Have Laptop, Will Telecommute: Working Globally in Games

[Music] first I'll go ahead and introduce myself uh my name is Alexandra M Lucas um I'm a game writer and narrative designer I spent the last two years writing for Microsoft's Cortana team and I'm currently narrative lead on a project I can't talk about uh but I've worked on a variety of game types from RTS mobile games to interactive novels to educational MMO RPGs um delivered presentations and published on romance and sexuality in games um mental health in games and gender identity and pop culture um and I've telec commuted with clients across the country across the US where I'm based um as well as Eastern Europe um so I'll go ahead and pass it on to my other panelists here hi hi everyone my name is Michelle kluf I am also a writer and narrative designer I am also the token non-american of the panel I'm actually based in Vancouver uh British Columbia um and as a result uh I have basically had nothing but uh

International clients uh all of my American clients have been International uh and I've also worked with clients in uh the Ukraine Hungary um uh China and so on um I've worked in uh visual novel games in uh third uh third person shooters uh Match 3 mobile games uh and on you know in my spare time I also uh chair the igda romance and sexuality special interest group group great hi everybody my name is Heidi Mcdonald I'm a little bit under the weather I apologize for that um I've been in the games industry for about eight years um doing writing and game design and creative Direction and all kinds of stuff like that um lately I have gone independent and I am currently working on a contract for disruptor Beam on an unannounced mobile title that's very exciting so

yeah I've been working remotely about three and a half years so it's fun hi my name is Patrick Cory um I'm a yet another writer narrative designer um the I've been working in the industry for about 5 years and freelancing for about four of those years um my last big contract was a twoyear two and a half year long stint at a a studio in Melbourne um where I spent half the time actually in country in the studio um and the rest of it I spent as a a remote um designer working for them on a title that is yet unannounced uh before that I worked with a studio in Switzerland bleen fluge Studios on two games uh Cloud Chasers which was an award-winning mobile game um and then the followup to that was a SQL airheart uh which just recently hit switch and has done very well there so I'm very proud of that um and then before that I worked in a variety of genre uh augmented reality um alternate reality games um internet video stuff like that uh so I kind of

I've done a bunch of things right hi everybody I am Toya Christen Finley I am a writer and editor in general so I work in different media and in games I am a game designer a narrative designer and an editor um and I have been telecommuting my entire adult life just about uh so I'm very familiar with it I think I have been in the room with the team that I have worked with all of three days for the almost 20 years that I have been telecommuting um I am on the Executive Board of the igda game writing Sig I have also done a couple of books I co-authored the game narrative toolbox that was with three other authors it was done virtually um I am also the editor and contributor to uh narrative tactics to Mo for mobile and social games pocket sized storytelling and I have had clients in Chile uh Portugal Singapore Australia China as well as the United

States yeah okay great so welcome to our panelist thanks for being here today we're going to go ahead and dive in uh our first question is is telecommuting actually doable so what would you say to a telecommuting skeptic I'd say that on days when you really don't feel well and don't have a very good voice that's the perfect time to have a telecommunity job and you also have the benefit of not needing to wear pants and I mean I am wearing pants you can't see I am wearing them I wore them for you I have a running gag where I have a line item on my invoices an a add-on for pants wearing there you go yeah they want to pay me more I'll wear pants at the office you would have casual Fridays but you can have no pants Fridays so there's that all right Michelle you something um another thing that's actually really nice about uh telecommuting is uh if you are are in

the phase of your career where you may have a day job that has absolutely nothing to do with video gaming uh in which case you you know you have to go out to you know your local office or your local job and then you get to come home you know throw off all your clothes pants optional and uh sit down at your computer and uh do some work there or you know curl up in bed and do you know stuff on your laptop so um it is actually a it's it's eminently doable if you are and and indeed might even be the best way to do it if you're still you know kind of doing work part-time uh on top of a non-industry uh uh day job or indeed an industry day job so I was apparently doing telecommuting before it was a thing so I would say hell yes um this is actually my 11th GDC in a row and I thank you so my first GDC I knew nothing about game development you know I had been publishing as a fiction writer and I just wanted to find out you

know can I do this in games as well and the thing I was being told because I'm from Nashville Tennessee which is a amazing gamehub no it is not oh you're from Nashville too awesome there's hardly any game development whatsoever in Nashville and I said hey I would really like to get into games writing in 11 years ago people were telling me you have to move and I was thinking why I have a laptop I'm able to send emails and send documents but there was a lot of skepticism right but there weren't all of these platforms back then like jira and freed camp and Trello and so now it's a lot easier you have a lot more virtual studios as well because renting an office space is very expensive and so devs are finding out hey we can make this work um we can have people located

