Have You Seen Noclip?

I'm not talking about the command (even though the command is the inspiration for the name.) What I'm talking about is the Youtube channel created by former Gamespot journalist Danny O'Dwyer. If you don't know, Danny O'Dwyer left Gamespot and decided to start his own Youtube channel called 'Noclip,' in which he makes crowd-funded video game documentaries on specific games. If you don't know about this new channel or haven't checked it out yet, I would strongly advise you to go and watch his documentaries; I'm not saying this as a thing to go do before reading this though. I'm not spoiling anything, I'm just recommending you to go watch these documentaries. I feel that their are not many video game documentaries out now, so having O'Dwyer take on this challenge is good not just for the video game community, but for the documentary community as well.

Their are not a lot of video game documentary series out, but their are a very few if any that is about the trials of creating a specific game. That is what I see in Noclip. A lot of the documentaries on video games that I see are about the industry as a whole, but Noclip is on specific games. In these documentaries, O'Dwyer interviews various people involved with making a specific game and talks about the process of making that game, from before and after the release of the game. But what makes these documentaries amazing is that he doesn't stop there. He talks about what inspired these developers to make this game, the early stages of their career and the early stages of the game itself, why the developers made their game a certain way, what they want you to experience playing their game, and more. O'Dywer and his interviewees go deep into a game and its development where others don't. Where I see one thing, they see 1 million. They show that everything has reason in games. Nothing is their by mistake, nothing is random, and everything you see, think, and feel has deeper meaning to it.

Those ideas impacted me in many ways with the different games that he has been over. Even though I loved The Witness, I could not find a way to look past the fact that is just an island full of puzzles. But the documentary on The Witness opened my eyes to many things. After the tutorial area, the first puzzle you see is an insanely hard puzzle that opens a bunker door. Where I see that it's just a puzzle to skip, Noclip showed me that the puzzle was a way to show you that their is no linear path in the game. That it is ok and will probably happen that you get stumped on a puzzle and that it is ok to just move on to the next. Where I thought that the game should have a progression meter on how many puzzles you solved versus the total amount of puzzles, Noclip showed that having this meter would ruin the mystery exploring aspect of the game and that not knowing how many puzzles are in the game is what makes the game great. These developers of games really showed me how deep everything is in their games, and I found this to be an eye opener.

Danny also is starting a separate series in Noclip that is about interviewing specific people. So far, he has only interviewed John Romero as part of this new series, but I do believe this series has potential to see what these people and their careers are really about.

The Noclip profile video on John Romero is something that should not be missed either. Where the other docs about about a single game, the profile on John was about his entire career. Danny didn't just talk about Doom, Doom, Doom. He talked about what got him motivated to start making games, the beginning of id software, after leaving id, and more. These profiles allows us to look deeper into John than just the guy who made Doom.

Noclip is a fantastic Youtube channel that both gamers and non-gamers should watch. It opened my eyes to new ideas as well as showed me how these developers started and how inspiration from older games transfer into their new games. Danny O'Dwyer is doing something new with creating many different documentaries that are completely crowd-funded. Not only that, these documentaries are high quality, which is very pleasing to the eye. If you haven't subscribed to his channel or didn't know about this before this post, go subscribe to his channel and see the games and the people behind those games in a whole new light.

Is this a paid advertisement?

I don't know if I should flag this or not.

No, nothing about the topics really interest me at all.

I heard Danny Odwyer makes 22k a month with this one weird trick.

Whenever a documentary's sole focus is "this thing I like," it inextricably gives off the feeling of being not far removed from an advertisement. I love Danny and don't think he's being disingenuous or anything, but it's nevertheless an impossible hurdle for me and his work.

This is not an advertisement for Noclip. Danny isn't paying me to say this, he doesn't even know who I am. I made this post because I want to support this youtube channel who I believe is doing something great for the video game community. I'm not writing as my job, I don't even freelance. I just write because I like to write, even if I'm not the best at it. I also don't feel that Danny makes these videos as a secret way to advertise games. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel that he does this to give people a better understanding of those games and games as a whole. Maybe I'm wrong on everything I said about Noclip, but I promise you that I didn't make this post or anything I write because someone paid me to.

@themist997: I think it's fine duder. Danny's such a vip on this site that no one's really gonna bust your balls about discussing Noclip. I love what he's doing and have subbed to his Patreon since he launched it. I've only watched his Doom doc, but it was really good stuff. He's really doing awesome work.

@themanwithnoplan: Thank you. I just made that comment because someone thought this was a paid ad. Also nice gif.

wat.

I don't really see the NoClip stuff as documentaries, since they're honestly just a bunch of interviews cut together. Not much in terms of telling a story.

Regardless, Danny's been doing awesome work and getting some great info out of these guys.

@themist997: People were joking with you(i think), Danny is a friend of the site.

That said i haven't actually checked out any of his vids, i'm not much into documentaries but maybe i will at some point. Also drew has started something similar as well, but i guess more about places and people.

That's the thing about documentaries. People seem to have this impression that documentaries are providing an unbiased look at something, but the vast majority of them have a clear agenda and don't look at both sides.

@oursin_360: I still felt that I needed to clear up that I wasn't being paid(the title does seem a little click-baity.) As for the Drew thing, I'm excited to see what he does. From the sounds of it, he is doing a travel channel where he travels the world talking to people in different regions and cultures about their gaming experience.

Danny who?

O'Dwyer? Sounds like that sketchy guy who was on that cricket Quick Look...




I love Danny. He does amazing work.

I love Noclip. Danny is pretty much the coolest.

