Any Austin

Any Austin
Austin in 2025
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2013–present
GenreVideo essay
Subscribers1.59 million
Views181.911 million
Any Austin's voice
Austin discussing the goals of his videos.
Recorded 2025.
Last updated: October 2, 2026

Any Austin is an American YouTuber known for creating video essays about video games. He focuses on obscure, specific, or technical aspects of games and their setting, including The Elder Scrolls, Grand Theft Auto, and The Legend of Zelda. Topics covered in these videos include the hydrology, infrastructure, or economies of the games' worlds, surveying them like real-world places, usually to highlight the attention to detail (or lack thereof) of a game's developers.

Content

Austin has created videos discussing the hydrology of several video games, such as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Austin's study of video games led him to analyze the power grids in Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V, and the number of nuclear bombs detonated in the map of Fallout 3. He has also made videos attempting to live an average life in games like Cyberpunk 2077.

Austin has a series on his channel in which he searches for 'odd and unremarkable places' in video games. These showcase a series of places that a player would not normally explore in any great detail.

He also creates music under the name the Excellent Man from Minneapolis.

Reception

Hyperallergic's Dan Schindel included Austin's video essay on the power grid in Los Santos in a list of video essays during the holiday season. Several writers for PC Gamer recommended Austin's videos, including Joshua Wolens, who said that Austin put "a thousand times more work and analysis" into analyzing Morrowind than the game designers would have expected.

Personal life

Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Austin currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

References

  1. 1 2 Wolens, Joshua (October 8, 2024). "YouTuber hero-scientist reveals the hidden lie at Morrowind's heart: Its rivers aren't rivers at all". PC Gamer.
  2. ↑ Jones, Ali (August 13, 2024). "Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom mapper discovers a weird geographical plot hole that puts Hyrule in direct opposition to Skyrim". GamesRadar+. Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  3. 1 2 Macgregor, Jody (May 12, 2024). "YouTuber spots something unusual about Skyrim's river flow, modder gets on it immediately". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  4. ↑ Velde, Issy van der (February 20, 2025). "Skyrim's foremost geographer uses weather stats to explain how it actually feels to live in each of the iconic RPG's cities". GamesRadar+. Retrieved April 23, 2025.
  5. ↑ Velde, Issy van der (November 29, 2024). "Have you ever wondered where GTA 5's powerlines go? Me neither, but the YouTuber who followed Skyrim's rivers to their source has found out and it's fascinating". GamesRadar+. Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  6. 1 2 Litchfield, Ted (June 2, 2024). "One Fallout 3 fan investigated how many bombs actually landed on the Capital Wasteland: it turns out, not that many". PC Gamer. Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  7. ↑ "Can you live a normal life in Cyberpunk 2077? YouTuber takes on a 15-hour experiment, goes through a lot of frustration, but is eventually satisfied". Gamepressure.com. December 4, 2025. Retrieved August 11, 2026.
  8. ↑ Colp, Tyler (March 20, 2025). "The expert on finding weird places in Skyrim, GTA 5, and others does it out of love". Polygon. Retrieved May 14, 2025.
  9. ↑ Schindel, Dan (December 12, 2024). "Five Video Essays for the Holiday Season". Hyperallergic. Retrieved April 22, 2025.
  10. ↑ Cowen, Tyler; Any Austin (June 11, 2025). "Any Austin on the Hermeneutics of Video Games". Conversations with Tyler (Podcast). No. 245.