vg scoring Would GameDev.net be a good place to Showcase tunes from my potential OST in hopes of scoring for a game? what do y'all think?

[GSO]

so, I've released two albums of classical music so far this year and I want to break into (orchestral)Video Game scoring. Would GameDev.net be a good place to Showcase tunes from my potential OST in hopes of scoring for a game? what do y'all think?

[AngelCityOutlaw]

To be brutally honest

No. There are tons of people on indiegamer forums hopeful to score games. I only ever had one positive experience with such sites - it just happened that I lucked out, on GameDev.net I think, and the guy who hit me up was a former Ubisoft art director, i.e., a credible person, who was making his own game. That was like, five or six years ago now and while the game was good, it sold poorly. Anyone else, I've lost count of how many, I ever heard from was shady as fuck. People who've never made a game before promising "profit sharing" and wanting you to sign contracts that look like they were written by a fifth-grader. Really, these people are just looking to screw you since they have no idea what they're doing and because they don't deal with you face to face, they can slink back into the shadows at a moment's notice, leaving you with nothing.

If you want to do media composition for serious, you have to get out there and network. Find out what kind of trade shows, game dev networking meet ups, etc are going on in your area. This is where the people who mean business will be. You live in America, so that means things like PAX Prime, GDC and the many IGDA groups are far more feasible for you to travel to (I assume) than anyone else who doesn't live in the USA. Go to these things, but remember, it can and often does take years of building relationships. 

Also, try not to limit yourself to just games. A lot of people are just hell bent on video games for some reason. I mean, they offer a number of creative benefits for sure, but there are talented film-makers, animators etc. out there too.

Hope some of this helps!

[Neifion]

+1 to everything ACO said. I had pretty much the exact same experience with those types of forums. Your best bet is to network locally and/or try to get out to some events.

[GSO]

so basically since I live in rural Utah my best shot is to become a member of things like http://www.audiogang.org/ & Film Music Network plus keep an eye on things like Pax east right?

[Neifion]

I honestly wouldn't bother with G.A.N.G. or music submission sites like Film Music Network (especially ones like that, which make you pay a fee every time you submit for a job). Also, just because you live in rural Utah doesn't mean you should give up on looking up filmmakers/game developers in your state. Check out some of the university film and programming/game design deparments; many of the students in those programs need music for their projects. They may not pay well (or at all), but at least you've got something for your reel and if by some chance they do make it somewhere down the road, chances are they'll look up somebody they worked with rather than a Joe Schmoe on the internet. You can also look up game jams in your area or local film festivals. Hell, you've got the Sundance Film Festival in your very state!

[Meteo Xavier]

Constructive Devil's Advocacy:
(you knew I was going to do this)

Pretty much any and all advice on how to score more gigs and "make it" in music (or arts in general for that matter) is only going to be effective up to a point, and not a very high point. What ultimately decides if you land any kind of gig in music is being the right person at the right place at the right time for the right project. You have to hit all four checkpoints there. It's luck.

For that reason, any and all advice amounting to "No, people don't land jobs on Gamedev.net, it's all about who you know and networking." is both true and false to certain degrees. I've tried Gamedev.net and had no success I can think of on it, but I still check the forums occasionally anyway. Why? Because it's opportunity. Because in doing this for 12 years, I've found what I would consider success in the strangest of places - places outside all these industry leeches tell you to go and places they tell you to avoid. There aren't magic tricks to getting music success - if there was, we'd all be doing the exact same things and it would be self-defeating anyway because then all the employers would get overwhelmed and sick of looking for talent in an "industry" willing to cannibalize itself just to make $300-a-minute.

And you know what? All these composers and "industry" people all say and do and think the same stuff anyway and then they wonder why the "industry" they cling to is failing them. Honestly, you could make a dystopian sci-fi/1984 story out of the game audio racket - you just replace "state" or "empire" or "system" with "industry" and you're good to go.

The point I'm getting at is this - the whole mindset of focusing on getting work might be the problem of getting work itself. I'm in a lot of game audio groups and such, and all of them talk so much more about the "industry" of game audio then the art itself. It's all money, money, money, money and fame. Everyone's desperate to sound like Hans Zimmer and Nobuo Uematsu in the race to get those coveted big bucks and strut their shit around the interwebs, but if everyone sounds like everyone else, how do you stand out? If you're doing all the same shit all the forums tell you to do, then you're just waiting in line. Why should you avoid Gamedev? Because other people didn't find it useful? If it wasn't useful, there wouldn't be such a huge community there at all. Destroying possibilities in the desperate race for gigs is exactly the opposite of what you do to objectively improve your odds at landing gigs!

