masongoddamnwright

What is a freelancer?

According to dictionary.com, a freelancer is “of or relating to work conducted by a person who sells their services by the hour, day, job, etc., rather than working on a regular salary basis for one employer.”

So, rather than being employed by a company, you work on your own. Companies might come to you and ask for your service, in which case you can get paid to do some work without committing yourself fully to them. You’re sometimes a subcontractor, maybe an indie developer, and you employ yourself.

So, what kinds of skills might you need? For a games developer – a lot. Let’s cover just a few of those skills you might need:

Firstly, good programming skills. It’s a good idea to be familiar with languages and engines commonly used for games development, for example C# and Unity. If you were to be an indie dev, Unity or Godot might be your preference. You’re probably also going to want to be good at fixing bugs, since you don’t want to get stuck in a loop trying to solve an issue and have it take days to fix.

Secondly, you’ll want to be decent at actually designing games. Stuff like core gameplay loops, UI design, etc. Making a game is one thing, but making a good game is another! When you’re not working for a larger company, it’s just you out there, and you’re going to want to have a good reputation for making good, quality work.

Thirdly, you’re gonna want to be good at communicating with people. Communication is very important, as you are working with people who are paying to hire your skills, and they’re going to want to make sure you’re doing things right and your work is coming along well. A very good communicator would engage in an extended dialogue with their client to make sure that there’s no room for error, and show their interest in the project. Once again, being good at communication will help build a good reputation, which will help with future work.

In addition, you will need to have good timekeeping skills. Be reliable, be honest with your time estimates, and be especially careful and sure to meet deadlines. Being known for having bad time management skills is an easy way to tank your professional reputation, and lose whatever momentum you had.

Would I become a freelancer, and if so, how would I go about doing it?

Personally, it’s a very tough question. There’s many upsides and downsides to freelancing, and depending on your specialty or discipline area, it may be better for you or not. Working as a freelance artist I personally think would not be the right move for me. Art is a passion for me personally, and I feel that turning it into a job would burn me out and strip away what makes it so special for me. In addition to that, I take my time with art, and I’m rather slow with it – something that a potential client would not be interested in unless they really had the time to spare.

As for the perspective as a game designer, the amount of freelance game designers has shot up in the UK according to gamesindustry.biz, which at first may seem exciting or even promising. But once you realise that this spike has occurred due to mass layoffs and shutdowns in the UK games industry, the picture changes. Freelance games designers aren’t more common because of an increase in demand – rather, there’s more freelancers in this field because people have lost their jobs in AAA and are looking for any source of work they can in the meantime. Extra competition especially doesn’t help, as it makes the market far more competitive. Unless you really stand out, you’re going to have a harder time finding a client who would choose you over someone with experience in AAA

That’s why it’s very important to share your work and show off what you’re capable of. I would primarily showcase my work on places like Reddit, Itch.io, or LinkedIn, posting the work I was most proud of and doing so frequently. I shared more about how you might do this in this blog here, so if you want to know more, go read that! (After you’re done here, of course. We’re not done quite yet!)

What about starting my own business as an indie developer? Now, that’s a more interesting question. Personally, this is my end goal, the thing I want to do the most with my studies in games development. It’s always been my dream to not just make someone else’s game, but to make my game. Nobody to tell me what to do, I take the reigns and have the freedom to make only the best games I’m capable of creating. Making a business may be hard, but if you’re dedicated, it’ll be worth every step. You just need to believe in what you do, and make it work.