all across the world and the other thing is sometimes the right person is on the other side of the world than you are and they're the right person for the job and you can't bring them to you um and so Skeptics need to understand that this is a greater opportunity for people who are marginalized as well and can't just take up and move to a hub it's expensive yeah I kind of want to Echo that what you're talking about in terms of the resources and the tool sets that are available now it seems like now as opposed to um he told me to angle it this way so I'm going to try to do it this way uh as opposed to um you know even five seven years ago is the best time for telecommuting uh it's one of that we have the the broadest range of tool sets in terms of communication in terms of content delivery um in terms of um of co-working and any sort of like documentation or things like that um the the the tools and the resources for those sorts of things have exploded in the past few years um so much so that you know I worked on a studio that was

it was like in constantly on the hunt for the best one and we were changing it was in great environment but it we were changing um tool sets for communication for like just team chat over and over again three times just to find one just for us um so yeah the the the answer would be yes absolutely but uh and we'll talk about it later there are challenges that rise up uh because of that that you have to be aware of and it depends on the discipline like writing has a long history before computer years of remote working um so there's a little more infrastructure there um departments like art or programming have a little more nuance and some challenges that um you need to be aware of when you start going into that field I just wanted to um to jump off something that to has said about um telecommuting being really good for marginalized people um I have a really goofy life um I spend half of my time in Pittsburgh I spend half of my time in ring North Carolina I have a

special needs child and I have rheumatoid arthritis and all of those things put together would make it really really hard for me to actually go and attend a job every day but I mean I have been able to turn out award-winning work despite that because of the fact that I've had the the flexibility to to work remotely and I don't think it's as much convincing people that working remotely is great I think it's a matter of convincing company that it's really to your interest to allow this as a choice for people who need it working remotely is not for everybody but it is something that I think would would make things better and help help bring in a more diverse group of developers across the board if companies you know gave that choice more readily to people who would like it um yeah I was just going to jump in real quickly and we move on to our next question um my husband and I recently

moved to a small town just outside Seattle after being based in Seattle a long time and it is half the cost of Seattle um and part of how we were able to do that is we simply asked our employers if telecommuting was possible and they said yes and it was just something we hadn't considered um or we'd felt they'd really be closed off to and part of it is finding sort of a telecommuting setup that works for you and the client so I know folks who works at Studios where it's two days a week that are telecommuting so everyone knows that and um you know makes their schedules accordingly so it is about working with the client working with the studio to find something that works for everyone um yeah so great we'll go ahead and move on to our next question uh which is how do you find uh International slf freelance clients so a couple of ways um get getting to know people in my own network

uh whether that is face Toof face at you know GDC or Pax or ecgc and of course not everybody can get to conferences uh so like in Facebook groups um we have uh a game writing group um on Twitter and so people have gotten to know me and when they meet someone who needs a game writer or a narrative designer or even an editor they'll give that person my contact information um I get surprisingly wonderful random emails sometimes or I will get uh someone contacting me through my website who was referred to me by someone else so that's really important and then of course there's the direct uh you know I I see a posting or something like that um and I will respond to it uh and I find nowadays like in the last couple of years and I it blows my mind and I guess it shouldn't but I'm thinking back to

the days of when this didn't happen at all there are Twitter postings for jobs you know and and now we're seeing more and more remote work fine or you know freelance Contracting remotely fine um so find those Twitter feeds where people are likely to post jobs um find groups online over social media or even discussion forums like um you know Unity forums or um Indie forums where people are posting gigs and if they're if they're like Unity or smaller Indies they're probably going to be working remotely with people anyway because like I said it's too hard to maintain a physical space it's very expensive yeah uh hasht uh game jobs I think is the one of the big ones for Twitter where you see a lot of postings there um but um yeah I've noticed that a lot of people when they're looking for work um despite the fact they want to work remotely they'll still only focus on when they're

looking they're doing the job searches or looking at Studios they'll focus on ones that are regionally nearby or they sort of get locked into a tunnel vision of um places they want to live or something like that instead of just doing a broad-based search for every Studio or um cold calling smaller Studios to see what they need um so make sure you are when you're looking for job postings it's okay to Ping them and ask hey can this be a remote or hey is this you know hit them up on Twitter hit their their official Twitter account or something like that hey can this be a remote you know I have my qualifications but you know I really like you know the hot dog place down the street so I don't really want to move or something like that um that uh but also um you mentioned coming to GDC my first International um freelancing work I ever received was by going to the Swiss games booth in D in uh GDC uh in 2014 and meeting the designer at bleen flug and we just hit it off and and then he mentioned that we he needed a game

