Today marks the one-year and one-week anniversary (the only real anniversary worth celebrating) of me turning freelance as a full-time games writer, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’d learned that fall outside the “What tools should I use to author my script?”, “Why don’t people love ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ more?”, and “How do I portray my creative vision of a world wracked in conflict through a game that is ostensibly about dropping bricks into a tube?” questions that come along.

Reading back, the thoughts have very little to do with writing for games and more about doing any sort of creative freelancing, but I suppose that leads neatly onto point one:

Being a professional games writer is not about being a writer, or anything to do with games. Sure, once you get down to doing a piece of work that’s what it’s about, but the majority of time, certainly at the start, the focus is going to be on sales, pure and simple. If you can’t do sales, you can’t do the job and that’s a very bitter pill to swallow for a “creative” person. Without clients, you could be the Dickens of games writing and it isn’t going to pay the bills and it isn’t going to make you a star. Actual selling is not necessarily hard, and there’s plenty of books on doing it well, but getting used to the rejection, picking yourself up, and trying again is a tricky emotional thing to deal with, particularly if you’re not used to doing that sort of thing.

It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know. Following on from the last point, you can’t make it in this industry (or probably any other industry) without a good network. The bulk of the work that I have got, I’ve got through people I knew before turning freelance. And if you haven’t got a great network, you have to make one, and fast. Even if you think you have a good network, it’s never good enough. Even if it seems like a tremendous outlay of money, and if you’re willing to put in the work, you have to get out to the conferences and make quality contacts. No matter how many LinkedIn connections you’ve got, if you can’t say “Hey dude” to someone you know in a bar and find out what projects they’ve got on, it’s not going to work.

A bird in the hand… blah blah blah. A lesson that I’ve learned so many times in the past, and still continued to learn from (i.e. fail at!). I turned down work, pretty good work, because there was something better around the corner. The corner came and went, and nothing happened. By then the other work had gone and I had nothing. Stupid error, don’t do this. If you find yourself with two bits of work at the same time, find ways around it and thank your lucky stars!

Try not to start your business in a year where there’s a massive global economic crisis. For all its recession resisting properties, you only need to look at the number of studios that have closed and the number of jobs that have been lost in the games industry to see that there are knock on effects of “the downturn”. The main effect for me has been the significantly increased attitude to risk, and that means fewer companies doing bigger products with a writing component, and fewer companies willing to look outside their usual sphere of interest when it comes to finding a writer. For established writers, this isn’t as much of a problem, but for a new writer without a name in the industry, you’re just another risk they don’t need right now.

Luck is a bitch. By giving yourself contingency you can roll with the punches, but sometimes things happen out of your control that you can simply put down to shit just happening. I lost two great potential contracts which were at the negotiation stage when the projects were pulled in their entirety. I was turned down for an interesting piece of work because I was “too professional”, so you never quite know how people are going to react, and sometime you just have to write it off as bad juju.

Have people around. If you’re working on your own, it’s easy to underestimate the importance of having real people to talk to. Not necessarily for work purposes, but just friends or family who you can vent to, or someone to big you up when you’re down. All of the things on this list get amplified because it’s all on you, and if you can’t find a way to deal with the rollercoaster of it all, especially in the early days, then it all gets suddenly harder.

Remember why you’re doing it. There’s a point at which “the dream” get subsumed into the practicalities of keeping going, so you need to sit back every now and again and check that you’re still enjoying it, because at the end of the day there are easier ways of making money than this, and if you stop enjoying it, you’re flogging yourself for no reason. And that’s crazy-town. Despite the bad times (of which there have been several), and whatever happens in the future I can look back on the year and say “I've been a professional writer for games”. For me - totally worth it.

Whilst at GDC last week, I enjoyed several days of networking with all facets of the global games industry, one of the things I wanted to do whilst I was there was get in touch with a number of Mobile Games companies that had a presence at the show.

A good number of companies showed a keen interest and an understanding that as their roles were expanding to take into account the next, more powerful, generation of phones (not least the iPhone) that their games might benefit from writing input. Unfortunately, there was still a vanguard of mobile developers who were completely incredulous that their games would ever need professional writing. And I'm not talking about people with a perfectly reasonably assertion that their current games wouldn't benefit... but people who considered that there was no way that ANY mobile game would ever need a writer.

The arguments fell into two broad categories: a writer wouldn't be any use because the volume of text is small, and that the budgets are too small to take on an external contractor.

Surely if the volume of text is small, then it's even more important that you get a good writer, if every word counts that much more, you want someone who can craft those words even more tightly? One of the benefits in getting a specialised writer who understands the nature of games, is that they can work within the technical restrictions imposed on them in a way or a more generalised writer might not.

The second argument seems to be predicated on a belief that a writer is going to turn up after eight weeks with a 600 page manuscript and say, "Stick this in your game, that'll be a million pounds, please." If the volume of text is really going to be small, as the first argument suggests, then a freelancer is only going to need to be employed for a short period of time, as a proportion of the budget it shouldn't be out of whack with any other aspect of development. I'd be just has happy spending a day producing a well-written but minimal piece of work as I would spendings months on a well-written epic.

The mobile games industry is arguably growing up a lot faster the console industry has, and is going through the same discussions and quandaries as its elder sibling. But just as there's a constant debate in the regular games industry about the value of writers, it is only right that the mobile games industry follows suit. I can only hope that it draws it's own conclusions, and understands that writing isn't a pointless inconvenience that has to be crow-barred into the mobile experience but instead another potential facet of a game that, when done right, can make a tangible difference in player enjoyment.

