Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts. And how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? Maybe this following exchange will sound familiar
Speaker 1: to some of you out there. Hey yeah, do you
Speaker 1: ever wonder why we're here? That's how the very first
Speaker 1: episode of Red Versus Blue, an animated web series that
Speaker 1: launched nearly twenty one years ago. As I record this
Speaker 1: in March of twenty twenty four, and it's a series
Speaker 1: that spans nineteen seasons and multiple mini series offshoots. This
Speaker 1: year that series will conclude, which was planned. They had
Speaker 1: planned to finally wrap up Red Versus Blue. Also, the
Speaker 1: company that produces that series, Rooster Teeth, is going to
Speaker 1: shut down. That was not planned, or at least it
Speaker 1: wasn't anticipated to be this particular year. I thought I
Speaker 1: would do a pair of episodes. It turns out as
Speaker 1: a retrospective on Rooster Teeth. By necessity, this is going
Speaker 1: to be a cliffs notes version of that company's history
Speaker 1: because it packed in an awful lot during those twenty
Speaker 1: one years of existence. But I felt it was important
Speaker 1: to acknowledge Rooster Teeth because it was one of those
Speaker 1: forces that helped shape Internet culture and how online media
Speaker 1: can work. Rooster Teeth was one of those early web
Speaker 1: based media companies that would fuel memes and fuel merchandise sales.
Speaker 1: It would help shape the sense of humor for a
Speaker 1: generation of fans, and I actually put it up there
Speaker 1: with a lot of other early web based comedy shows
Speaker 1: off like Aska Ninja and Homestar Runner. These were things
Speaker 1: that sort of defined Internet culture and Internet humor in
Speaker 1: those early days. You could also point to other groups
Speaker 1: like Lonely Island. You know, the trio of Lonely Island.
Speaker 1: We're finding amazing success online, but would find even greater
Speaker 1: success in mainstream media as they would go on to
Speaker 1: work with Saturday Night Live and then other projects. Also,
Speaker 1: way back in twenty twelve, I actually had Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: co founder Bernie Burns on this show. We did an
Speaker 1: interview with Bernie way back in twenty twelve. So if
Speaker 1: you want to crawl through the tech Stuff archives, you
Speaker 1: can actually find that episode. It's titled tech Stuff Talks
Speaker 1: to Rooster Teeth. We actually have done classic reruns of
Speaker 1: that show, so you should be able to find it
Speaker 1: through the archives. It originally published on February twenty second,
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, while I've been doing the show a long time,
Speaker 1: or you can check out the sod How the Great
Speaker 1: Movie Ride Worked. That published on September two, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: a decade later, and that featured special guest Jack Battillo,
Speaker 1: who also worked at Rooster Teeth. He was a founding
Speaker 1: member of their Achievement Hunter channel, which I'll talk about
Speaker 1: more in a little bit. However, to tell the story
Speaker 1: of Rooster Teeth, we actually need to go way back
Speaker 1: to the early two thousands, before there was a Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth company to speak of. There were a group of
Speaker 1: friends and co workers who lived in Austin, Texas, and
Speaker 1: they decided to collaborate and to launch a website. And
Speaker 1: some of them had had a little bit of experience
Speaker 1: doing this. All of them had had some interest in
Speaker 1: creating content of one form or another. Some of the
Speaker 1: group had actually even attended film school and had the
Speaker 1: actual education to go into things like production. One of
Speaker 1: the founding members had served in the military as a photojournalist.
Speaker 1: It also launched magazines or zines, as they would say
Speaker 1: in the old school fandom days for the punk rock scene.
Speaker 1: Most of the founding members had at one time or
Speaker 1: another worked for a tech help call center, and so
Speaker 1: they were familiar with each other and they loved video games.
Speaker 1: Oh also they loved to drink as an alcohol. They
Speaker 1: loved drinking, though for the record, most of the guys
Speaker 1: have seriously cut back or stopped drinking alcohol these days,
Speaker 1: and they decided to make a comedy and culture website
Speaker 1: called drunk Gamers. So on this site they did everything
Speaker 1: from game reviews to commenting on culture to razzing each
Speaker 1: other and their audience, usually while inebriated. The joke more
Speaker 1: or less ran its course, and they decided to sunset
Speaker 1: the website after a while, but it gave them a
Speaker 1: taste of creating content for the web. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that they produced during the drunk Gamers era
Speaker 1: was a trailer for a proposed series. This series would
Speaker 1: make use of the Xbox video game Halo as a
Speaker 1: sort of engine for their show. The Drunk Gamers would
Speaker 1: use controllers in a multiplayer mode to make the characters
Speaker 1: bob their heads in time, with lines being spoken in voiceover,
Speaker 1: and then they would also you know, move the characters
Speaker 1: to specific locations in view of one character that acted
Speaker 1: as the camera, so it was like they were hitting
Speaker 1: their marks on a soundstage and they would act out
Speaker 1: a script. They would record the voiceover to go with
Speaker 1: the action, and it was akin to digital puppetry, and
Speaker 1: this relatively new art form had the name machinema. Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth did not coin that term, nor were they the
Speaker 1: first to do this, but they were an early example
Speaker 1: of machinima. The trailer they produced featured a narrative and
Speaker 1: an increasingly combative subtitle editor who would squabble as the
Speaker 1: editor would paraphrase what the narrator was saying. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you're watching these clips of video game characters doing stuff.
