Does anyone know ways to use GML programming skills to find or make work, such as freelance work using Game Maker?
I was thinking of doing freelance game prototyping work for people looking for a quick mock-up and getting the feel for their game, that can be done within a week or a few days.
If anyone has an idea, could someone please help me out? Thank you.
Personally, I started out using GameMaker as a hobby, and I've worked on some small projects for other people, but I eventually got hired as a website and database programmer rather than as a game programmer.
Unless you find a team that is already using GameMaker for its project(s), your experience with GML may not count for much on its own, as the language is only useful inside GameMaker itself. However, understanding GML means that you also have basic programming skills, and once you know one way of programming it goes much quicker to learn another.
GameMaker made programming easy and interesting for me, but other languages gave me the tools needed for non-game projects.
A company may not hire you based on the fact that you know GameMaker specifically, but it may hire you because you know programming. It could be wise to research other programming languages and learn the basics of how they work.
If you are to sell your skills to a client, they will likely care more about the end result than the exact road you took to get there. For example, if the job is to make a game that works on Android phones, that is something GameMaker can do, and by extension it is something you could do.
If GameMaker doesn't seem like the tool for the job, use what you learned from GameMaker to help you understand a different program/framework. Even if you focus on GameMaker, you may need other languages if you are to set up an online game server or scoreboard.
A lot of successful games have been made with GameMaker, so it's definitely possible to make a living by using it. The Showcase section on the official homepage shows us games like Hotline Miami and Undertale - big hits in the Steam store.
This article from GameMakerBlog.com lists a few people who's made it big. Most important, I would say, is "True Valhalla", who gives the community running updates on how his business is going. You can find his blog linked in the article. He has written a book about how to make money by selling apps and games, which could be well worth checking out.
If you wish to focus on freelance work using GameMaker alone, then make sure to understand the ins and outs of the program so that you can be as flexible as possible. Make sure that you understand how the movement functions work, how to do collision checking, how to work with data structures, how to work with views and surfaces, and so on.
The technical skill doesn't need to be perfect, but you need to have an idea of what to do and how in order to realize your ideas within a reasonable time frame. Practice until you feel comfortable taking a game from concept to demo in a short time, and build a collection of examples and engines that could be useful to you. If you can reuse a script, that's a lot better than writing it from scratch for every new game you make.
Finally: Marketing yourself. In order to become attractive to potential clients, it helps to demonstrate your expertise by publishing your work online. Make yourself visible. Post screenshots, videos, and playable versions of games you've made. You could blog about game development, or build up a small profile by helping people online and getting credit for it.
Any project you can point to and say "I worked on this" makes you a more credible developer. If you are just starting out you may not have any projects yet, so one suggestion would be to make a small mini-game and publish it in an app store. You may even publish it for free. For your first games, exposure could be as valuable as sales.
