This post was originally written in Italian by Paolo Gambardella. It has been translated by an AI agent and may contain inaccuracies.
There’s a worrying trend that has quite literally exploded over the past few months, at least in my social feeds: posting drafts and half-finished work.
I see established professionals posting rough gameplay examples, presumably to catch the eye of a potential client or employer. I see junior people posting screenshots from 3D authoring tools or game engines, probably to demonstrate their skills.
Noise. Nothing but noise.
I understand the anxiety around wanting to carve out a place in the industry, and I’m all for the drive to get things done — but the problem is what we’re actually showing.
- If your goal is to develop your indie game, think about serving an audience rather than collecting reactions on LinkedIn
- If you’re looking for a job, nobody’s going to hire you just because you can open a piece of software.
The reality of the industry
I was reading yesterday this very interesting post by an industry leader — one of the most clear-eyed takes I’ve seen in months. The reality is that we’re in a moment of consolidation (not a crash, as some people like to say), where the investor narrative can’t promise growth anymore. There’s an enormous amount of talent out there looking for work right now, which makes it genuinely hard to stand out.
This naturally leads people to think that standing out and differentiating yourself is what matters. And in a way, that’s true — but I don’t think speed is the key factor here. Posting half-finished work does get your voice out there sooner, yes. But it also shows your scrappy, unpolished side.
So how do you actually stand out?
I don’t have a magic formula, but I’ve been in the industry for years and built my own position from scratch, so I do know a thing or two. The most important thing is the relationships you build with other people — anything you can do to build them better is worth doing.
If you’re an indie developer looking to get visibility for your project, you need to do everything you can to connect with your early adopters as soon as possible. Find out where they are, talk to them, genuinely try to understand how they play, what they buy and why. If you’re putting together a video to grab attention, do it with the right level of polish.
If you’re a professional without much experience, rather than showing things that frankly anyone can do (look, here’s my axe on ArtStation!), put in the work to figure out what makes you unique, and show that in the best way you can. Nobody cares about the how — they care about the end result and why you believe it’s strong.
If you’re an experienced professional, there’s no point showing off that you built a new prototype in a few minutes. Instead, focus on helping people understand why working with you is a good idea. Nurture the relationships you already have, teach what you genuinely know — videos work well for this. Help people see that you’ve learned to think deeply about certain things.
Less slop, less spam, and more real connections and genuine knowledge-sharing!