Hey kids,
The final part of Story Beats is online for you. This one dissects a scene from Bastion, and also puts a fine point on where I've been going with all this. Still debating whether or not I wanna do a little fine tuning before making this public on Friday. In either case, I'll talk a bit more about the video and the series then!
Cheers,
-I
Thank you so much for the support this month!
2016-03-31 06:59:00 +0000 UTC View Post
You can now blab about it on the interwebs. The next and final part will most likely come out in early April, which will get us caught up to February. Fun fun fun!
Hey hey, backers! Part 3 of Story Beats is now online for you and you alone. I will probably hold off on releasing this publicly until Monday, because word on the streets is that videos tend to get more traffic on a weekday morning than on a Sunday. Dunno how much of a difference that makes, but might as well try.
Hope you enjoy it!
Hey all! The new video essay just went public. You may now tell all your friends. Huzzah!
Hey team,
My time, it's almost 12:30am. I'm really hoping this plan of mine, doing a Story Beats every week in March, isn't going to always involve a 10-14 hour crunch on Mondays. But, at any rate, the new video is done for you. This is the same version that will go public tomorrow (er... later today? Wednesday? when am I launching this thing?). This video is about Limbo and its unsettling use of game feel. It was fascinating watching this go from a ruddy mess into something ...
2016-03-15 04:26:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Howdy patrons! The new video essay, Story Beats: Dear Esther, is live! This is - Jesus - my first video essay in three months. Been gone too long! Glad to be back.
Quickie reminder that I'm counting this as 1/2 of January's video. If I can keep my intended schedule, we'll have 4 videos by the end of March (let's call it mid-April to be safe), which will be 2 to count for January and 2 to count for February. Then I'll try to get both march's and April's done in April, but we'll see h...
2016-03-08 22:01:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey patrons,
Here's your early access to the first part of my 4-part series on interactive narrative. This one's about Dear Esther. Wanted to have this online for you yesterday so I could go public with it today, but I didn't finish the edit until almost 8pm, and figured that wasn't much lead time. It needs a smidgen of color correction, some proper end credits, and both Final Cut and YouTube have taken a dump on the compression settings, so the version that goes up tomorrow will be...
2016-03-07 19:16:05 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-03-01 07:59:59 +0000 UTC View PostHey hep cats,
I have made the executive decision that I want the miniseries on interactive narrative to come out on a regular schedule. I've been out of the picture for a few months now, as far as my YouTube subscribers are concerned, and I'd like to show up with some quite regular content. So the plan is to release one video every Monday in March. So instead of finishing the edit on the first video, I've spent the last couple weeks writing the scripts for the remaining three, so that I ca...
2016-02-22 15:47:46 +0000 UTC View PostThoughts on Firewatch
My capsule thoughts on Firewatch, which I played through the other day. I recommend against reading this if you're planning to play the game, as it's best to go in cold. Also, yes, I am going to attempt to write one of these for each game mentioned in Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood #2. We'll see if I manage to play them all!
Hey, folks! I said that one of the things switching the Patreon over to monthly payments would do for us is allow Patreon to fund things beyond just the videos - namely, what writing I do. I realize I haven't been fastidious about actually sending that writing to y'all, so I'm going to collect some of the stuff I've written here, and make a point of updating you all when something of significance goes online. (If you want to see this stuff the moment it comes out, 2016-02-08 22:26:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Howdy-do Patrons,
My health is much improved (fingers crossed it stays that way), and I'm starting to get more work done. Hooray! Time to update y'all on the plan for getting back up to speed:
I'm going to be starting the year with a 4-part miniseries on interactive narrative. The first script is written and I'll be capturing game footage later today. The temp narration is clocking in at 7 minutes, and I think that 5-10 is probably gonna be the ballpark for all 4. This is a minis...
2016-02-03 16:09:59 +0000 UTC View PostThank you so much for the support this month!
2016-01-31 00:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostHi patrons,
I have to let you know that this month's video may be late. I've been dealing with some health problems. I'm getting these issues addressed but it's been diminishing my ability to work. There is some chance that January's video will come out in February, but I'll be aiming to still get February's video out in the same month, so unless things don't improve you'll get a twofer. If things don't improve - if I end up behind schedule longer than a month - we'll still get ours...