writer and that's how we developed our relationship so walking around and actually introducing yourself and not being so upfront to say you know hey can I work for you or anything like that but just getting to know what their needs are getting to know how you can help them out getting to know what they're working on not necessarily the thing that they're pitching at the moment but in the future um and letting them know that you're available is um an excellent way to start building up that n network building out your reputation um and getting your name in front of people's faces let me jump in really quickly about something you said um a lot of times people don't know that they need you uh you'll hear about a project that they're working on and they don't have that position filled um and so when you're talking to someone whether it's face to face or over email or however um look very carefully and listen very carefully to the holes that need to be filled and then explain how you can fill that hole I would say take LinkedIn very seriously I know a lot of people just kind of have like a half-ass profile or

whatever but um I noticed that once I started actively updating my LinkedIn and treating it like a really serious place for people to find me people started finding me um I had three different companies from other countries outside the United States all contact me based on LinkedIn so I think that that's one of the one of the places that people are going to f to find Developers yeah I was when I was given that advice about LinkedIn I was very surprised because it's not really a site that a lot of people think about maintaining or going to every day or I me there there are certain benefits to it but it's certainly not on the daily hit of you know Twitter or Facebook or whatever but it is the place to get your name in front of people who are hiring um make sure it's you know actively maintain it um yeah um I'll also second the uh importance of LinkedIn although I'll be um sort of the the odd one out and say

that I don't keep mine as updated as I should and yet I've got tons of work through Linkedin even when it's not that updated so um so uh but definitely like create at the very least a strong base profile that even if you're not updating it all the time that like someone can go to you and immediately see what your strengths are what your skills are and uh what they're looking for and chances are you will get some messages um the other thing is um uh make sure to have a website you know with your with some strong portfolio pieces and an easy way to get in touch with you because that's the other way that I've gotten uh most of my contracts is that you know I've just been going about my daily life and the next thing I know Bing hey you know I'm looking for a narrative designer and your names come up in Google so um you know could we talk more about uh our project and um so there is there is something to be said for like absolutely pursue the active um ways of like networking and you know getting on social media and and talking to people but don't neglect like the sort of more I don't want to

say passive but like the sort of more permanent um things that you have running in the background as well because you know they they you know they can and will get you work um not necessarily consistently but um it's it's way better to have them than to not have them um and the other thing I would say is uh sort of on the on the case of networking um don't be afraid to like in fact actively network with people that are not necessarily going to get you a job you know because uh you might think well I don't need to hang out with the writers the writers you know or or the programmers or the artists they they're my they're my competition no they're your colleagues and uh if you make those connections with them then uh later on when someone says to say Toya like oh I I really want to make a game about I don't know steamy romance involving like Dragon Age characters she'll be like that's not my bag no that's you actually it's

us um so yeah so so make sure to make those connections with your own discipline as well Michelle said something really important Beyond like the steamy romance with the Dragon Age characters also very important all I heard was Dragon Age she she mentioned have a way to contact on your website that sounds obvious but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated um I had a friend on Facebook who was an editor putting in anthology together and she was getting super frustrated because there were all of these writers she wanted to invite but when she went to their websites there was no way there was no contact information whatsoever there was no web form um you know she would go to their Linkin no way to contact them um and I know that for some of us the internet can be a very scary place because we can get very unwanted attention um I for a while had somebody who he wasn't dangerous but he was just

really annoying and I did not want it to get dangerous so I actually didn't have an online portfolio for a long time because I didn't want him to be able to contact me um but there are websites like Wix uh where you can make a website and there is like a contact form there where people don't see your email address but if they fill in the contact form it will go to your email um so put as much contact information on online as you feel as comfortable and that will keep you safe and that that goes for every field too not just writers or art like even um programmers or producers or any sort of Department in the in the industry needs to have a a billboard um uh a what billboard that they can point to um people who uh you know if something comes along you want to be ready when that opportunity comes along you want to be able to say you know not hold on a moment I need to put something

together for you but you want to say here's the link so you can look through my samples in whatever form they take you know in whatever form whether it's you know a fancy Gant chart or um I don't know I don't know but uh whatever form those samples look like whatever the form your billboard takes you absolutely want to have that ready and available oh and this is my please be careful uh there are plagiarists out there uh PSA there are plagiarists out there um and I do know people who've had samples online and people have taken their samples and used it in their own applications uh the best way to try to guard against that is a PDF uh so if you have anything that is not in a PDF and it's online please convert it to PDF as soon as possible that's not a complete fail safe but if people are already too lazy to do their own work it is a nice hurdle for them to get over perfect and last thought on that question um if you're feeling a little lost on how to start with getting

involved in these communities whether you're in whether you're a writer or a sound designer um or something else um a lot of folks up here mention that they run or are part of the igda sigs special interest groups there there's one for just about everything um and if there isn't you can start it yourself um but that is that generally leads you those lead you to the relevant Facebook groups and um meetups and sort of things so that is a place you can start to get involved and to network so um all right our next question here um we'll dive into the pros and cons of using freelance platforms like upwork people per hour and so on for those who use them okay suck in that so I used Elance before Elance was a thing Elance merged with odesk to become

