The Gaming Den

Hey guys, can I tell you a secret? There's a lot of talented game designers on the Den. Most of you are also assholes, but that part's no secret.

This thread isn't for Frank and Bobby who have already had their brush with being "in" the industry, flipped it the double bird, and hit eject when Loren Coleman stole a mansion in Tacoma from the Shadowrun freelancers and the angel Moronai came down with some golden plates that said he didn't do nuffin', so Randall Bills decided to let him stick around (that is the most hilarious and most succinct summary of the fifty bajillion page "The Shadowrun Situation" thread that brought me to the Den in the first place). Rather it's for everybody that's been waiting in the wings homebrewing stuff but never getting paid a dime.

As I mention probably often enough that it's annoyed one or two of you, I work for or own a game company. I won't say which one publicly and I ask you not to take the hour of internet detective work it would take to find out. I post on the Den with my "tact" filter off (see above) and so if it came out publicly that "Schwarzkopf" on the Den was [REAL NAME REDACTED], it would be super bad for me. I've said a lot of really mean things on here about people I intend to beg for money in the future.

ANYWAY, I work for or own a game company. We need to hire more freelancers, which we have no intention of treating like my signature quote indicates. The bad news is the games we make, while AWESOME--I would know, I'm totally impartial obviously--probably aren't the games that you have already heard of or care about. The good news is that we will pay you.

The open question is how much you would like to be paid? Not just in the specific hypothetical situation of working for my company, but in the general hypothetical situation of if you were to come work in the industry as a freelancer.

I've been on both sides of freelancing...

at this point, I've written at least as much for CGL as Frank or Bobbie ever did

...and I know that the pay and the terms are often bullshit (although I've heard that working for Evil Hat ain't so bad).

I want my company to pay more, and on better terms, than the Stalin-analogous assholes in my sig quote.

I mean... if I were to freelance, it would have to be a lot. I have no particular experience writing 8 hours a day of game design, so I have no idea how much I would output, so I can't do a conversion. But I personally would need at least 6 figures before I even contemplated switching, but I'm probably not an average case.

So, freelancing pays by the word. As a rule. So it's not a "six figures a year" thing, it's more a "I want to get paid $XXX per word" kind of thing. It's not something one does as a full time job, more of a part time hobby that pays (and what I'm kind of going for here is, doesn't pay shit).

As a point of reference, Frank, and Bobbie, and myself, if and when we got paid at all, got paid $0.035 a word by CGL.

On one end of the scale, there are assholes that seriously expect you to write for them for $0.01. Zombie FASA is one of these assholes.

On the other end of the scale, I've heard that big shots like Ken Hite and Robin Laws have a FLOOR of $0.10 per word (*whistles*), which if he did that 40 hours a week all year and can put out anywhere near as many words per day as I can (I can easily write 10,000 words a day if I write all day: my GF likes to reference that popular musical Hamilton and say I'm writing like I'm running out of time) would probably get him WELL into six figures, although I haven't done the math.

So let me do the math: if I got paid the floor that Ken Hite gets (which I totally never will) and wrote 40 hours a week for a year (which I never will) and produced at least 5,000 words a day (which I totally can), I would be making...let's see, let's assume that I produce 25,000 decent words a week....

25,000 words a week x 52 weeks in a year x $0.10 cents per word $130,000 a year before taxes. Not too shabby at all for writing games about elves and dragons and cyborgs, but no way in hell am I ever going to actually make that much.

My only knowledge of freelancing pay and hours are some guestimates I vaguely remember reading... here, probably. Since shitting out TTRPG content is the sort of thing I do on-and-off in my freetime for fun but probably not the sort of thing that makes sense to do fulltime, if someone approached me my first concern would be "am I going to get enough work out of this to make it worth the upfront hassle of getting involved?" My second concern would be "are they going to expect too much work out of me to fit into my schedule (and patience) for what is essentially a job on the side?" My third concern would be "okay, how much is this supposed to pay? I have no idea how to price myself, and no idea how to find out what's reasonable. Well, fuck."

Though I will say that I have to struggle to not be wildly verbose, which is something everyone here already knows, and I'm pretty sure I'm slower than average at churning out piles of words, which suggests that freelancing is maybe not a thing I should do. Me having a per-word writing gig seems like it would be a bad investment for everyone involved.

Most freelance fiction writing pays 20-25 cents/word, and most freelance technical writing pays 45-55 cents/word (not including markups for celebrity-level names). So if you (or anyone) want to be taken seriously by professional-level talent, your offer would be somewhere in that range.

That 10 cents/word is considered big-shot money is an indicator of how unprofessional the RPG industry is, which is probably why even the most recent D&D teams have been made of nepotism and failure.

I sent you a resume by PM.

Is this short story writing or games mechanic writing or adventure module writing or what you're looking for?

Plot twist: Dr. Dragon is recruiting writers for feeder porn

OgreBattle wrote:Is this short story writing or games mechanic writing or adventure module writing or what you're looking for?

Plot twist: Dr. Dragon is recruiting writers for feeder porn

Fuck it, I'd do it. I've written worse for lessfree.

Ok. So I have "professional" experience as a word miner. Which is to say, I have experience writing to assignment, writing to a word count, pitching, developing an idea, all that stuff. Comes with being a Journalism major. Of course, if you define writing professionally the way my last advisor did, which is to say you got paid to write, I've never fucking been paid to write, to my sorrow. Even when I was writing for websites, they were start ups and shit that couldn't pay.

I have plenty of examples of my RPG writing on this site. Part of that is just being an inveterate tinkerer with the rules, part of that is that I genuinely enjoy it.

Googling entry level pay per word rates, I've got one site saying the range is between $0.03 and $0.25, and then the various rates quoted here. I guess it comes to what do you think you could afford to pay. It seems like it should be a haggling process rather than a one sided bid.

