Having just randomly spotted Brian Hook's recent post named 'Grunts vs. Commandos: What Kind of Mercenary Are You?' on the Gaming Mercenaries website, I was alerted to, well, the existence of the site in general, which exists for video game development freelancers to discuss their trade.

It particularly came up because I was checking into the background of DICE speaker Michael John, who posted an introduction there last summer which quite fiercely defines why someone should be carefree: "My experience founding and running a development studio reinforced this feeling. I found the business portion to be tedious, stressful, and distracting from the actual process of making games."

id/Verant veteran Brian Hook has been the stalwart poster in recent weeks/months, though, and his post on health insurance for the contractor is pretty useful: "I would submit that if you asked most independent workers to identify their biggest concerns about their career choice, the top two answers would be some combination of “finding work” and “health insurance”." Interestingly, a commenter asks whether the IGDA could ever help with health insurance for freelancers, a thought-provoking idea!