Larian Studios Forums General Chat What takes to become a writer for the major rpg (or other story-driven games)?

I spent almost 20 years writing stories for games, released a small-scale rpg that were quite successfull considering zero budget and promoution (for anyone interested - https://store.steampowered.com/app/526430/Project_Fire), as well as few smaller games, and joined dozens of indie projects, none of which was developed past the very early stages, teams always felt apart by members disappearing without letting others know.

Still, i have pretty vague ideas about joining the larger teams.

My skills have various downsides due to my mental disorder, like being able to work only on specific genres, or not being able to learn tech skills. Yet i compensate for that with excellect story quality. I do that because i spend a lot of time to work on my stories and think trough most of the details - a priviledge that most writers don't have, since they are hired to work under strict deadlines and have to write story from scratch within that limit. I was spending years, and in some cases even over a decade to perfect my stories, and make them a lot better in quality and depth than average ones you can find on the gaming market.

Yet, there seems to be impossible to demonstrate the stories to the potential employers, because there seems to be no way to contact them privatly. And if you do it publicly (like, write on studio emails, etc) you getting no answer. And without being able to show what you worked on - you have no way to interests people in your stories.

Also, you can't find such positions being open at any job market or studio's website. I monitor them for as long as i started doing gamedev, and there is always positions for various professions - but not for the writers.

Even if you seek lesser jobs, like, maybe, writing side quests or specific characters, companions (not sure if such jobs exist, since main writer can easily handle everything, but maybe if they rush the development he might not have time for that?), there seems to be no such thing. It's weird that some games require a lot of writing, but there seems to be no need for someone who can do quality writing (and i don't mean just writing a good text - most writers can do that, but not many can craft endaging stories and interesting characters).

And i wonder, what's the catch, what was i doing wrong? All my life all i did is tried to make better stories for games but seems like there is no need for that.

Also, i wonder, if i will offer enough money to the studio leaders, will it be enough do draw their attention and make them read my pitch? Since i am not interested in anything but writing, and living in my country becomes impossible for disabled people anyway (even disregarding the war), it might be possible to just sell all i own and use that money to pay for the studio leaders to review my works. But, even if this possible, how do i make them such offer?

I have no idea what the career path for a video game writer is (though there does seem to be info on the internet, eg at https://www.gameindustrycareerguide.com/what-does-a-video-game-writer-do/).

But I seriously hope you are not actually considering paying people to look at your work. I would say that anyone who would agree to review writing on that basis is likely to be crooked and should be avoided like the plague.

All the best for your future.

When option A does not work after too many attempts, you have to try option B.

I also considered different approaches, like moving to the country where office is, going to the offine, taking hostage by using a toy gun and demanding a 20 minutes of attention to present my work. But since i know that others usually react to things differently, as always i went on forums and asked, and turns out that for some reason people would not hire someone who did this, even if gun were a toy and no harm were ever possible.

So if i 1) Don't have nessesary connections for someone to ask for me 2) Don't have communication skills to convince people to look at my works 3) Can't use pseudo-violence to achieve this goal - paying money is the only other option i could think of. If someone will have better ideas, i would be glad to listen.

Hey gang,

I"m new here, and just wanted to chime in... because as a semi successful creative as well, I've also wondered this... seems to be pretty straight forward for the more technical jobs in these companies, but when it comes to the writing/creative time(?), etc... it seems to be a bit more intimidating... that said, this is great advice from Mod, OP... please don't pay people to evaluate you... Nothing in entertainment is ever achieved this way... it's like the classic trope of the charlatan talent agency who makes you pay them to get you discovered. You already are putting out tangible proof of your assets, trust your instincts friend.

PS... if anyone else has any insight into this though, I'm super curious like OP too...