No Pun Included needs a
Transcript
Something happened recently that made us reevaluate our work at No Pun Intended. Over the last month, we were working on a video for a board game called Strange Sloth Simulator, and that video should have already been out. As in, I wrote the script, filmed a lot of footage, edited a portion of it. I would say we were 2 days away from completing the project. But, as we were reviewing what we'd done so far, we realized a simple truth. The video is bad. It was making some points that seemed obvious to us, but needed better contextualization to be overt. It needed a rewrite extensive enough that meant that we could not use the existing footage we already shot for it. So, I went and rewrote it, and after another careful review, we realized that the video is still bad. Unlike the previous attempt, it made sense, but here's how I can explain it best. It's a 20- to 25-minute video where I talk about how Strange Sloth Simulator simulates the precise feeling of playing a slot machine. Unsurprisingly, the game is monotonous and dull, but also incredibly compelling, which I think is satire.
There, that's all the points I'm making it, and somehow we managed to extrude that into 20 minutes. When you realize that you are a stone's throw away from becoming a parody of yourself, you know something is wrong. Reviewing board games professionally has been the greatest privilege of my life. I cannot think of a better job. I love doing it, and I don't want to stop. Finding something unspoken about a game, something interesting, and sharing it is just the best motivator. It's not the only thing, but it is a thing that gets me up in the morning. At MPI, we like to make tentpole projects, something that makes us stand out. The way YouTube works is that we can't just do those projects. We need little ones in between, something that keeps the channel chugging. But just because those videos are little, doesn't mean we want to do a bad job with them. That means that even those little videos need extensive play experience, and we found ourselves leaning towards making videos that specifically bypass that need. And that's how we get to videos like the Strange Lot Simulator one. And frankly, videos like the Terraria one. Playing a game for 9 hours and writing our feelings about it, believe it or not, that's easy stuff when it comes to reviewing games or talking about them in other meaningful ways. I'm going to speak plainly now. The well hasn't just
run dry, the well is well and truly [ __ ] We have nothing meaningful to say about games right now, mostly because we're working on big projects. We've sort of abandoned a critical part of being a board game reviewer. And that part is playing games. Let me explain that in a bit more detail. It's not that we're not playing games. If we have two types of projects, long-term and short-term, we tend to favor the long-term videos because they need just that much more effort. And so play time for short-term projects suffers. Nobody included needs a reset sometime to get back into the swing of things. Finish off the big stuff, but also spend meaningful time with games that are new to us. This is where you come in. We are asking you to consider supporting us on Patreon, and more importantly, I want to peel back the curtain a little and show you how the sausage is made. If you've been watching us for any amount of time, you'll know that unlike other board game media, we are entirely viewer funded.
Our only source of income is Patreon and a smidge of money from YouTube AdSense or in other words, you pay our salary. I don't want to get into specific finances, but our income split between two people is just a bit above minimum wage for each of us. We both work from home and financially there are certainly benefits to that, but being independent means that we also have to buy every game we cover and many more games we don't cover because how will we know which games are worth covering or not unless we play them. That is an immense expense and since we started our Patreon at the end of 2019, it's seen a level of support that is just about consistent with today.
And I don't think I need to tell you things are a bit more dicey financially since that time, but back then we still received review copies, so our finances were better. This is what our living room looks like when we're shooting a video. Living room being the keyword as in this is where we live. A shoot can take anywhere from three days to much longer for more complicated videos and I know it doesn't look like much, but tearing this down and setting it back up again can literally take hours, which means doing it each day is self-defeating work, which also means that our living room might look like this for a week. We use multiple angles, which is important for videos to have better flow, which means moving all of that gear into new positions, but also tearing down the game and resetting it up for each shot. With games that have a lot of components, this is time consuming, not to mention B-roll.
Which is something I'm responsible for. A typical 20-minute video requires around 60 shots of B-roll. Each of them has to be set up in the right configuration with the right components to illustrate whatever rule or point that we are making. A non-typical video like ours requires much more. Games like Terraria the board game have hundreds of components that need to be arranged and rearranged.
Which is okay. That's the job. It's time-consuming, but that's just what creativity is. It takes time. I am illustrating all of these costs and steps not to say, "Look how hard it is." but to illustrate what challenges arise in our workspace. One of the biggest appeals of board games is that they are social. To play games, we have to invite other people into our house.
There's just a little problem. Half of the time, the space where we play games looks like this. If the most critical element of the job is to play games, how do we play games in this environment? Even if we were willing to make people sit here, we wouldn't get the intended play experience because it was suffered under constraint.
Also, we have this idiot that obsessively barks at every person that comes into our house, but I'm only saying this so I can put a clip of Sydney into the video. And we don't just need people in our house to play games, we need them to keep coming back to play the same game. Because with the exception of something like Terraria the board game, we don't want to be the type of board game reviewers that share their impressions after one play. So,
here's the plan. We will take a little bit of time off from putting out videos. That doesn't really mean we are taking time off, we're just going to use that time to explore new games, build more on those long-term projects, and make sure that the videos that will come out will be worth your time. Nor does it mean that we'll decrease the number of videos, we'll just have gaps and a more concentrated output in between. We don't want to reduce our output, we want a better logistical workflow. At which point you might be asking, well, what are those long-term projects you've been working on NPI? What is there to look forward to? Glad you asked. Problem, sometimes long-term projects don't pan out, so I don't want to make an oath that all of these will see the light of day because a wobbly oath is not how you lay new foundations. But, one of these projects is much further along than the others, and for those of you who enjoyed a look into the world of board game miniatures, well, there is a spiritual sequel in the works, and I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that it's unlike anything we have done before. The subject of which I don't want to reveal just yet, but it is a real doozy and something I'm already incredibly proud of. If you want to help make these projects a reality, we absolutely need your support.
Effectively, we're asking for a pay rise, and also some time to make sure that the work we do is good work and is worth that support. The last thing we want to do is chuck logs into the content fire. We want to create work that's meaningful to us and to you. For years now, we've been desperate to acquire a studio space for Noclip Included, which would alleviate so many of the issues that we've described and create a separation between work and life that would add in a meaningful way to what we do. But, studio space for filming, even in one of the cheapest major cities in England, is an increase of 1,500 pounds a month, not to mention a safety net. Studio space has been our goal for a while, and it's still our goal now. We need a boost from you to get us there. So, please go support our Patreon. What will you find on our Patreon? I'll be frank, it is purely a platform where you can support us, but there are a few nice little perks. First up, our Discord is just a good space on the internet, moderated and well looked after. Second, we're starting a monthly Patreon-only audio digest called the digest. I'm sorry.
Where we just gab about all the games we played that month. The first episode is live now, and this time free for everyone to listen to. But, the most important thing is that if we hit that studio goal, that opens up a whole different world for us. So, rather than over promising right now, we are saying you've seen our work over the last 2 years. We make videos that stand out, and we are asking please help us make having a dedicated work space financially viable, so that that kind of work can thrive, and we will make more of it.