How to get a game writing job if you have no experience
Local doctors hate these three secrets that will get you game writing jobs and clear pores
How do you get a game writing job if you have no experience writing games?
You don’t.
I’m sorry, but… you don’t.
Would you get given a publishing deal if you had never written a novel? Would you get a film deal if you had never written a script? There is no major writing medium where some level of creative production is not required prior to starting a professional role. There may be exceptions from time to time, but it just doesn’t make sense. Coding and art and other disciplines may not have finished games but they do not need to if they can demonstrate pure command of their languages of art. Writing is not the same. A portfolio is not necessarily enough if the samples are all made-up, as there is so much about this medium that requires a structure and execution over time. And if you have not finished a work when so many others have, even entry level people? Why should a company hire you VS them?
So how do you rectify this?
The right question is: how do you get such a job if you have no paid experience in the medium? This may seem semantics, but it’s not.
Here’s what you do.
Write a great game.
Maximise the chance of saying the right thing in the right place at the right time.
Once you’ve internalised point 2, completely erase it from your consciousness.
How do you write a game if you have no experience? Just the same way you would write a novel if you’d never had a publishing deal, or how you’d write a film script if you’d never been paid to make a movie (i.e. the same way anyone in any field of writing breaks into writing). You study the craft by playing lots and writing lots. You can represent branching on pen and paper if you’re really feeling intimidated by the possibilities. When you are ready, I’ve designed this tool to enable you to make your first segment of a game in 5 minutes.
How do you maximise the chance of saying the right thing in the right place at the right time? 1
You network. You get to know people. You participate in game jams. You get used to how industry people talk and discuss games and development. You use your games output from step 1, whenever it gets good enough, to build social proof by getting coverage and people playing your work. You make sure you put the work into actually releasing your output and promoting it properly, and if it doesn’t make the impact you were hoping for, you fail again, and you fail better, incrementally until you succeed. You take an honest look at what you are writing and ask yourself if you’ve made something that a lot of people would want to play or if you’ve made decisions that will limit your audience significantly, especially with recruiters.
You then… completely forget about all that, and focus on making a great game + improving your craft.
There are workshops out there with a variety of focuses, like my own (currently in waitlist / not active for a while, sorry), but although these can really help provide structure and focus to your production if they’re focused on actual writing, you don’t need any of us to do this. If you can recreate even some of the conditions of a timeframe, structure, and feedback with trusted friends, go for it.
Why else do you want to become a game writer in the first place? If it’s for pure ego or external validation, the idea of spending all this time and effort will seem like anathema to you.
Just because you enjoy coffee or spending time in cafes doesn’t mean:
a) that you would enjoy running a cafe
b) that you know how to run a cafe
c) that you would succeed financially in running a cafe
d) that the whole experience might make you hate the very smell of coffee.
Remember this when considering turning any passion into a career
If wanting to get into game writing is at all to do with actual love of the craft, then find out whether you do really love this. You might find a lot of pain and angst along the way (what writer doesn’t…) but you should find joy and accomplishment and yearning in the craft also. And if you hold these values of challenging yourself and testing yourself in creative output, then you become the exact kind of person that would be great for a games company to hire.
There are so many free resources out there to get started: it’s never been easier to become a game writer, which might be hard to hear for many people. A paid, full-time professional? That’s quite difficult, but it has always been difficult. And when you hear about the hundreds of applications per job, I assure you, a vast number of those will never have made a finished project at any point. The odds are very difficult, but not as difficult as they might seem. And to spend years applying for those jobs without any experience or finished projects, VS just starting to do the thing you think you love, feels like a no-brainer to me.
(Note: the ‘right time’ element of all of this is compromised at the moment with the games industry layoffs. This is not to say that all writing work is erased: just that networking is more important than ever and that expectations of an in-house secure job are somewhat lessened for the time being)