Telstra recently put out a call to find Australia’s next video game reviewer, offering $25,000 for the opportunity. The interest was massive, but as always, there can only be one winner.
Telstra’s nominated reviewer, and the recipient of $25,000 over the next few months, is Joshua Appadoo. Appadoo isn’t someone you would have heard of in the gaming space before: his YouTube channel has 16 subscribers at the time of writing, and his Twitch and Twitter accounts have similarly low followings.
A photographer and video editor in his spare time, Appadoo stood out to Telstra because of his technical ability and experience with content creation generally. “What stood out most for us with Joshua though is how he’s thought about looking at games through the lens of different themes – something you can expect to see from him as Telstra’s Game Reviewer,” Nathan Gumley, Telstra’s connected home principal, said.
Gumley also noted Telstra will follow up the Game Reviewer program with more outreaches to the gaming community:
Overall though, through the casting process, we’ve been really blown away by the talent and passion in the Aussie gaming community. We have a number of gaming projects in the pipeline that we’ll be looking to get more gamers involved in over the coming months.
Appadoo’s channel is pretty new – only six months old – and like most gamers, he has certain franchises he’s excited for. Fable 4 and Elder Scrolls remasters are high on the list, and the Melbourner enjoys consuming a lot of content from Twitch and major YouTubers, like Jacksepticeye and PewDiePie.
When asked about how he sees the program panning out for him, and what he wants to accomplish with his reviews, Appadoo told Kotaku Australia that aimed to make his content as accessible as possible.
“People know Australia is a great wildlife place, great holiday place, but they need to know there’s more to it than just that,” he said over the phone. “I think putting us on the map in terms of what is a very up and coming industry with streaming and games and content creators is very good, while there are a few sort of larger names.”
We’ll have a full interview with Appadoo, covering his views on gaming reviews generally, his hopes for next-gen consoles and his background in gaming, soon.
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