Hey patrons,
If you enjoyed our most recent episode on the surprisingly long-lasting appeal of Cookie Clicker, then you might like to join us as we chat all over it.
Hope you're doing well out there, wherever you are!
Hello!
Just a quick heads up to say that I'll be hopping onto GameSpot's Play For All stream this evening to help raise money to support both the Black Lives Matter movement and direct relief for COVID-19.
Along with Gamespot's Dave Jewitt, I'm going to be playing Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.... as a baby. This is inspired by 2020-07-03 13:19:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone.
As you might have seen over the last week or so, dozens of people have now come forwards to share their experiences of sexual and emotional abuse within the games industry.
We've been following this as closely as we can and I thought I'd use this month's Patreon Show to share a few thoughts and look at what People Make Games can be doing to help.
Thanks,
Chris
2020-06-29 15:10:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey, remember Cookie Clicker? I certainly do.
I think it was probably the first idle game I'd ever played and back in 2013/14, I was obsessed with it... for about two weeks. But it turns out, almost seven years later, some players never actually stopped. They're still there, clicking away, earning just impossible number of cookies as they do so.
I wanted to know why they're still playing and how a game that started off as a "dumb joke" could hold people's attention for quite this ...
2020-06-25 14:12:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello!
So, erm, yes. This one's a little different for the channel.
With the sporting world in shutdown, we sent Quinns to investigate Second Life instead. To be more precise, we wanted him to find out more about its virtual sex work and the very real people involved.
Watching him navigate his way through a world of raunchy animations and questions about ejaculation is a complete delight, of course, but that's not really what this video is about.
The women of the Monar...
2020-05-26 13:11:40 +0000 UTC View Post
About 20 months ago now, I wrote a somewhat optimistic email to Noclip's Danny o' Dwyer, pitching a documentary on one of my favourite video game series: Total War.
If you check the date on that email, you'll see that I sent this over on a Sunday afternoon, which is a bold move. I hadn't quite figured out my work/life balance at this point, sorry Danny.
Anyway, this got the ball rolling o...
2020-05-12 06:22:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everyone,
If you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence, we’d like to celebrate our first video reaching a whopping one million views on YouTube. Published over a year ago now, it is of course… What happened to the Queen’s Golden Wii?
If you haven’t seen it before now, the video tells the story of a PR stunt from 2009 in which games publisher THQ sent a gold-plated Nintend...
2020-05-08 18:35:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello, I have just finished working on a collection of designs in a new style! These prints are available as part of the $20 tier and those patrons will receive a random one of these each month for the next six months.
However, for this first month I thought it'd be fun to let you decide which one gets sent out first.
Vote here: https://strawpoll.com/168c5pp4
...
2020-05-05 14:33:37 +0000 UTC View Post
In today's Patreon Show, I share some thoughts on the types of stories we want to tell going forwards.
And Anni gives me a haircut. Thanks Anni.
2020-04-30 17:08:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everyone!
Today's story is one we've been hoping to tell for some time now. It begins in the early 1980s with an attorney called John Joseph Kirby, a man whose surname may seem like quite the coincidence, given that his client at the time was Nintendo Entertainment.
But of course, that was no coincidence. John Kirby, despite not being much of a video game player himself, is part of the reason why Nintendo decided to call Kirby... Kirby. And that story is one worth telling. 2020-04-23 14:19:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Not the best timing for PMG's new sports correspondent, as he discovers all sporting events have now been cancelled forever.
Until that changes, Quinns first turns his attention towards the bizarre world of television game shows. There's some brilliant, brilliant stuff in here and crucially, they're all shows that you can watch right now, should you want to.
Enjoy!
Hello everyone,
So this video's a little different to our usual episodes.
To be entirely honest with you, I've been struggling with work a little bit over the last few weeks. In our last Patreon Show I talked about how I thought PMG could be a useful distraction from the chaos, and I do believe that, but at the same time... it's hard to think about anything else.
Thankfully I ended up stumbling upon something that's helped me with that feeling and I'd love to tell you about ...
2020-03-27 14:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everyone,
Hope you're doing well out there.
If you enjoyed Quinns' very first episode on the channel, you might like to hear some more from him and Anni about how we made it. Or let's be real here, you want to hear Quinns react to the slow-mo footage of him being tackled by a bunch of athletic university students. We know what you're after.
If that's the case, then boy, do we have the patreon-exclusive video for you!
2020-03-20 12:40:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Listen, we're sorry about the thumbnail. You can blame Cube from the PMG Discord...
2020-03-13 17:26:56 +0000 UTC View Post
It's time! Quinns is here with his first video for People Make Games and we think it's a corker.
Join him as he explores the world of Kabaddi, a playground sport that's gone pro and swept across India's television screens over the last few years. It's dramatic, it's acrobatic and if you don't know about it already, this video should serve as a great introduction to the game.
Also, of course, Quinns tries it for himself. It's worth watching for that alone.
2020-03-12 13:32:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Well this is new, isn't it?!
We decided to have Quinns join in with the directors' commentary for our Infiminer episode because he something of a history with Zach Barth, the game's creator.
As part of my research for this story, I ended up stumbling upon an old interview from 2011, in which Quinns is chatting to Zach Barth about Spacechem for Rock Pa...
