Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pramas" data-source="post: 1329136" data-attributes="member: 995">Believe it or not, it has actually gotten worse for freelancers since the d20 era began. In the early to mid-90s, when I was breaking in via freelancing, I routinely received 4 cents a word and had paying gigs at up to 11 cents a word. From the stories I hear from freelancers looking for work from me these days, it's quite common for d20 companies to pay 2 cents a word, or even less. It's pretty sad really. As for general advice, I wrote this up in another forum, but it seems applicable here:I've been making a full time living as a game designer since 1998. It is possible, it's just that the odds are not in your favor. Talent is certainly a factor, but luck and knowing the right people honestly have as much to do with it. That's one of the reasons I always tell people interested in getting into the industry to go to GenCon and meet people. You never know when the fellow freelancer you met in the Velvet Room will end up as the line developer for your favorite game. Or you might meet a publisher at the very moment when he desperately needs a replacment for some other guy who flaked out. I got my first paying gig in the industry in 1993, working on Mayfair's Underground RPG, because they needed someone in a hurry to fill in for a dropout. They even paid me 6 cents a word because it was a rush job (little did I know I would not see 6 cents a word for years after that). You will find though that a lot of people who dreamed for years of breaking into the industry end up leaving for greener pastures. After the bloom comes off the rose, you realize that you can make a better living doing almost anything, unless you end up involved in one of those rare ventures that pays off. A lot of the people I met on the way up left the industry long ago, to write novels or work on computer games or practice law or whatever. My advice: do good work and be a stubborn sonofabitch.</blockquote>

Verification