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Month: June 2026

Don’t Get Distracted

Published by Paolo Gambardella on 05/06/2026

This post was originally written in Italian by Paolo Gambardella. It has been translated by an AI agent and may contain inaccuracies.

This week there was the Sony State of Play, and the new God of War was announced. The game features Kratos’s wife as the protagonist, with a cube as her companion — not quite what you’d expect. After the event I was scrolling through LinkedIn, and all the “experts” had their take. The character is wrong. The cube makes no sense. Swapping the protagonist’s gender has never worked for other franchises.

Watching the reaction of someone who actually worked on the game is worth more than a hundred LinkedIn posts put together. Honestly, I’m a bit tired of people exploiting the algorithm’s tendency to push outrage content. Especially when those people don’t make video games — they’re not in the trenches. I’d rather hear the passion of someone who actually works on games for a living.

The other thing I want to point out is that Santa Monica Studio has a more than proven track record of making successful games. We should all respect expertise and acknowledge that people who know more than us are probably right. I’m in the process of unfollowing podcasts and channels that thrive on controversy, because they distract from what actually matters.

Video Game: A Complicated Reality

Published by Paolo Gambardella on 02/06/2026

This post was originally written in Italian by Paolo Gambardella. It has been translated by an AI agent and may contain inaccuracies.

The issue of creating and distributing video games is a complex reality. Talk to anyone working in the industry and you’ll always hear the same thing: “making games is hard.”

During the years when video games received massive investments (especially during COVID), an illogical mindset crept into the industry: treating this delicate reality as if it were a complicated problem.

Complicated problems are solved with the left side of the brain. Building a rocket to go to Mars is a complicated problem. You need experts who, with the right knowledge and reasoning, will get you there. Once the process is found, the problem is solved — barring human error, of course.

A complex reality, on the other hand, requires entirely different skills. Skills for which the right side of the brain is better suited. It requires building certain relationships — both with people and with creative work. There is no single method, no formula. Companies that succeed and rely solely on formulas eventually pay the price.

Game creation and distribution cannot be treated as a complicated problem: it must be respected as a complex reality. Otherwise, it boils down to a game of stolen ideas and performance marketing tricks that only bring in money in the short term. Then, inevitably, someone comes along who is willing to work with fewer protections and longer hours, and overtakes us.

Sometimes I get the feeling that we need more humanists and artists, and fewer mathematical minds and business people, among our executive ranks.

Testimonials for Freelancers

Published by Paolo Gambardella on 01/06/2026

This post was originally written in Italian by Paolo Gambardella. It has been translated by an AI agent and may contain inaccuracies.

In recent years I’ve watched talented, experienced colleagues — people with years under their belt — lose their jobs overnight. The game they were working on didn’t sell well enough, the studio shifted strategy, or the publisher pulled the funding. The games industry is hit-based.

In this context, the “classic” path — find a studio, work there, build a career — is less secure than it looks. It carries real risks that people often don’t factor in, because we’re conditioned to see a permanent contract as the gold standard of job security, especially here in Europe.

When you work for a company, you have a single client: that company.

If things go wrong for them, they go wrong for you too. When you work as a freelancer, you have multiple clients. Losing one is a problem, but it’s not the end. The risk is spread.

But freelancing isn’t something that just happens by itself. You have to build it deliberately, over time. You need a system: a way to find new clients, keep existing ones, and make yourself visible to people who don’t know you yet.

The crux of it is this: the right clients need to know you exist. Since you’re almost always under NDA, you can’t show the games you’ve been working on, you can’t mention the titles, sometimes you can’t even say who you’ve worked for. The portfolio — the main tool most creative professionals use to present themselves — becomes all but useless for us.

The simplest solution is the client testimonial.

When a project wraps up, before the collaboration closes for good, ask your client to write a few lines about you. Three sentences is enough: what you did, how it went, what they took away from it. What you get is the voice of someone who’s worked with you and can say, publicly, that you’re worth hiring.

It works because it lowers the perceived risk for a new client. Someone who doesn’t know you has no way to evaluate you directly. But if they can see that someone else has already done that evaluation for them — and had a positive experience — the leap of faith becomes much smaller.

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