It may have more to do with the quality of your code. I'm now in a hiring position (Director of DevOps), and I can tell you, seeing a game in a Github wouldn't turn me off at all, it would intrigue me. But I would also take a hard look at the code. Is it quality? Is it well written, well organized, good naming, good clear commenting, well documented? A lot of people let quality slip on their personal projects - and then if you share that, that makes a bad first impression.
And I should also say I have for the most part given up ever getting a computer job, I do a couple of hail marys here and there, but mostly these days just focus on the niche highly undesired things I actually love (like elisp and supercollider), instead of forcing myself to enjoy react or svelte or whatever. It has made me quite happy to give up, I just like to learn and make art, I can be happy as a lowly receptionist if I can keep doing that. :)
A mobile app , even if it's a game, is still a mobile app.
What does the rest of your resume look like, did you finish college? I got to 6 figures sans degree, but college might help
These days, as I have been told, getting an email back is less merit based than it is playing the right game for the initial algorithmic screening. Once you get through that though and do interviews, your merits become a lot more important, but the initial step is huge. It has taken me years to get to the point where I get an email back like... 1% of the time. Its a big black box, but you have all the room to experiment with it!
I am really happy for your success though!
It makes me wonder if there's something else going on here. Are you applying to positions that aren't a good fit for your experience or skills? Like only applying to senior positions when you've only had a few years in the industry or only applying to positions in languages you've never worked in (but want to) ?
I really struggle to believe that sharing code from personal game projects or music tools would hurt (rather than help) your application. (Unless, as mentioned in my other comment, you really cut corners in those personal projects.)
Edit: I see, reading your other comments I see you mention that you're in a receptionist job right now and I think that resolves my confusion. If you don't have any actual work experience, yeah, getting that first job can still be really hard. Everyone wants senior engineers, no one wants to hire juniors. Which fucking sucks, because we have to hire juniors for their to be seniors. But, again, putting good code you've written - even games and music tools - should help not hurt you. So I would examine the code you've written for those tools and make sure it is good, solid code. If not, take some time to clean it up and then try again. (If you can find that time.)
> Are you applying to positions that aren't a good fit for your experience or skills?
I just applied to Google. Specifically, I applied for their lowest-level position, L3.
I "passed" the algorithmic interviews and was told to expect a round of lower-pressure "team fit" interviews the following week. Instead, after multiple weeks of zero interviews, they let me know they were rejecting me instead. So I somehow managed to fail a round of interviews I wasn't even given.
This is what a competitive hiring market looks like?
Getting an interview with a normal company is pretty easy though
What's the relevance? Most people won't work there, so the hiring market is competitive? Isn't competitive?
If you meant to talk about me personally, that statement already doesn't apply to me.
I landed my first part time gigs from a software meetup, and then got a full-time job from networking at a computing conference.
I wouldn’t waste any time at all on emails or recruiters.