The early Cloth Map vlogs from Drew are also really cool.

I'm a patron. I've watched all of them and enjoyed them all--to varying degrees.

@dudeglove: I get both sides of this and realise that Danny's probably still easing his way into what he wants from noclip. When a lot of people see the word 'documentary' they think of an exposé like Capturing the Friedmans or The Smartest Guys in the Room.

Maybe Danny's got a critical piece in the works or maybe he's decided not to go down that route, but I'd sure like to see one.

Disclosure: Is a Patron.

@themist997 Don't think anyone really thinks you where paid for this. Danny is a long term friend of the site and the community on Giant Bomb. Heck he was hosting two podcasts on the site at one point, So I don't think there is anyone here who isn't aware of what Danny is doing with Noclip, and a good chunk of us are already Patreon backers.

'Youtube videos', I get watch video game information from dedicated websites on my personal computer.

I haven't watched one yet, but I think I will definitely check NoClip out to see if it's for me.

figured you could use a decent quality logo. still perplexed as to why you posted a thread like this on this site of all places but hey

This is really weird. I'm not completely sure why... anyway Cloth Map is also awesome, I'm sure no one here has heard about it either.

So far he hasn't really done any games that interest me. I saw his upcoming project was about FFXIV, and considering the path it has had from one of the worst MMOs to on the best, it certainly has potential. Also will be cool to get a closer look at Japanese game development, as you don't really see a lot of it.

I'd hope so, since like mentioned by @mister_v, Danny has been doing video/podcast cameos on the site since at least 2013 and he has been posting on the forums for quite a bit as well.

I've been supporting Noclip myself and have enjoyed the content so far, even if some the games haven't been that close to my heart. I do feel sad about the fact that he's not (understandably) visiting that often anymore, though!

@dudeglove: I hear you, and have some of the same concerns myself about how much (many?) legs his project has. For me, the benchmark in 'how this thing got made' documentary making has been Fulton and Pepe's work with Terry Gilliam but having an independent filmmaker following a game's progress from conception to release, with full and frank access just isn't gonna happen.

I think people are misunderstanding that @yummytreesap is saying.

So far all of the NoClip documentaries have been very gushy. Here's this video game I like. Here's this other video game I like. Here's these dudes who made these games I like. There's no Inside Baseball to it.

There's a difference between having an interest in something (Making a Murderer, The Jinx, Supersize me, Bowling for Columbine, When Louis Meet..., Planet Earth) and just plain liking something. NoClip seems very much in that because of the work that's been done so far being almost entirely overwhelmingly focused around massive success stories on games or personalities that Danny himself really likes. And most of that will likely come down to the industry just being so tight lipped about these kinds of things but getting those lips to talk and verifying what they say would make for such, such more compelling documentaries.

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone on the site whose been on the boards with any real frequency, or who listens to the podcasts/watches the live streams who doesn't know what it is. I will say Danny is far less apt to promote his stuff when he's come on the podcast compared to someone like Will Smith who said "Foo" probably 100 times each appearance.

That being said, yes noClip is awesome. Danny's work is so awesome, even, that I will watch features on games I have no interest in at all, like Frog Fractions 2.

@toopopplio: It's the same for me. Never played Rocket League outside of trying it out for like 15 minutes, wasn't a huge fan of the new DOOM, no real interest in the story behind Frog Fractions or ARG in general, not a fan of Jonathan Blow etc etc. The new FFXIV doc should be interesting because I did put 150 somewhat hours into that game.

I guess when it comes to games I am more in line of what Drew is doing(or going to do) which is looking at them in a broader scope of cultural impact/differences and so on, and not solely video game focused either.

Indeed. I know that documentaries (and journalism outright, but that's another topic altogether) both are and should not be unbiased; I have a degree with a damn focus in the form, for pete's sake. But the "this is a game I like and here's the person who made it" form of documentary, without any deeper digging, is formally no different than the sorts of "making of" videos that are packed in as promotional material. Obviously a documentarian will have an interest in whatever they make a documentary about, but the best documentaries transcend a pure description of a subject: The Act of Killing isn't just a study on a piece of shit war criminal, it also depicts the banality of evil. Grizzly Man doesn't only tell the story of a man who got killed by bears, it unveils a larger picture of man's fatal hubris, esp. in the face of chaotic and uncaring nature. And then the good ones that don't necessarily do that at least tell important and often hidden stories, e.g. Harlan County, USA or The Thin Blue Line or Up the Yangtze or something, though it wouldn't be hard to argue that those all do paint larger pictures.

And again, it's not to say I believe documentaries of this sort are without value, but it also means I don't actively seek them out and that I also think media with video games as its subject still has a long way to go. I like Danny a lot and think he's done good work at Gamespot and don't doubt that he's doing good work now, but I'm just not super interested in much of his output thus far.

@themanwithnoplan: Drew Scanlon hates him!

@magmamud: if your not having a connection to the games is whatMa stopping you from checking out the NoClips, so far, you should still check "em out. They tell video game stories that are interesting regardless of whether you personally have context or not.

To anyone who wants to know: I already knew going in that almost everyone who goes to this site already knows Noclip. Again, I kinda don't like my title(even though I'm not gonna change it,) but I still wrote this article because I wanted to support Noclip, and this is the place where I write.

@themist997: Thank you for your continued support!

Was happy to see him leave GS to pursue something like this that I'm very interested in.

I watched the episode on The Witness the other day and really enjoyed it (not a huge fan of the digital 8mm look personally, but it's a small thing and that's just me). Looking forward to finally watching the Doom documentary as well.