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[LemonScented]

For various reasons, it's hit "that time" at the company I work for. I'll be handing in my notice soon, and looking to what I can do with the rest of my career. I've been a professional games programmer since 2003 (although I've been coding games since 1989 and between 1993 - 1997 I was selling them - does that make me "one of the first indies", or something?). I've worked at a couple of major studios, on a handful of major titles. The CV looks pretty good, and I'm considered a senior programmer by games industry standards.

I could go for another studio job in the UK somewhere, but for several reasons I'm considering having a go at doing freelance work instead. I like the idea of working from home (where "home" is "anywhere I enjoy living and is sufficiently cheap", rather than "where I had to move to in order to work at X studio"); I like that freelance work would involve more variety and less emotional involvement in the projects I work on; I like the idea of better pay (I know I'd be losing out on pensions, health plans and paid holiday but I can live with losing those things or supplying them myself); I like that if there are periods of unemployment (covered by savings from the higher pay) I can spend some of that time doing indie work rather than being restricted to working in the evenings. Obviously even though studio work is hardly job security these days, with seemingly-healthy studios regularly collapsing overnight, the uncertainty of finding commissions and chasing down paycheques from stubborn studios scares me a bit. I don't have much in the way of savings, so the first contract would have to be something for 6-12 months to allow me to build up some kind of financial safety net. Also, I have no idea how to get started in an endeavour like this - how to set up a limited company (do I need to do that? I think I do), how to deal with tax, how best to find work, how to manage potentially working offsite for game studios (particularly how that pertains to working on console games, where I'm unlikely to be able to use a devkit)...

Has anyone here done this? Any advice for someone who has done years of studio work but who is totally new to freelance? Is it even feasible to be considering this, or should I just give it up and find more studio work?

[BrianSlipBit]

Unfortunately, I can't help you with any of the specifics of contracting or freelancing for major (or even smaller) studios.  It's been my experience in the past over here in the US, that every place I've ever worked for that was doing console work, simply wanted their programmers on site at the office.

I do know a few people who have recently detailed their own problems with trying to get companies to pay up on their contracts and what a hassle that turned into.  They were fairly small iPhone game related contracts.

You sound like you want to pursue indie work though.  I reached the same point in my career when the last project I was working on was canceled and the entire team was laid off.  I had spent the past decade breaking my back to put money into other people's pockets, and quite frankly, was sick and tired of all the BS and instability that goes along with 99% of most pro game dev jobs.

However, I'm too conservative and not enough of a risk taker to have just gone cold turkey full-time indie.  That alone is a lot of pressure.  So, I found a nice stable 40hr/week (non-mind bending, non-back breaking, non-pressure packed) day job coding straight apps.  The people are actually quite cool and the projects are actually interesting (funny how things work out sometimes).

Yes, being forced to do all indie related work in the evenings and on weekends still totally sucks.  But, the day job at least leaves me in a mental state where I'm energized and capable of doing it.  Granted things on the indie project move a good bit slower.  However, that was a trade off I was willing to accept.

I know none of this has directly helped answer any of your questions.  But, I figured it might be worthwhile to mention what I've experienced so far, as another possible approach to take.

At this point in your career, it sounds like you've got enough practical knowledge and experience to pull off an indie project on your own.  Whether you want co commit to doing that as a full-time endeavor or play it a bit safer and keep it on the side for a while, is ultimately something you'll need to figure out.

Decisions like this are often times a bit scary, and are most definitely never easy.  Good luck!

[Oddball]

I can't really help with all the getting freelancing work questions, but I can tell you that working for yourself in the UK couldn't be simpler. No need to set up a company or anything like that. Just register as self-employed and your good to go. Depending how complicated your income/outgoings are you can self assess your taxes or get an accountant to do it.

[bateleur]

I have been a freelance programmer for three and a bit years now.

You have a couple of possible misconceptions about it. First, you will not necessarily make more money. You will make more per hour of actual work, but unless you have a continuous stream of contracts and work yourself pretty hard your equivalent wage may not be all that great. (Fortunately your outgoings will also drop due to no commute costs and being able to live of real food!)

Second, it will not allow you to emotionally detach from your projects. Quite the reverse, in fact. Because you don't have formal work hours, projects which run into trouble will eat your life. And some clients don't have great people skills and consequently can be stressful and difficult to work with as they make unreasonable demands and poor decisions.

Still, there are many positives too. For one thing, I've never yet had to "chase down" a paycheque from a client. Also, you don't need to be a limited company unless you're going to expose yourself to legal risks (I've never needed to). Also, I spend less than an hour a month on admin in total - you'll probably be about the same.

Also, assuming you're a programmer there's no reason to restrict yourself to the games industry. Not all non-games contracts are incredibly dull and some of them pay better than games stuff. They're also way easier to find.

If in doubt, go for it. It's definitely feasible.

[LemonScented]

All of that stuff is really useful - I love this place! 

@BrianDFS: It's cool to share your experiences, even if they're not directly related to freelance - it helps to give me an alternative take on what my options are. Frankly, yes, I'd like nothing more than to go fulltime indie - I've got the skills and the motivation - but that's a HUGE financial risk, and one I'm not willing or able to take. So in the meantime, indie work stays for the evenings. One thing I'm thinking/hoping/imagining might come out of freelance work is that I can spend the time in between contracts working on indie stuff as well as jobhunting - perhaps some casual iPhone/Flash/Facebook type stuff to see if I can supplement the income, as well as devoting chunks of time to "the" project as well.

@Oddball: Great, this is just the kind of stuff I need to know. I'll look into that, assuming I end up going down this route.

@batelur: Perhaps I over-simplified things when I said "more money" - from what I understand it's more like "more money per hour, but comparable money per year when the periods of unemployment are taken into account". What I'm hoping is that I can use those periods of unemployment to do other, hopefully also profitable work as well as jobhunting.

Regarding emotional detachment, I guess I won't know how I will react to it all until I try it. Whilst I envisage that the more direct connection between putting the hours in and paying the rent would likely cause me to take the work much more seriously (let's face it, it's all too easy to get complacent with a salaried job in a big studio), doing studio work for me has always come with an implied sense of ownership over parts of the game as a final product, and frustration when it's not steering in the direction I think it needs to go to be the best product it can be. What I'm hoping for with freelance is that I can do my best to fulfil client's requirements but not have that investment in the product itself (since, after all, I'm not going to get a cut of any sales bonus, and there'll be another project round the corner). That's the theory, anyway, but I accept that I may be well off here.

Regarding non-games work, I have a non-games freelance programming friend who may be considering subcontracting some grunt work to me, which I'll be fine with. The irony there is that to begin with at least, I wouldn't feel comfortable charging much, since I'm pretty much a n00b when it comes to a lot of non-games stuff, whereas I'd be considered pretty senior and experienced in games. I've not touched a database since I was in college, and my knowledge of programming languages other than C/C++ and a smattering of Python is pretty limited. I guess that would come with time, though, and if I could pick that stuff up fast enough it could end up being more lucrative.