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What's a good forum for a composer to look for work at?


MikeViper
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Hi, I'm MikeViper and I'm a free composer, who's looking for work. However, I've heard from many that this site isn't the best place to look for work. Now, some people have recommended gamedev to me, but other than that, are there any other sites you guys can recommend me?

Kongregate is a big flash game web site, and I'm sure you can hunt down developers of games if you go there. That's a great place to get your music into a game.

Yes, I know I said hunting down, but really, looking for work isn't easy. You need to do all of your research and contact everyone every way you can. Act like a journalist who doesn't know his place and keep being persistent to find more people (but don't sound desperate). There aren't really any shortcuts to this sort of thing (you can't just post one ad on a forum and expect game devs to contact you).

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Also, as I told some other people here on the forums today..."hunting down" people usually never works. At least, for me it didn't. Your story may be different.

This year, I got to write music for 5 different games. 2 of which died during development, 3 of which come out next year. All of those projects found me, not the other way around. Usually asking around gets you nowhere because most of the time, game developers big and small know what they want and are well aware of composers they would like to score their game. In most cases, they already have musicians.

I mean think of it this way, you can sit and sift through the hundreds of emails from people wanting to write music for you. Or, when you start up the company and/or project, you can fire up the internet yourself and pull up the portfolios of countless composers professional and independent. All of various styles.

I almost never see anyone advertising for composers because they usually already have them. Musicians though, they advertise their services everywhere.

Again, just my own experience with it. It might not be true for even the majority of people.

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Do video game composers have agents? I'm sure the most popular ones do, but in general it's more of a job like any other.

I don't really recommend agents in any field personally unless you're doing much higher grade work. Agents are as difficult a channel as publishers, labels, etc. and they don't really do much for you at the end of the day IIRC. I have no experience with agents, but I've researched it and heard some horror stories.

A gamedev model to start out with would be much better.

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Do video game composers have agents? I'm sure the most popular ones do, but in general it's more of a job like any other.

I don't really recommend agents in any field personally unless you're doing much higher grade work. Agents are as difficult a channel as publishers, labels, etc. and they don't really do much for you at the end of the day IIRC. I have no experience with agents, but I've researched it and heard some horror stories.

A gamedev model to start out with would be much better.

An agent set up Zircon with Soul Calibur V. :nicework:

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Generally, agents won't want to have anything to do with you unless you're already bringing them work.

Unless you're bringing something unique to the table, they're not going to find you work, you have to do that on your own.

It's not as if there's some great surplus of work available and you just need a match-maker to connect you to the right job. You have to be great. You have to be great just to talk to the people who might contract you. You have to be great just to sit at the table and ante up--a game of poker is the perfect analogy.

Think of an agent like a wildcard, they'll give you the edge, but always at a cost (they give the same edge to anyone else who has them), and they're not going to show up in your hand unless you're playing with a full deck.

Everything else is luck and business cunning--that's how you win and get the good gigs.

But just to sit down at the table, you have to be really fucking good. Otherwise, you better sit on the sidelines, watch, and work on your game.

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What Dan said plus the fact that very few of us are Zircon.

What Dan said and what Meteo said about not being Zircon.

Though if he does get bored of being Zircon, I would be willing to switch places. Ever since I saw "change up", I've wanted to try pissing in a magical fountain at the same time as someone else to see if it really works.

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