Hello. I was wondering if anyone could tell me if it was possible to earn a living creating IF games.
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Creating IF isn’t likely going to amount to your primary source of income unless you create an entire successful gaming company or work for one of them; see
Choice of Games actively solicits authors to create games under contract, or independently as “Hosted” games with revenue sharing; details are on the site.
Some authors make a bit of pocket change via donations or selling them commercially on itch.io.
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Hey! I can only speak to my own experience but I’ll share what I can. Last year I was earning about half my income (which admittedly wasn’t much) from IF-related work.
A big chunk of that was a contract with Heart’s Choice games, an imprint of Choice Of Games. You can apply here (they’re always looking for writers). It’s a fairly long multi-stage recruitment process and if you have a pitch selected you’re paid an advance in instalments as you hit certain milestones in your game.
The rest was freelance work - one-off contracts for clients like museums and universities, workshops for community organisations, guest lectures etc. This requires a lot of networking - I got started through contacts I made doing community outreach for a gaming museum, so it’s worth identifying if you have any existing networks that might be interested in working with you. A simple website with testimonials, work samples, a rate sheet etc. is really useful too.
Happy to answer any questions if you have them!
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Thank you for mentioning Heart’s Choice, which is essentially the “interactive romance/relationship” arm of Choice of Games
Whatever gender or orientation you want to play, and whether you like your romance sweet, spicy, or smoking hot, there will be a Heart’s Choice game for you in our catalogue.
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Thank you Hanon. That clears things up for me.
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Much appreciated Lauren.
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