I am a college freshman looking for game-development internships for the coming summer. To showcase my past experience in game development, I have a game on which I worked for about 2 years during high school, but was unable to complete due to several reasons. I have a twitter account that has pictures and clips from the game. And overall, the clips of gameplay I uploaded on the account demonstrate my skillset in game-development. Should I include it on my resume? (I am a little hesitant since I never completed the game...) If yes, then how do I present it???
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3Does this answer your question? Should I include unfinished/cancelled projects to my portfolio?– gnatFeb 27 at 11:27
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4Does it have source code that people can look at? Anything at all that you can show? Put it on your CV. An unfinished game is a lot better than nothing at all.– gnasher729Feb 27 at 16:18
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One can list the skills used. Although gaming doesn't sound serious, there are many computer-related skills you may have picked up.– JosephDoggieFeb 27 at 19:37
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Would you mind candidly adding a couple of the major reasons you did not finish the game here? I think it would really help the answers. For example, if it's "I stopped having as much free time to work on it" or "I realized some things were incorrect, and I didn't have time to rewrite it", I think those are a perfect opportunity to present the project to employers as "here's what I learned by working on this project".– BlackhawkMar 1 at 21:26
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It's worth recognizing that many people "in the workplace" join teams that work on very large multi-year projects, and most will leave before the project is finished. While abandoning a personal project might be perceived as laziness or emotional immaturity, I think it's way more likely that prospective employers will be interested in what you WERE able to accomplish, and what skills or lessons you learned along the way.– BlackhawkMar 1 at 21:29
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3 Answers
I also think you should list it, especially when having no prior work experience and looking for an internship.
It shows your interest in the topic.
Be prepared for questions like "Why didn't you finish the project?" or similar.
List and describe all the subtasks that were part of that project. The fact that you didn't finish it is really not that relevant, what is important is that you can put it all in context.
So many project that companies start are never finished. Look at the current trend of "unfinished" games being released only to have to be updated later.
During your project, you learnt things, you solved problems, you used new technologies. Share what you gained from the experience.
Just because it wasn't fully finished and polished, doesn't mean that it wasn't a valuable experience worth sharing.
