The boost in the site’s overall traffic in the Zero Punctuation era has been enormous. “Second only to Penny Arcade.” The video reviews now include an advertising strip that easily covers the costs of streaming it, according to Escapist publisher Alexander Macris in any case, says Macris, “The cost of hosting the videos is far less than the value of building an audience.” “I’d suspect Zero Punctuation is the second most popular video game review source in the world,” he added.

(Airborne poo is invoked.) Unsurprisingly, Croshaw’s takedown of Microsoft’s bloated darling remains his most popular review to date, attracting 1.15 million views on Escapist’s site alone, according to Russ Pitts.

While fanboy sites were uniformly over-praising Xbox 360 flagship game Halo 3, for example, Croshaw pronounced the title “run of the mill” - and vividly explained why. When they saw Croshaw’s videos, “We instantly knew we wanted him, his genius, for The Escapist - it was a ‘blink’ decision.” Pitts contacted him, and within a couple weeks, the first installment of Croshaw’s video column, dubbed Zero Punctuation, was live on the site.Ī surreal rollercoaster of sight gags, grotesque metaphor and surprisingly literate insight, a Zero Punctuation review is unlike anything currently available in the timid, obsequious gaming press. “The strategy was to go short, go funny,” she explained. At the time, they were looking to re-brand the site away from its feature-heavy format. They garnered him a large YouTube viewership, which subsequently earned Croshaw the attention of Escapist Executive Editor Julianne Greer and her video proprietor, Russell Pitts.

The Brit is Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, an indie game designer who was until very recently (by his own description) “bored, unemployed, alone.” (His “Yahtzee” nickname was taken from a character in an adventure game he made.) Last summer, Croshaw created a couple of crudely animated game reviews with nothing more than Photoshop, Windows Movie Maker, and his uniquely deranged wit. The site is The Escapist, a smart online game magazine that launched in 2005 to generally tepid page views. What are the video game reviews of one obscure, foul-mouthed Brit worth nowadays? How does several million views and a four hundred percent jump in traffic sound?

The escapist zero punctuation