upwork yes you can get a living wage on freelance platforms like that but it's difficult um one reason why is that the platforms themselves Market themselves as uh places to find cheap work so what ends up happening is you have nonprofessionals trying to do your job and you also have cheap scammy clients um who want to pay you $5 and $10 an hour and so what happens is it's very difficult to find great clients now I did through Elance um but it is difficult and you might end up spending way too much energy and time trying to figure out who's uh valid and who is not so like right now I have an upwork uh profile I haven't touched upwork in probably like three or four years every once in a

while I will get an email from someone you know who is looking for a game writer um but it's really not that useful for me the one thing I will say that is actually nice about those platforms is if you jump through all of the Hoops um that you need to you can make sure that you get paid if somebody tries to stiff you um but otherwise I would stay away from them yeah I I would agree 100% with everything toy just mentioned um one thing I found it was useful for is if um for me what I was trying to dip my toes into different types of writing or different types of um professions that I hadn't really had much experience with so it was a good way to like try stuff out while still getting some money for it um that's not the ideal method of of making a living but it was a it was useful for me that I wasn't I had a I had a goal and I had a task and so I could try my hand at this this thing like technical writing or something like

that um while also still valuing my time properly um but uh yeah you're there's a lot of competition and a lot of um wage depression that happens on sites like that um so it's it's a tough it's a tough tough choice well it to the wage depression thing there's also a lot of discrimination uh based upon where you live you know um you might be trying to get a professional rate but the client might think well you live in this country you don't need to make that much money I mean I I know Freelancers who have had to deal with that so yeah I have either four or five accounts you know with those types of places and I've never gotten a single item of work from any of them so I just pretty much leave the profiles alone and worry about other things if it happens it happens great but I don't don't put any real stock into those sites at

all do um I I think I have gone on uh upwork like maybe like four or five times in my life I managed to get one client and it was mostly through um Toya's recommendation because there was a client that was looking for multiple writers and then I pretty much never touched it again so I am uh that that means that I'm not the right person to be giving you know Insight on upw works or maybe it means I'm the perfect person to give Insight because yeah you can you can quite happily go through your freelance career never touching any of them so don't feel like you absolutely have like you know put up put up a profile um but do not feel that this is you know needs to be or indeed should be the backbone of your uh telecommuting career perfect thank you um our next question here is how does one structure

their day so that they actually get work done as a telecommuter big one um well I am unusual among a lot of the telecommuters I know in that I actually do try to structure my day a little bit like you know a day in the office like a 9 to 5 um although I've recently shifted from 10 to six because just seems to work a bit better with my um sort of mental cycle um that oops that can be uh difficult to do when you are dealing of course with uh International clients that are in a different uh time zone and in fact one of my clients um uh in China has asked me recently to like could you know could you start work a little bit later um and then you know stick around a bit in the evening when we're all getting into the office um so I think it's it's a it's a delicate balance between um what are the

prime times that you would like to work versus what are the prime times that your clients would like you to work and sometimes it is completely fine to like in fact encourag to come down on your side and say yes I finish work at 6 um you know I'm that is that is when I will hand in my work for the day and then I'm done um but in other cases you may want to be a bit more flexible um in terms of other structure as I said I just mostly remember you know like 9: to 5 is my work time I you know take a little bit of time for lunch um because of the nature of writing I will sometimes stand up and wander around my apartment with a coffee cup contemplating existence and you know the the nature of writing uh and then I go back to work so um uh I to try I do struggle with distraction I'll be honest and what I do is I've downloaded a whole bunch of apps that stop me from checking my phone and stop me from checking Facebook so um I highly recommend Forest if you're looking for

you know fun little apps that sort of you know make you at least have to think about what you're doing online uh or on your phone um and yeah so that's how I keep that's how I manage to pretend like I'm working all day so if Michelle is the structured one um I would be the opposite of that um I'm somebody who has always been something of a night owl it's like my most creative and best time ends up usually being in the middle of the night so I had to have a conversation with my supervisor pretty early on about deadlines it's like when you say something is due by Monday what time on Monday right and as soon as I understood that the deadline on Monday is when she clocks in at 8:00 on Monday well that's awesome that means that I can be up till like 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. do and what I do um I love working at night because nobody else is a it's impossible to get bothered it's like your phone