...not in a traditional liberal European US-bashing way of course. What I mean is the voting American public's selection last week in the second American Idol semi-final was deeply unsatisfactory. Why would they pick Kris Allen over Megan Joy Corkrey? She's got an interesting and unique voice and looks great; he is as bland and cookie-cutter as you're ever going to see - plus she designs fonts for a living... what's more American and worthy of Idolisation than that?!

Stay with me, I am going somewhere with this...

I am addicted to American Idol, I have watched every season (except season seven as I couldn't stand the potato-faced David Cook), I have watched many episodes from the early seasons countless times. Initially it was out of obligation, research for my involvement with the Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol games, now I just can't stop myself.

People will say that it's unwise to be bigging up my involvement with such a "casual" game, when the majority of game scripts are of the "burly-men shouting" variety, but in terms of technical achievements I'm very proud of my work on American Idol as it gave me a wealth of experience that I might not have got elsehow.

If you're unfamiliar with the game (which as a European you would be as it was never released, and as someone who reads gaming blogs, you probably have negative interest in both the i.p. and the game genre), I shall quickly summarise:

As an American Idol contestant, you sing various songs in front of the show's famous judges, and at the end they provide relevant advice and criticism on your performance, reacting to song choice, outfit, performance, progress through the competition, etc. exactly as they would in real life.

I'm not going to claim it's revolutionary, but for a game geared towards the mainstream end of the market, it's a lot nicer to be giving players feedback in a natural way rather than simply flashing up a score. Of course the judges are an integral part of the American Idol experience for contestants and wannabe contestants, so they had to be in there, but it was really important for us to flesh them out and make then actually provide a constructive and/or entertaining part of the game.

The exact same process is essential to any game with context-sensitive in-game speech, but it's a step that's often missed and in-game speech suffers all the time from poor implementation (resulting in repetition, inappropriateness, or lack of interest).

The script had to allow for judges to disagree with one another, to have enjoyed parts of a song more than others and to seamlessly move between the facets of the judgement. The actual implementation behind the scenes from both a code and a design point of view was significant and not only that, the system relied on a huge number of lines, ultimately for recording with the real-life judges so they had to work from a technical perspective, but also be appropriate lines for people saying them.

Now if anyone ever says "You can't write to 'a voice'", I can point them at a game where I wrote for three very different (and well-known) voices, and the lines performed by those very people with a negligible number of lines that they thought weren't "them".

And more than anything it gives me the ability, through the avatar of Simon Cowell, to insult hapless players throughout North America on a semi-automated basis. If they go back to playing the game after voting for Kris instead of Megan and Simon Cowell describes them as "utterly useless", then my job will have been done.

You can’t go anywhere on the internet where they are talking about game stories without some enthusiastic comment poster presenting their incredible and unique vision of the future where games provide a truly interactive storytelling experience. “Not just branching plotlines”, they continue, “but genuine non-linear storytelling!” and the world is rocked to its very core!

But I would argue that there already exists a genre that presents exactly the kind of non-linear storytelling that their visionary eye can predict, and not only that, but that it has done so for a number of years, although it isn’t necessarily the first place you’d look – it’s not some experimental indie-darling, it’s not a text-based adventure from a veteran of the industry… it’s EA’s most successful franchise.

After several iterations, the commentary in FIFA 09 is amongst the best examples of a system that provides an impeccable voiceover to the whole gameplay experience. It is the perfect distillation of the ability for the game to generate, in real-time, an accurate vocal narrative on the events that are taking place within it.

I’m not talking about player-driven storytelling in a “let the player make their own story”, games-as-art, hippie bullshit way. I’m talking about the game accurately recognising the events of the game as they play out and responding accordingly. The first part (the recognising) is a highly technical challenge and requires significant interaction between code and design, the second (the responding) is where having a highly proficient games writer comes in.

Not only does the writer have to understand how and in what context every piece of speech is going to be used, they have to ensure that it flows when used in combination, that the speech is balanced such that more common elements have more opportunities for variation, and above that still have to continue to write appropriate, realistic, and interesting lines.

I would go as far to suggest that the design and writing of a FIFA script is much more ambitious in its scope and execution and more deserved of praise, than any of your Mass Effects, or Bioshocks, or any of the other games of last year that were lauded for their amazing storytelling direction.

It’s not perfect, and I’m sure today’s attempts will be just as laughable in ten years time as the first iteration of voice over commentary did ten years ago, but what’s important is that it is happening. The techniques used aren’t limited to sports games, and in-game speech systems that the majority of games employ work on the same principles, but are simply executed to a more limited degree.

There’s always going to be the need for storytellers for games that have distinct stories, but we already have the talent and the technology to create more compelling in-game speech for games where the story is the play. There are plenty of games that need storytellers, I would argue that there are many, many more that simply need writers.

Last night I headed down to fancy London for the second week of The Sitcom Trials, a sitcom development project aimed at finding the next great British Sitcom and showcasing scripts, actors, and directors to important industry figures.

Why it was particularly important to me, was that my sitcom, Boarders, was one of the entries last night, and it was the first opportunity I'd had to see it in the flesh. Luckily the director, Charles Armstrong, and the two main actors, Robin Sebastian and Lucy Sullivan, brought the script to life in ways that I hadn't imagined, and the resulting piece was a pleasure to watch. And it is as much a testament to the performances and the direction as it is to my incredible writing skills that Boarders was judged second on the night by the panel of experts (first was the excellent "Trainspotting" by Graeme Knowles). Second place is good enough though, as it means that it goes through to the next round in April, and that means, hopefully, even more of the important TV and Radio folk will get a chance to see it.

Sooner or later I'll start blogging about games stuff, then all of the Twitter followers who are there specifically to enjoy my vast gaming wisdom might feel like they're getting their money's worth. For now though I'll just bask in the glory of my limited success.