Drew Castalia: Freelancer

Over two sessions the first year games group were presented a talk from the freelance scriptwriter, Drew Castalia. Considering, as artists, we will spend a lot of time after uni freelancing before we find ourselves settled in a job in a large game studio, I found Drew's talk to be one worth remembering.

Over the course of his visit to NUCA he talked about a variety of different experiences he had encountered as an independent contractor and presented his views on how each of them have developed his approach to his career.
The first experience he shared with us was his involvement in the The Young Sherlock Holmes Adventures comic book. Castalia wrote the original script for the comic book only to discover he was not credited for his work on the final book. The people who contracted reasoned that they had changed the script just enough for them to call it their own. Drew then reflected to us that he did not see the case worth following up because of how this might damage his reputation. He states that, if you, as a freelancer, have a history of taking the companies that hire you to court, you are less likely to get hired. He also made a point of showing us the contract which he was made to sign to be a part of the project. It is commonly known that when working for a studio or company, you will often have to surrender your right of ownership of the work over to the company or studio you are working for in order for them to use it. However, I believe you should also make sure that you are guaranteed a credit in the contract with only a few exceptions. This sort of situation is likely to happen to any contractor numerous times throughout there career, it is only when a contractor has become experienced and sought after enough that he or she can completely avoid such situations. 
The next experience Drew discussed was his application for a place writing for the very prestigious games studio, Bioware. Over the better part of a year he was asked to submit, resubmit and resubmit again, his script for an in-game mission as way of application, which he was eventually denied. One of the main lessons I took from this experience was that, even when rejected, you should continue to get your work out to as many authorities as possible, if not with hopes of actual acceptance, then with hopes of constructive feedback, which Drew received in abundance from Bioware. 
Drew has also attempted to Auteur his own games. He taught himself to program and spent a year on an RPG game in the UNITY game engine. His game was extremely text heavy and lacked aesthetic grace. After this he then decided to produce a game that put less emphasis on art and more emphasis on gameplay and story. Although the game, this time, came out OK he found that it just was not fun. He justified this by saying that he was, first and foremost, a writer and that trying to produce an entire game by himself was a mistake. He then went on to stress the importance of collaboration. I completely agree. According to Chris Crawford, author of The Art of Computer Game Design; although it is important to have a general knowledge of how a game is put together and what each person does in the production of a game, you should never stray from your specialisation unless you are capable of being a good programmer, designer and artist with any of the above skills suffering as a result of being a "Jack of All Trades". 

If found Drew's talk to be extremely helpful and shall make note of it as reference for when I, myself, am working freelance after university.