Free Member Newsletter - April 2024 (Patreon)

Hello Free Members,

Every month, around this time - we're going to post this Noclip Newsletter to let you know what we've been up, what plans we're ready to tell you about, and to offer a place for comments and feedback.

I'm hoping our regular Patrons can also see these posts but Patreon has been confusing in regardso I'm just gonna post it and see if they get updated... (UPDATE: they don't!)

The whole point of the free member tier is to make sure that those of who aren't ready to commit to a paid members, and those of you have been paid members in the past, can still be connected to the work we do here and lend us your feedback. Noclip has always been a project for a small, dedicated community who equally care about documenting and preserving the history of games. So I'm excited to finally have a way to talk to you directly.

Alight, there's a lot this month so let's get going.

We Released our PENTIMENT Documentary

Our Pentiment documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffIdgOBYwbc) went live this month and we've been pleased with the reaction. When we take on these projects we do so with the knowledge that it may not be for a massive audience. So to see the doc blaze past 100k views in the first few days was really satisfying. It's another demonstration of our commitment to covering weird little indie games - I guess even if they come from large AAA studios owned by the biggest software company in the world!

100 VIDEOS published on the Archive Channel

Yesterday we passed 100 uploads on the Noclip Archive channel (https://www.youtube.com/@NoclipArchive). This is just the tip of the spear but we've already saved a bunch of 1080p E3 history, posted dozens of lost TV Commercials, found a bunch of lost interviews and I've even edited a few GameSpot features from the raw tapes.

Next week we'll be publishing a video about what we've learned on those first 100 tapes. The best stuff we saved, the mistakes we've made, and what the plan is for the next 100000 tapes.

Dear Dwyery Podcast is launching - SUBSCRIBE TO THE FEED NOW

My new podcast show DEAR DWYERY is launching next week with an episode on the design of Balatro. This podcast is produced by our own Jesse Guarascia and is designed as a documentary series in it's own right, with scripts and plenty of quality editing. By now the trailer episode should be searchable on most podcast platforms but here are the hard links to the most popular feeds.

We've got episode on Pacific Drive, New Blood Interactive, Warframe and plenty more coming down the pipe. Expect episodes every 2 weeks while we get used to the format and gauge audience reaction.

RSS FEED: https://feeds.libsyn.com/510433
APPLE PODCASTS: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dear-dwyery/id1743075225
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/21q62MfZjjCvcpO7engYxT?si=753537ee4ace45df

IN THE EDIT : Hyper Light Ep3, Dwarf Fortress, Music of Wipeout and more...

We're currently editing the third episode of Hyper Light Development (99% done) our massive documentary on Dwarf Fortress which may likely going to be a three-part series now (60% done) and a short documentary on the sound and music of Wipeout (75% done).

We've also been working on a bunch of Noclip Crew stuff and of course the Noclip Crewcast. If you ever feel like you're out of step with us, subscribe to the two of those.

Oh and we've a few things to announce...

ANNOUNCING: The Making of DREDGE

This week I sat down the three of the developers from Black Salt Games to talk about the development of their freshman indie hit; Dredge. This was originally supposed to be a sit-down interview at GDC before I got sick, but we were forced to do it remotely.

The good news is that that gave us the opportunity to talk to more people and for longer so the final doc will be better as a result. Also the team at Black Salt bought new webcams and microphones especially for the interview which was very considerate of them. They also supplied us with a veritable treasure trove of development assets so the doc is going to be a truly deep dive into the game's design. Also I've learned from both the interview and this post that it's impossible avoid water/boat/fishing idioms so I'm going to stop trying.

It's gonna be a good one.

PATRON GOODIES for April 2024

This ain't an upsell, but just in case you're interested in some of the patron exclusives we posted this month, here's a little list.

Project Postmortem: Pentiment:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/project-102615921

April 2024 Patron Show - The Post-Surgery Pivot:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/april-2024-show-102557716

Animating Pentiment - Bonus Scene:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/animating-bonus-101980429

Josh Sawyer on Designing Pentiment - Extended Interview:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/josh-sawyer-on-101984886

Hannah Kennedy on Art Directing Pentiment - Extended Interview:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/hannah-kennedy-101984884

NEXT MONTH...

There are still a few secret projects we've told the Patrons that we're not ready announce more wildly yet but expect to hear about those soon. We're making our way through all these edits, launching the new podcast and doing a lot of organizing for the rest of the year.

We have shoots in the summer and autumn, so for the next month we're not flying much. There are also three BIG retrospectives we are working on - one is going to launch this summer and the others in the winter. I have one day trip to Seattle for one of the unannounced projects but aside from that we're just working on finishing our currently slate of docs and filming the stand-ups for them.

In the meantime if you have any thoughts / comments / suggestions, please stick them in the comments below. We really appreciate you keeping in contact with us and hope you've enjoyed our work this past month.

See you in May!

Danny