Three months ago I landed my first long-term contract in almost a decade. I’d spent ten years as a creative entrepreneur, writing novels, producing podcasts, and designing games – with a little contract work on the side. This latest gig wasn’t consultancy, but a year long contract to serve as a senior writer for an audio fiction app.
What senior writer meant evolved over the three months I’d been working there – pitched to me as essentially a show-runner role with supervisory duties over a team of junior writers. This gradually shifted as the company moved away from original content to focus more fully on localization of web fiction, largely from Asia. Our task became rewriting the material for an audio format and a western audience’s sensibilities.
I was fine with this. I’m not precious about creative work done for clients, and my primary goal was to spend my contracted year networking and making connections – by being responsible, reliable, and pleasant to work with. In that I largely succeeded – my coworkers liked me, and our team was given priority assignments.
Then one day I logged in to work to find that my credentials no longer functioned – I couldn’t get into slack or my work email – and a few hours later got the notice that I’d been laid off as part of pipeline refactoring. Not just me, either – I found out from a coworker that it’d been a broad stroke, with half the US team rendered redundant, our leads left scrambling as they hadn’t had any notice either.
My efforts with my coworkers paid off, however – several contacted me and continue to send me job leads as they come across them. Unfortunately this has all coincided with big layoffs at Bungee – the games industry is having its own layoff cascade – meaning that the labor markets for the jobs I’m most qualified for are glutted by people who suddenly find themselves having to find work as well.
So it goes.
What now?
I’ve got a three-pronged approach. The first, simply, is take advantage of the job leads sent my way. I’m looking for work as a game writer or narrative designer, but I’ll take anything related. Screenwriting, Consultancy. I’m not picky, I need an income. I’ve got a lot of experience. I’ve got a lot of competition.
Secondly, I’m going to be working on game writing and narrative design portfolio pieces. I have ideas for projects ranging from interactive fiction serials to platformers to action RPGs – though without an income my artistic options are limited. The textual interactive fiction is probably easiest to implement, though I can handle really basic pixel art myself. If you want to see what games I’ve made in the past, check out my itch.io page.
Third: Hobbies. I’ve got three-thousand subscribers on the YouTube channel where I post narrative analysis videos of old games – thanks largely due to a surprisingly robust internet community of Ultima fans. I cover some video game history topics as well… come check it out if that’s something you’re interested in.
Hopefully, ideally, I’ll find something soon. But if I don’t, I’ll have plenty to occupy myself. Maybe I should get the ol’ mailing list moving again…