3 Videos Dropping Next Week (March Update #1)

Hey Patrons,

Okay. There's a lot to cover here so let's get into it;

We filmed a secret thing...you'll see it in three days...
First of all I want to give you heads up that there are three videos dropping next week. The first is our Astroneer doc which we filmed at the beginning of February when another project was cancelled. It's our most emotional documentary to date bringing a whole new flavor of storytelling to our channel. It's live on the channel tomorrow. The other two videos are....secret! Actually, they're embargoed. So, I decided to try something new. I felt pretty guilty that we lost a big doc story in January, and while I know many of you appreciate the indie stories like Hades and Astroneer, I went on the hunt to do something with a bigger game. As it happens one game I'd been looking into for a doc later this year was doing a preview event for press and influencers. So myself and Esteban flew to the studio (we paid for it, obviously), and instead of doing the regular press event thing of playing the game and doing a short interview, we basically just filmed the fastest Noclip doc ever in one day. The result is two short videos on the design of an upcoming game. One is REAL SHORT at 5 minutes long. It's a test-bed for making some more viral videos to get more subs in the door on the YouTube channel. The other is about 10-15 minutes long and feels a lot more like the Cory Barlog video which has been really popular. Expect one of those to land on Wednesday once the embargo drops, and the other the following day, or maybe Friday. Special behind-the-scenes video explaining how it all went down for our $5 patrons too.

Noclip @ GDC Livestream Pass (Special Offer)
Remember our Noclip Sessions from 2017? When we filmed a bunch of shorter interviews with a wide range of devs? Well we're doing that again, but much bigger. We've got around twenty interviews lined up with big names, indie folks from Europe, America & Japan talking to us about everything from game design to journalism, representation, unionization and more. Myself, Esteban and Jeremy will all be filming interviews from Monday-Friday which makes this the biggest (most expensive) project we've done in quite a while. And perhaps once the dust has settled, ever. 

My plan for events has always been to hire more people so we can film more behind the scenes stuff for our $5 patrons and perhaps even stream. At GDC we're going to be doing a bit of both so to help with this we're going to be testing out Patreon's new "Special Offer" system to add a bonus to the $10 tier this month. If you're in that tier or above you'll automatically get access to daily live check-ins from the studio we're filming at. You'll get early updates on who we're talking to and get to ask the three of us questions about how it's all going down. You can ask me about who we're going to interview that day, Esteban about his first GDC and Jeremy about how his foot is doing (he legit broke his foot earlier this week - another reason we're flying in Esteban to help!). Anyone else can up their pledge this month and get access to the bonus too. There will be more details once we launch the offer in a week's time but if you have any questions shoot them in the comments below.

Patron Goodies + New Tier
The nature of the February work sort of put a spanner in the works for some of Patron rewards last month as I basically couldn't talk about anything I was working on. Also the editing livestream tier was once again left in the lurch as (a) I was editing gameplay that was embargoed (b) I was editing incredibly emotionally sensitive material in the Astroneer doc and (c) the Hades stuff is really tough to stream because there's just so much of it. So I've come up with a fun solution, and one that will also help me relax and take care of myself during work hours a bit more. We're going to do a monthly "staff party" where I basically relax, play games on a livestream, answer questions and maybe show off some of our work - for the day. This is the new $20 tier and our first staff party will be this Friday (March 8th). These will be available as VODs after the fact too. My ultimate aim is to do them like my old "Community Service" or "Random Encounter" shows on GameSpot back in the day. Get guests in to play from time to time too. 

What else this month? Jeff Gerstmann Podcast for one...
Well you voted  on what you wanted to get from our backlog so the Jeff Gerstmann podcast will be up the week after next. Also edited the Blades doc to try get that out before I head to SxSW (I'm doing a talk and having some meetings) and GDC around the latter half of the month. We'll have a Patron Show once these three videos have landed (it'll be a lot more fun once you see what the game is) and then I look forward to sharing more behind-the-scenes stuff from SxSW and GDC. Not to mention letting you in on the murders row of developers we have lined up for interviews in San Francisco. It turns out we're more popular with devs than we were two years ago! :)

Got any questions, stick in the comments. Hope you're enjoying your Sunday!

Danny

TL:DR
- Astroneer Doc Tomorrow
- Two other videos from an embargoed game coming Wednesday onward.
- We're doing 20+ interviews at GDC this year.
- Noclip @ GDC Livestream Pass coming to $10 this month.
- New Monthly "Staff Party" stream days for $20 tier (first this Friday)
- Jeff Gerstmann podcast is next. Blades after that.