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[jddg5wa]

I'm not currently in a position that I want to "hire" a writer yet but I was hoping to get feedback on what it might cost.

I have a game currently in the works that will be approx
• 5-7 levels
• 2-3 hours gameplay
• Moderate amount of dialogue (500-750 words)

The main communication will be between the player and their "AI" companion that accompanies them everywhere. There might not be a lot of dialogue but I have in mind enough that I would like to see about hiring an experienced writer to help. Right now I am just trying to gauge what a project like this could cost.

If any more details are needed, let me know!

You can check out my game devlog for more details and story idea: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=35856.0;topicseen

[DrDerekDoctors]

500-750 words isn't a moderate amount of dialogue, it's a *tiny* amount of dialogue. That'd be less than a days work for any decent writer (although obviously there'd be revisions). I believe the UK writers guild states about £450 a day for writing (I haven't got my copy of the guide to hand) but I imagine if you found someone who really wanted to work on the project, they'd be willing to work for a *lot* less, perhaps deferring payments to the back end. I don't know what US rates are, mind.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

generally freelance writers are paid between a dollar and three dollars a page. a page is about 300 words. so you are basically looking at something *almost free* -- i could write you 750 words for $10

i'm not sure you realize how little 750 words is, though. 750 words is 3 pages. your entire game is only going to have *three pages* of dialogue? do you realize how little that is?

by contrast, most modern games have at least 500 pages of dialog, often much more. planescape torment had 4000 pages

even the first zelda game (for the nes) had significantly more than 3 pages of text (counting the intro test sequence and everything all the individual people say -- shopkeepers, clues, etc.)

[shacleav]

For quality work, probably $30.

[DrDerekDoctors]

Both those estimates are a lot less than any professional games writer worth his salt would ask for. Plus, games writers aren't paid by the page due to the iterative nature of games writing (I've never known a game script make it from first draft to last without the game requiring massive amounts of it to be re-written). It's a very different job to regular freelance writing.

Still, if someone wants to commit to doing it for thirty bucks, that's entirely their prerogative.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

most of that is true, except that the idea that more money equals more quality isn't really true. for example, people in the third world do exactly the same jobs as people in the first world do, but are paid tens or hundreds of times less. a doctor in the US makes like 150k a year, a doctor in indonesia makes like 5k a year, but the doctor in indonesia may well be the superior doctor

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Economic pressures keep the doctor in indonesia from taking on western patients, leaving him tragically making 5k -- freelancers aren't bound as strictly by those unfortunate circumstances. Artists in asia and the third world tend to charge comparative rates to westerners, I should expect/hope that writers do the same.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i suspect that if you hired e.g. a 3D artist in china their salary would be significantly lower than hiring a 3D artist in the US. where did you hear that they would be paid the same?

in any case, the entire thing about different pay in different countries is just an example. there are plenty of other examples where people who are better get paid less than people who are worse. i just find it laughable that someone would claim that people who are paid more are better at what they do when everything i've seen is to the contrary

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

i suspect that if you hired e.g. a 3D artist in china their salary would be significantly lower than hiring a 3D artist in the US. where did you hear that they would be paid the same?

in any case, the entire thing about different pay in different countries is just an example. there are plenty of other examples where people who are better get paid less than people who are worse. i just find it laughable that someone would claim that people who are paid more are better at what they do when everything i've seen is to the contrary

Largely anecdotal, since freelancers rarely discuss their personal rates, so I can't just grab an artist in china to use as an example. However, it's ludicrous to think that the average freelance art salary would be as high as it is (comfortable even in the most expensive cities in the world, if you're established) if all of the extremely talented chinese art teams (there are a lot) charged considerably less than US artists. There is minimal if any bias to hire a US artist for freelance work, freelance work does not discriminate by geography.

There isn't a 1:1 correlation between skill and salary, no, but there is also an average rate. If you have enough ability to command the average rate for your field, why would you quote a client any less? If a super elite american artist gets paid $100+ an hour to do good work over the internet, why wouldn't an equally skilled and reliable ethiopian artist charge the same?

