Quintin Smith is one third of People Make Games, although hopefully you already knew that. Outside of his work with us, he's also known as the co-founder of board games behemoth Shut Up & Sit Down and now, as of just a few weeks ago, he's started something brand new, e...
2024-03-06 15:52:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone,
Just a little update here to let you know that Dylan was born on the 10th Feb and is doing really well. We're so in love with him and his tiny, often quite serious-looking facial expressions.
He arrived weighing 8 pounds and 4 ounces in the early hours of that Saturday morning, thanks in part to the amazing NHS staff who helped us along the way. But the real credit goes to Anni, who needed to find so much strength and resilience and courage during a 33(!!!) hour lab...
China has a multi-billion dollar gaming scene that you may well know nothing about. It's time we all talked about Jubensha!
Join Quinns as he digs into the history of "script murder" and why China's Gen Z loves it so much, before he heads over to Singapore in the hopes of finding a game that's been translated into the English language.
Stephen Totilo has been a games journalist for two decades now, making him one of the most experienced people in the field. His career spans a stint at MTV News as its first ever games reporter, nine years as Kotaku's Editor-in-Chief and until recently, he wrote a twice-weekly gaming newsletter for Axios.
Today, Stephen is looking to strike out on his own with 2024-01-23 13:22:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey patrons!
As most of you will already know, People Make Games is made up of three different people: Anni, Chris (hi, that’s me) and Quinns. We all slot together like a tiny Megazord in order to make this weird YouTube channel of ours happen and *hopefully* create some documentaries that you’re proud to support along the way.
Although Quinns and I are typically the ones hogging the spotligh...
And now for something totally different!
At the very end of September, Quinns and Chris traveled to the Mojave Desert to roleplay the end of the world with FOUR THOUSAND other people at Wasteland Weekend.
It was, in many ways, like playing a post-apocalyptic video game in real-life, with all its costumes, characters, factions and quests. But over our four days at the event, we discovered something much more important than all of that, hidden away behind the skul...
So we're not exactly sure how this has happened, but last night we checked Twitter to find that Geoff Keighley had just announced People Make Games was nominated for "Content Creator of the Year" at next month's Game Awards.
We won't be able to make the event itself, because it's happening in Los Angeles and Keighley's not stumping up for our plane tickets, but it'll be nice to watch it...
Nathan Grayson and Riley MacLeod have just launched a brand new, worker-owned games publication called Aftermath, along with some other ex-Kotaku staff you'll recognise. As in, today, right now! Chris grabbed them for an interview a few days ago to talk about the challenges t...
2023-11-07 17:31:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone,
Today's video is not a normal one for us. In fact, we had something else lined up for this week which we can't wait to show you. It's silly and fun and an exploration of an entirely different kind of games community. We cannot wait to share it with you.
However, after the events of the last month, we couldn't ignore what's happening in Palestine right now. And so we've asked Tamoor Hussain (who you m...
2023-11-06 20:37:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey patrons!
I had an unusual Gamescom this year, having popped over for just the last couple of days of the show. In fact, by the time I arrived, almost everybody from the games media had already gone home it seemed.
So why was I there so late? What convinced me to ride something like ten hours worth of trains over the course of just three days?
I've got three words for you: Farming Simulator League.
2023-08-31 10:31:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Patricia Hernandez is now the former Editor-in-Chief of Kotaku, having been fired from the position just a few days ago. In today's episode we're going to be talking to her about what's happened and digging into the increasingly strained r...
2023-08-23 13:39:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Much like the rest of the world, I've been playing Baldur's Gate 3 this weekend and although there's just so much to love about this game, I thought I'd use today's newsletter to gush about its title screen a little bit. I've included a video above, if you've not seen it already, because a screenshot simply won't do. Give it a watch, it's only a minute. Indulge yourself.
I mean, really, ...
2023-08-14 14:03:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello patrons!
This month you're joining Chris on a leisurely stroll as he talks to you about such breezy topics as "burnout" and the "games industry's total unpreparedness for Artificial Intelligence".
It's actually quite a chilled out Patreon Show, despite the topics.
Thanks so much for your support :)
2023-07-28 11:48:06 +0000 UTC View PostAs I sit down to type this, I’ve just clocked the fact that I’ve now been a video games journalist for more than a decade. It’s been ten years and three months since a baby-faced (and honestly, not especially qualified) Chris Bratt weaselled his way into a full-time gig making videos on the internet. That makes me some kind of greybeard by this industry’s standards these days, I suppose.
And it all started at such a *weird* website. VideoGamer was unlike pretty much any other ga...
2023-07-22 13:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Team PMG are back again to tell you about some video ideas we've had which were, in fact, not very good.
