OutsideXbox and Xtra: Mike Channell, Ellen Rose, Andy Farrant, Luke Westaway and Jane Douglas

Let’s be honest here, I’m not the first person to be inspired by a YouTuber and I won’t be the last, despite how many people in the world largely ignore YouTube and treat it as a place where fun and logic go to die, you can learn a lot by subscribing to the right channels, science, history and even gaming.

Gaming is the subset of YouTube I’m going to be talking about today because within this genre lurks a channel all it’s own, a gaming news channel that isn’t afraid to be bad at games.

OutsideXbox has been around since 2012 in some form or another, they started out as a bit of an offshoot of a former Microsoft web show “Inside Xbox” which was cancelled sometime before the inception of OutsideXbox.

One of the hosts from Inside Xbox, Andy Farrant, teamed up with former Xbox official magazine writer Mike Channell and former MSN technology writer Jane Douglas to make a youtube channel about gaming, gaming news and other gaming related things.

With all three of them having had backgrounds in gaming/tech journalism, it seemed like a match made in gaming journalism heaven, they all provided their points well and in an entertaining fashion, but they also all seemed to get along outside of being co-workers as well, which is rare, because when you put three people in a close quarters situation for over six years, sometimes someone is going to get bit.

Their channel became more popular and through the years has found with trial and error what works, and what doesn’t work. What works for example, is any time they play horror games and put the controller in the hands of Andy, someone absolutely terrified of horror games but will play them anyway because of bravery, or something.

These horror gameplay videos are massively entertaining, if not headphone ruining, and they serve to show just how well the crew get’s on with each other in a non-scripted way, those who get horrified together, stay together, after all.

Brutal slendering’s aside, when ideas didn’t pan out or things didn’t quite work in a way they wanted them to, they adjusted their content accordingly, and I think the most stunning thing is that this channel has been around for over six long years and it’s still one of the most popular Xbox related channels on YouTube.

Boasting a number of subscribers too large to even fathom; OutsideXbox has provided many news videos, review videos and let’s play videos where they show off their disregard for listening to NPCs their love for just having fun, which is a rarity these days, many people just want to be famous, to be cool, or to live up to the legendary status of their favorite gaming youtubers, but OutsideXbox just wants to do what they do, and they want to do it right, but they aren’t afraid to be a little silly.

Or a lot silly, as many of their “Show of The Week” videos are scripted with jokes, lowkey skits and insanity (That’s a good type of insanity!)

In 2015 they started an offshoot channel known as OutsideXtra which would house other videos that didn’t quite fit under the Xbox gaming system, focusing on news and games from PlayStation, Nintendo and more, they hired on Luke Westaway (Former CNET Tech and Gadgets) and Ellen Rose (former Youtube Vlogger, Xbox On host and gaming enthusiast) to be the hosts of this side channel and it has grown in it’s video and subscriber count since it’s inception. And has become just as lovely and integral to the reason people love OutsideXbox so much.

I’m talking a lot about their history and not a lot about why I hold them so dearly to me, so let’s get into that. I found OutsideXbox through a series of misadventures on YouTube, watching videos and then clicking on “related” led to my eventual discovery of OutsideXbox’s most well known videos, their weekly list videos.

I was into it, I was enamored by listicle videos because it was entertaining and funny and dare I say it? Well informed. These people really knew what they were talking about, so I watched a lot of their list videos and eventually fell into watching their game play videos (Slender: The Arrival, anyone?) and that led me to the show of the week videos and the livestream VOD’s and by then I had already been watching them for a little over a year.

I’ve been through a lot of personal life stuff, stresses and emotions that no person should have to go through alone, and as silly as it sounds, I never felt alone because I knew I could delve into the enormous backlog of OutsideXbox videos and it always somehow brought a smile to my face.

Outside Xbox/Xtra D&D Live at Rezzed: Luke Westaway, Ellen Rose, Johnny Chiodini, Andy Farrant, Jane Douglas and Mike Channell

I was drawn into different games that I’d never even considered trying before, genre’s I never knew would be fun for me because of their videos, and I’ve expanded my horizons with art, writing and more because of their amazingly endearing D&D antics that they started in 2017 with Johnny Chiodini of Eurogamer as their very patient Dungeon Master.

With the adventures of Corazón, Merilwen, Prudence, Dob, and Egbert, I have found myself more creative than ever, writing fanfiction, making art and creating real life crafts based on their characters and misadventures, these videos are not only a great opening to anyone interested in D&D but not knowing where to start, but an inspiration to creative people out there.

Outside of gaming and computers, I’ve started to become interested in furthering my education and finding interest in subjects I never did when I was in high school, physics, history and more, and thanks to OutsideXbox and Xtra, I’ve also found a new appreciation for musicals (most notably Hamilton) and old Disney songs.

So even though you don’t think I’m doing anything when I’m sitting at the computer laughing endlessly at something you can’t hear, trust me, I’m not crazy, I’m just watching OutsideXbox/Xtra. Two channels that have inspired me to do things I’d have fervently disagreed with in my teen years.

In conclusion, I would like to extend a thank you to both these channels and all five of their hosts for being unafraid to suck at things and learn along the way, you guys are awesome and I hope you all make videos for years to come.