WHAT IS VOLUNTEERING IN THIS INDUSTRY?
Volunteering can be a dicey thing, especially when you’re doing work you’d traditionally be paid for. The unfortunate news is while you always deserve to be paid for your work, volunteering free services may be a fantastic way to initially break into the sector of games you want to be in and stand out from a crowd.
Especially with development, there are many different spaces for volunteering your time; most notably, individuals will look for programmers, writers, or sound producers/composers to collaborate with them. Again most notably these positions are based on revenue-share models, promising a cut of the money earned at the end of the day.
I did volunteer work in games as a concept and illustrator artist for several games following 5 or so game jam events. My work allowed me to constantly pump out illustrations I was proud to advertise, and also add my name to a shipped title (which many junior role individuals do not have).
WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR
Volunteering can also be a way to exploit labour, especially out of entry level positions and for the idea of “exposure” – a dreaded word many of us have heard before. Generally, my experience-based advice is this:
- DO NOT prioritize volunteer work over paid gigs. Your time is money, and that should reflect what you are doing.
- DO NOT ALLOW FULL-TIME WORK EXPECTATIONS. You are a volunteer and should be treated as such; a 40 hour work week is not a justifiable workload for someone doing pro-bono work.
- ALWAYS ASK to see a GDD or current model. Many “Idea Men” are seen consistently on websites like INAT and Discord. We’ll talk about this more below.
- ALWAYS ASK for a revenue breakdown and NEVER EXPECT to make money from a revshare project. Revshare products very rarely make up the cost of time of creation, and when they do (and are properly divided) you’re often looking at dollars, at most.
- DO ASK the calendar plan. If you are not the project lead, seeing a time-based breakdown of a project ensures that everyone is working on task and has clear goals.
“IDEA MEN” AND VALUING YOUR WORK
“Idea Men” are in the hundreds and populate many volunteer servers. They have great ideas, but otherwise contribute no technical skills to a project and source that from others. The problem is, everyone has great ideas. It’s properly creating them and formatting them that is what stops everyone from making their own video game.
When you’re doing volunteer work and viewing websites, be wary of “largescale ideas”. Most typically, this is beginner studios or solo devs claiming to want to make “an MMO” (of any kind – these are notoriously hard and insanely expensive) or largescale projects with a tiny team.
GOOD SOURCES FOR VOLUNTEER WORK
Websites like LinkedIn, Reddit’s INAT, and Discord servers with reputable sources are all good places to find volunteer work. Look for a studio and use the advice above to ensure that you are getting valued for your time, and remember that you are able to back out of a project if you need to.
GAME JAMS
Game jams can be a great way to dip your toes into studios. Small projects with a time limit allows you to find a team and understand workload breakdowns, while also having something to show. Before joining any studio, I did around 6 game jams (primarily as an artist and occasionally writer). itch.io has a great page for finding them!
SO IS VOLUNTEERING THE WAY TO GO?
At the end of the day, you should be valuing your art and also recognizing that volunteer projects demand a lot of time that you need to be willing to contribute as part of a team. Volunteer work can look fantastic on a resume when done right, so best of luck!
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