Frasier Looking at Video Games is taking over Twitter and here's the man who made it
"Maybe it'll be the next 'Can You Pet The Dog'...who knows"
"When the unofficial Bloodborne account retweeted it I thought 'great, that might get a bit of traction'" McGill tells GamesRadar.
"Once I saw a few accounts with 100k plus followers retweeting I thought 'okay, this might do fairly well' - but it was only once I saw some big industry names retweeting it that I really thought ' this is doing numbers' and the followers have just kept going up since."
frasier looking at yahar'gul, unseen village pic.twitter.com/baBlEeqEkpSeptember 7, 2021
The @frasier_looking account now has 9,933 followers and counting and boasts notable industry followers from Bungie, Sucker Punch, Ubisoft, Respawn, and many more. Not bad for an idea that came from a single still image McGill saw in a tweet complimenting Frasier's apartment.
"I bookmarked it to come back to a few days later to do something with it," he explains. "Originally I was going to just have him looking at general non-games-related things, but when I started thinking about what he could look at that would be funny/entertaining, all I could think about was video games."
He knew the locations would be instantly familiar to anyone who played games, and it felt like it would fit with that original image.
"I always felt it had potential, which was the reason I started it, but I didn't think it would gain this much traction so quickly. I thought if it got a retweet from one or two of the games companies I featured, it might do okay, but not like this."
frasier watching the matrix pic.twitter.com/y8OwrQCLpQSeptember 9, 2021
McGill has the advantages of having worked in games for years - he's just about to move from a marketing role at Rebellion to a job at a video games publisher in London - and knowing a thing or two about social media.
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"I've had a personal account for around 11 years, and I started a Mighty Boosh 'No Context' account during the pandemic as I was bored. I've also worked in social media marketing for the last 5 years on various game releases, so Twitter is my main social media platform."
He plans to keep the account going, so either give in a follow @frasier_looking now or prepare to see it retweeted into your timeline on an hourly basis.
"It's the perfect account really - as I work in games it's not really a chore, it's just fun to see people enjoying the content, and to see industry peers sharing it. Maybe it'll be the next 'Can You Pet The Dog'...who knows!"
Remember Twitter's Fake Kaz Hirai? We spoke to him too.
Rachel Weber is the former US Managing Editor of 12DOVE and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She joined 12DOVE in 2017, revitalizing the news coverage and building new processes and strategies for the US team.