Noah Caldwell-Gervais

Where Are the Videos?

It’s been several months since I had a video complete for the channel, and I want to give everyone an update on what’s going on with that. I am having one of the most difficult seasons of my life and I am continuing to work through it. There’s just a lot of backup and delay.

Back in the summer, I actually had a major mental health breakthrough and was feeling better than I have in many years. I was feeling really prepared and optimistic about my content. After the Shadow of the Er...

Closing Out 2023

Hey everyone! 

I've selected the questions for the 10th Anniversary Q&A video and answered the other questions as best as I'm able. I'm planning to release that alongside the next video, which I thought would be short but isn't really shaping up to be. As it stands, I am attempting to transition into shorter single-game videos in January, with just a couple more medium projects to close out the year. 

On the slate:

'Playing Quake for the S...

10th Anniversary Q&A Submissions

Hello everyone!

The Fallout Retrospective is finally finished, and things can actually start moving again. There are a number of planned changes for the channel, such as focusing more on smaller videos, but those need some time to be ironed out. In the meantime, I was going to try and do a Questions and Answers video for patrons just as a special thanks and to try and be more open about the process. I'd like to limit it to 25 total questions for the video, but I'll try and pi...

Thank You For the Lincoln Highway Video

This February is my channel's tenth anniversary, and in that spirit the next video release is going to be a remake/remaster of all my old Fallout content (including that very first video) as well as the Real Life Landscapes of Fallout East Coast as a double feature. I might miss the actual date of the tenth anniversary and push a little into March, but I think the Fallout double feature is the best way to celebrate just how far the channel's come in the past decade.

The Lincoln Highway ...

Updates on Projects For Fall / Format Changes for Next Year

Hello everyone! 

As usual, I have both good news and bad news. The good news is extremely good. 

First, my novel is almost done! I've nearly completed the full first draft and am now powering through the major and minor edits. My hope was to have it done by the Halloween spooky season but I might miss that window. It will be available first on Kindle Direct Publishing and then 90 days after that free to patrons. The KDP contract says I can't distribute it on m...

More Project Juggling

I feel absolutely awful saying this, but there will be more delays on the travel projects. I've finished the Bloodborne / Sekiro / Elden Ring video at last (https://youtu.be/hPRo4arGaSk), which is good news, and I got within 24 hours of leaving on my trip until some last minute mechanical problems grounded the car for another short while. The problem with this is that Nate, my audio editor, was going to come with ...

Trip Delay Until June 23rd

Hello everyone! I had intended to leave this May on the Lincoln Highway trip, but I've been forced to push it back by a couple unpleasant circumstances.

1) I got Covid. I'm glad, at least, that it happened before I left and not during or, least of all, before. It's been mild enough for me but there needs to be a few weeks in between this and leaving on a winding journey through multiple states and isolated communities.

2) Gas shot up to $5 a gallon. I had set...

Just Past the Line

Hello everyone! I'm sure there's some concern now about where the next video is as we get to the end of the first 90 days of the year. I got agonizingly close, but the next video won't be done until Friday the 1st or Saturday the 2nd of April at the latest. There simply isn't enough time left to allow me to fully finish by end of day Thursday.

As always, refunds are available, and if you feel like this has been so long of a time between uploads you'd like to cancel your patronage, I und...

2021 in Review: Biggest Year Yet

Hey everyone!

I think it would be a mistake to say anyone *enjoyed* 2021, it's actually been the best year the channel has ever had. And that's both audience growth and output! I've put together some basic numbers for how the channel has been performing by runtime and games covered, which I don't think I had done before.

Here's what I discovered:

-- In 2015, I made 12.25 hours of content about 49 games.

-- In 2016, I performed a little worse: 10.3...

Big Changes, Small Delays

The last time you guys had to wait three months for content, it ended up being over seven hour's worth. Unfortunately, nothing about the production process for the Resident Evil video was sustainable for me. I didn't do anything EXCEPT put time into the project, and it did some injury to my mental health and the people around me for me to have pushed so hard. And in the end, it was full of errors, no better in terms of quality than anything I'd already done. It was not an *improvement*, exact...

Update on Where The Videos Have Been

Hey everyone,

I wanted to post a brief update on what I've been doing and what you've been contributing to. I've mentioned it on Twitter, but I'm doing a Resident Evil retrospective that ballooned considerably in scope while I was working on it. It's grown to an 18-game retrospective for which I've written 70,000 words so far and I'm still working on the section about Village. I wanted this to be done in less than 90 days (I was a fool to have ever thought 60 days was possibl...

2022 Travel Content Plans / 2021 Objectives

Hello!

I want to make some announcements and clarifications about my plans for travel content and how I've been investing your money.

The first thing is that I've had to bump plans for travel content into early 2022. I honestly have no idea when I can get a vaccine, and that's the key factor in getting those videos going. It might be all the way until late summer and fall, and I don't want to get into a situation of having promised something I'm unable to del...

State of the Channel 2020, or, How Much is Too Much?

