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[2Mello]

Hello all,

I'm 2 Mello, a longtime musician but short-time game composer working on a few moderately-sized indie titles with GREAT people. Definitely a newbie in this business. I've been slightly isolated from other composers working on my level, so I wanted to join these forums to find some others who may be just starting out or who may be moving along and doing quite well. One of my games is completing soon, and another is in a bit of limbo looking for a publisher, so I have a few questions about making sure you have that all-important next job.

How do some of you initially manage to make sure you always had a next job? Where do I look? Should I try getting in on the ground floor with an indie team or just cold-calling and making sure someone thinks of me when the time comes around? Is there anyone I should talk to, or a community I should become a part of (besides this one)? Also, are there any mistakes you might have made initially or things you wish you had done sooner, like learning to use a certain program a lot of jobs require?

Thanks to anyone who has some answers, or wants to share in these ponderings. I realize that I'm incredibly lucky to have found paid jobs this early at all, and definitely feel as such, but why not look forward to what's next, possibly making a career out of this? It's good to have dreams.

[TopherPirkl]

Well, finding the next job is unfortunately about 50-70% of your time as a freelancer, in my experience. At least, that's how it is until you're established and have enough people that you've worked with that they approach you rather than you having to hunt down work.

From my own experience, the most important community to be a part of is your local community, if you have one. I'm in an area that doesn't have the most active game dev community, but I've still gotten all of my gigs from someone I've met face to face. Involving yourself in an online community can be immensely rewarding, but nothing beats in-person contact, and most devs I know would always default to working with someone they can meet up and have coffee with. I would venture to say that this is doubly true for composers. I'm a sound designer, and I'm lucky in that I'm kind of the only really active sound designer in my area, so any developers who know sound will play a major part in their game usually end up approaching me at some point. On the other hand, there's six or seven people I know who would consider themselves primarily video game composers, and they're constantly competing for projects.

So as far as online communities, I don't really have much to offer. I've had really poor luck on Reddit, unfortunately, and have had marginal luck on some other small, non-game-dev-centric forums.

As for things I wish I had done sooner? I wish I had spent more time trying to understand other elements of game dev, like the ins and outs of Unity, Game Maker, Unreal, etc. as well as what goes into animation, rigging, modeling, environmental art, stuff like that. And programming. I probably could have gotten on a couple of projects in the past if I had been a more confident programmer. Again, though, a lot of my experience is really pretty specific to sound design. I think one thing sound design and composing really have in common is that you need to constantly be creating content and upping your game.

Like I said, the game composer field is hugely competitive, so find what you're good at and refine it as much as possible, and expand your skillset during your downtime. If you aren't working at your craft on a near-daily basis, you're already well behind the competition, so to speak.

TL;DR: Spend all your time networking and looking for gigs, then spend the rest of your time honing your craft. Oh, also work on your current projects when you've got a minute.

[2Mello]

Thanks for the reply! I am lucky enough to be in a city that has a small but active game-dev community. It sounds like I should hang out more there. I love how possible good telecommuting is these days, but what you say about the ease of getting a cup of coffee is very true. I don't think there are many people who primarily consider themselves composers in that local group, either.

Reddit and forums seems like a real mess, being very over-saturated with composers looking for and posting their work, so after taking one look at that I knew it probably wasn't the place that people go to get hired. I wonder, could there be some secret Valhalla of composer/dev interaction...probably not.

I've learned quite a bit of how sound and music works in Unity from the projects I've worked on so far, but having knowledge of multiple engines would indeed be great, especially now since they're all almost free in some way or another. And polishing the craft daily is no worry--my life goes limp if I'm not making music, It's absolutely a necessity!

Thanks again for the advice, Topher--I think I'm going to go see if my local game devs need anything. BTW, followed ya on Twitter!