Dear Dwyery is a new seasonal series from Noclip that's more structured like a radio show. Every episode, Danny O'Dwyer interviews a member of the games industry to dive deeper into a topic of interest. The first episode was with the developer of Balatro, which spun the whole thing into motion.
The production of the episodes was much more involved compared to traditional podcasts. A big focus of the project was in using music and sound effects to take the listener on a bit of a journey through the story with us. Sometimes this involved including clips from various sources to help further explain what was being said, and sometimes it was using music to make what was being said more poignant. This involved hours of scouring to find a good soundbite (you'd be shocked how little of gaming news is read out by people that aren't casual podcasters), as well as searching for music from royalty-free sources we paid for to match the tone of the conversation.
This part of the process, finding clips and expanding the conversation, was important to making Dear Dwyery stand out and it succeeded in that goal. Making something that's more educational and informative that a simple interview is something that the games coverage sphere is missing, and this was a terrific opportunity to change that.
A lot of my time was also spent ensuring that there was a good balance to everything, so that nothing was too overpowering or distracting - a process that took me some time to get used to I'll admit. That first episode is a little... loud.
A lot of my time was also spent ensuring that there was a good balance to everything, so that nothing was too overpowering or distracting - a process that took me some time to get used to I'll admit. That first episode is a little... loud.
For the video version of the podcast on YouTube, Danny hired an artist for this recreation of himself, and he threw together the layout for it. Delivering a longform audio-only podcast is a joy, especially in the flexibility it allows for the format, but there's marketing it on a visual platform like Twitter, BlueSky, or YouTube can be tough. I produced clips for marketing purposes, and though we saw the reception on the posts to be solid, the work stood on its own well enough. The episodes have done well, especially with big developers and games with strong communities.
