Too big for the bedroom

Gaming gold with Yogscast

Yogscast started as two friends creating gaming videos in their bedrooms for a laugh. Now it's Britain's biggest YouTube games channel with millions of fans across the world and billions of views. Pamela Parkes went to meet the Yogscast family in their Bristol HQ.

Photos: Dave Betts Artwork: Yogscast

"For a certain generation we are cooler than Google." 

Yogscast Towers

A stone's throw from Bristol city centre is a non-descript office building where you will find global celebrities at work.

Between them they have billions of YouTube hits, hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and attract legions of fans to their personal appearances.

If you are over 30 you may never heard of them. But in the world of online gaming, the people who work for Yogscast are superstars.

"We have tried to remain fairly covert because of the nature of our business. We try to keep our location a secret just so we don't get inundated with fans," says Yogscast chief executive officer Mark Turpin, swearing Bristol24/7 to secrecy.

The 27-year-old is fresh from a recording session, creating a new gaming video. It may sound simple – playing a game and talking about what you're doing, but the Yogscast creators have got this down to a fine comedic art.

“For a great video it is about childish fun and, for us, it is about having fun,” says Mark, who is known online as Turps. “It is a very intimate process of YouTube broadcasting. There aren't many barriers or filters between you and your audience so, if you are having fun, that can be infectious and that can lead to great stuff.”

The videos are gaming gold and the viewing figures for Yogscast's online channels are phenomenal. The company was the first in the UK to reach a billion YouTube views in 2012 and again in 2013.

To put the figures into context, 70 years of viewer minutes are spent every day watching Yogscast videos on YouTube.

This exposure has turned the 'content creators', the people who record the videos, into global gaming gods. At gaming conventions thousands turn out to see the likes of Hannah Rutherford (Lomadia), Sam Thorne (Strippin) and Zoey Proasheck (Zoeya).

Having fun on the job is the key to the content creator's success, says production manager David Boddington, who coordinates the dozens of videos the Bristol company produces every week.

"They talk to their audience day in and day out. They know exactly what to make and how to make it good, funny and how to create something brilliant."

The Yogscast Family

The channel was created in 2008 by Lewis Brindley (Xephos) and Simon Lane (Honeydew). From their bedrooms in a house in Reading they started to record funny how-to videos about the massive multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft and uploading them to their YouTube channel which they called Yogscast.

The inspiration for the unusual name is now gaming folklore – it originated from a World of Warcraft Guild, Ye Olde Goone Squade (YOGS).

In a perfect gaming masterstroke in 2010, Lewis and Simon started to make videos about a then little known game called Minecraft, which went on to become one of the most successful games in gaming history.

"We were quite fortunate to grow alongside the success of Minecraft, I think we helped each other out." says Turpin.

With the eyes of the world tuning in to Yogscast the business snowballed to the point it was getting too big for the bedroom.

The hunt for an office began. "We looked around and we chose Bristol," Mark recalls. “I grew up here and I have always loved the city.”

Some 20 people now work out of Yogscast Towers in BS2. The company is a creative hub of artists, editors, animators and content creators whose basic job is to make silly videos to make each other laugh.

YouTube allows for the catering of niches,” says Turpin. “Where mainstream TV has to appeal to the broad masses, we can just create content which we think is really funny for a particular sub-set of people and, when we are on a global audience scale, is still a massive number of people.”

Knowing what your audience wants is, of course, easier when you are of the same generation as them. Most of the Yogscast team are under 35 and are massive gaming fans.

Animator Ciaran Askew is 20-years-old and admits he is "very, very lucky" to be working for Yogscast.

Growing up just outside Bristol he was a huge fan of the channel and was just 15 when he started sending in animations to Yogscast. They caught the eye of Lewis and he offered Cieran a job. 

“I don't think he knew how old I was,” say Cieran, who had to initially turn down the job because he was doing his A-levels.

Working for Yogscast is not all fun and games though, says Mark. "We do work very long hours. We have to play games for a long time and be creative and funny. 

"It is high-paced and demanding but, if you boil it down, we are playing computer games for a living and shouting into microphones.

“The dream of working here - it can be everything you want it to be. For a certain generation we are cooler than Google."

The next big thing?

Artwork by Yogscast

In the true sense of investigative journalism Bristol 24/7 put some burning questions to the Yogscast team.

Does your mum think you have a proper job?

What's your favourite game of all time?

What game are you looking forward to playing next?

Favourite Yogscast video?

CEO Mark Turpin, 27

Mum follows me on Twitter - she will sometimes phone me up or Tweet me telling me a video was really good

Hearthstone - simple to play but very hard to master

Batman - fun and simple to play and a great story as well.

Heroes and Generals Challenge

Production manager, David Boddington, 32


Mum does think I have a proper job otherwise she'd be giving me grief every day 

Red Dead Redemption like Grand Theft Auto set in the Wild West 

Fallout 4 will be incredible 

The Bomb  

Sound engineer, Sam Gibbs, 23

Mum does now but I originally told her it was a studio job to avoid the hassle of explaining what it was

League of Legends

Magicka 2

Block N Load

Artist, Orjan 'Teutron' Aarvik, 24

Not at first. Now she is quite happy to tell anyone who is willing or unwilling to listen what her son does.

I usually find one game then I get tired of it but Skyrim is a favourite 

No Man's Sky

The one with Simon impersonating a Yorkshire policeman playing Need for Speed