How to Break In and Stay In - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 8

bed, and practice. At one point we started playing this other online shooter, Soldier
of Fortune II , and I became pretty good at it.
So good, I was recruited by a top clan that competed in matches. Eventually, I
ended up meeting one of the producers of the game. He was also the writer of the
single-player version of SOF2 . I asked him how he got the job of writing the game,
and he quizzed me on how I broke in to screenwriting. We exchanged information
and contacts, and through him I met quite a few other developers and producers.
I called them, e-mailed them, and took the ones in Southern California out to
lunch. I picked their brains and pitched my services. A former Blizzard producer
who went to work for Atari in L.A. finally offered me a project. The developer
was Liquid Entertainment, and the game would be a Dungeons & Dragons RTS. I
submitted some writing samples to the developers, met with them a few times, and
was eventually hired. That was my start, and my subsequent jobs have come to me
much the same way. If you want to be a freelance game writer, you need to do a lot
of schmoozing and networking. It's not something I'm completely comfortable with,
but I've gotten better at it and now, occasionally, I even enjoy it.
Wendy Despain, International Hobo
My path to breaking in is winding and weird. I got a degree in magazine journalism
with an emphasis on science writing back when the World Wide Web was being
invented. Since it was an interesting tech story, I learned the basics and got sucked
into the world of Web development. My journalism contacts got me a job making
Web features for Tribune Company—the owner of the Chicago Tribune , LA Times ,
and other newspapers and TV stations. My contacts and experience there got me
work producing websites for television shows, and in the course of working on some
Gene Roddenberry projects, I designed and wrote for two alternate reality games.
I had always enjoyed playing video games, and in college that led me to MUDs,
the very first massively multiplayer online (text) games. That's where I developed a
love for interactive narrative that I put into practice with the alternate reality games.
When those completed their runs, I realized video games were more invested in
interactive narrative than television was at the time, so I decided to transition into
the game industry and started networking. I also went from working full-time as a
Web producer to freelancing as a writer for magazines, novels, and television. I got
involved in an interactive fiction project and joined the IGDA.
TheIGDAGameWritingSIGgavemeanopportunitytoshowcasemywriting
and organizational skills to a group of industry insiders, and after being very active in
that organization for a while, I got into a conversation with one of the working game
writers who was also active there. He mentioned in passing that he was slammed
with work, and I reminded him that I was a freelancer. He asked for samples, and
within a few weeks I had a freelance job writing for a video game.
The moral of the story is to never underestimate the value of networking and
practicing your craft. That's how I've gone from one job to the next to the next, and
now I'm even the chair of the IGDA Game Writing SIG.