If luck is the real determinant for success, then how do you create more luck? Well, mathematically, that would mean you create more chances. How do you create more chances? You do more things. You do ALL of it. You do NONE of it. You post on Gamedev. Buy some fucking ad space on there even. You get chummy with other musicians and indie gamers. You apply to big companies. You apply to small companies. You apply locally and you apply globally, and then when you're done with all that, you get creative and think far outside the box of what you can do next. They're ALL opportunities and they're all chances. You only fail for sure if you don't do it. That is just straight up math.

So let's review:
1. Don't get narrowminded. Try all of it and more. Go ahead and try Gamedev. It won't kill you.
2. Focus more on your art than trying to get work and be famous. If what you have is incredibly good and you price it right, people will beat down the door to get it. This is a fact of business.
3. All advice for music success is only helpful to a point, including this very fucking post I'm typing. Success is skill plus luck. Nothing else can be counted on. Pioneer your career.

Finally, don't quit your day job. The irony of being an artist for a living is that the one thing that truly helps guarantee success for them is the one thing artists don't want to do - work a job. With steady income, you don't have to become dependent on the lottery tickets of music success. You can afford to take risks, be unique and have tools at your disposal to keep your product at envious quality.

Sounds like a lot of work? It sure does, but being successful always takes a lot of work one way or another.
 

 

[Neifion]

It's not about destroying possibilities. It's about putting more effort into the things that have a better likelihood to succeed.

Meteo's method: throw everything at everything and hope something sticks.

A better method: do your research and focus on the most effective avenues.

Of course you're free to post on Gamedev. AngelCityOutlaw and I were just trying to give some advice based on our own experiences. I'm assuming the OP already knew that "try everything" is an option, otherwise they wouldn't be asking for focused advice.

[Kat]

In addition to the above advice, I might suggest SoundBetter. You can sign up as a provider and take jobs, with a small commission taken from the profits. They mostly focus on vocalists and producers, but they do have an entire section dedicated to game music. Generally someone offers you a job(or you find a job listing and offer them), you make a proposal(including cost), they pay SoundBetter and the funds are released to you when the job is finished. It's no guarantee, but it might get you some jobs.  I see a lot of providers in the game music section charging $200+ per song(often much higher) and getting no reviews(which implies no jobs). Might have to low-ball on the prices a bit, but it couldn't hurt to sign up - One provider  I worked with said he used SoundBetter and a ton of similar sites simply for the leads - Got his name out in more places, and while he didn't get a ton of jobs from any one site he did get quite a few from all of them combined.

I wouldn't suggest indie game forums in most cases simply because, as AngelCityOutlaw said, most of em are going to be unknowns trying to make their first game and looking for people to do everything.

 

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I'm obviously no famous composer @Meteo Xavier, but I have had the opportunity to sit at the same table and eat greasy bar food with people who have impressive careers in the video game industry. They have all said exactly the same thing: "You've gotta network and get involved with the community" and attend meetings and places where enthusiasts and professionals alike come together. I've had a better success rate and just more fun this way than any online method. It's dishonest to suggest that repeated advice is simply due to a lack of originality or some sort of conspiracy. Rather, it means that this is the most effective method of getting into a job where you can't just put in your resume and wait 7 - 10 business days for them to get back to you.

Therefore, connections matter. It is unlikely that you will find good ones on indie dev forums.

 

[Nabeel Ansari]

http://media.wix.com/ugd/ebb935_109f128500324e33aac33f9a37fb6c9e.pdf

This is last year's GSC survey. Has aggregate information on all the happenings in game audio/music. Salaries and such. Look at page 13, it shows the distribution of what method people used to get their last gig. You'll see for freelancers, an overwhelming majority of gigs (around 70%) are acquired through:

1. Referrals ("I'm a big name composer but I can't do this gig because I am busy. You should contact this other composer, she's really good."

2. Past project ("You did great work with us on that game. We want to work with you again.")

3. Other (conferences, networking, game jams, etc.)

 

While job postings and recruitment are much much smaller by comparison.

 

That should be telling more than anything how important networking is. If you build relationships both with people you work for and with other fellow composers, you've got "referrals" and "past projects" lined up in the bag. If you go out and be a friendly person at conferences, you've got "other" in there as well. Don't be stupid enough to think that in order to succeed you're supposed to hawkishly step on other composers and refuse to make friends. You're ending your career by doing that.

 

Additionally, if you have a Facebook, join the Business Skills for Composers group. It has tons of people who've worked on hundreds of games and been doing this for decades who sit there and answer your questions. They will tell you more concrete advice and tell you stories, about how to actually build relationships and work on your people skills.