2016-01-22 16:52:48 +0000 UTC View PostHowdy backers! We Don't Talk About Kenny has now been quite thoroughly annotated.
Also, BTS backers, there's some new stuff on the devlog. Same password.
Thank you so much for the support this month!
2015-12-31 00:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostHowdy patrons,
I have two newly-annotated videos: Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? (The Future of the Adventure Game) and A Single Study in Germany: Video Games & Cultivation Theory.
A...
2015-12-05 04:30:58 +0000 UTC View PostHeya patrons! Letting you know: starting this month I've flipped things over to monthly payments instead of per-video payments.
tl;dr
It'll keep you from getting double-charged if I release two videos in the same month, it supports all the work I do that is related to the videos but is not the videos themselves, and helps guarantee the videos come out more regularly. Your time is valuable to me, so if that's all the explanation you need (or, indeed, if you had just assumed we wer...
Hey all, the finalized version of the new video is online. There are some minor changes from the last one, most not very noticeable. This is the version you can spread around, if that what you're into.
Hey all,
The Early Access version of the new video is up. It's called We Don't Talk About Kenny: Telltale's Walking Dead Season 2. This is not the final version - on rewatch, it needs some tweaks to the pacing in a couple spots, and the end credits go on too long, and I don't know why the music is skipping like that so I'll have to do something to the audio.
Final version will go up tomorrow morning, so keep this one under your hat til then. This was a very, very hard vide...
2015-11-30 13:09:46 +0000 UTC View PostHey patrons! Just letting you know - I had intended to get a second video out this month, the last one paid for by the Kickstarter, but the script needs another draft. It'll be coming out next month. I keep swearing up and down that I can't even promise one video a month, it was perhaps over-ambitious to attempt two in October. The extra time will only make it better!
BTS patrons: new post up on the devlog. Same password.<...
2015-10-29 11:34:18 +0000 UTC View PostIt's been a few days and it appears that, no, I was not hallucinating - we reached our first milestone!
HOLY FUCKING SHIT.
I was extremely sick when the news came in, so I didn't do the kind of yippy-skippy dance around my bedroom I would have done normally, but I promise it was happening in spirit. It is probably tedious to manually thank all 167 of you, but here, shotgun approach: THANK YOU ALL! I am overflowing.
Alright, alright, let's talk: what...
2015-10-20 14:00:45 +0000 UTC View Post
After some re-recording of bad audio, a bunch of waffling about the title, and a last-minute addition of outro music, the new video essay is officially public! We'll see how this goes over with the peanut gallery.
Thanks again, everyone!
Hey Patrons, I feel I am honor-bound to talk about the Patreon hack with y'all and whether or not backing my campaign has put you at risk. Some of y'all may want to make some informed decisions about your relationship to Patreon in light of it, but I'll preface this by saying: I think you are probably safe.
The short version: on September 28th, Patreon's entire database was hacked. This was due to a debug version of the site being visible to the public and some guy taking note of it...
2015-10-11 14:16:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey patrons!
Normally y'all get access to my videos a day early. However, in this case, you're getting it close to a week early. While finishing up the edit, I re-recorded a few lines in the Sound Studio, and for some reason they're really distorted. By the time I noticed there wasn't enough time on my reservation to record again. (This is why it pays to do a test recording right away.)
I went ahead and spliced them in so I could finish the edit, but the earliest I can re-...
2015-10-06 20:44:40 +0000 UTC View PostFirst off, a glad welcome to all the new backers here! This channel continues to exist because of you.
I've just finished annotating Things of Beauty: Super Smash Bros. as Spectator Sport. You can read the annotations right here.
The other existing annotated videos are:
Hey Patrons! I didn't re-upload the videos after all, so the links sent out yesterday are still good. The YouTube pages have more information in them now, though!
Here they are again if you need them:
Getting Your Ass Paid: Kickstarter vs. Patreon
Getting My Ass Paid: Why Crowdfund?
Hello patrons!
This is my first official Patreon post - let's hope I don't whiff it. Here is the early access to not one but two videos about crowdfunding. Seems appropriate, no? The one above is about the way you should think about crowdfunding, and this one right here is about the actual pragmatics of running a campaign on Patreon or Kickstarter.
Tomorrow, when these go public, the...
2015-09-29 20:48:36 +0000 UTC View Post