I haven't done a major update on my channel in several years, and the simple reason is that I've often felt lost and confused about that myself. Every month for almost three years I've said to myself "I ought to tell everyone how it's going, what's next" and then chicken out because I haven't had any decent answers. It's surprisingly easy for this to happen month after month for an extremely long time. The more I let it go on, the more conversations I needed to have but didn't pil...

New Travelogue (With YouTube Problems)

Hey everyone! 

I've finished the second Atomic Tour video, but I had to upload it over a connection so slow it took three days. Now that it's done, there's some kind of problem where it thinks it's stuck at 95% processing even though the video is available in 1080p. 

What this means is that, although the video is done, it won't list itself on my channel, in search results, or ANYWHERE else on the site. I'm out of town visiting my Dad and I'm not abl...

Soft Reboot Updates!

The four videos are going to be uploading later towards the evening, and I'm sorry to say that I haven't nailed down how Youtube Premier works for a live chat to happen. But the release flurry is just about finished. As they upload later on today, I'll be making some small changes to the Patreon page and cosmetic changes to my other social media accounts. In lieu of a live chat, I'll be uploading a video update on upcoming changes and projects, and the channel's new directions (which aren't *...

"Middle Dewey", A Channel Reboot, And A Series of Exciting Ideas

Hi! I'm Noah Gervais, and I sure did have a rough year in 2018.

Probably one of my all time favorite comedies is Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox story, which is a biopic parody. There's a scene where Dewey, the main character, is just having a complete meltdown at the back of the tour bus and one of the bandmates asks, "Hey man, is Dewey *okay*? He doesn't seem like himself."

"Naw man," another bandmate assures him, "That was Early Dewey. This is Middle Dewey." 

It's a ridicul...

April's Video

Hey everyone,

Some of you may be aware I've been working on a Far Cry retrospective-- I'm nearly done but it's the 30th and it isn't all the way done. It's turned out to be one of my biggest projects ever, around two hours of runtime and sixty pages of script and almost 300 hours of work so far.

But 99% done isn't *DONE* so I've left a lot of you high and dry again. It's frustrating to think that if this month had had 31 days it wouldn't be late, but it doesn't, and...

Draft Post

Hey everyone!

Last night I posted a draft of a thank you note I was working on, about the Travel Videos and an upcoming Call of Juarez retrospective-- it wasn't all the way there and didn't 100% follow what I was trying to convey, because I was planning on hammering out a second draft later-- 

I'm sorry if it caused any confusion, it was a half-formed thought I hadn't meant to post yet. 

But hey: Call of Juarez retrospective next week.

End of the Trip / Reductions / Refunds

So back at the beginning of the trip, before I even left, I said to my wife "If it ever stops being fun, we'll come back."

Well, in late August after the last round of videos we hit a low point with the trip. I got into an argument with my friend Mitty, and it ended our friendship. We went dead broke for a week with no food, electricity, or anything. And so Kendra asked to come home. I asked her if I could finish up at least some of my intended loop, and she agreed so long as I was ...

Summer Video Schedule

Hey Everyone! 

I'm sorry this month's videos are slightly late-- I did two at once, and a surprise review I got to do fro Polygon ate into my time. Expect them within the next two days, though. They'll be:

1) Prey vs. Prey, looking at Human Head's 2006 story-driven shooter and Arkane's 2017 immersive sim.

2) Outlast 1 & 2: Gamifying Found Footage Horror, doing a maybe too-long deep dive into the Outlast games and why putting the player in c...

Pulling Things Together In January

Hey everybody!

So, as you've all noticed, I'm late with the video for December and owe you one for January as well-- I have stuff that's mostly put together, a Dishonored video and one for the Homeworld prequel. And more-- I played Tyranny and will have a video on it at some point, but I'm trying to get an article published on that game so I'd been delaying and dithering on a video script for it.

More to the point, though, *I get married in less than a week* and it ...

The Final Pivot Towards Travel Content

I have promised travel content for a long time, and not delivered. I haven't been idle. I've been trying to fix my bus. And thanks to all of you, it's ready. I fixed my spark issue. I'm waiting on a friend to help me time it, but I got it to backfire, and that means I have spark. Once it's timed, it'll run in a basic way.

And once it runs in a basic way I'm going to spend a significant portion of the money you gave me having my work double checked, the new parts dialed in, and the things I...

Delays and Refunds

As you know, I've had a Baldurs Gate video in the works for some time. I have taken way too long with it, and my laptop's power circuit has died. I have ordered a new laptop, but it means more delays after the delays I could have actually avoided.

I would be frustrated by this, if I was in your position l, I would not feel like I was getting my money's worth. I am happy to give a partial or full refund to anyone displeased with the time management of my channel this past month.

T...

July 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

June 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Major (Positive) Changes To My Employment Situation

Hey everyone! I've made major updates to the Patreon page to reflect the fact that I'm now also doing freelancing work as a legitimate game critic for real publications. If anyone was waiting until I reached this threshold to stop their patronage, I want to make sure you know that threshold has been reached.

May 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

April 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

March 2016 Patreon supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

February 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!