isn't going to be going off and your Facebook isn't going to be cuz everybody else is asleep right it's awesome it's just I'll sit there and I'll I'll have my headphones on and my music on and I'm I'm just like cranking and it's the middle of the night I know that's not for everybody but it's kind of what I do so it's like I'll wake up around 11: and I'll I'll get through all my social media check emails and all that other stuff see if my boss has left me anything that I need to answer right away then I'll go have lunch I'll talk to my kids then uh take a nap then I'll get up from taking a nap and uh just kind of I think I'll get maybe 3 hours in the evening in before there's like dinner time and stuff like that and then I'll like really get crank in at about 9:00 at night and I'll go from like 9 to about 2 or three and that's seems to be what's the most natural for me I realized it's unorthodox but I'm an

unorthodox chick um I I actually found myself having a really tough transition from a very structured work environment where I worked in an office um where I had to be there every day at a certain time and people held me accountable if I you know came in not wearing pants or something like that and uh two two much more um Dynamic and loose work environment telecommuting and freelancing where the only person who is holding me accountable as me um and that that was actually very tough for me it was and it's something that I recommend people take a kind of a good hard look at when they want to transition to a telecommuting remote work environment is that are you the type of person that either would be fine with sort of a a self-imposed structure or could be could create a structure from thems um so I had to I had to impose very strict like this is when I start work and this is when I end work and this is when my lunches and basically I had to recreate that office environment for myself um or

else you know I'd end up um playing video games accidentally and lose five five hours or you know whatever it is that will that will suck my time away um because there's no one you know watching me um I have to I have to like actively create an environment where that wasn't possible uh and I've gotten much better at it um and uh with the with the time zone thing my my client in Australia um there was a you know there's times when they're getting into the office at their 9:00 a. and it's 5:00 P p.m. for me so we I had to have a long series of conversations about what the expectations were their expectations for me and my expectations for them about communication and being online at the same time cuz there just wasn't like I wasn't going to be able to stay up until 3:00 a.m. like some folks um like I just wouldn't be working at that point like it would just be being available for the sake of being available um so communicating and setting hard deadlines or hard hard stop points for yourself um

and being precious with those H hard stop points has actually uh been very useful for me um so they know you know once at a certain time you know they know to ask the questions between nine and and one to me because after that I'm sleeping I am also one of those unstructured night owls um I go to bed around 5 or 6:00 in the morning and I wake up around 1: or 2 in the afternoon and that's not a given either based upon how awake I am uh in the early morning or how sleepy I am and and I decide I'm just not going to get up but I I have found that I tend to divide my day into uh stuff for other people and stuff for me um like Heidi said everybody's asleep at night I tend to work on my own things at night and I'm able to focus better on my own things at night I also edit at night because oddly enough I find

editing very therapeutic and so I I edit throughout the day um I tend to do things for clients during the day um and basically I don't have like an organized schedule I figure out with my client uh when I need to turn things in I tend to have you know like you know two 3 weeks before I need to turn something in I know how long a particular product is going to take me like if I have to write a particular document um I know how long that's going to take so I can figure out dayto day if I want to work on that or not so I think if you are used to being in an office and you've had structure before and you've had a supervisor telling you I need this by X time one thing you really need to figure out is how long does it take me to do a certain task and so when you are off by your own with no supervision um you're going to know how you're going to be able to

schedule your time and Toyo brings up a good point which is that there are different types of relationships with your employer when you're doing remote telecommuting so if you're on a milestone base where you there's a a deadline for your work that needs to be turned in as opposed to with my work with this Australian with uh play Corp um it was sort of a daily uh um check-in and a collaborative a daily collaborative environment um and so the type of relationship affects um the structure how you structure your day uh so that you know if you don't it sounds like if you don't need to be available to them at all times then you can you have a little more flexibility with your with your own personal time or the way you structure your day whereas if you are somebody who's telecommuting um and you have your your time zones basically align the same as the as the client or the employer um you might be expected to be on slack or uh or any sort of proprietary chat Services

all the time so you can answer questions like that so again it's about negotiating with your employer negotiating with your client to figure out um what works best but knowing your knowing what works best for you at the same time yeah I went from uh working 9 to5 office and then going to the games industry which was Studio culture which was totally different and then I went from Studio culture to um working remotely so I've done all three things at this point and the one thing that I found the hardest um when switching over remote work was getting used to asking questions it's like I am not somebody who will inherently always ask a whole lot of questions about what I'm supposed to be doing but it is necessary to do when you're working remotely even if you think it's obvious it might not be and so I'll proceed my question with something like this is probably a stupid question but I just want to be clear and it's like asking tons of those little questions to make sure that you understand what it is that they want you to do um or that they understood what

you were telling them and that becomes especially true if there's a language barrier um but uh but yes you will become friendly with asking questions and of course something to uh realize on that level is um because I I'm I'm sort of uh I I've had the opposite problem I'm always asking questions and then realizing oh wait my clients are at you know are in bed at Prime I need to ask this question time um how do I manage that and so it has been like ideally yes you you get this all laid out at the very beginning but don't blame yourself if it's if it's also like a work in progress that you know if you start it and you sort of figure after a while like no I actually do need more like direct feedback I need to be able to ask questions and get them answered right away um you know talk to your talk to your client about you know how to get that working think about how you can maybe uh rearrange your schedule

