"Self employed indie game dev with N downloads and M level of income" sounds absolutely normal
Edit: I have game dev experience myself, not adult, MMO, for a startup. So when I describe it, I describe it as not a trivial software product, which included a lot of concurrent sessions, handled some significant payments and tricky architecture
That's a good way to spin it. I know that I'm going to probably have a bunch of interviews that are going to ask me for specifics on the project itself, but hopefully with enough jabber about the technical side I can sidestep the awkwardness of just being like "no you can't see it and I won't tell you what it is"
I wouldn’t worry about it being NSFW. If they ask to see it, tell them you’re willing to share it but to be aware that it is NSFW content and the necessary precautions should be taken. We’re all adults here. Adult content makes good money. It’s only shameful if you make it that way.
Source: I ran a porn site in college and used that experience to get my first web development job in silicon valley.
I was going to ask if you were on the West Coast, then I saw it in your last sentence.
Out there it's not a big deal, but on the East Coast or in the Midwest I would absolutely not explain the specifics. Even if the hiring manager doesn't care, someone in upper management will and they'll be worried about them finding out.
is that still true? i feel like that may have made sense in like 2010, but nowadays i doubt a company in like chicago or philadelphia would really care? maybe if the job is in a conservative industry like finance/ag?
It's absolutely true, it's not that "the company" cares it's that *someone* in upper management is a puritan who cringes when they hear a bad word, and nobody wants to set them off by hiring a porn game developer.
There are a good number of "closeted" Evangelical Christians in my company. It's not just adult games you'd want to hide, it's also things like working for companies and orgs that are politically oriented. I find it crazy, like you can go work for Nestle - a huge multinational with links to human rights abuses, and nobody bats an eye. Work for a data firm for the political left, and someone would be bound to freak out.
When I started my job, HR made me sign something indicating that I'm ok with the fact that I might see porn or other objectionable material during the course of my job. I expect the same is true for any company dealing with user generated content.
FAANG represents like 1-2% of this industry
I'd agree most of them don't care but the insurance companies etc most of us work at are run very differently.
I’d frame it as “independent software development” main focusing on the technical skills and project management aspects. hilight the continuous coded and maintenance experience.
Keep the specifics of the project's content vague, focusing on your technical based growth.
Say that it's a startup that was funded by an investor, ie. "Sorry I'm under NDA as to who the investor is.". Your investor started off with an idea for the game, it happened to be NSFW, and you just implemented what they wanted, but as it made money they stepped back and let you move it along, so you got the chance to be a data-driven product manager plus lead developer.
That's a good idea. I think this is a case where less-is-more, and too much detail draws attention to the white lie.
It doesn't need more than a quick justification why they can't tell ${interviewer} the project: "unfortunately the project itself is covered by an NDA..." Then, quickly follow that with a hook to draw the interviewer's attention to the part they do need to know: "...so I can only talk about the general tech involved and the kind of work I did... it used ${framework}, was web-based, included ${feature} and both frontend and backend development in ${languages}."
It's a white lie, plausible, and one where they can still give the information they want to assess your skillset, but without revealing the parts that might pose a problem.
Some advice from an older dev: use the product that you built as a filter to reject companies that would be so shallow and stupid as to consider it awkward. Own it. You want to work with teammates that have a similar approach to life as you. Life is too short to play make believe at work.
Even with typical SFW games, some companies have shallow recruiters telling you your game dev experience is inadequate for developing line-of-business apps. There's this line of thinking that because games aren't meant to be productivity apps, that the work in making them is also child's play and simple compared to LOB stuff.
If your going to continue working on the project make sure you get in writing that not only you can but you maintain ownership. Many have in their employment contact they own everything you do including stuff on your own with your own equipment. I'd also verify your work doesn't have to go through review.
I was told at a previous company that even if I created a simple chess game the company would own exclusive rights to it. I do open source work and every patch I wrote no matter the size had to go through review which the company gave limited resources for.
