thought. I've been thinking about what I actually want to be in the gaming industry, and found a few weaknesses on my part. I'm not a really good artist, my animation skills are okay but not Pixar quality, and my programming experience wasn't really great since I'm not a huge fan of coding. This of course leaves character designing, animation, and programming off the list so far, unless I extensively practice on those. But the one field I think feel most comfortable with is writing. I've noticed that I'm much more comfortable with making up a story and writing down rather than try to visually represent it. Even with my YouTube videos I seem to mainly enjoy writing episodes rather than make them.

This of course got me thinking, what if I just tried to be a writer for video games? I looked it up and the salary for a script writer can vary depending on the contract with a game company, though full time positions can have a starting salary of $60,000 with experienced writers going to $150,000 or higher.

Now at this point, if I want to try and get to video game writing professionally, there are a few options for me to consider.

1. Make my very own games with my own scripts, and publish them. They could count as experience for video game writing if I try to apply for a writer's job at a game studio.

2. Volunteer to write for non-profit games. I found in the Unity forums (and I think Unreal Engine has the same) a section where people can volunteer for video game jobs for non-profit works. These games do still get published, and they can still count as experience. I also feel that non-profit projects are a bit more open to people who don't have prior writing experiences.

3. Through Unity or Unreal Engine's community, try to get hired as a writer for an indie project. It's a bit more professional experience that I could put in a CV or a resume.

4. Perhaps following graduation and having a steady starter career, I could go back to college to focus strictly on writing for media and entertainment. My current University has a great program for Radio-TV-Film with emphasis on screenwriter, or I could find a different college with programs for game design and writing.

I'll start basic over summer with some small scale projects and volunteer work, and hopefully, if I do enough in the coming years, I may get a job with a small game developing company and hopefully work my way to larger companies like Bioware or Telltale (my two dream places to work). Otherwise, after a couple years post-graduate with a solid job, I can go back to school and work on a full scale screenwriting degree.