If you haven’t read last week’s article ‘The Gamers’ Guide to Writing for Games — Part One’ yet, I suggest you take a peek at it before reading further here. That’s partly because you’ll find that information relevant when reading ahead, but mostly because I get paid more if you do. Why the honesty? Because self-promoting (as nasty as it sounds) is one of the best ways to achieve success in this here writing business, and that’s mainly what I’ll be talking about today. Getting started. Getting better. And getting known.

Getting started, getting better, getting known; and get hired

Getting hired in the writing industry (and doubly so when writing for games) is a long, tedious and often painful process — and unfortunately, there

hen we’re young and invincible, we believe we can become anything. From Astronauts to Aeronautical Engineers, Paramedics to Porn Stars, nothing is a stretch; nothing seems too far out of our reach. When I was young, I wanted to be a writer. More than that, I wanted to write about video games. It seemed like the logical choice really, I spent my childhood playing them; studying them, reading about them, cherishing them and criticising them — why not do it for a living?

But it was just a dream. Just one of those goals you set, but always know you’ll never really achieve. I wasn’t going to get paid to write about games any sooner than I was going to make my living designing aeroplanes or exploring the bitter reaches of space.

At least, that’s what everyone kept

It’s no great secret really, that despite its many shortcomings the MMO business is doing quite well. As far as making a few bucks go they really hit the sweet spot with this one; design a game that never ends, and charge people by the month to play it. It’s ingenious.

The problem though (that is, with ingenious ideas) is that everybody wants a piece of the action. Design a game that makes millions, and millions will begin re-designing your game. Of course, those millions are more often than not Korean, and as Koreans are about as good at emulating the success of World of Warcraft as a sock is a condom, things tend to turn south fairly quickly.

Skip ahead a few years and you’ve got an industry made up almost entirely of these ‘WoW clones’, and e

The Darkfall Chronicles

A lesson in manners, rudeness, and the improper way of things

1:30 AM…1:31 AM…1:32 AM… 1:33 AM…

Hitting the F5 key on my Zboard for what I can only imagine to be the seven thousand, four hundred and sixty ninth time; I let forth a sigh of raw depression as the page begins to load once more, revealing yet again the same lifeless pane as it had every other time I had done so these past eighteen hours.

1:37 AM… 1:38 AM… 1:39 AM … 1:40 AM…

In an attempt to escape the monotony I entered once more into the forums, an infinite abyss of human deprivation and indecency; a place where deformed versions of the English language ran rampant amongst a race of creatures that were oblivious to their very existence. Wading through the unforgiving trenches in the search of information, I quickly came to my senses, and escaped back to the entrance. I hit the F5 key again.

1:48 AM… 1:49 AM… 1:50AM… 1:51 AM…

Thinking back to a message I read a day earlier—containing the second last piece to my unfinished puzzle—I decided to read it once more in the