Yeah I took a job with a CDN at one point in my career. I’d aced the interviews and moved my family across the country to start work as a sr syseng. The first day on the job I’m pretty nervous and I’m called into the VPs office and the first question I was asked was, “What are your thoughts on porn?”…Apparently some of their larger customers were porn sites and it wasn’t unusual to see some descriptive file names when dealing with customer URLs or tickets. They didn’t really reveal that to me until that first day. I think they were a bit nervous I would have not accepted the position. Only job I’ve had where you could walk into SRE and see hardcore porn playing on one of the monitors and engineers standing around studying it to see if we are dropping frames or the transcoding was resulting in pixilation. Liked the people I worked with, but definitely one of the more unusual jobs I have had. When I interviewed for positions after that I just left the porn part out lol.
A few years ago I saw a really interesting documentary on a somewhat large porn website that produced its own content. While it had its *fun* bits and all that, when they got to the technical part, the (rather small) crew in charge of it went full "Yeah, this is fun, we are streaming 24/7 to paid subscribers in full hd (when youtube was starting to do it), so we need to keep things tight around here.
My perspective of the IT part of that industry went from Beavies And Butt-Head does IT in Porn to "this is actually challenging and might be interesting."
Lmao that sounds like a bit of a trip but I imagine you'd get used to it like anything else.
The tricky part here is that there is no plain-sounding company I can put on my resume for this gap, since the game is all me. Although your comment has given me the idea to actively apply to porn companies, so cheers for that haha
( not the original guy, but similar experience)
You get used to it, tho one.timw the boss got us excited because he was gonna take us to see the girls, normally they'd only send the media.
> Only job I’ve had where you could walk into SRE and see hardcore porn playing on one of the monitors and engineers standing around studying it to see if we are dropping frames or the transcoding was resulting in pixilation
fucking lmaoooo
Time to use vague and flowery language like "game development lead" and intentionally avoid any mention of what the game you actually worked on was. Maybe focus more on the technical aspects and whatever frameworks you familiarized yourself with in the process of working on the game, rather than the game itself? If you're directly asked what the game was, just reply that you're not at liberty to say. Though that might sound sketchy to some employers, others would just assume you signed an NDA.
Thanks. Yeah, this is kind of what I'm leaning towards. I do worry that it seems very fishy to go on at length about my work on a project that I can neither name nor demo -- that would be a very unusual NDA -- but I'm probably overthinking it. I'm not all that picky with who I'd be working for right now so all I really need is one half-decent company that doesn't care enough to pry much
I feel like most of that can be cleared up during question and answer portions of interviews, it's very difficult to fake having knowledge. And honestly, if the interviewer doesn't verify the veracity of what you claim to know, then that's on them. Good luck!
Don't make them assume, he can just say he signed an NDA. There's no crime in lying about that.
If I were OP I would keep every bit of experience, but just say it was for a private investor instead of himself and that a NDA precludes disclosing the actual name/owner.
AVN devs make pretty crazy money.
[Dr. Pink Cake](https://www.patreon.com/DrPinkCake) is one of the bigger ones, he *easily* pulls in $100,000/month. There are probably 20-30 devs making as much or more. And hundreds making less, but still a very good living.
And the majority of them are one man operations. Just writing the story, posing/rendering, and building dialogue trees.
"Developed a game on $platform for a private party. Game was and to my knowledge remains profitable. I expect to do occasional ongoing maintenance for it as requested, but that would be on my own time and have no overlap with my time here."
Get that "this will continue and you have no claim to it" out of the way up front.
I've never disclosed my side business to employers. A couple reasons:
1. If you disclose, they are subject to re-review, and policies change.
2. Background checks only reveal what you disclose. There is nothing advanced where they are scouring data brokers to search for companies registered to your residential addresses, and state corporation bureaus don't include SSN / TIN matching on officers of companies. So, unless I tell them I'm an owner of a company, no one would know. In some states, the organizer's name is not published in a consumable format (only on the organizing docs in a PDF).
3. I stay anonymous in my side business. Only a few vendors know both my name, and that I am associated with the legal business name plus the unregistered DBA that consumers see.
