Chris is filming a Noclip documentary!

Hey everyone,

So here's a cool announcement that I've been desperately trying not to spoil for the last few months: I'm going to be filming a guest documentary for Noclip on the history of Creative Assembly, the creators of the Total War series.

This won't be published for a good while yet, but I'm going to be filming the bulk of the interviews this week. In fact, we're starting today!

I'm so excited about this project. It's a bit of a dream to be working with Noclip, as I love love love what they do. I'm sure some of you do as well.

Anyway, I figured there might be a few questions about what we're up to. So let me try to answer them here!

What's a Noclip?

It's a cheat that lets you walk through walls and that.

It's also the name of an incredible video game documentary channel on YouTube, headed up by Danny O'Dwyer. He and his team provide some of the most detailed glimpses into the world of game development that I've ever seen and I've gobbled up just about everything they've done since it first started almost three years ago.

On a personal note, Danny has been a huge help to Anni and myself since before we even announced People Make Games. I fondly remember sitting on the floor with him outside the press room at GDC 2018 and hearing his advice on striking out alone and working with Patreon.

And so yeah, I've been looking for an excuse to work with him on something for the last few years now and this felt like a really good reason.

What's the documentary going to be about?

In short, we want to tell the definitive story of Creative Assembly. How did a one-person team making games out of a spare bedroom turn into this gigantic studio that now employs hundreds of people and is responsible for one of the most popular strategy game series of all time?

Total War, Time Commanders, SEGA, Alien: Isolation, the launch of Rome II, working with Warhammer. There is so much to cover here and we want to put something together that can hopefully do the entire story justice.

Whereas People Make Games tends to focus on really diving into individual aspects within a wider story, Noclip specialises in tackling the bigger picture. I've been reporting on Creative Assembly for the last five or six years now, including our PMG episode on Time Commanders, so this seemed like a great opportunity to collaborate.

What does this mean for this month's PMG episode?

Nothing at all!

Anni and I have worked (and planned) hard to make sure that PMG's output won't be affected here. I have a few days of filming coming up, but much of the production work will actually come over the next few months and we're being smart about how and when we do that to ensure our own work doesn't take a hit.

With that in mind, this month's episode is set to go live on the 31st July and it's REALLY WEIRD. Like, easily our weirdest work to date.

Anyway, let me know if you have any questions! And hopefully you're as excited about this as we are.