um something else to consider that I I think a lot of people maybe don't consider and that is um it's not only just about your structure it's about the structure of your client um we tend to assume that the clients we have are all you know 9 to5 like office hours in whatever their time zone is but you may be deal you may be working with an indie who's like working out of their bedroom or their basement and they will be keeping very very unusual hours as well so um my current situation is I have two clients one that's in China and that has involved me shifting my schedule around to match uh you know they're a full office they're you know 9 like 10 to 7 um Beijing time and so I have to adjust to that but then my other client is in Indie in Hungary and he stays up till 2 in the morning um so he like it's actually really easy to get hold of him during my workday so that's something to consider when you're looking at clients that um the type of client uh you work

with like may affect the sort of schedule they have so don't like jump to assumptions of everything has to be on their 9-to-5 could be on your 9-to-5 and I'll jump in and say that I work best from 900 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. so and there with a couple Folks up here and that is actually that's part of the criteria I think about when I am seeking out clients folks who are at least like hours um ahead of me so that can help you narrow down if again wondering where to start um also as far as how do I get to work um I personally find it helpful to do kind of a c a centering activity that's relevant to me that could be a spiritual religious thing um or something as simple as doing power poses even so again if you're just kind of looking for something to jump start you know when you're in your home but know you need to do work um and a a separate thought I'll just add to that too is increasingly there are shared workspaces

available out there for telecommuters and Freelancers um I'm pretty sure San Francisco has a bunch of them I feel like I've seen a few Seattle Austin um and that's a sort of thing where you can rent out like a little cubicle typically for a certain amount of time or potentially for weeks at a time so well I was I was just going to add to that um changing your setting once a week may also help I do that as well um one day a week week uh around 2: p.m. I go to my favorite little pizza spot where I can go to the booth in the back and I know I am getting work done today and I sit there from around 2:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. um and so I know I'm going to be focused today I am leaving my house I am not going to have the distractions that I usually have I I do similar thing with you know the the stereotypical Cafe I'll sit in a cafe in the corner and and do my work um but I always recommend people who do stuff like that to maintain a

really good relationship with the staff there um because they get to know you and you don't want to be that jerk that is always coming in and not tipping and just sitting at the table and you know taking up space if you have a spot be kind to those people you want them to like you something else to consider um you know obviously we've been talking about how to deal with distractions and how to resist distractions and it is very important but I also think that you know to a certain extent um we tend to think of distraction as like you know a a pure enemy that there is nothing good about distraction but sometimes a short and managed distraction is kind of what you need to sort of reset your your your mind space and get like that burst of energy um that's why I've been actually experimenting recently with the Pomodoro Technique which is very much kind of like you set a timer you work for 25 minutes and then you have 5 minutes of like you know free free time that you can do something else and I find that that actually helps when it's you know

after the 5 minutes I'm like okay I've I've like even though I wasn't directly thinking about what I had to write it's helped reset my my mind space a bit now obviously some of you may find that you know you need to get into a flow State you need to not stop but I suppose like my recommendation would be like if you find that there are types of short short distractions in your day that can help um you know help you get back to work help you keep your energy up then don't beat yourself up for for quote unquote succ coming to them as long as you get your work done by the you know by the deadline um do what you have to do yeah and if if it is physically possible for you um and you're not in a flow State get up and walk around like every 25 20 25 minutes uh because sitting in front of a laptop even if you can't sense it is incredibly draining and also just because you're working you're putting a lot lot of physical and emotional and mental effort into what you are doing

and so you know getting up or moving around recharges your batteries it's really important all right thanks so much um our next question is what are some technological hurdles to telecommuting and what are your suggestions for resolving them um just just have the help desk information like if it's a help desk you're supposed to talk to if it's a person you're supposed to talk to have that information at the ready um I I've run into a situation where one of the tools that I'm supposed to be working with is for whatever reason not working correctly on my laptop and so that means that until we get that situated I have to compose the game dialogue directly into the code of the game um and you know anyone who knows me knows that you probably don't want me in your code luckily they gave me um a longer deadline because they knew that it was like really hard to like try to parse

out visually where I'm supposed to put things but um that that's just the kind of thing that can happen and you just kind of roll with it and I know when I get back from GDC we're going to be doing a a step by step you know figure out how to make the tool work on my on my computer thing and if not we've got the hacky way um this actually kind of dovetails nicely with what we were just talking about in terms of um these types of challenges technological hurdles are best overcome by communicating with your client or the the employer as quickly as possible as clearly as possible giving them specific details about the problem that you're having or the question that you have um and if you've established a communication pipeline that's been working it should be pretty straightforward to resolve these problems but it's about upfront knowing that you need to establish a communication pipeline who who you need to talk to who's in charge of making this decision or resolving the problem um and not having it be oh you got to go