[jddg5wa]

500-750 words isn't a moderate amount of dialogue, it's a *tiny* amount of dialogue. That'd be less than a days work for any decent writer (although obviously there'd be revisions). I believe the UK writers guild states about £450 a day for writing (I haven't got my copy of the guide to hand) but I imagine if you found someone who really wanted to work on the project, they'd be willing to work for a *lot* less, perhaps deferring payments to the back end. I don't know what US rates are, mind.

Thanks for the info, interesting to see that there is a writers guild average wage. I don't think I've heard of anything like that in the US but I'm sure it exists and I just didn't know.

i'm not sure you realize how little 750 words is, though. 750 words is 3 pages. your entire game is only going to have *three pages* of dialogue? do you realize how little that is?

by contrast, most modern games have at least 500 pages of dialog, often much more. planescape torment had 4000 pages

Thank you for the estimate. I do realize how little 750 is. I'm not making a huge AAA game and plus most of the story will be told by visuals but with a few a key parts that will need dialogue. I also only estimated the amount of words. While doing some planning of the game levels I came to conclude that there would be more dialogue needed than what I originally stated. But I created this thread to get an idea of what writers might charge. Also to scout writers who I might contact once I get to that point.  

For quality work, probably $30.

Thank you for the estimate.

Both those estimates are a lot less than any professional games writer worth his salt would ask for. Plus, games writers aren't paid by the page due to the iterative nature of games writing (I've never known a game script make it from first draft to last without the game requiring massive amounts of it to be re-written). It's a very different job to regular freelance writing.

Still, if someone wants to commit to doing it for thirty bucks, that's entirely their prerogative.

Yea from what I've been looking up that video game writers do I'd hope to now have someone that, when I come to the point of needing a writer, would work along side me to have the story told well through dialogue. I mean I can tell someone exactly who I want to say what but then I could write that myself. I'd hope to find a writer that might look at my game and gameplay and work with me to add dialogue in places that might improve the story aside from writing exactly what I want. With the amount of time I imagine to work with the writer, anything under $100 doesn't seem like it would even cover minimum wage in the US.  

There isn't a 1:1 correlation between skill and salary, no, but there is also an average rate. If you have enough ability to command the average rate for your field, why would you quote a client any less? If a super elite american artist gets paid $100+ an hour to do good work over the internet, why wouldn't an equally skilled and reliable ethiopian artist charge the same?

I've actually been "beaten" out of a 3D modeling job because of someone who could afford to do the work cheaper. They didn't necessarily do it better, though comparable, but the client was happy and that is all that usually matters. One reason a client might not charge as much is because they don't necessarily need to charge as much to afford to live where they are. Also if freelance is only a hobby they might not care about what they make.

But to say there are more than enough design studios that function fine that you could safely say artists working for less doesn't seem to hurt the market.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

just one note, i wasn't actually volunteering, since i'm quite busy. i'm saying that i have done freelance work in the past, and have written 750 words for $10; i was using myself as an example

also, i should note that the post that you just wrote is probably longer than 750 words. i know you said you have an idea of how little 750 words is, but you just wrote more than 750 words (or maybe something like 500?)

i mention this because -- think about how long that post took you to write. not very long, right? the people estimating 450 euros for that amount of writing are overcharging. it's not an amount of writing that would even take a day to do. it would probably take less than an hour. by comparison, i've written 6-page college essays for people, including the research, in less than an hour (and they got A's, as an aside -- i'm not talking low quality essays). so no, $10 or $30 for 3 pages isn't less than minimum wage, at least in the US, where minimum wage is around $7.25 an hour

[shacleav]

For $30, I can write the story and spend about 4 hours thinking about it, planning it and writing it. However if it turns out you need a longer story than the stated amount of words, it will probably cost extra.

In case you ever need me, I will probably charge you $7.50/hour for writing, or $10 hour for game design. The number of hours it takes me is at my discretion since I want it to be good, but also might be negotiable.

