Regarding Night in the Woods (Patreon)

Hello friends. I hope you're doing well.

I'm writing this at 3 AM as I prepare for several long flights on my way to XOXO, to do a talk about the Nightmare Stream I did earlier this year. I just realised now I never talked about it here on Patreon. Huh. Wow. Maybe I should make some kind of proper post-mortem of that amazing, crazy thing, some time. I could only have afforded to take the time to prepare and execute such a thing because I'm supported by you. So I definitely owe you all that.

I wanted to make sure I left a message about this now, instead of putting it off.

For over a year I've talked about working on a video about Night in the Woods, a game which was tremendously meaningful to me. I've put off working on it multiple times because, honestly, I'm still awed by it. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of *the* games of this generation, and I still only barely feel like I can begin to talk about it and do it the justice it deserves. It resists simpler forms of design analysis because it has a deeper value, and I have a lot of anxieties about correctly articulating those things.

I'm sure you've all heard the recent stories from people coming forward about the behaviour of Alec Holowka, who did music and some coding for the game - I believe these stories.

Scott Benson, who worked very closely on Night in the Woods and did most of the writing and artwork, has recently published a piece about Alec on medium, and I recommend you read it if you can manage reading stories about abuse. I had to take a break partway through because it resonated a little too hard with some of my own experiences.

I've always been a proponent of the idea that art is more than its creators, and Night in the Woods remains a deeply touching work. But I have a lot of anxieties about covering it right now, for reasons I hope are clear. The issue is still ongoing, the dust is still settling on it all. I have no idea how I could talk about any of this.

The time will come to talk about Night in the Woods, but it isn't now, and I felt like I had to admit that here. I hope you can understand why I want to give it some more time.

Thanks. In the meantime, I'm still working on a lot of other things.

I wanted to make sure I covered something that managed to have a big emotional effect on me, achieved something similar to the game I had intended to talk about. With that in mind, the next video is going to be about the Pathologic games.

The original Pathologic and the history of its critical reception is a very complicated and interesting story, and I've wanted to talk about it for some time. Pathologic makes a very strong case for how games can be about more than 'fun', and perhaps the opposite emotions can be just as valuable to explore. With the release of its sequel, and what I see as the continuation of the series not being recognised as it 'should' be, I think that would be a topic worth covering right now.

Thanks so much for your continued support - in future I'd like to be more forthcoming about projects and how progress is going and what progress even looks like on videos I make, so when I get back I hope to start sharing that in more detail.

See you soon.

- Harry