We are Patch Notes

A cut-paper collage. An interior of an grey open-plan office. Cut photographs of rain, rising tides, and protest flicker rapidly in the office windows. The chairs are empty.

PATCH NOTES INTERACTIVE is a studio of independent game makers located in Ireland.Our team consists of a decorated industry veteran and a speculative fiction writer. Together, we have over two decades of experience in telling stories for a living.We are here to make games.
We are here to push boundaries.
We are here to persist in the ambitious human act of creating art.We reject the notion that survival in this broken industry requires us to surrender our ideals somewhere between the pitch deck and launch day.Our debut title is 1000 CUTS: an atmospheric narrative game about making art in an industry on fire.

What do you do in an industry on fire?

The title is spelled out in letters cut from old magazines. Behind the letters, black marker lines fan out in all directions. The shape resembles the blast marks of firecrackers on pavement.

1000 CUTS is a story about making games in an industry that's on fire.It chronicles the collapse of the game industry as we've watched it unfold.
It condemns decades of worker exploitation driven by corporate greed.
It rages against the systemic erasure of human art on an unprecedented scale.1000 CUTS is a personal retelling of our experience at ground zero.

Drawing on the team's nearly two decades in game development, 1000 CUTS tells its story through the perspective of a talented game developer who struggles against layoffs and industry turmoil. It depicts their life through a linear sequence of minigames, each of which are rendered in a combination of collage art, stop-motion animation, and rotoscoping. The minigames reflect activities which a game designers will typically engage in, especially as part of a team, but not ones which the public commonly thinks about regarding game development. These include setting project scope, negotiating publisher demands, navigating convoluted job applications, balancing gig work against production, reading reviews, addressing Jira tickets, solving bottlenecks, and commiserating after layoffs.1000 CUTSwill provide a first-hand account of game development in the 2020's, as applicable to AAA as it is to solo development.

A cut-paper collage. An interior of an grey open-plan office. Cut photographs of rain, rising tides, and protest flicker rapidly in the office windows. The chairs are empty.

ABOUT US

We’re a two-person studio dedicated to making original narrative games in Ireland.

Unorthodox headshots in the style of a mixed-media punk zine. Ellie looks towards the far horizon, while Eóin looks to the viewer.

ELLIE TSANG (they/she)
Executive Producer
An award-winning game designer and industry veteran. Narrative designer and lore writer on Wonder Woman and Warren Spector’s Project Argos. Writer on Aether & Iron. Essayist in The Game Narrative Kaleidoscope. Member of the IGDA and Imirt.

EÓIN DOOLEY (he/him)
Creative Director
A speculative fiction writer, narrative designer, and RPA programmer. Author of No Sympathy, published by Android Press, longlisted for BSFA Best Shorter Fiction. Member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, the British Fantasy Society, and Imirt.

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