{"id":1841,"date":"2023-09-07T16:35:47","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T16:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/?p=1841"},"modified":"2023-09-10T12:47:13","modified_gmt":"2023-09-10T12:47:13","slug":"freelancing_traps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/07\/freelancing_traps\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Dev Freelancing Traps"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"1841\" class=\"elementor elementor-1841\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-2ef904b5 elementor-section-full_width elementor-section-content-space-around elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"2ef904b5\" data-element_type=\"section\" data-settings=\"{&quot;background_background&quot;:&quot;classic&quot;}\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-no\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-73355cc9\" data-id=\"73355cc9\" data-element_type=\"column\" data-settings=\"{&quot;background_background&quot;:&quot;classic&quot;}\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-background-overlay\"><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-7c0acd8f elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"7c0acd8f\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.15.0 - 20-08-2023 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#69727d;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#69727d;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p><!-- wp:paragraph {\"textColor\":\"ast-global-color-5\"} --><\/p>\n<p>Like myself, a lot of indie developers venture into freelancing to support themselves between projects or to finance their current game. <span style=\"font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; color: var( --e-global-color-astglobalcolor2 ); font-family: var( --e-global-typography-text-font-family ), Sans-serif;\">It can be a learning experience to get into a lot of different projects in a short period of time but, the truth is, you can never be 100% sure what type of people you&#8217;ll be working with. You&#8217;ll meet great people for sure, but, sometimes also not so great. Are they scammers just trying to get your work for free? Do they even understand the process of making a game? The prospect of losing days, weeks or months working on stuff that falls through is a very real one. Even wasting time writing a proposal that goes nowhere can be demotivating when you could be working on something else (your own projects for example!).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Any freelancer needs to be able to sift through the plethora of jobs proposals out there. Below I&#8217;m sharing a list of 12 red flags to watch for. The more of these you see into the job proposal\/contractor, the larger the sign you should stay away from them. You&#8217;ll still miss a few here or there, but this gives you a baseline of bad contractor characteristics.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><b>1)\u00a0<\/b><strong><em>They (the contractor) are bad at communicating.<\/em><\/strong> Often very, very informal or very poor English (or whatever language). Surely the environment for game developing (specially in the smaller spaces) can be informal but anyone that is serious about hiring someone should be able to have ability to communicate in a professional way.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><b>2)<\/b>\u00a0<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\"><em>They have a hard time showing anything regarding their project. <\/em><\/span>This often happens when they don&#8217;t know how to structure the ideas they are having. Sometimes this can also happen when they have the &#8220;million dollar idea&#8221; and therefore can&#8217;t have anyone &#8220;stealing&#8221; their stuff. It is fine to sign an NDA, but you&#8217;ll need a minimum of information to even give out a quote on any project or even to see if you are interested\/able to work on it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>3) They have wild expectations of time for projects or how far a team can be stretched. <\/b>This often happens when it is the contractor&#8217;s first project and they are not fully aware of the workflow that goes into making a game. They expect short deadlines and, of course, accompanying that, very low value for your work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>4) They don\u2019t like to talk about payment or the payment form is very convoluted. <\/b>Do you really want to get paid in Robux, Amazon Gift Cards or some crypto currency you&#8217;ve never heard of?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>5) They are complete strangers that want you to work for free or are expecting funds to come from something that they<br \/>know 1000% will come through later ( it won\u2019t). <\/b>So many people want someone else to execute their ideas for a promise of later payment. They have very little explanation of what they bring to the table or structure to their plans. Because you don&#8217;t know the person, you don&#8217;t even know if they are the type of people that will be committed enough to pull through and you might be left hanging with half a game after putting in a lot of work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Another common trap is the expectation of funds from various sources. Work now, we&#8217;ll pay you (an unspecified amount) later. There is no way anyone can 100% guarantee funding, regardless of where they are considering drawing it from.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; color: var( --e-global-color-astglobalcolor2 ); font-family: var( --e-global-typography-text-font-family ), Sans-serif;\">Do you want to volunteer for a project you really care for? That is great! But from the start have the mindset that most of these projects will never see the light of day or make profit to share.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>6) They have hard time explaining what they want or the project has no focus. <\/b>The less clear plans the contractor has, the more chance they might be figuring out latter that the project is not what they where expecting and therefore, just dropping it entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>7) They are rude or belittle you. <\/b>No excuse for that! If they are rude at the start, what are the chances they&#8217;ll be better after they are paying you? Very small.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Please consider that sometimes different cultures communicate differently, and somethings might not be necessarily perceived as unpolite. This one is hard to figure out, so let some leeway if there is a language\/cultural distance between you two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>8) It is too good to be true (make of that what you will).<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>9) They have NFT or Crypto in their profiles. <\/b>Sorry for generalizing but it is often the case that these projects feel very shady.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>10) They have absolutely no internet presence. <\/b>This is not necessarily bad, but the more points of reference you have for a potential contractor the better, specially if they are trying to make something big.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>11) They want to make an MMO and it is their first game. <\/b>Again, sorry for generalizing, but the scope for these types of games often escape the grasp of people. Sure, they are great, but they are often a massive undertaking that shouldn&#8217;t be taken lightly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>12) They want to make a game because a super popular game was released in the same genre in the last weeks. (they<br \/>played that and are super excited about it but didn\u2019t really thought it through).<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Again, you can find great people that fall into one or two of these characteristics, but the more of these you see, the more you should be aware that it might not be a good fit for your time. Stay safe!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:paragraph --><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any freelancer needs to be able to sift through the plethora of jobs proposals out there. Check out this list of red flags to watch for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"elementor_theme","format":"gallery","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/bear-trap-413397_1280-e1694178161151.jpg",640,426,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/bear-trap-413397_1280-e1694178161151.jpg",640,426,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/bear-trap-413397_1280-e1694178161151.jpg",640,426,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/bear-trap-413397_1280-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/bear-trap-413397_1280-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"large":["https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/bear-trap-413397_1280-1024x682.jpg",1024,682,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/bear-trap-413397_1280-e1694178161151.jpg",640,426,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/bear-trap-413397_1280-e1694178161151.jpg",640,426,false]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"sharprocksgames","author_link":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/author\/sharprocksgames\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/category\/blog\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Blog<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"Any freelancer needs to be able to sift through the plethora of jobs proposals out there. Check out this list of red flags to watch for.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1841"}],"version-history":[{"count":36,"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2156,"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1841\/revisions\/2156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharprocksgames.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}