How do you hire a scripter?

This should not be singled out to SCRIPTORS, but ANYONE, that is why people need to TAKE DOWNPAYMENTS.

(Caps not screaming, just emphasis on key words)



The point is, there are people out there willing to pay good USD for a script, and there are scriptors out there willing to take on the project. It`s just harder than it should be for finding these people. Like I said, I went through tons of phoneys before I found someone who knew wtf they were doing.

Conversely, if the prospective client is willing to do much of the work themselves - get their hands dirty with the ins and outs of scripting - which actually isn't all that idfficult truth to tell, its just time consuming at times and takes a bit of commitment - a lot of scripters would be more than willing to help by looking at problem areas, recommending changes, and pointing out ways to do things. The boss/worker paradigm just isn'tall that fun and joyful in our time off from work, but collaberation can be an entertaining social break, given the right chemistry mix. I have also found that the Scripters of Second Life group can be a fantastic resource, providing you approach them from the point of view of having done your homework.

Now, you might say: "I don't want to do that, I want someone to do all the work for me" and that's a valid point of view. But people for the most part come into Second Life to have fun, not to work, and that goes double for those with technical skills. You're putting the effort in for everything else, after all, so you might as well spend a couple weeks grokking the basics of scripting and playing with the hundreds of freebie scripts in the library.

I also have to agree with the other posts about not wanting to do work that'll lead to server issues when scaled to the mass market. If someone wants to do something resource intensive, they may be playing the wrong game, or the right game in the wrong place. Second Life will never be Halo or World of Warcraft and a lot of scriptors will refuse to work on any project that doesn't sync with the technical realities the current scripting system imposes on them. There are too many "clients" out there who can't take "no".

Hate to sound harsh, but I'm here to have fun. So is everyone else.

But there *are* people who come in here to do work. And if they are offering themselves up as a 'business' regardless of WHAT it is, they need to learn how to be a little professional. Not only them, but the potential client. I used to offer custom tattoo work, the main reason I stopped was due to the HIGH wants of the "client" and the very LITTLE amounts of money they wanted to pay, especially for the nonsense and demans they threw at me. I imagine it is this way with anything, whethere its a custom build, a custom script, or even a custom texture. This is RL time you are talking about, i`m not going to work an hour of my time for 300 lindens, right. However, some people will. They play in 'game time'.

If people with certain skill are not here to work, then people can not expect them to take on a project and If they are not advertising their skill for custom work i`m not even sure why people would really bother to IM them.


And if someone does want custom work done they should not EXPECT to pay a few hundred lindens for something that is going to take up a lot of one`s time.

There's another reason too. For a builder, custom building is often a great opportunity to build a name - because it gives the builder access to more land to build on (something that otherwise would have cost them money) and also often to something that someone else is going to promote, meaning their build will be more noticed by others. They can say, "I built that building," and others can see it to, because the building is right there.

But for scripting, that just doesn't work so well. If someone clicks and passes through a complicated door or portal or other in-world interactive animation, the script making it do so is not at all visible. In fact many non-developer users won't distinguish between the build and the script - it's "a door that opens", and the fact that this actually involved two completely different people is something that isn't borne in mind so often.

To be noticed as a scripter you have to make things where the script is in the forefront, so that people do notice it - and typically those are not the things people ask for as custom scripts, because often the reason why they're asking for a custom script is because they've made something they want to be improved by scripting.

People who are pure scripters - that is, they script and don't build - also have a somewhat different relationship with the world to other content creators. SL's "big rewards" for creation are satisfaction, money, standing within the community, and control over the environment; but someone who can't build or texture de facto can't control the environment. Yes, scripting can exercise control over the environment but only in a limited sense - a pure scripter can make a flying plywood cube, but they can't make a bird (and of course I mean "can't" here in terms of lacking the skill or talent, not lacking the tools). Building a community around scripting is also difficult - some people have managed it (look at the scripted collars, for example, or certain brands of casino games or guns) but it's not automatic given a script (the Multi Gadget is a very good and well known scripted item, but does it have a user community?) It's in no way as natural as it is for a builder who can build an environment that people can actually meet each other inside.

And so for a pure scripter, things often tend to come down to personal satisfaction or money. I even have some scripter friends who wound up feeling that way about SL even though they admitted that they had never wanted to see SL that way. And money for a custom job is often a bad deal compared to making a mass-market product that might earn a hundred or more times the sale price. Of course, that means there's lots of scripters targeting the mass-market, which drives down prices. It's not surprising that I've seen "will script for food" signs sold in shops in SL, and even seen someone advised by an experienced user on scripting that they "shouldn't, there's always some rube who'll do it for you for free". Can you imagine either of those being said about builders or texturers?

Note that this isn't saying you can't get custom scripts done or that doing so is a bad idea (I'm usually happy to do them ) but just to give some understanding of why it might be a bit harder than for other things.