In the gamedev, I would not want to work with someone just because he has built a game on his own. Gamedev is notorious for having a low barrier of entry and then there is an exponential learning curve. I'd rather work with someone who has a deep understanding in some specific area or has worked on a library of some sort. I think there are a lot of other technical fields that work the same.
Shipped games both on teams/companies and individually are game development gold. You will be in if you have shipped titles especially individually or with a small team that is a decent game.
If you have no shipped titles, the second best way is at least game components, networking, game mechanics etc that you can demo.
Personally I only like to work with people that can take a project to ship and are product focused. Gamedevs that don't know the depth and troubles of shipping a title will have to learn that on the company otherwise and usually don't know when to cut/scale correctly the gameplay/mechanic/product etc. A big problem with AAA development and broken systems is the heavy specialization, it is why games come out bugged as there is very little ownership or people that can ship a game solely and understand how all parts connect.
Unless you are only working on triple-A titles, most game companies are small/medium and need shippers that aren't as specialized, especially mobile. Though most people that go into AAA games think they will get to make their game, but in actuality they work on such small parts that they eventually break out into their own smaller studios or indies to build games.
Everyone at a game company wants to build their games, it is why people go into games. For success you have to have shippers who understand the whole shipping adventure that want to come together to get games out the door that each can have input on as a team, but also have the itch scratched that they already have shipped some of their own games and an outlet for creativity if specialization is too heavy on a project. The best game studios and games are developed by smaller teams and key individuals that understand this, especially during pre-production into early production/prototyping/game mechanics, during production and post-production that is where you want more specialization but even then you want people that have shipped.
I think that experience in shipping and experience in maintaining a project is largely different. I'd rather work with someone who has maintained one live project, rather than with someone who has shipped 5. Especially on mobile. Shipping a simple game is not hard. Understanding how much you have fucked up with load times and fps is valuable. Understanding why certain technical and architectural decisions are wrong is valuable. I have rewritten big parts of the game just to fix performance issues even though the team has shipped 5 games before.
> I'd rather work with someone who has maintained one live project, rather than with someone who has shipped 5.
I agree, I coupled shipping with maintaining as I see that as one. Just getting it out in the world isn't enough, updating it, not breaking it, smooth updates for users with little friction, not breaking profiles, no crashes, upgrade/update testing, library/version updates etc are all massively important.
Definitely better to have someone that has done some production on a live state of the game over someone that shipped and forgot, but both are better than no shipped title or production.
