Extra Credits

The series has its roots in 2008 when co-creator Daniel Floyd created two video presentations for his respective art history and media theory classes at

In July 2010, an announcement was made that the series would be a featured series for The Escapist,^[6] where weekly episodes of the series began, as well as the introduction of the new title, Extra Credits. Since Floyd had started working at Pixar Canada at the time, Portnow also enlisted colleague Allison Theus to handle the art. The first episode, "Bad Writing", debuted on July 28 and would since be on The Escapist for the next year.

In May 2011, The Escapist and the show's creators hosted the Extra Credits Innovation Awards at LOGIN 2011, which was meant to praise developers who were willing to take risks and push the boundaries of video games as a medium.^[7] Awards were intentionally nonstandard compared to other awards frequently presented, focusing on ingenuity rather than success, including the categories: Innovation in Game Design, Innovation in Narrative Delivery, Most Unbelievable Awesome Fun, Genre Buster Award, Positive Impact Innovator, and LOGIN Special Award for Innovation in Multiplayer.^[8]

2011-2016: Dispute and revival

On June 28, 2011, Portnow announced through the show's Twitter account that Theus had a radial tear in her shoulder (likely a separated shoulder) that could potentially end her career. A two-month crowdfund project on RocketHub was created with a goal of $15,000, which eventually raised around $104,000. The crew, overwhelmed at the response, decided to start an independent game publisher with the excess profits.^[9]

Around the end of July, The Escapist privately contacted Portnow with a disputing claim for the funds.^[10] Alexander Macris, then-content director for The Escapist, led the claim and stated the money should have been used to create more episodes of Extra Credits and to compensate parent company Themis Media for donation incentives, such as premium memberships and T-shirts.^[11] As a result, Extra Credits broke ties with The Escapist,^[12] and after a brief four-week stint posting directly to YouTube,^[13] the show was picked up by Penny Arcade's PATV network.^[14]

The indie fund would ultimately be created under Extra Credits LLC, which was started on November 18, 2011, and holds the show's unregistered IP rights.^[15] Starting with episode 100, Elisa "LeeLee" Scaldaferri (creator of former Escapist webcomic Name Game) became an official staff artist for the show, to rotate episode productions with Theus. Later, Theus departed from the series to work full-time at Retro Studios (though she still contributes to spin-off mini-series) and was replaced by webcomic artist Scott DeWitt.

In December 2013, Penny Arcade announced the downsizing of its services, including the detachment of Extra Credits and other partner shows from PATV. The crew announced that their official YouTube channel, which was previously intended to be an outlet for syndication, would become the official release outlet starting at the beginning of 2014. The first videos officially released since then were a previously broadcast live Q&A video and the episode "The Good We Do".

2017-present: New team and departures

On 2017 the show's Twitch channel was relaunched, with nightly hosts including Echo Diaz and Will Overgard.

On May 23, 2018, in the episode "Choice Paralysis - Too Much Of A Good Thing", Daniel Floyd announced that he and Carrie would be leaving Extra Credits, and that Matt Krol would take over as new narrator and showrunner. Krol was a television producer and podcast host who frequently guest hosts with Portnow on the show's Twitch channel. A series of Extra History and a spinoff called Extra Politics were completed ahead of the announcement and aired throughout June of that year.^[16]

On October 30, 2019, however, in the episode "The Perfect Horror Protagonist - Writing a Character for Fun & Terror", Krol mentioned that James Portnow, the only member of the original lineup, was leaving Extra Credits after 10 years of being the show's writer, even though his scripts would be used for future episodes.^[17] With the episode "Design Land: High Concept"^[18] from May 18, 2022 Portnow started writing for Extra Credits again.

Members

Controversy

Will Overgard was laid off after he "violated [Extra Credits'] community code of conduct",^[19] something that was privately reported. The exact nature of this violation is disputed. Will Overgard stated "I had screwed up badly in my personal life and even privately offered to resign over it. But that offer was never acknowledged. My "community guidelines" violations were never discussed."^[20]

On June 9, 2018, former media director Soraya Een Hajji went public on Twitter about leaving the show due to growing tensions with Portnow after their romantic relationship had ended.^[21] Extra Credits responded with a statement on their website in which they confirmed there had been a complaint but stated that an independent investigation "found no evidence of improprieties with regards to the claims of workplace harassment."^[22]

Soraya later clarified that James had never "physically or sexually harmed me and never stalked, intimidated, or acted violently toward [her]", saying that her statements had been "misinterpreted" and that she made them as a reaction to going through "a difficult breakup".^[23]

Format

The show is presented in the style of a

The opening song, "Penguin Cap" by CarboHydroM, is a cover of the "Slide" music cue from Super Mario 64. Ending songs vary between episodes, but are typically sourced from OverClocked ReMix, where Floyd was a former contributor. Notably, Floyd hinted occasionally about another arrangement from CarboHydroM that he wanted to use as his departing outro song, which was revealed to be a cover of the end credits music from Super Mario Kart called "Secret 1000cc Mode" on his final Extra Credits episode in May 2018.