2020-03-10 14:17:28 +0000 UTC View Post
We tell the story of Infiniminer's Zach Barth, the designer who inspired Minecraft and then had to watch it make billions.
There are some amazing anecdotes in this one, like when Zach was working at Microsoft and was brought into the meeting in which they decided to bring Minecraft to the Xbox 360.
Or there's the time he was volunteering at an awards ceremony the year Minecraft won the Grand Prize.
Can you imagine what that must have been like? Well, Zach can....
2020-02-27 14:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone!
Join Anni and myself as we take a look back at one of our favourite videos on the channel, last month's trip to Hong Kong to interview Blitzchung.
We're super, super proud of this work, but we couldn't have done it without your support - so thank you! And again, thanks to Blitzchung himself for agreeing to the interview and giving us so much of his time.
2020-02-18 14:35:25 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey everyone,
We're really excited to announce that the People Make Games team is expanding!!
Anni and I have been looking for a way to bring more fantastic stories to the PMG channel for a while now, but we've never wanted to sacrifice quality for quantity. With that in mind, we realised we need to bring a new hire onto the team, allowing us to continue making the video game documentaries you've come to expect, while giving them the room to work on... something e...
2020-02-13 11:01:00 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey patrons!
Let's have a chat about (by some distance) the biggest journey we've made as People Make Games and the story we found on the other side of it.
Thanks for your support this month - we've got some real exciting news coming in February. You'll be hearing from us real soon.
2020-01-30 12:42:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Earlier this month we travelled to Hong Kong to meet Blitzchung, the Hearthstone player who made headlines around the world last year following a post-match interview in which he voiced his support for the huge protests happening in his city.
The headlines, however, were less to do with Blitzchung's statement, and more to do with the response he received from Blizzard Entertainment, the creators of Hearthstone.
This was a complicated story for us to cover, as you'll see, but I'm r...
2020-01-23 14:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
As we get ready to start our 20-hour journey home tomorrow, I thought I'd check in and let you know that we've just finished our third and final interview in Hong Kong.
I think you're going to really like what we've been able to do with this one. Your support has allowed us to travel halfway around the world and spend some real time getting to know Blitzchung and his story. This wasn't just one rushed conversation in front of a camera, but rather two days of breaking down barriers and f...
2020-01-12 09:10:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Before next month's trip to Hong Kong, we take a quick look back at the last month of People Make Games.
It's been one hell of a year, from investigating a religious group in Germany to having a nosy around Peter Molyneux's dining room. Thanks so much for letting us do what we do.
Here's to an even better 2020!
2019-12-19 13:08:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everyone!
I've sort of given the surprise away in the title of this post, haven't I? Never mind. For our next PMG episode, we're going to Hong Kong.
Early next month, Anni and I are going to be spending a couple of days with professional Hearthstone player, Ng Wai Chung (AKA Blitzchung).
As in, yes, th...
2019-12-17 12:12:46 +0000 UTC View PostHello everyone!
It's Chris here, with something of a spontaneous blog post for you. Actually, I'm not sure if you're still meant to call them blog posts if they're published on Patreon. What are they then? Patreon posts? That's boring. This one's a blog post. I've decided.
One of the most common questions we get asked about our work is: where do you find your stories in the first place? I thought it might be fun to talk about that a little bit, if you're interested. Maybe you're a...
2019-11-30 17:37:24 +0000 UTC View Post
It's time to say goodbye to my copy of Prototype for the Xbox 360, once and for all.
After being snubbed by CEX, we decide to take a look at what happens when you try to recycle a video game, plastic box and all.
Obviously, in most cases, the best thing you can do is resell or donate any old games, but what happens if they're no longer usable? We take a look at the current state of video game recycling.
2019-11-28 15:22:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello everyone!
It's been a little while since we've published a Patreon Show, cheers for sticking with us.
Things have settled down a bit now since the Athene documentary went live and we've got a couple of things to share on that front, but mostly, we're enjoying the fact that we can now finally work on other projects. The next PMG episode is already shaping up to be a fun one.
The last couple of months have been some of the most difficult in our careers and we could...
2019-10-29 12:55:16 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi everyone!
Thanks so much for your patience as we worked away on this piece. It has been a huge, draining thing to put together for Anni and myself, but we think this is a story that needs to be told.
This 90-minute documentary is unlike anything we’ve published on the channel before and we genuinely couldn’t have done it without your support. As you’ll see, the video is unlikely to be approved for advertisements on YouTube and we’ve turned down any sponsorship deals, gi...
2019-10-07 10:01:05 +0000 UTC View PostHey patrons,
You might have noticed that we've sort of disappeared since our last video was published two weeks ago. Thanks for watching that one, by the way, we're really happy that so many people seem to have enjoyed it.
But since it went live we haven't published the usual Patreon Show or Behind-the-Scenes video that you might have expected by now. There's a reason for this and it's the sam...
2019-09-12 13:15:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's the story of a weapon in Wolfenstein: ET that sounded so powerful, it was leading to players getting more kills.
They'd eventually ask for it to be nerfed, thinking the weapon damage itself must be too high. But it wasn't.
Oh and erm, stick around until the end, yeah?
2019-08-29 14:34:42 +0000 UTC View Post