I think it's irrational to expect a developer to just take a plot from someone new to the industry and build a game around it, no matter how good it might be.
I feel like any kind of word would suit this sentence, but not "irrational". Chosing a plot or game design (or anything in the world, to be honest) regarless of it's quality, and only based on authors fame is pure irrationality. There is no logic in this action, and the only possible motivation could be "too lazy to check the actual work, so i rather believe that famous person will do well".
If you coming to some eating establishment, for example, and see there a most famous cook in the world who offers you a potato that's not even cooked, and an unknown person who offers you a good meal - would you still chose a potato because the person who selling it to you are famous?
Rational, logical behavior would be checking quality of work and picking it based on that quality, and not on worker's personality.
It has to either be a startup fully equipped with programmers and missing ONLY a writer and ideas, which sounds unlikely, or you'd have to be a very big name commanding a market share and bringing fans as automatic sales.
But there is also companies so big, that assigning a few people to the side project won't affect them at all, it's an almost nonexistant risk vs big reward. Yes, fans do some automatic sales, that's why many major franchizes like Star Wars no longer care about quality, but expirience tells that good games still sale more than bad games with existing fanbase.
try to query smaller devs who are less likely to even have HR
I tried, but they usually have the writer for main game they doing right now, and, unlike big companies, have no time or funds to do side projects.
lie if you have to
This is something i won't do. The only kind of things i will ever make up - is my stories. I have a special hatred for all kinds of lies, even the most harmless ones, like flattery. The only expection are fiction, where reader knows that it's not true.
Use your concepts and plots as portfolio that will help you get on board somewhere.
I cannot do that because they are the best of the best i ever created (and maybe even will create). Some of them took more than a decade to achieve the state of perfection. They are too valuable to just post them everywhere.
And, after all, i already have a game where all players were happy with the story. Despite it's being a small rpg from unknown developer, with lots of limitations, and even the story being only a prologue. Do you know many games where people liked not even a full game, but a prologue so much? Now imagine what i can do with at least few people in team and ability to tell whole story?
There's a social network for everything now, right? Game forums, message boards, reddit?
There was a whole paragraph in my letter about why i canno do that. In short - i am not a social person and not a leader. I can give clear directions and cooperate with team well, but i cannot make friends, and cannot bring people together. That is why i am searching for already formed collective. I don't want to lead, i want to just do my part and leave leadership for people who were born for that.
Find ways to adopt your plots and game designs into straight prose.
It will be bad. My expirience allows to tell it very clearly. And i don't want to do anything bad. My skills are unsuited for prose. It's like asking a horror wrtier to write a kid's fairytale - just not his area of expertise. Some birds can swim, but fish will always do it better.
Lastly, it's good to be confident, but saying things like : "Here, i can give them the plot that will easily beat plots of every major franchize of same genre out there. " is not helpful and frankly does not look good when you're trying to make an impression.
I am telling this because it's the only thing in the world i am confident in. In this example, i was speaking about military shooters - and since the release of Spec Ops - the Line there were hardly even just good plots in this kind of games, not even talking about great ones. All major players invested in visuals, but not the story. With such weak competition it will be very easy to beat all of them. Notice that i cannot tell the same about RPG genre, for example - because there is a lot of incredibly strong competitors there (and the best of recently released ones, Disco Elysium, by the way - came out from previously unknown developers - how it's not an example that only skill, and not fame matters?), and i can only hope to be on the same level with them. But overall quality of plots (and even game design) in the industry are quite poor, and it's a fact that hardly anyone will deny - that's why any game with half-decent plot usually instantly receives universal praise. I want to change that, and i know that i can help doing that. Is there anything wrong with it?
I believe that my stories are not just good, but above that. I spent my entire life only mastering this one art to make it possible. You are telling me to not say it... but then, what should i say? This quality of my stories is the only reason why someone should ever think about hiring me. Without them i am nothing but a biological trash, that's not good for even most simple work. So, if the only reason to hire me is quality of my stories being above average ones - what should i say, if i am not allowed to say that?
Let the work speak for itself.
There is a few things in the world that i would want more than this. You have no idea how i wish for someome to finally read my work and see how good it is, so i would not have to tell anything, and let my work speak for me. But how do i convince them to look at it? Even if it takes only a bit of time, like 10 or 20 minutes - i still having zero sucsess in such a simple task.
So English is your main issue? Or are there other requirements you're missing?
Geographical location. Several shipped projects. Education. Maybe something else i forgot about. But English (and any other language except Russian) are the main issue, yes. And it's quite big issue for the writer, because if someone looks for one - they require perfect language skills, and i have them only in Russian.
Of course that's not important for actual work, because it does not affect general plotline at all (it can be explained with very simple words), and all dialogues i write can be corrected to sound better - but it seems like people would rather chose an average writer with great language skill.
CDPR has very specific franchises they focus on: The Witcher and Cyberpunk. That is ALL they make for the time being.
Somehow i have a feeling that even despite release shift majority of work on CP is already over, and from Witcher franchize they are working only on Gwent atm. It seems like a right time to assign some of the people who already did all they could for those games to new jobs, because new game usually starting it's development cycle before current one getting released. I am may be wrong about it, but that's what i am hoping for.