Or at least that's the premise, anyway. To be honest, we've sort of talked ourselves round on at least one of these. You'll have to decide for yourself! Should Chris go to FarmCon?
Thanks so much for being a patron!
2023-07-20 15:17:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Rebekah Valentine is a Senior Reporter at IGN and an instrumental figure in the site's latest ambitions to establish itself as a true home for longform video games reporting. She's also just been on the ground at Summer Games Fest, the potential successor to the games industry's biggest, flashiest trade show, E3.
How do the two shows compare from a reporter's perspective and will E3 ever manage a revival? W...
Over the last three months, we've been looking into a story that we know a lot of you really, really care about. We do too.
Following a series of explosive allegations surrounding the games studio ZA/UM and the possibility that Disco Elysium has been stolen from its original creators, we've jumped headfirst into making sense of it all for ourselves.
In this TWO AND A HALF HOUR DOCUMENTARY, you'll see us travel to Estonia to attend one of the court hearings in-person, interview bot...
2023-05-29 13:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
People Make Games gets invited to a fancy awards evening and are bringing you along with them, in Chris's pocket, like a little friend.
2023-05-12 14:22:36 +0000 UTC View Post
2 Player Productions is a documentary crew that's been embedded with Double Fine Productions for more than a decade now, having first come onboard in order to follow the development of Broken Age and create the Double Fine Adventure series.
However, it's their latest work that's absolute...
Microsoft Excel is an eSport now, so uhm, we hired a green screen for Quinns to muck around with.
Honestly, it's best if you just watch the video. I'm not really sure what's happened here.
2023-03-15 13:31:00 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone and welcome to what we’ll now be calling Christopher Bratt’s Online Newsletter. That's it. That's the name.
Listen, I’ve been trying to think of a newsletter title that could more directly reference video games for months now and I’ll be totally honest with you: there’s nothing left. As a community, we’ve now officially created too many things to do with this hobby and the well is absolutely bone dry. I blame the YouTube crowd mostly. We're yet to see an adjec...
2023-02-24 15:37:26 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey patrons!
Quintin and Chris are back again to tell you about some video ideas they've had which just haven't worked out.
We like to do this from time to time, mostly so we can feel some kind of cathartic relief after our reporting on these stories ended in total failure. So please, indulge us, as we open to doors to our Bad Idea House.
2023-02-10 14:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Tyler McVicker has been utterly obsessed with Valve for more than a decade now, having reported on almost every scrap of news, speculation and datamined morsel to come out of this famously secretive company at the heart of the games industry.
Having just published our own report on the reality of working at Valve, with its "flat"...
Valve claims to have been "boss-free since 1996", but what does that really mean?
We've spoken to 16 current and former employees about the inner workings of one of gaming's most unusual companies.
You may have noticed things have been a little quiet on PMG for a few months now. This will hopefully explain why!
Hey patrons!
Here's a little insight into what we're working on right now (a massive video about Valve) and when to expect it (early January). We've actually filmed most of it already, but it's going to have a longer runtime than much of our recent work and that means it'll need more time in production too. So thanks for bearing with us on this one! It's a biggy.
2022-12-14 14:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey patrons!
It's Chris here. Since we published yesterday's report on the gambling scene that's now embedded itself into Steam over the last decade, I've been thinking a lot about some of the darkest, most isolating years of my own life. Thankfully, they were some time ago now, but I think it might be useful to talk about them all the same.
And so, in case it helps somebody going through something...
2022-11-08 17:45:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey patrons!
You might remember in 2016, a couple of YouTubers got into some real trouble for 'promoting' a CS:GO skin betting website to their extremely young and impressionable audiences. Unfortunately it turned out your boys Syndicate and TmarTn actually owned the site in question and hadn't thought to mention that as they streamed themsel...
2022-11-07 14:48:20 +0000 UTC View PostHey patrons,
Just a quick update here from your pals at People Make Games.
Anni, Quinns and I are busy working away on what will end up being a two-part video series about one of the industry's most intriguing companies. It's been a big ol' project so far, but we've just about finished filming the first part as of yesterday. We're hoping to have that published on the channel for you to watch at some point in the latter part of October, with the second part following shortly afterw...
2022-09-27 09:00:36 +0000 UTC View Post
After a couple of months away, The Games Press is now back in your podcast application of choice!
Sam Greer is a freelance games critic, having previously worked for Glass House Games and GamesMaster magazine. More recently, she worked with People Make Games (th...
2022-09-05 15:48:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone,
Sorry there's been a bit of a run of missed Patreon Shows recently, they sometimes get demoted further down the list of things I need to do when the rest of my PMG work is piling up.
But we're back this month, as I head to Gamescom in Cologne, Germany to take part in a session about the reality of making video games in Ukraine right now, alongside two developers from Frogwares. You c...
2022-08-30 12:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post