talk to Joe he's the so and so person oh no actually you need to talk to Jane she's the the person that handles questions from people keeping your supervisor in the loop as well all the time so like having a point of contact a specific point of contact if possible with a department is really important so that you always have a uh yeah like you know exactly who you need to go to a a couple of points the communication pipeline is very important something that I have a really difficult time with um I'm working with devs who like to make major decisions in Skype chats uh and there can be 50 posts 50 messages in Skype and there have been times where a major change was implemented and a couple of us didn't know because it happened in Skype like two days ago 50 messages away um and it was like 3 weeks later when we found out

there was a major implementation change and so there needs to be one uh a one place where all of the documentation is um and everybody needs to decide where that place is and to make sure hey have there been changes made please keep those changes in the documentation um so that I'm working with the most recent information um and that's just important not just for you so you're not frustrated but if people don't have that information that can set the project back the other thing is um if you're in a subcontracting position in other words there is a contractor that's working with a client and then they find you and you are actually working for the contractor make sure you are also in communication with the person who is going to be approving your work um because that's going to be the contractor's client I was in a position where I had no

communication with the client and um I was trying to do my work I was asking lots of questions uh the contractor was trying to do his best to get the answer to those questions and he couldn't um and that was probably very very early in my career where I did not know to say hey I also need the email address or the phone number of the client so I can contact them directly um I'll actually say one of the technical issues that I've I've had um has been of course like one of the things that you know is supposed to help uh particularly for writers is um prototyping and you know putting putting the text into say unity and you know seeing how it plays out um I have not had the greatest luck at having uh at at trying to organize with clients to set up my system so that I can actually do that myself so what you know tends to happen is I you know send off my text to China and they do the prototyping on

their end I get a video of it um but I don't get to actually do it myself and uh I've asked them multiple times hey could we could we put Unity on my you know could we get unity set up so that I can do this too and they're like uh we have other things to do uh we can't really do that right now so um so depending on your discipline you may end up being a little siloed off um uh from things that way um um at which point you just sort of have to uh communicate with the client and do like and work with what you can do so like hence you know I said okay well if you um you know if I can't actually see what these scenes look like myself can someone make videos for me oh yeah sure we can do that um so it's something to consider that that you know maybe early on the process if you if you get the chance um you know make sure that you're onboarded with um you know the tools that you can actually like prototype and see the game and see the scenes and see the things that you're doing um because otherwise you

sort of basically have to send it off um send it off into the ether and then eventually someone comes back and says we put it all in unity and it sucks go do it again and you're just like I I I could have figured that out earlier if I could have put it in unity so tell me to consider yeah I um there's one thing that I could strongly request is is um if you're an a studio or or a team that wants to start uh bringing in Outsiders bringing in remote workers um establish an infrastructure to do so before that because there is a there is if that person can't hit the ground running you're wasting money on them basically like you're wasting money on doing the sort of loop of oh actually I need a VPN so I can go and access you know the git repository or like oh and then you have to set that up and then you tell them and there's this whole Le lag time between um request and implementation that um is just a waste of time and money so set up the tools that you need uh beforehand before

engaging folks um and that includes uh yeah VPN email uh documentation access things like that that you don't necessarily think about because you're all in the same office on the same network um but as soon as you start introducing people from the outside into that process um it comes a weird a weird tangle of problems um on the flip side of that if you're somebody who is looking for remote work when you are once you pass the conversations about what the job is and um the sort of introductory stuff it would probably be good to ask if they've worked with remote people before so that you know they might have um infrastructure in place to to make your job easier also on the stuff everybody doesn't think about who is going to get you paid I have this really funny story about how it took me a year and a half to get paid on a project and it wasn't because the client was trying not to pay me it was because I was working with a producer who doesn't have to deal with that and again it was early career ignorance for me I

didn't ask anything about that um and so long story short uh I went through two producers in a year and a half and finally the second producer because the first producer moved to another project said oh we just need your checking account information and there's one person in this department who will get it done for you I mean that is getting paid is a technological hurdle in a lot of cases like that is it is weirdly difficult still to transfer M money from one person to another in 2019 uh we actually only have a few minutes left so I'm going to push us just a few more quick questions so um yeah speaking to that how do you prefer to be paid and just uh quick answer so quick for me I open a SE a separate bank account at my bank and have my clients wire transfer in um there's sometimes a fee and that's something you you talk about up front for them to cover it so I