And I'm going to send you a pm with resume and links and such.

I've generally been paying writers 6 cents a word for freelance work, though the pay scale could go up or down depending on what the quality is.

Most freelance fiction writing pays 20-25 cents/word,

No offense (*immediately says something extremely offense*) angel, but WHAT FUCKING DIMENSION DO YOU LIVE IN? I've been in the fiction game my entire life and...

This year, I wrote an 8,000 word story for an indisputably pro-level platform. I got paid five cents a word. It is the most I have ever been paid per word for anything I have ever written. EVER. I was ECSTATIC.

I think you got that $0.20-$0.25 per word quote from a portal to an alternate dimension called CRAZYLAND, a portal which is coincidentally lodged up your ass.

most freelance technical writing pays 45-55 cents/word (not including markups for celebrity-level names)

Since you are already channeling transmissions from CRAZYLAND, would you mind telling me who are celebrity-level names in the celebrity-littered field of TECHNICAL WRITING?

Fuck it, I'd do it. I've written worse for lessfree.

Ok. So I have "professional" experience as a word miner. Which is to say, I have experience writing to assignment, writing to a word count, pitching, developing an idea, all that stuff. Comes with being a Journalism major. Of course, if you define writing professionally the way my last advisor did, which is to say you got paid to write, I've never fucking been paid to write, to my sorrow. Even when I was writing for websites, they were start ups and shit that couldn't pay.

I have plenty of examples of my RPG writing on this site. Part of that is just being an inveterate tinkerer with the rules, part of that is that I genuinely enjoy it.

Googling entry level pay per word rates, I've got one site saying the range is between $0.03 and $0.25, and then the various rates quoted here. I guess it comes to what do you think you could afford to pay. It seems like it should be a haggling process rather than a one sided bid.

And I'm going to send you a pm with resume and links and such.

Currently, our floor is $0.025. Our ceiling is currently $0.05. Policy is every 10,000 competent words you write me, you get a half cent a word bump. So once you've written me 50,000 competent words, you've gone from floor to ceiling. Our payment terms are 5000% less exploitative bullshit than Catalyst, which is admittedly a low bar. But we'll pay you half on completion of final draft, and at least that's something.

Everything is flexible, and everything is negotiable. If you have previous industry credentials at the CGL or above tier, we start you at ceiling, not floor (Frank, Bobbie, I know you're not interested but that would mean you).

I'll PM you and Hicks PMs or return you guys' PMs later on today.

UPDAT:

To everyone who has PM'd me about this offer, which was meant to be less of a job offer and more of a "testing the waters on what freelancers expect to be paid per word", WOW! And I want to offer unironic and heartfelt thanks for all of the interest!

Everyone who has PM'd me as of this exact moment has a tentative, cautious "yes" answer to the question "Will you pay me at least $0.025 per word to write for you?".

I will PM you all a link to my website, thus selectively revealing what company I own on Thursday (I am in EST Time Zone if it matters to when Thursday is for you), because Thursdays are when I handle that sort of stuff as co-owner of the company.

I am HONESTLY not trying to be a huge drama queen about this, I swear, but this is all contingent on your tacit consent to keep my "secret identity" a secret, so I can continue my tradition of being savagely rude/brutally honest on the Den about people I might need to beg for money and/or licenses in real life.

"Applications" which were never exactly meant to be opened, are now officially closed, except to Prak, who is specifically encouraged to send me something resembling a resume some time before Thursday.[/b]

I've done some work Meikle (which he's already quoted), and he's definitely on the higher end from what I'm aware of in the industry, but I've otherwise done essentially nothing paid in the field that I could reasonably put in a resume or equivalent to send to anyone.

As it stands, I'm mildly frustrated (with myself) at the general attempts to get into game writing. Part of it is motivation; at 4¢/word, I need to be able to reliably write (and get paid for) 20k words/week to quit my day job. The other part is "deer in the headlights" kind of effect because it's not like there's a definitive to-do list on the goal.

Sweet, I'll get that to you once I get home from my real world job tonight

I am logging out of Schwarzkopf. My business partner is logging into Schwarzkopf. She will send out PMs to those of you who made the cut (everybody who applied) with the address of our website (KEEP IT SECRET, KEEP IT SAFE) and the email address to send an email to today to join our freelancer pool.

Okay, logged out, tried incompetently to kill myself, logged back in, ready to rock.

Applications are (still) closed. We have heard from Prak and from Chamomile through our official email.

Hicks, Dean, we need emails from you through our official email to hold your spots. Then we're locked, cocked, and ready to rock cocks..."no homo".

Thanks,
- Neurosis nee Schwarzkopf

Sorry 'but that. I'm at work for the next 5 hours. Will email resume as soon as I get home.

Resume sent to supplied Email address. The link to your site in the last PM is broken.

<salt removed>

The three Denlancers left standing (Prak, Hicks, Dean) e-mail Mikaela your deets so we can get your NDAs signed and start talking projects.

Schwarz Neurosis out.

If posting misleading quotes out of context is supposed to improve my or anyone's opinion of the professionalism with which your company conducts itself, it is not working.

Alright, Chamomile. We've agreed privately to drop it. Let's drop it.



My company's professionalism is super important to me, but everyone on the board at a minimum knows that my company's CEO (i.e. me) is a crazy person that tried to kill himself over getting fired from Shadowrun, which kind of compromises my professionalism no matter what else I might say.

That said I'm sorry for any hurt feelings.

Neurosis wrote:Alright, Chamomile. We've agreed privately to drop it. Let's drop it.

For future reference, when you agree privately to drop something, don't bring it up publicly, because that's not dropping it.

Gotcha.