And the reason why it would take me 4 hours for the writing, is because I want it to be good. I would probably spend more time on game writing than your average book page.

[MA-Simon]

It baffles me how cheap most of you are.

generally freelance writers are paid between a dollar and three dollars a page.

Come on???

Some of us actually need food and other things for a living.
My current single guy living expenses are about 700€ / month (Cheap apartment, water/electricity, normal Food) to that comes Internet, Broadcastfees, Trash, Rent, Health Insurance, Phone bills. etc. etc. That amounts to about 1000€ per month.
WITHOUT tax!!!
Not counting furniture, cloths, car fuel & repairs and all the other very expensive things.

How can you possibly charge 1-3$ per page?

Social Status and all that nadanada mean jack if you provide a professional service.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i'm just saying that's what the going rate is. check e-lance.com if you don't believe me. i've worked as a freelance writer, and have friends who have worked as freelance writers, and that's generally how much we make

[jddg5wa]

i'm just saying that's what the going rate is. check e-lance.com if you don't believe me. i've worked as a freelance writer, and have friends who have worked as freelance writers, and that's generally how much we make

Curious to know how that works since e-lance seems to go by hourly wage. How many pages are you writing an hour?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

some are by the hour, some are a set amount, elance allows you to do either one. for example, this one is 10 1000-word articles for $50 to $150: https://www.elance.com/j/write-electronics-product-reviews-word-articles/47339570/

this comes out to about 40 pages (for rounding purposes i'm using ~250 words a page) for $50 to $150, or about 80 cents to $2.40 per page. if you use the estimate of 333 words a page instead of 250 words a page, that's 30 pages, or 1 to 3 dollars an hour (exactly what i claimed)

and, as i mentioned above, i can write up to about 6 pages per hour, though of course that'd depend on the type of writing (nonfiction is faster than fiction). so if i were to take that job above, i could probably do it in 5 hours, which would be between $10 and $30 an hour

of course there are jobs that pay more than that, and less. but in my experience the link posted above is typical of the type of job a freelance writer would be able to get on a day to day basis

also keep in mind that a page isn't all that much writing. this post is about a page (edit: probably two pages now that i've added more to it). it took me about 10-15 minutes to write. i know that tigsource posts are a different level of quality than articles, but aside from capitalization and punctuation (which i stylize on these forums), i wouldn't write all that much differently for jobs like the above than i do for my posts, and it wouldn't take all that much more time, either

another thing to keep in mind is that often these writing jobs are not actually designed to be written for humans. a lot of them are SEO stuff, designed for search engines. that job above is for paid reviews, which is very easy. and a lot of other ones are for people who don't know english that well, and are simply looking for someone who can write basic english. they aren't looking for exceptionally skillful writing, they are looking for writing that is readable and clear, without grammatical errors

[MA-Simon]

Maybe I am not getting the point of this elance thing, but:

I need someone to write 10 reviews of consumer electronics devices (which I will identify after awarding the project). If all goes well, I will have a series of assignments like this.

But how is getting 10+ guys writing paid reviews for your products even a legal thing???

Edit: Looked in some more.
Okay, It is also about other jobs. But wow. Most of these prices are still ridiculous. (Unsurprisingly most of these offers are from the us)

Sorry for having highjacked your topic like that.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

it's not only legal, but incredibly common. our own moderator, dragonmaw, used to work as someone who wrote positive reviews of products. never trust stuff like amazon.com user reviews; many of those reviews were not written by real people

(to be fair he said he regretted doing that and would not work at a job like that again)

i once wrote a tour guide to tanzania, even though i've never been to tanzania

[ink.inc]

til dragonmaw is not a real person

[jddg5wa]

Well this has me realizing, and that is a good thing, that my expectations are for someone more than a writer. Without realizing it I was wanting someone that would not just write the dialogue but also work with me to integrate said dialogue into the game. As in looking at places and characters and seeing where dialogue might be added to enhance the story or where I may add a character with dialogue, etc.  Aside from getting estimates this thread has been an immense help, thanks guys.