Extra Credits

Extra Credits is a weekly webshow currently airing on Penny Arcade's PATV. Created by Daniel Floyd and James Portnow, the series is a successor to the loose series of video lectures by Daniel Floyd inspired by the game review series Zero Punctuation, and centers around Floyd "lecturing" about many different topics relating to video games.

Background
The first videos of the eventual series were started around 2008 by animator Daniel Floyd, inspired by the Zero Punctuation web series on The Escapist, as two student projects while studying at Savannah College of Art & Design, the second released on YouTube with huge popularity following. Afterwards, it became a loose collaboration with industry veteran James Portnow, with occasional videos released through Floyd's YouTube channel under the loose title Video Games And....

The Escapist
In summer 2010, James Portnow made a deal with the online magazine The Escapist to make a series of weekly videos, with Allison Theus handling the art instead of Floyd.

The series ran for 52 episodes on The Escapist, which gained a large audience with its challenging subject matter and relentless enthusiasm about video games as a medium. The trio eventually rose to Escapist fame alongside fellow contributors Yahtzee and MovieBob.

Allison's Injury
Around June 29, 2011, Allison told James that she had a radial tear in her shoulder muscle that would threaten her future in art and Extra Credits. James subsequently made a RocketHub project asking for $15,000 to pay for surgery. Surprisingly, the EC fan community responded quickly and donated over $75,000 in three days. At the end of the campaign, the RocketHub page totaled $103,814 donated by 3824 fans.

During her recovery, the show brought on guest potatoes to make art for the weekly episodes in their own art styles.

YouTube
During that time, The Escapist claimed that because the RocketHub page was meant to "save Extra Credits", they claimed a share of the profits. Because of delays in payroll to Allison, leaving Portnow to pay her with his own money, Portnow sent a hired business agent to talk to Themis Media (parent company of The Escapist) claiming that all rights to the Extra Credits IP belonged to Portnow.

After a brief argument, The Escapist agreed to give up the rights to Extra Credits, and in turn, remove all mentions of the show from the site.

While looking for a new partner, the latest episodes were released onto a new YouTube channel and most of the communication between fans was then made on either their Facebook page, their Twitter page, or the fan forum Extra Curricular.

PATV
During PAX Prime 2011, shortly after leaving The Escapist, the Extra Credits team announced to attendees that the show would be picked up by PATV, the online video site by PAX creators Penny Arcade. The first new episode premiered on Wednesday, August 7, also marking a brief return of Allison to the show before her recovery continued.