Freelance work in creative industry.
| What is Freelance ? |
A Freelancer is a self employed indavidual that is not under any contract to work for another. They have full control on all aspects of their work. Weather they make a product to sell or get paid to work as an indapendent hire to finish a clients project.
The freedoms that going freelance provides can not be understated, they can work as many or few hours as they want, take on as many jobs or self tasks as they belive they can handle. All profit made by a freelancer goes to only them and it is their choice weather to work from home or at a site.
At the same time going Freelance comes with alot of work and just as much risk and should be thought through carefully before attempting.
| Pro’s & Con’s of going freelance |
Here we will discuss the the pro’s and con’s of going freelance in the game industry spisificlly. While other profestions might rely on getting clients. The biggest difference for a Games Developer is the broad scope of how you do it. You could be wanting to earn some money on the side while working a full time job or make it your full time profession.
Pros:
- Your the Boss
The first thing that comes to everyones mind as a benift no matter what profession is the fact by going freelance you are your own boss. You make all the decitions on what to do and when to do it.
The biggist benifit to being self employed it that you can take any steps you deem nessesary to make yourself sucsessful without haveing to discuss it with a superior. - Flexible
The enticing thing that everyone wants even in full time employment is haveing the freedom to work as much or as little as you want when you want.
Going Freelance means you can work as hard as you want if you really want to achive something for yourself. But dont need to panic if your sick one day and cant do so. Or even worry about makeing it to the office. Because your home is your office. - Self Development
Working at your own pace on the projects you want to work on means you get to exsperament with the mechanics and functions you want to learn.
While triple A studios would have you working in one area of work becuase they know you have the knowlege for it. And indie studios will typiclly have you working on asmany areas as you can which you may not have any intrest in.
Being a freelance game developer means you get to make your projects the way you want to make them and try things you might not have the chance to work on while employed in a studio. - Long term steady income
If you went freelance in the games industry and you worked hard to praduce fun and stable games, you have the opatunity to have a steady flow of funds over the course of your career.
Unlike a phisical product where you make something and once it’s sold it’s gone. For games when you make one and you put it up for sale your selling the right to download a copy and play. If you had developed a game that was good qulaity and stable, you could then leave it for the rest of your life and find peaple over the years still buying your game.
Cons:
- Alot of work
While theres alot of benifits from being a freelance game developer the amount of work needed to be sucsessfull makes it difficult for it to be your full time job.
You might be able to make a game, but then thats the easy part, haveing a bisness mindset to create what players want is hard.
If you make a game, will players want to play it ?, what will you charge for peaple to play it, takeing in feedback from players and decideing if you should listen to their suggestiosn or leave as is. Managing bug reports, advertising, community managment etc.
Makeing a game to sell is only the first step. But you will have to cunduct yourself with a bisness mindset if you are really going to earn from your work. - Self Advertiseing to Platforms cuts
Possibly the biggist decition when it comes to selling your game is where to sell it.
Most the time for freelane game developers the thing that hinders them isent how good the game is but that no-one knows it exsists.
Advertising and getting the word out about your game is ‘EXSTREMLY’ important for a freelance game developer, becuase if no-one knows it exsists no-one will come to buy it.
Makeing your own louncher and spreading the word with discord, Gamescon and youtubers works to a point, but you will always have the issue of not reaching a wide audiance.
The natrual conclusion is to use a games platform like “Steam” or “itch.io” where there is a massive community of players which lowers the need to advertise.
But the drawback is these platforms may have a limit to the size of the game you publish on their platform or even take a cut from any sale you make on their platform. At current time Steam takes a %30 cut of all sales on their platform and that is money that the freelancer never gets
| What core skills do you need to be a freelancer |
The core skill to be a succsessfull freelance game developer is dedication. A mixture of hunger to learn new things, A bisness mind to know how to make a profit and a level head to talk to and handle a community feedback.
If you have the quality of always wanting to learn how to get something working in a game engine then you have the ability to make a game that players will enjoy and pay for.
If you have the ability to run yourself as a bissness you’ll have the ablity to know what will attract players to your game and how to way the options of the best way ‘for you’, to make money as a freelancer.
And if you can take critisisum and are active in talking to the community that plays your games. You will be able to improve the quality of your game and make peaple want to promote your hard work.
HomelyZacombie 