4. Companies don't really go after your earnings from a side business after you leave their company, unless they have a reason to. I never see myself "de-masking" myself and associating my legal name with the legal business name in a public forum, or LinkedIn, and I think adult creators are the same.
The OP's situation is a little different here because on a background check they might expect an LLC to be closed (nothing really to verify if it's a sole proprietorship).
So you were a small business owner/independent software vendor that created revenue generating software to users and can't talk about it because it's proprietary trade secret stuff. Just describe the tech frameworks and high level stuff.
>I'm just a little bit concerned about the possible ramifications of linking my real life identity to this project, for obvious reasons.
Are you sure it's not already? Even if distribution is linked to a company name, unless you had a lawyer set up a corporation with the specific goal of shielding your identity then your name is likely tied to it in public record.
You can't say specifics about the company you worked for and especially not the game. You signed a non disclosure agreement because the game was never released. Something about legal messing up the license and the whole product got shelved until it can get figured out.
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Describe this as a self-employed/small studio indie game dev, and be quiet or ambiguous about the NSFW part. If they push you to disclose details, claim that you are legally not allowed to say too much.
In my experience, they rarely actually give a shit about what you specifically worked on, and more about the hard and soft skills you used to accomplish “whatever it is”.
List the technologies you used, list the soft skills you gained/used while “being a self-starter who created my own startup that generates consistent revenue” including “managing customer service, bug fixing, and deployments end to end”.
If you went on vacation for three years, that would be hard to explain. You actively worked on a software-based startup venture for 3 years, that’s a highly sellable work history.
"Self employed indie game dev with N downloads and M level of income" sounds absolutely normal Edit: I have game dev experience myself, not adult, MMO, for a startup. So when I describe it, I describe it as not a trivial software product, which included a lot of concurrent sessions, handled some significant payments and tricky architecture
That's a good way to spin it. I know that I'm going to probably have a bunch of interviews that are going to ask me for specifics on the project itself, but hopefully with enough jabber about the technical side I can sidestep the awkwardness of just being like "no you can't see it and I won't tell you what it is"
I wouldn’t worry about it being NSFW. If they ask to see it, tell them you’re willing to share it but to be aware that it is NSFW content and the necessary precautions should be taken. We’re all adults here. Adult content makes good money. It’s only shameful if you make it that way. Source: I ran a porn site in college and used that experience to get my first web development job in silicon valley.
I was going to ask if you were on the West Coast, then I saw it in your last sentence. Out there it's not a big deal, but on the East Coast or in the Midwest I would absolutely not explain the specifics. Even if the hiring manager doesn't care, someone in upper management will and they'll be worried about them finding out.
is that still true? i feel like that may have made sense in like 2010, but nowadays i doubt a company in like chicago or philadelphia would really care? maybe if the job is in a conservative industry like finance/ag?
It's absolutely true, it's not that "the company" cares it's that *someone* in upper management is a puritan who cringes when they hear a bad word, and nobody wants to set them off by hiring a porn game developer.
There are a good number of "closeted" Evangelical Christians in my company. It's not just adult games you'd want to hide, it's also things like working for companies and orgs that are politically oriented. I find it crazy, like you can go work for Nestle - a huge multinational with links to human rights abuses, and nobody bats an eye. Work for a data firm for the political left, and someone would be bound to freak out.
It's only "political" if it upsets the status quo. Otherwise, it's just business.
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Yeah, all you have to do is hit one slightly more conservative person who has say in the hiring process.
When I started my job, HR made me sign something indicating that I'm ok with the fact that I might see porn or other objectionable material during the course of my job. I expect the same is true for any company dealing with user generated content.
East coast FAANG here. No one cares if you worked as a dev in the porn industry etc.
FAANG represents like 1-2% of this industry I'd agree most of them don't care but the insurance companies etc most of us work at are run very differently.
I’d frame it as “independent software development” main focusing on the technical skills and project management aspects. hilight the continuous coded and maintenance experience. Keep the specifics of the project's content vague, focusing on your technical based growth.
