Behind-The-Scenes: Cyberpunk 2077

My GPU finally arrived! Here's my thoughts on my Cyberpunk video!

This video was a bit different to what it initially started as. The video was initially just going to be a review of the anime, comparing it to the game, but I found the game and anime themselves were the least interesting parts of the story to me. So after enjoying Edgerunners and seeing posts online about Cyberpunk, I decided to do a little case study on the game and CD Projekt Red.

I've seen lots of videos covering information related to what went wrong, but a lot of them covered different topics or came to a different conclusion. So I figured I would compile as many of the problems that CDPR faced as I could, and try to assemble it into a bit of a timeline of events.

Almost everything I found out or already knew about Cyberpunk's development went into the video, including things like the Quantic Lab situation and how COVID affected them. There's still info missing, since we'll never be able to see into the development process ourselves, but I think what I covered is pretty much everything we're ever going to know. And hopefully I was able to present it in an interesting manner.

I do wish that I was able to review the game and anime a bit more thoroughly, but I was a tad pressed for time, which I'll talk about later. As is, my opinion is still what I present in the video. The game had a good core to it, which was just wildly underdeveloped. And the anime is amazing on all fronts.

I think some people saw my opinion of the anime as "just an advertisement" as a bit harsh, especially since people were quick to reply that it was in development before the game came out. But I don't know any other way to look at it. I can enjoy the anime separately to the machine that pushed it out, and I believe everyone else should too. But acknowledging that machine and how it marketed the game was the point of the video.

Oh, I also learned penultimate does not mean "final" as I thought, but "second to last". Which is incredibly lame, because I thought I was very smart and cool to use that word like that. Oh well.

Recording

Recording this was pretty similar to previous videos, especially the Fanservice one. I think recording it all in one 3 hour session was probably a bad idea, as I could notice my voice degrading over the course of the video, but again, I was a bit pressed for time.

This will probably be my last video before I upgrade cameras though. I'm planning on getting a full mirrorless camera and using that instead of my iPhone, which should be a massive upgrade.

The iPhone is fine for quality. The only issues are that 1) I can't use my phone while filming 2) I can't see what I'm recording while filming, and 3) my iPhone has a record limit of about 30 minutes due to storage, so I have to film for 30, upload the footage for 15, then film for 30 again. Meaning each video is like 6 or 7 "chunks" I stitch together. 

Getting a mirrorless camera, especially one I've seen that doesn't have a record limit, means I don't have to stop midway through. I might also be able to hook it up to the PC and not have to sync my microphone with the video in post, but even if I can't it's still an upgrade.

Editing

Editing this was a pain. Assembling lots of footage always takes a long time. And me sticking to Cyberpunk backgrounds and Cyberpunk OST background music just meant more time finding relavent clips and songs.

I tried to keep the edits simple to streamline a bit, but it was still a lot of passes before I could see something final. I mean, you can see the timeline and how many cuts I was doing. It was just kind of messy to edit.

I wanted to do more moving backgrounds and show relevant footage, since I felt a lot of it was just me in front of camera with a still background, but that's something I could've only done if I had more time.

And that intro, oh my god. I had the idea to set the intro to an Irving Force song from the very beginning, but I do not know how to edit montages or anything like that. So I just kinda slapped that together to the beat and shipped it out. If there's one thing I could change about the video it might be that. I like the final product, but if given more time I would've gone for something much smoother.

Sponsor

And speaking of time, I did not have very much of it to make the video. Raid reached out to me to do a sponsorship for October, and I agreed because I thought my first sponsor being Raid: Shadow Legends would be incredibly funny considering how I talked about gacha games before. And to sponsor a video on how evil video game marketing is was hilarious to me.

But taking the sponsorship was a bit dumb from me because the deadline was only about a week and a half after I accepted the offer. And so I had to ruuuush to get it done in time and not be terrible. The video was halfway written when I took the deal, but I basically pulled all nighters to get my research and scripting done.

I then had the video recorded only 4 days before the deadline to submit the video for sponsor approval. So I edited the entire thing for 10 hours a day for 4 days to get it done on time. Which is ironic when it's a video on how terrible crunch is in the video games industry. But to be fair, all of my crunch was self-inflicted and I could've just pulled the sponsorship if I really wanted to.

Going forward, do be aware that I won't be taking sponsors unless they actually interest me and I like the company. I get dozens of emails for sponsorship offers, and I say no to pretty much all of them. 

Also be aware that I won't be crunching to make videos regularly. This was sort of a one time deal that I thought would be fun, and was willing to work overtime to get done on time. In the future, as I've done with previous videos, I'll be working on my own pace.

Thoughts

Overall, I'm very proud of how the video came out. Case studies or deep dives into history like this are very fun to me, and I'd like to do more if there's anything interesting I can do it on. Fanservice and this are my current favorite videos, and I think it's a good format to follow.

And speaking of more videos, I think my next one is going to be lighter (finally). I have an idea I want to cover that's pretty simple. But that video might not be out for a bit because I'm going camera shopping, and I think the one I want to get is on back order. So probably no video until I get that and set it up. I'll keep everyone updated on Twitter though.

Hope everyone liked the video, and if you have any thoughts on it or this behind-the-scenes, then feel free to leave a comment!