I was on Script Lock
The Script Lock podcast, created by LA-area games writers Nick and Max Folkman, had me and Cat Manning on to talk about games writing and freelance work.
You can find the episode we appear in here!
We spent a lot of time talking about what parts of freelance work are most difficult and stressful. All four of us do freelance games writing work-- Nick and Max full time, Cat and I part time-- and although we're speaking from a writing perspective here, I think a lot of the stuff we say in this episode is applicable to freelancers of all stripes. Basically:
- Don't cut your rate to make yourself tastier to clients, because you will extremely regret it
- Make sure they give you a contract
- Make sure you protect your ass in the contract (with limits on revisions, schedules which aren't ridiculous, etc)
- The worst red flag is when the person who hires you doesn't know what they want from you
- If you work in games, when you go to events, don't only hang out with people from your discipline. Meet people from other disciplines, because games are multidisciplinary and your support network needs to include other types of creators
- This episode also contains my classic rant about how much IFComp's rules suck, refined here on perhaps its 50th or 60th performance
In the podcast I said I was available to help encourage young people who are getting into freelance games writing to charge more for their work. This is 100% true and you can reach out to me on Twitter any time to ask about it. I will encourage you to charge more money for your time.