YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon

YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon consist of English video game commentators Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley. They started the main Yogscast channel, BlueXephos, in 2008. Simon and Lewis are famous for their Let's Plays and video game commentaries of Minecraft. As of November 2013, YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon YouTube channel, BlueXephos, has over 6.2 million subscribers and over 2.26 billion video views.

Biography
Simon Lane and Lewis Brindley are from Bristol, United Kingdom. Lewis Brindley founded The Yogscast in 2008. The name Yogscast came from their World of Warcraft guild name, "Ye Olde Goone Squade". "Goons" are members of the Something Awful forums where the guild was originally formed and which most of the Yogscast members are part of. Videos posted on behalf of the guild were referred to as "YOGScasts", with the term "Yogscast" eventually coming to refer specifically to those posted by videographer Brindley.

YouTube
Lewis Brindley and Simon Lane founded The Yogscast in 2008 when they began creating World of Warcraft videos on their main YouTube channel, BlueXephos, now known as the YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon.

World of Warcraft
The World of Warcraft videos were the first videos released by the Yogscast. These videos were largely how to videos. When the Cataclysm expansion set was released Brindley and Lane began recording play-through videos. Much of the Yogscast's initial popularity was due to media and blog coverage of these videos. Joystiq regularly covered Yogscast Warcraft videos as they were released.

Minecraft
One of the most popular video features of the Yogscast is the Minecraft series. In December 2010, Brindley and Lane began an ongoing series of Let's Play-style Minecraft survival multiplayer videos. As the series progressed, however, it evolved into a semi-improvised comedy drama and was renamed Shadow Of Israphel. The Yogscast then expanded to produce video coverage of Minecraft updates, and shorter series consisting of Brindley and Lane playing through custom "challenge" and "adventure" maps designed by members of the Minecraft fan community. Yogscast members Hannah Rutherford and Duncan Jones also make occasional appearances with Brindley and Lane to demonstrate Minecraft mods.

At Gamescom 2011 the Yogscast promoted the Xperia PLAY with Minecraft: Pocket Edition on behalf of Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of Minecraft, who was unable to attend in person.

Mod Packs
In June 2012, The Yogscast started a new Minecraft server running the mod pack Tekkit. Many Yogscast members took the chance to make Tekkit series after the instant success of the initial series. They later changed the series name as a whole to 'Jaffa Factory' because of changes to the mod pack, as explained in the video "Jaffa Factory 93 - Everything is broken". The series was based on Lane's aspiration of making Jaffa Cakes (represented by cookies) in Minecraft. Brindley recruited the help of Jones, who had a very basic understanding of the mod pack previous to the series. Later on in the series, the Yogscast based some episodes on very basic, streamline 'scripting', and introduced Yogscast members Sips and Sjin into the series. They played part of being hostile at first against the 'Honeydew' gang, but soon after major events in the series they all ganged up in the one series on BlueXephos. In March 2013, all the previous Tekkit series restarted with different names; for example, BlueXephos restarted their Tekkit series as 'The Jaffa Factory' with episode 93.

The Yogscast later created a custom version of the Minecraft mod pack Feed The Beast that they started using for their series and later made available on the FTB Launcher. This mod pack was chosen to have its own personal name that matched The Yogscast's theme of general naming: "YogCraft".

Music Parodies
The Yogscast have also made several music parodies about Minecraft. As of November 2012, their most popular video is "Screw The Nether", based on Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger". Another popular parody is "Form This Way" based on Lady GaGa's "Born This Way". Both are created and sung mainly by Yogscast member Martyn Littlewood. Another popular music parody is "HONEYDEWYEAYEA", a parody of the viral video "HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA". Released in June 2013, "HONEYDEWYEAYEA" gained two million views in just under two days. This parody was released around the time that the BlueXephos channel reached a total of two billion YouTube views. Brindley commented: "Consider this a special celebration for reaching 2 billion views, you guys are the best." Lyrics and singing were by Lane with extra vocals from Brindley, Lovasz, Jones and Littlewood. A "HONEYDEWYEAYEA 10 hour version" was also released two days after the original. A behind the scenes version was also released later.

YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon
YOGSCAST Lewis & Simon (BlueXephos), the main channel of Yogscast, is hosted by Lewis Brindley and Simon Lane. As of August 2013, the channel has over 5.7 million subscribers. It is the 18th most subscribed channel on YouTube.