Hello From Oakland! Here's What's Going On... (Patreon)

Hey Patrons,

We'll have a Patron Report up on Monday that will list off what's been going on for the past two months but there's so much has happened, and I'm conscious of our radio silence, that I wanted to post a quick update from Oakland filling you in on what's been happening. Because a lot has been happening. So let's get to it!

Internet Arriving Friday & Normal Service Resumes

The truck came to our place in Maryland around three weeks ago. Around that time myself and Jeremy were in New York filming our doc on the ESRB (surprise if you didn't listen to the patron-only update podcast) and then I had to quickly pop over to Pittsburgh to get some more filming of our AbleGamers series done. We were filming at a hospital and so it had been planned months earlier. The timing wasn't ideal as I had to then drive 7 hours back to Maryland to fly across the country with my family (including a cat and a baby) but it's all worked out in the end. 

The truck took another week to arrive so we were sleeping on air mattresses in an empty house for most of last week. But it's all been unloaded now, we've got about half the boxes unpacked. The internet should be here on Friday at which point normal Noclip service shall resume. I've already got the PC set up with the Synologys up and running as I had to render some stuff for clearance almost immediately. We also have our Oakland mailing address ready which is in the same location it was when we first started out!

As the moving dust was settling we took a day off after arriving to go to the ballpark with some old local friends and some new ones too. For those of you following my work since before GameSpot it's very strange to once again be neighbors with Tamoor. Albeit several thousand miles from where we were originally in London.

The Studio

I'm 99% sure I've found our spot. It's a big open plan office with a bonus side room which works well for podcasting. It's in a secure location a stones throw from the Bay Bridge which means getting guests over from San Francisco would be as easy as possible while still paying East Bay commercial rent. But the most exciting thing for me personally is that it's run by a friend who operates a game studio out here. So not only would it suit our needs in terms of somewhere to film, build sets and host podcasts - but it also plugs Noclip in to a big community of developers, games preservationists, filmmakers and more. Easy guests for the podcast, and good people to have around to film short bonus videos. Excited to share more soon.

Jeremy Helping With Our Editing Backlog

The achilles heel of Noclip has always been editing speed. We film a lot, and then it takes me a while to get to it all. This is all going to change as Jeremy is going to be working with Noclip a few days a week. Prior to the change I hired Jeremy for filming and coloring only. But with the new studio (which is like a 15 min walk from his place) he's going to be helping out a lot more. We're going to work out of the studio together a few days a week and he's going to take a bunch of the editing work off of my shoulders. We have a decent backlog of work that needs editing and so making great videos out of all of those is our priority. 

Right now we're working on;

• GDC Videos
• Creative Assembly Doc
• ESRB Doc 

While this month we're also filming;

• History of docs for Bastion, Transistor & Pyre
• A weird little secret project with Edmund McMillen

So there's a lot to keep us busy. The studio won't be ready until the first of November so we're basically heads down on editing for the next four weeks.

The Podcast & More

The other big reason we wanted the studio space was to establish our podcast in earnest. A weekly show where myself and Jeremy talk about the work, video games, movies, editing, and more, alongside a host of guests from both development and the games press. We put the word out for guests and already have some awesome folks lined up for the first few episodes. The plan is to do 3 regular podcasts out of the month, with the forth being for patrons only. No ads on the podcast for anyone.

The other side of this equation was the "bonus channel" I've been teasing for a while. Somewhere for us to publish all the stuff we do that doesn't fit on the regular Noclip channel. I had talked on that most recent podcast upload about what that might be - perhaps a new separate channel, or maybe piled onto the Podcast channel. In the end I've figured out we had the channel all along - my personal YouTube channel. It already has a build in audience and the work I was going to do fits nicely into what's already gone up there in the past. So we're gonna be shooting some more "behind the scenes" bits on there and resurrecting some stuff I did before Noclip. With Jeremy's help I'm confident we can bring back The Point's replacement for good. Since The Point stopped on GameSpot the quality on YouTube has skyrocketed. So we're looking at people like Hbomb and Contrapoints as inspirations for the new show. I'm also hoping to take another swing at O'Carina of Time. In fact we'll be using the studio for a bunch of random, fun livestreaming events too. Extra Life too. I cannot wait to get in there.

Thanks for sticking with us! The best is about to come.

This has been the craziest two months of Noclip's life but I'm really excited about where we're ending up. The purpose of this studio, bringing Jeremy into the fold in a more serious way was to fix the problems we've had since day one; Having a consistent amount of docs hitting the channel all year round, establishing a weekly podcast,  making the best version of my op-ed show we possibly can, and building the community. We're also going to be adding a bunch of patron benefits to the podcast and sub-channel content so keep an eye out for those. The idea is that we become more public facing than we were before, but elevate the voices of our patrons in doing so. 

We're taking a bit of a risk with all of this but it's where I've always wanted Noclip to be and I'm excited with the opportunities that having our space gives us. Not just in terms of getting people to collaborate with us, but also just creatively - having a zone where myself and Jeremy can throw around ideas and come up with something special. 

And we've got some big docs lined up for the next 6 months. Sort of like our first year all over again. Game releases come in cycles and we've got some big stories on the docket.

Expect video updates once I'm able to upload video (I'm currently using an Xfinity hotspot to post this) and the patron report next week. If you have any questions in the meantime, please stick them below. 

Danny