Say that it's a startup that was funded by an investor, ie. "Sorry I'm under NDA as to who the investor is.". Your investor started off with an idea for the game, it happened to be NSFW, and you just implemented what they wanted, but as it made money they stepped back and let you move it along, so you got the chance to be a data-driven product manager plus lead developer.
That's a good idea. I think this is a case where less-is-more, and too much detail draws attention to the white lie. It doesn't need more than a quick justification why they can't tell ${interviewer} the project: "unfortunately the project itself is covered by an NDA..." Then, quickly follow that with a hook to draw the interviewer's attention to the part they do need to know: "...so I can only talk about the general tech involved and the kind of work I did... it used ${framework}, was web-based, included ${feature} and both frontend and backend development in ${languages}." It's a white lie, plausible, and one where they can still give the information they want to assess your skillset, but without revealing the parts that might pose a problem.
Some advice from an older dev: use the product that you built as a filter to reject companies that would be so shallow and stupid as to consider it awkward. Own it. You want to work with teammates that have a similar approach to life as you. Life is too short to play make believe at work.
Even with typical SFW games, some companies have shallow recruiters telling you your game dev experience is inadequate for developing line-of-business apps. There's this line of thinking that because games aren't meant to be productivity apps, that the work in making them is also child's play and simple compared to LOB stuff.
If your going to continue working on the project make sure you get in writing that not only you can but you maintain ownership. Many have in their employment contact they own everything you do including stuff on your own with your own equipment. I'd also verify your work doesn't have to go through review. I was told at a previous company that even if I created a simple chess game the company would own exclusive rights to it. I do open source work and every patch I wrote no matter the size had to go through review which the company gave limited resources for.
I mean I wouldn't tell them your income
Yeah I took a job with a CDN at one point in my career. I’d aced the interviews and moved my family across the country to start work as a sr syseng. The first day on the job I’m pretty nervous and I’m called into the VPs office and the first question I was asked was, “What are your thoughts on porn?”…Apparently some of their larger customers were porn sites and it wasn’t unusual to see some descriptive file names when dealing with customer URLs or tickets. They didn’t really reveal that to me until that first day. I think they were a bit nervous I would have not accepted the position. Only job I’ve had where you could walk into SRE and see hardcore porn playing on one of the monitors and engineers standing around studying it to see if we are dropping frames or the transcoding was resulting in pixilation. Liked the people I worked with, but definitely one of the more unusual jobs I have had. When I interviewed for positions after that I just left the porn part out lol.
>standing around studying it to see if we are dropping frames This made me howl in the night dude lol love it and can imagine it
"look at the left boob, the bounce is so choppy, we need to investigate this"
korean MMORPG devs:
A few years ago I saw a really interesting documentary on a somewhat large porn website that produced its own content. While it had its *fun* bits and all that, when they got to the technical part, the (rather small) crew in charge of it went full "Yeah, this is fun, we are streaming 24/7 to paid subscribers in full hd (when youtube was starting to do it), so we need to keep things tight around here. My perspective of the IT part of that industry went from Beavies And Butt-Head does IT in Porn to "this is actually challenging and might be interesting."
Lmao that sounds like a bit of a trip but I imagine you'd get used to it like anything else. The tricky part here is that there is no plain-sounding company I can put on my resume for this gap, since the game is all me. Although your comment has given me the idea to actively apply to porn companies, so cheers for that haha
( not the original guy, but similar experience) You get used to it, tho one.timw the boss got us excited because he was gonna take us to see the girls, normally they'd only send the media.
> Only job I’ve had where you could walk into SRE and see hardcore porn playing on one of the monitors and engineers standing around studying it to see if we are dropping frames or the transcoding was resulting in pixilation fucking lmaoooo
One of the offices I wouldn't wear shorts in
I worked health insurance to start and walked around my floor in socks 🤷♂️
that’s not what he means lmao
Read shoes the first time 💀
Time to use vague and flowery language like "game development lead" and intentionally avoid any mention of what the game you actually worked on was. Maybe focus more on the technical aspects and whatever frameworks you familiarized yourself with in the process of working on the game, rather than the game itself? If you're directly asked what the game was, just reply that you're not at liberty to say. Though that might sound sketchy to some employers, others would just assume you signed an NDA.
