When was the last time you shared your work and something terrible happened?
Did you put your music up on Soundcloud only to have the entire internet rise up against you in a grand revolt, chanting the words “no more video game music!” ?
Likely not.
Even still, many people in the game industry are downright terrified of promoting themselves and their work. Frankly, they are selling themselves short by pretending that they’re not an “expert” or “authority” in their field, even though they already have tons of experience and know-how.
I’ve definitely been guilty of this, and if you’re a human, so have you.
If nothing bad will happen to us if we simply share our work or spread our knowledge, why don’t more of us do it? Why don’t we teach others what we know? Why are we so damned scared?
Well, on top of the general fear of rejection, we’re scared that people will discover that we don’t have all the answers or aren’t masters of our craft.
Maybe you don’t have a college degree, so your hard-won skills/knowledge aren’t worth anything to anyone.
Or maybe you just don’t have your Masters degree yet, so you're not really an expert.
Bullshit.
Anytime those thoughts enter your head, you’re giving the middle finger to everyone in your industry and saying “I don’t want to participate. I don’t want to share my knowledge. I enjoy holding everyone else back."
So how do we share our stuff without being sleazy? How can we teach people in our industry about what we do?
It’s quite simple really:
JUST DO IT ANYWAY.
As creatives, we have a habit of underselling ourselves and our own experiences. We believe our knowledge and skills are commonplace, when they are anything but.
If we think “well, everyone knows that MP3s don’t loop. You’ve gotta use OGGs to get compressed audio to loop. Duh.” the less likely it is that others will ever learn that tidbit of knowledge, thus holding everyone else back.
Start a blog, a Youtube channel, a Periscope channel, a Twitch stream, a newsletter, a Twitter account, ANYTHING that will allow you to add value to the world around you. Share and show what you’ve been up to and you’ll be shocked at how many people come out of the woodwork to support you.
Stop holding yourself and the industry back. Show your stuff. Share your knowledge and be the expert that this industry is so desperately in need of.
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