Extra Credits for most of its history was produced and narrated by Floyd, who used

Business operations have been handled by Kate Donaldson until the end of 2013, and have been handled from then until 2018 by Soraya Een Hajji, who is also a volunteer director for GaymerX. Een Hajji also began writing Extra History in 2017 to assist Portnow in scheduling.

Community

July 1, 2011 marked the creation of a fan-operated community surrounding Extra Credits with a

On August 6, 2018 Extra Credits announced their first game jam hosted on itch.io, running from August 16 - August 18.^[29] The jam hosted 1,158 participants, and finished with 328 entries, a little over 28% participation (an average game jam has approximately 25% participation^[30]). In a blog post following the jam, Extra Credits indicated they would like to host more events like the jam and "By hosting more opportunities in the future for people to creatively collaborate, we hope that more people are enabled to make cooler things--because learning matters."^[31]

Starting February 2021, Extra Credits started posting their videos ad-free on Nebula Streaming Service as part of the Standard Creator Community,^[32] with some exclusive and extended cut videos on the service.^[33]

Serials

Since partnering with PATV, all official episodes have been re-categorized into seasons of 26 each for technical constraints on their site. The only videos to not follow this format are the pre-Escapist videos, which are exclusively held by Floyd but have each been eventually replaced by updated official episodes.

Mini-series and spin-offs

During the show's run, the creators have been occasionally requested to create game-specific mini-series based on Extra Credits. The first one was Extra Credits: Firefall, which spanned 5 episodes and was requested by

After moving to YouTube, the team decided to make use of their space to expand their channel with new series running on different days of the week. First announced on March 24, 2013, and debuted 4 days later, James Recommends is an extension of previous "Games You Might Not Have Tried" episodes of the main series, and features Portnow discussing the merits of less-popular games which he finds unique. The following week, Floyd announced Extra Remix, which features spotlights on promising members of the video game music community, namely through OverClocked ReMix. Portnow also brought in colleague Dan Emmons to run Design Club, a series supplemented by live streams in which Emmons discusses the merits of design as they pertain to specific games or levels. Extra Frames is a series of videos produced by Floyd in which he discusses video game animation, which has since rebranded to New Frames Plus^[35](see PlayFrame below). A new series began in late 2017 titled Extra Sci-Fi, which examines works of science-fiction and their cultural impact. Another spin-off, titled Extra Mythology, began in early 2018, examining myths from different early religions.

On June 4, 2018, Extra Credits launched an 8-episode mini-series named Extra Politics that exploring the United States political system from a game design perspective.

Extra History

Extra History is a spin-off on the main channel focused on topics in history. It started out as a mini-series requested by Creative Assembly to deal with the Punic Wars, in which their video game Total War: Rome II was set.

On August 23, 2014, the crew announced a campaign through Patreon to fund the continuation of Extra History full-time. This campaign gained over $2,500 within a 24-hour period, and as of June 2018^[update] lists over $15,000 in monthly pledges. Topics are chosen by a monthly poll seeded with suggestions made by Patreon supporters. The show has its own dedicated staff, including art by David Hueso, Lilienne Chan, Heather McNabb and Nick DeWitt, and music by Deana and Sean Kiner.

In December 2022, in order to accommodate the increased interest in Extra History and support both it and Extra Credits, a second channel was started, bearing the original Extra Credits name, to house the gaming content. The original channel was renamed to Extra History, and contains the videos for Extra History, So You Haven't Read, Extra Mythology, and Extra Sci-Fi, as well as the Extra Credits episodes from before the split.^[36]

Twitch channel

The show's official Twitch channel was launched in 2013 as a live supplement on certain weekdays. It originally ran with Design Club Live and Allison's Art Corner, hosted by Dan Emmons and Allison Theus respectively. Emmons departed within a few years, and the channel went dormant.

It was relaunched in 2017 with the hiring of professional streamer Will Overgard to be production lead for the channel. Overgard frequently streamed video games on the channel until his removal in April 2018. Various gameplay and discussion streams have since been aired by Echo Diaz, David Hueso, James Portnow, and Matt Krol.

In November 2018, the production of the Twitch channel changed to Will Kunkel. With the change, several podcast-style discussions began airing regularly each week; Design Club Live with Kunkel and Geoffrey Zatkin covers in-depth discussion on aspects of game design, sometimes expanding on the animated Extra Credits videos, Extra Breakfast with Kunkel and Krol covers industry and media news topics, and Extra Politics features Kunkel, Adi Blake, Ryan Dancey, and Luke Peterschmidt covers current events outside of the games industry. For regular streams, indie games and discussion on them as they are played are a large focus.

PlayFrame

Extra Credits launched a sister channel called Extra Play on December 14, 2014, but it did not become active until October 2015, when Side Quest, a