Every now and again I’ll come across a question that I can really relate to in some way that I feel like I can impart some insight to, so I’ve decided to keep a record of them here.
Obviously these are just snippets of my own personal experience and not a guarantee of anything. I only hope that it will give you a better insight into the industry as a whole and better equip you to make your own decisions.
“How do I contact Game Devs to ask if they need a Composer?”
I actually wanted to expand on this since you can do the usual random cold emails/messages to a developer’s company email, Twitter, LinkedIn, Steam or itch.io profile etc., and sure the worse that could happen is that 1) you’ll never get a reply, or 2) they’ll say no. What’s there to lose?
I really want to advise caution with this approach. As at the moment of writing, there is a huge over supply of composers and not enough demand in the industry so the possibility of your message actually being looked at is very slim.
When I was being a game developer myself, dealing with the game, the creative aspects, managing people, marketing, I still had my fair share of messages of other composers messaging me asking if I, a composer/developer needed a composer. I wasn’t impressed. Not because of the varying quality of work but because it was super obvious that these messages were copied and pasted. Please at least do some research. When I was an indie developer working on a horror game and got cold emails from everything else other than what I was looking for. I wasn’t even looking for any other audio people, so to get several messages from random people added to my plate of Things To Deal And Make Decision With™ in a mostly frustrating way.
Approaching Indie Devs are are definitely easier than approaching the right person in a AAA Dev Studio in this day and age, but you still need to do your research. Does the game work in your style? Do they have a good studio culture? Company benefits? Location? The best way to connect with Game Devs are through Industry Events and Game Jams. I’ve written more about them in my other article here.
Hope this makes sense, and good luck!