Videogamedunkey

Jason Gastrow (born January 30, 1991), known online as videogamedunkey or simply dunkey, is an American YouTuber known for his YouTube skits and video essays that blend crude humor with video game criticism.

As of March 2023, Gastrow's YouTube channel has seven million subscribers, and he has accumulated over three billion views.

Gastrow has been publishing videos online since 2003.

Initially, he created Flash animations that he uploaded on the website Newgrounds under the username "MeatwadSprite".

Examples include "Great Yoshi Migration", his first video, and a parody of the Village People song "Y.M.C.A." called "F.U.C.K."

On the H3h3 Podcast, Gastrow said he wanted to be an animator when he was young.

During his channel's initial years, Gastrow was primarily known for his coverage of the 2009 multiplayer online battle arena game League of Legends.

According to Yannick LeJacq of Kotaku, Gastrow "had a special place in the League of Legends universe for consistently producing some of the best, and definitely the funniest, material in the game's massive community".

Gastrow started his current YouTube channel, videogamedunkey, in 2010, with a video of him performing a speedrun of the 1991 game Battletoads.

Gastrow recalled that the name "videogamedunkey" came about when he was playing Left 4 Dead with a friend.

He "told him to pet a donkey or something," and after trapping his friend in the game, told him he would release him if he said "go go magic dunk".

Gastrow is also known for popularizing jokes about Knack (2013) and its sequel Knack II (2017), titles for the PlayStation 4, to the point that the games "became the internet's favorite punchline".

Gastrow initially signed a contract with internet entertainment platform Machinima, Inc., which according to him took a large cut of his earnings from advertising.

In 2013, Gastrow switched from Machinima to Maker Studios, which reportedly took more revenue than Machinima.

Microsoft offered to pay if he made four videos for Xbox Live's Summer of Arcade.

Shortly after Gastrow uploaded the first video, in which he lambasted the game he was playing, Microsoft took down the video and canceled the deal.

Gastrow has since worked with Curse LLC, which he has praised.

Gastrow reportedly earns up to US$1.7 million a year, and he is "likely the highest-earning cultural commentator with connections to Madison".

In a 2015 Reddit thread, Gastrow mentioned that his channel's profile picture was designed by Newgrounds animator and YouTuber Chris O'Neill.

By September 2015, the videogamedunkey channel had 1.8 million subscribers.

Gastrow's videos have collectively generated over three billion views.

Outside of YouTube, Gastrow is active on Twitter and has pages on Facebook and Reddit.

He and his wife Leah also run Dunkey's Castle, an online merchandise shop.

Gastrow primarily covers video games on his channel.

This includes posting reviews, playthroughs, video essays, and montages.

He has also reviewed films, such as The Shining.

However, he quit making League videos in September 2015, after he was banned for "toxic" behavior, such as repeatedly insulting other players on his team in the in-game chat.

In December 2020, Gastrow released a video in which he stated he would stop making "good videos" and instead switch to a daily schedule.

He subsequently released shorter videos on a daily basis that satirized his stated plans and featured clickbait titles.

For example, a purported Minecraft video involved Gastrow playing as the default Steve avatar from Minecraft in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

According to his wife, the switch in content format was because he was "feeling frustrations about the current YouTube landscape and worried about the future", where his and other channels' past curated content has been "overshadowed by the latest trends and low effort stuff" from larger channels.

Polygon noted that the videos performed better than Gastrow's previous content, anticipating that he was exemplifying the current problems with YouTube to bring the situation to light and would eventually return to his normal curated content.

In August 2021, Gastrow joked in a live stream that Kanye West's then-upcoming album Donda would sample a song from the animated short film Strawinsky and the Mysterious House (2012); upon the album's release, the track "Remote Control" sampled the exact clip, leading fans to theorize that West's team watched Gastrow's stream.

In November 2022, Gastrow uploaded a video criticizing Sonic Frontiers, which resulted in the game being review bombed on Metacritic.

Gastrow stated he did not intend for the video to spark review bombing and accused Sonic fans of leaving negative reviews to make his fans look bad.

In September 2022, Gastrow and his wife launched Bigmode, a video game publishing company specializing in publishing indie games.

Gastrow stated in a video announcing the new company, "I think we're going to bring insane value to the table and the bottom line is: help good games succeed and help them continue to succeed into the future".

Co-founder Leah Gastrow said their ultimate goal was to "put together a catalogue of unique, high-quality games that can be enjoyed for many years."

While there was some criticism by gaming journalists, the announcement was well received by indie developers.

In January 2023, Bigmode announced its first title, Animal Well.