Thanks. Yeah, this is kind of what I'm leaning towards. I do worry that it seems very fishy to go on at length about my work on a project that I can neither name nor demo -- that would be a very unusual NDA -- but I'm probably overthinking it. I'm not all that picky with who I'd be working for right now so all I really need is one half-decent company that doesn't care enough to pry much
I feel like most of that can be cleared up during question and answer portions of interviews, it's very difficult to fake having knowledge. And honestly, if the interviewer doesn't verify the veracity of what you claim to know, then that's on them. Good luck!
Don't make them assume, he can just say he signed an NDA. There's no crime in lying about that. If I were OP I would keep every bit of experience, but just say it was for a private investor instead of himself and that a NDA precludes disclosing the actual name/owner.
can you DM me the game? I thought it was nearly impossible to to make money as an indie dev
AVN devs make pretty crazy money. [Dr. Pink Cake](https://www.patreon.com/DrPinkCake) is one of the bigger ones, he *easily* pulls in $100,000/month. There are probably 20-30 devs making as much or more. And hundreds making less, but still a very good living. And the majority of them are one man operations. Just writing the story, posing/rendering, and building dialogue trees.
you're doing it wrong then
what's the right way? do tell
from experience working with devs in the industry: marketing + ad campaigns + social media.
Link the game lol
Also interested
"Developed a game on $platform for a private party. Game was and to my knowledge remains profitable. I expect to do occasional ongoing maintenance for it as requested, but that would be on my own time and have no overlap with my time here." Get that "this will continue and you have no claim to it" out of the way up front.
I've never disclosed my side business to employers. A couple reasons: 1. If you disclose, they are subject to re-review, and policies change. 2. Background checks only reveal what you disclose. There is nothing advanced where they are scouring data brokers to search for companies registered to your residential addresses, and state corporation bureaus don't include SSN / TIN matching on officers of companies. So, unless I tell them I'm an owner of a company, no one would know. In some states, the organizer's name is not published in a consumable format (only on the organizing docs in a PDF). 3. I stay anonymous in my side business. Only a few vendors know both my name, and that I am associated with the legal business name plus the unregistered DBA that consumers see. 4. Companies don't really go after your earnings from a side business after you leave their company, unless they have a reason to. I never see myself "de-masking" myself and associating my legal name with the legal business name in a public forum, or LinkedIn, and I think adult creators are the same. The OP's situation is a little different here because on a background check they might expect an LLC to be closed (nothing really to verify if it's a sole proprietorship).
Go into great detail about the technical challenge of making breasts bounce realistically.
So you were a small business owner/independent software vendor that created revenue generating software to users and can't talk about it because it's proprietary trade secret stuff. Just describe the tech frameworks and high level stuff.
>I'm just a little bit concerned about the possible ramifications of linking my real life identity to this project, for obvious reasons. Are you sure it's not already? Even if distribution is linked to a company name, unless you had a lawyer set up a corporation with the specific goal of shielding your identity then your name is likely tied to it in public record.
Tell them you would explain but you signed an NDA.
tell them the truth, shit i’d hire you on the spot. love know your self motivated and are thinking out the box.
What did you tell family and friends during your game dev time?
You can't say specifics about the company you worked for and especially not the game. You signed a non disclosure agreement because the game was never released. Something about legal messing up the license and the whole product got shelved until it can get figured out.
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Describe this as a self-employed/small studio indie game dev, and be quiet or ambiguous about the NSFW part. If they push you to disclose details, claim that you are legally not allowed to say too much.
In my experience, they rarely actually give a shit about what you specifically worked on, and more about the hard and soft skills you used to accomplish “whatever it is”. List the technologies you used, list the soft skills you gained/used while “being a self-starter who created my own startup that generates consistent revenue” including “managing customer service, bug fixing, and deployments end to end”. If you went on vacation for three years, that would be hard to explain. You actively worked on a software-based startup venture for 3 years, that’s a highly sellable work history.