Speaker 1: And it was all supposed to take place in the
Speaker 1: era immediately following the events of the video game Halo,
Speaker 1: and the story was there erupted a civil war back
Speaker 1: on Earth, and the two sides of the civil war
Speaker 1: divided into Red armies and Blue armies, so Red versus Blue.
Speaker 1: It gave a hint at what the irreverence style of
Speaker 1: the series would feature, but at the time it didn't
Speaker 1: get that much attention. As drunk gamers wound down, the
Speaker 1: team had the opportunity to give the Red Versus Blue
Speaker 1: series another go, and they jotted down a list of
Speaker 1: ideas and jokes sort of scenarios that they could incorporate
Speaker 1: into the episodes, and each episode was only going to
Speaker 1: be a few minutes long, as the founders have explained subsequently,
Speaker 1: the original idea was to create a limited mini series
Speaker 1: of just a few episodes, so it wasn't meant to
Speaker 1: be an ongoing thing. But it turned out the show,
Speaker 1: which launched on April first, two thousand and three, would
Speaker 1: receive much more attention than they anticipated. Plus they still
Speaker 1: had plenty of jokes and ideas left from the brainstorming session,
Speaker 1: and gradually they started to get the feeling that they
Speaker 1: could perhaps do something larger and more ambitious with this
Speaker 1: recipe of materials and ingredients. So the show largely lampooned
Speaker 1: military life and bureaucracy, as well as tropes you would
Speaker 1: find in video games and science fiction action films. The
Speaker 1: first season was pretty low fi, but it also had
Speaker 1: to be because it was limited to the original Xbox
Speaker 1: Halo title, and this was also in an era before YouTube,
Speaker 1: so YouTube didn't launch till two thousand and five, two
Speaker 1: years after Red Versus Blue started coming out, which meant
Speaker 1: the team had to host the video files on a website,
Speaker 1: so they had to put the files on a server
Speaker 1: and make that available to the audience, and the audience
Speaker 1: would actually have to go to the website, click on
Speaker 1: a link, and download episodes, and they had a choice.
Speaker 1: They could download in quick time, or they could download
Speaker 1: in Windows media file formats and then watch the videos
Speaker 1: once you've downloaded them. I was actually one of these people.
Speaker 1: I didn't discover Red Versus Blue on day one. I
Speaker 1: was not like an OG fan from the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the launch. But when I discovered Red Versus Blue,
Speaker 1: they were only maybe four or five episodes into season
Speaker 1: one when I found out about it, and I got
Speaker 1: hooked right away, so I would end up downloading episodes
Speaker 1: the day they published, and ultimately I even burned the
Speaker 1: episodes of season one to a CD because back then
Speaker 1: PCs had optical drives. But anyway, the humor in those
Speaker 1: early episodes is frequently juvenile and vulgar. I think saying
Speaker 1: that not all the jokes have aged well is a
Speaker 1: more than fair assessment, and I suspect that if the
Speaker 1: creators were to put out the series today, they would
Speaker 1: make very different choices in some instances, but the spirit
Speaker 1: of Red versus Blue shares commonalities with literary classics like
Speaker 1: Catch twenty two. That novel highlights the absurdities and contradictions
Speaker 1: of military, particularly during wartime, So Rooster Teeth lampooned conventions
Speaker 1: found in bureaucracies in general, not just the military. And
Speaker 1: while there was never a guarantee that they would succeed,
Speaker 1: the show did find an audience, and it was a
Speaker 1: large enough audience to actually create challenges for the team
Speaker 1: because again, the audience had to go to a website
Speaker 1: and download a file, and internet traffic isn't free, right.
Speaker 1: If you are hosting files on a server and there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people going to that server to
Speaker 1: download those files, it can start to rake up a
Speaker 1: pretty substantial bill. So hosting the files would actually require
Speaker 1: better servers. Fairly early on in Rooster Teeth's history, so
Speaker 1: the group actually formed the company called Rooster Teeth. Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth takes its name from a sanitized version of a
Speaker 1: vulgar insult used in the original series trailer, an insult
Speaker 1: that I will not repeat here, but it's easily found.
Speaker 1: The company traces its origins to April first, two thousand
Speaker 1: and three, and the founding members, depending upon which version
Speaker 1: of the company's history you're reading, would include Bernie Burns,
Speaker 1: Matt Hollum, Gustavo Sorola, Jeff Ramsey, Jason Seldanya, and Joel Hayman.
