When money was tight, I wrote stories about raunchy superheroes

MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz talks about his life and tells you about his freelance work. At times he designed sometimes humorous, sometimes raunchy quest texts for browser games in order to pay his bills.

When I decided to try my luck as an editor for PC and video games in 2009, there was no safe harbor of permanent employment waiting for my career cutter. Instead, after my first attempts at paddling during my internship, I headed out into the rough sea of ​​freelance work.

I was lucky, in more ways than one. As a reliable author who was willing to invest countless hours in preview articles, tests, guides and special issues for online role-playing games, it was no problem getting clients and orders.

It was precisely at this time that the newly founded WoW magazine MMOPRO took off. As a reminder, we are talking about a time of declining circulation and discontinued magazines. As a new freelancer, it was almost impossible to get into an established magazine editorial team and be able to write more than a few pages on a regular basis.

MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz has been following MMORPGs like WoW for two decades.

Thanks to a personal recommendation, I was able to write my first test pages for the second edition of MMOPRO. A few months later I was already producing more than 20 pages per issue. That was an amazingly stable foundation for an ordinary sailor like me, who was still one of the newcomers to the industry.

And since some 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 didn’t feel as rough as feared. There was too much work rather than too little in the early months. What a happy luxury.

The turning of the tide

However, it didn’t stop with bright sunshine and wind in the sails. After the first few years of freelancing, my career cutter was heading towards a storm front. The MMOPRO couldn’t get its footing on the ground and had to be adjusted. In addition, gradually fewer and fewer online role-playing games appeared that were able to unleash a hype that justified special editions and large guide sections.

I was lucky again and, after the magazine was discontinued, was placed with the direct competition, PC Games MMORE, but there was already an established hierarchy of permanent employees who divided up the majority of the pages among themselves. So I had to look for alternative jobs to make up for the lost print pages.

Cheating with a difference

In fact, I was able to significantly expand my range of services over the next few years. I wrote more and more often about games of other genres, helped publishers with the translation of English sister magazines and occasionally took on PR tasks, for example writing so-called advertorials (advertising in editorial form).

What I found most exciting, however, was the collaboration with Playata. The two founders, Mathias Fabian and Marcel Anacker, had developed the Blasc community tool and the WoW database for buffed – this is how we first came into contact.

First I was allowed to write quest texts for some levels of Hero Zero. This is a humorous browser game in which you rise from armchair lover to supervillain-hunting hero.

The team’s second game is similarly colorful and fun, but is called Big Bang Empire and turns you into a budding erotic star. Designing raunchy texts, conventions and stages for this was great fun. Here is an example of the briefing for a time-based quest:

“EvilDick Productions has also set up shop in Beverly Humps. Infiltrate the studio of Trent’s biggest competitor and find out what kind of porn is being shot there.”

And the text after successfully completing the task: “Disguised as an extra, you get to the posh studio. Apparently the competition is relying on high-tech devices such as self-cleaning vagina replicas and vibrators with aiming assistance. Trent needs to know about this!”

It was a valuable experience to be involved in the production of game content and not just criticize games from a safe distance. But I also have to admit that this type of creative work was much more difficult for me than writing guides and tests.

I was therefore happy when I was able to exchange my freelance work for a permanent position as an editor and a predictable monthly salary in 2015. Finally a safe haven for your own career cutter, which ultimately led me to MeinMMO and thus to you.

Our new MMORPG expert introduces himself: “Hello, I’m Karsten”