The idea

The indie scene is composed of many people at many levels of development. We have part-time devs, hobbyists, converted pros, and upstart streamers. The one thing that most of these groups have in common is the way they compose themselves in social media. The ‘fake-it-til-you-make-it’ mentality is so prevalent in indie that it’s impossible to take anyone at their credentials. A developer trying to squeeze a couple extra hours of dev-time after their day job and other commitments has to act like the CEO of an already successful indie studio to cultivate a brand they can sell. I wanted to create a place where none of that shit matters.

I want to hear from the guy that got big on Kickstarter and had to take a second mortgage four years into development because he only had enough runway for two. I want to hear from the single mother of four pounding out pixel art for pennies on the dollar to stay afloat. I want a place to share the genuine highs and lows of working in and around the indie game development scene, without all the polish we apply to our public personas. I want a place for real stories told by real people, warts and all.

Write for us

At the moment, the pay will be abysmal. Almost not worth your time. Probably not worth your time. I’m a regular working guy so I’m not made of the amount of money it would take to pay you what you’re worth (no one is, you invaluable treasure). That being said, I will never ask you or anyone to write for free. If I can’t afford to buy an article from you, I will not be offended if you sell it to someone that can. We all need to eat.

If that didn’t scare you off, you can write me @ burkeg@goldmail.etsu.edu.

A good submission is:

A little bit about yourself.
A couple samples of writing. (nothing fancy, just need to know you can write in a comprehensible manner)
1-3 pitches for articles with length estimations.

Don’t send any finished pieces for publication unless we’ve decided on terms. If I end up passing on it, that means you wrote for free, and I promised I wouldn’t make you do that.

If you carried on reading, but were on the fence about the abysmal pay, I’ll let you know how abysmal. L Ron Hubbard is famous for complaining about writing for a penny a word, the rate at which he wrote his early pulp-fiction. If you want to be wealthy, I’d advise you to start a space cult, because a penny a word is the rate I’m currently offering. That’s about 20 bucks for a 2,000 word article. If you spend two hours researching and two hours writing, you’re making 5 dollars an hour. That’s terrible, not worth considering. At my current budget, that would put me at being able to purchase five such articles a month. I could also potentially double that rate and halve the number of articles I can buy. Let me know your opinion on that subject when you send in your submission. I’d rather have good stuff than a lot of stuff.