Since we launched our Kickstarter campaign we noticed that every day we'd receive an email from a music composer asking for the opportunity to make the music for Nubarron. This is a small rant about this topic.
Hi there! This is Francisco from Nastycloud, a game development studio from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Since we started getting visible because of our in-development game Nubarron in June, I noticed a peculiar phenomenon: Every day we'd receive an email from a music composer asking for the opportunity to make the music for Nubarron.
I know we're not alone, a couple of days ago our friend Agustin Cordes from Senscape twitted:
After our Kickstarter campaign launched, we started being contacted by 2-10 composers a day, twice as much as the contact we get from our backers.
Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against people trying to land a job, but I feel this is not the right way. Why? Because most of us want to know the people we work with.
Besides, we're all starving. Indie teams are starving. Sincerely we don’t have the money to pay for a full-time composer/sound designer. We’re struggling to get our game noticed and supported. We went to Kickstarter because we needed the funds to finish our game.
If the case is that we need a composer for our game, we’d probably get in touch with other fellow game developers to ask for recommendations..
So, here are a few suggestions for all of you musicians trying to land a job on the indie scene:
Avoid mass mailing: It’s cold and we don’t like it. Try to get in touch with developers, get to know them.
Get out of the building: Meet local developers, join local game development groups, there is one on every town or so.
Get out of the building II: Go to conferences but not to offer your services, to meet people. The bigger the network the easier to get a recommendation..
Get out of the building III: Attend to game jams. We met Rodrigo, our composer, on a game jam and blew our heads off. This is one of the most effective ways, but be smart and join a team where professional people is working.
Be unique: there are thousands of folks doing the same thing as you, you gotta get noticed somehow. Mass mailing is what everybody’s doing.
Get known: Start posting on reddit's Soundtrack Sunday, show your stuff and comment on other's, use twitter and facebook to be part of the community, provide feedback and value to the rest of the world, and that will come back for sure.
Befriend existing game musicians: ask them for feedback on your stuff and help.
Get serious about the craft: making music for games is different than making music in a band, TV or publicity. You need to know stuff like making a perfect look (believe me, almost all “game musicians” have problems with loops, careful with delays and reverbs), better if you know tools like FMOD, plus if you know psychology of music, and stuff like that.
Make a game: Find a developer, an artists and create a game, if you're smart enough to get it noticed and have people talking about its music, you'll certainly gain good visibility.
Well... that's it for now.. I'd love to hear some feedback about this from other developers and also musicians that are currently working on games.
Hope this is useful! See you on Reddit next Sunday.
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