Game Audio Success Comes to Those Who Wait
You’ve heard it before, but I’ll say it again:
There is no secret ingredient to instant, overnight success.
There just isn’t. Period.
There is a secret to success, but it has nothing to do with speed.
You can't build muscle or a successful career overnight.
The Secret Ingredient for Game Audio Success
What do those who make it in the game audio field have in common?
Is it amazing skill?
Golden ears?
Crazy connections and a lot of luck?
There might be a combination of those things going on but there is a more important secret sauce that inevitably leads to success:
That secret is patience.
“Patience is the core ingredient to success”
Gary Vaynerchuk
Patience is everything; especially in the game audio industry.
As freelancers offering sound and music for games, we have to play the long game.
Why?
Because the process of making games is soooooo slow.
You can't be known overnight for a project that first takes months to complete.
And even once the game has been launched, it might not gain enough traction to reflect positively on you for months or even years.
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The Business of Patience
As game audio professionals, we’re in the business of relationships and reputations and those are two things that simply require time to nurture and grow.
The good news is this:
The rewards for consistently good work in the game industry are slow to accumulate, but they do accumulate!
Let’s run some numbers:
If you snag just one project this year, that's a great start.
If you knock that project out of the park and the team you worked with likes you, you’re almost guaranteed the project they have planned for the next year.
If you do a second project with them, someone will hear about or notice that your work is good and come to you with another project in the second year.
You just doubled your income.
Imagine your work is noticed by twice as many studios the year after that…
Do you see where I’m going with this?
Takeaway
If you invest in doing quality work and stick with it, you WILL get a return on that investment.
It just requires a little patience.
There is no substitute for your relationships and your reputation (both of which can suffer terribly from poor communication) and the hard truth is that those two things can't be bought nor will they magically appear after just a few weeks of spamming your reel on social media every day.
However, one job can multiply into many if you constantly deliver for your customers and become known for doing good work.
Be patient, put in the work, and you WILL be rewarded!
P.S. I know exercising patience is easy… in theory.
In reality, it’s hard to sit and wait, especially if you have bills to pay.
And it’s also almost entirely impossible to be patient if you don’t have a real plan that you can trust to help you achieve the goals you’ve set for your business.
I created The Game Audio Pro with the goal of helping others understand the fundamental business skills that are often the difference between success and failure for freelancers.
If you're ready to take your game audio career to the next level, download my guide to The Most Important Mindset for Game Audio Success.