MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz shares insights about his freelance work. At times, he wrote quirky and risqué quest texts for browser games to pay his bills.
When I decided in 2009 to try my luck as an editor for PC and video games, there was no safe haven of permanent employment awaiting my career ship. Instead, after my first paddling attempts during my internship, I sailed out into the rough sea of freelancing.
I was lucky, in multiple ways. As a reliable author willing to invest countless hours in preview articles, reviews, guides, and special issues for online role-playing games, it was not a problem to find clients and assignments.
At exactly that time, the newly founded WoW magazine MMOPRO was also taking off. For reference, we are talking about a time of declining circulation and discontinued magazines. For a freelance newcomer to break into an established magazine editorial team and regularly write more than just a few pages was almost impossible.
MMORPGs like WoW have accompanied MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz for two decades.
Thanks to a personal recommendation, I was allowed to write my first review pages for the second issue of MMOPRO. A few months later, I already contributed more than 20 pages per issue. That was an astonishingly stable foundation for a light sailor like me, who was still among the newcomers in the industry.
And since several well-known MMORPGs were released in 2010 and beyond – such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, or Final Fantasy XIV – the vast sea of freelancing did not feel as rough as I had feared. In the initial months, there was more work than I could handle. What a fortunate luxury.
The Tides Turn
However, it was not all sunshine and wind in my sails. After the first years of freelancing, my career ship was heading towards a storm front. MMOPRO could not get off the ground and had to be discontinued. Furthermore, fewer and fewer online role-playing games were released that could unleash a hype justifying special issues and large guide segments.
Although I was lucky again and got a position at the direct competition, PC Games MMORE, after the magazine was discontinued, there was already an established hierarchy of permanent employees who divided the majority of the pages among themselves. So, I had to look for alternative assignments to compensate for the loss of print pages.
Infidelity in a Different Way
In fact, I was able to significantly expand my range of services in the following years. I increasingly wrote about games of other genres, helped publishers translate English sister magazines, and occasionally took on PR tasks, such as writing so-called advertorials (advertisements in editorial form).
However, I found the collaboration with Playata the most exciting. The two founders, Mathias Fabian and Marcel Anacker, had developed the community tool Blasc and the WoW database for buffed at that time – thus making the first contact.
Initially, I was allowed to write quest texts for some levels of Hero Zero. This is a humorous browser game where you rise from a couch potato to a superhero-hunting hero.
The second game from the team is similarly colorful and funny, but is called Big Bang Empire and turns you into an aspiring erotic star. Designing risqué texts, conventions, and stages for this was a great fun. Here’s an example of the briefing for a time-based quest:
“EvilDick Productions has also set up camp in Beverly Humps. Infiltrate the studio of Trent’s biggest competitor and find out what pornos are currently being shot there.”
And the text after successfully completing the task: “Disguised as an extra, you enter the noble studio. Apparently, the competition relies on high-tech devices such as self-cleaning vagina replicas and guided vibrators. Trent must find out about this!”
It was a valuable experience to also be involved in the production of game content and not just critique games from a safe distance. However, I must also admit that this type of creative work was considerably more challenging for me than writing guides and reviews.
Therefore, I was very glad when I could exchange freelancing for a permanent position as an editor and a predictable monthly salary in 2015. Finally, a safe harbor for my career ship, which ultimately led me to MeinMMO and thus to you.
Our new MMORPG expert introduces himself: “Hello, I’m Karsten”