admit I'm lazy I have them transfer the money direct uh use money transfer directly into my main account um of which there is a a minor fee but um uh but not that bad of one uh I also do actually use PayPal but rather than uh paying to get the PayPal money put into my account I actually keep it on my PayPal account and then use the PayPal to pay for uh you know business expenses and things like that I just get a wir t me um I've had it wired to me I also use a site called transfer wise which makes um cross currency uh monetary transfer is pretty easy straightforward um that's been successful for me in the past uh wired PayPal or if it's a client within the United States uh via check because I'm I'm not charged a fee and great um quick question too have you had any we are not legally able to give you um legal advice about this but mention just really quickly if you've had any concerns or special situations with

taxes or visas um working with clients outside of your home country well that's actually it was something I I realized I should have brought up about the you know tele you know is telecommuting possible and frankly if you are non-american telecommuting is not only like doable it may be like potentially one of your only options because I've had so many American clients uh who were originally looking to hire me as a full-time employee the minute they hear the word Canadian they're like oh can you do remote work so um so yes doing remote work can definitely help with the VISA issue because you don't have to negotiate the visa on the other hand you do have to negotiate your country's tax laws so please familiar please familiarize yourself with them uh particularly which countries your your country has um uh trade agreements and um uh tax agreements with uh so so that you don't end up paying both um you know

America and Canada a share of your taxes I've never been paid by a foreign country so I don't know um so occasionally when you do remote work for international um clients they will ask you to come to a studio visit um and depending on the country that you're be headed towards uh like as an American we have some countries that I can just kind of show up at and it's no problem I don't need a visa um other countries you do need visa and they're very particular about their visas and the do not leave Visa stuff to the last minute or if you get a bad feeling that your your client isn't handling the Visa stuff properly be um don't be afraid to slow things down and get it done properly because occasionally as you are um going in back into that country you'll be sent into a detention center and then deported as I was um because the Visa he got kicked out of Australia you guys

uh yeah it's true um but that's because the the VIS situation um is more complicated than just buying one online or just trusting that your client will take care of it for you um so be be very careful with that sort of thing even if it seems like it's straightforward uh I have never been kicked out of Australia or anywhere else and I've haven't had a real problem except for that year and a half thing getting paid um I have a single member LC so my contracts are with my LLC uh again uh if you want to get your own business find out which one is right for you and you know in the United States we have llc's we have C corporations that sort of thing um find out what kind of businesses you have in your own country and then talk to a lawyer about what's the most beneficial for you tax-wise thanks so much um final question we're at the end here uh what's one thing you wish you'd known before you started telecommuting and my quick answer is uh

I wish I'd known to just experiment with schedule styles for myself I used to think like oh I I love things totally open and free but I actually thrive on having a production schedule for myself so um I guess I wish I'd known um how much more challenging uh it is going to be to connect with your team when you're working um uh to particularly when they are uh not English speakers so um it's it's something that for me is still a work in progress um but it is something to be aware of but that you can overcome it that you can you know take the effort to uh connect with your team and be sort of part of the loop as opposed to that random person off in some you know office off in their bedroom somewhere I wish I'd known that how important it is that you're always hustling to find your next thing even when you're working um with all your heart on the thing that you're doing right now now um so you have to get comfortable with promoting yourself and

I've not been somebody who's typically been comfortable with that but you know you start to get comfortable with that and you you have your website and you have your portfolio and you you realize that that you really do need to kind of do that self-promotion so that people know to think of you when they need someone who does what you do I wish I had known how to avoid detention centers um but more than that I wish I had known um I kind of knew intellectually but I didn't know in practice to get people who know about contracts to review your contracts or at least in the beginning to actually look at contracts and contract language um just because you're a smart person doesn't mean you understand the implications of legal language um so getting a second set of eyes on contracts is a great idea I wish I had understood how important that website portfolio was and that I had gotten one up a lot sooner um because people were referred to me and then they found my website and cont contacted me that way but then I've had people who were just looking for a game writer or a

narrative designer and my website was one of the hits they found um and one last Quick thought um know what you're worth and ask for it uh it can be very hard to do especially when you're starting out there are great resources within your discipline uh we're all writers up here so the igda writing sake has a great primer on kind of where to start with setting your rates um but for it because they're not going to give it to you unless you do and one last quick note about that if you don't uh have something like a Sig that's got that look for something that's industry adjacent like uh look up what professional programmers make look what it doesn't have to be professional game programmers or professional game sound designers just what do they make in general you can probably find that online somewhere perfect well thank you so much to our panelists thank you for attending with us today uh yeah I have put our contact information up here so in some of our websites as well

so please feel free to follow us on Twitter uh get on get in touch there or on our websites and uh we'd love to chat more with you we're going to hang around a little bit just outside the career theater if you want to keep talking and uh thank you so much