Speaker 1: And the group started on a journey that would lead
Speaker 1: to a lot of really interesting opportunities for those folks,
Speaker 1: as well as others who would join the company. Now,
Speaker 1: the early days weren't exactly glamorous. The company's headquarters was
Speaker 1: even an office space. It was a relatively small spare
Speaker 1: room in Bernie Burns's home, and some of the folks
Speaker 1: meant that, you know, they were crammed into spaces like
Speaker 1: a closet where they would work, and they were working
Speaker 1: in a perpetual crunch time. They also, at this point
Speaker 1: they also had separate jobs. Not everyone could just work
Speaker 1: on this full time. In fact, I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: was working on it full time. Early on. They were
Speaker 1: maintaining a normal job as well as trying to produce
Speaker 1: a technically complicated web series. Because getting this right was
Speaker 1: not easy. You know, it's hard to tell when you
Speaker 1: are performing one of these episodes, if you're in the
Speaker 1: right spot, if you're looking in the right direction, if
Speaker 1: you're all your settings are correct. It's tricky to do,
Speaker 1: and so they were constantly working in Crunch and they
Speaker 1: were trying to stick as close to a weekly publication
Speaker 1: schedule as they possibly could despite all the technical challenge,
Speaker 1: some of which were more server side. Right, if your
Speaker 1: server happens to be down for whatever reason, it's not
Speaker 1: like you can upload your file. And uploading took a
Speaker 1: long time because this is the early days of internet connectivity.
Speaker 1: Bandwidth was limited, and some shots that they made would
Speaker 1: call for special circumstances that were not easy to generate
Speaker 1: or to replicate within the game. Like they were possible obviously,
Speaker 1: but they weren't easy. So it could take an hour
Speaker 1: or more just to set up a site gag, and
Speaker 1: if you messed something up, then you had to do
Speaker 1: it all over again. Also, you've got to remember these
Speaker 1: are guys who were mostly in their early twenties at
Speaker 1: this point, early to mid twenties, and sometimes they would
Speaker 1: get up to shenanigans and purposefully do things that would
Speaker 1: sabotage a shot and force everyone to set everything up
Speaker 1: all over again because that was funny. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: kind of activity that will get you thrown off of
Speaker 1: any normal production set, and I'm sure there were times
Speaker 1: where the creators were considering throwing people out of the
Speaker 1: Bernie's house. Anyway. There were also the technical issue of
Speaker 1: just making sure that the files were available for folks
Speaker 1: to download, because as the show grew in popularity, this
Speaker 1: became a bigger concern. One way the company generated revenue
Speaker 1: was to offer viewers the chance to become what they
Speaker 1: called sponsors, and in return, the sponsors would receive a
Speaker 1: DVD copy of the episodes at the end of the season.
Speaker 1: Then Rooster Teeth also began to produce merchandise like T
Speaker 1: shirts and other items featuring characters and catchphrases. I used
Speaker 1: to have a couple of red versus Blue T shirts
Speaker 1: way back in the day. I got them pretty early on.
Speaker 1: I remember having a T shirt from the character Caboose
Speaker 1: that said I like me, which you know, it's a
Speaker 1: good thing to remember once in a while. Now. In
Speaker 1: those early days, this small team handled everything themselves, and
Speaker 1: by small, I mean there were fewer than ten people
Speaker 1: working at Rooster Teeth. Everything that they did included fostering
Speaker 1: their growing community, managing merchandise orders, keeping track of inventory,
Speaker 1: responding to technical issues, plus you know, just creating the show.
Speaker 1: So people wore many hats figuratively. I don't think they
Speaker 1: literally wore a lot of hats. Okay, this is a
Speaker 1: good place for us to take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsors. We'll be right back with lots more
Speaker 1: about the early days of Rooster Teeth. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: So Rooster Teeth would launch the first season of Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue on April first, two thousand and three, and
Speaker 1: the first five seasons of Red Versus Blue are collectively
Speaker 1: called the Blood Gulch Chronicles, named after a map in
Speaker 1: the Halo multiplayer game. These episodes are just largely comedic
Speaker 1: in tone. They're also just a few minutes each. They
Speaker 1: get longer as the series went on, and later seasons
Speaker 1: would introduce much more dramatic elements, though it never strayed
Speaker 1: too far away from comedy. Some episodes have very little
Speaker 1: comedy in them, but most of them still have at
Speaker 1: least elements and references, and the series would also begin
Speaker 1: to incorporate original animation using techniques like motion capture technology
Speaker 1: to achieve effects that would be impossible if they relied
Speaker 1: solely on the various Halo game engines. And yes, they
Speaker 1: did upgrade to later versions of Halo as those versions
Speaker 1: came out in order to produce subsequent seasons of Red
Speaker 1: Versus Blue, and they would find reasons within the narrative
Speaker 1: to explain the changes, often as a way that was
Speaker 1: just a joke, but you know, they would still acknowledge it.
Speaker 1: They would at least hang a lampshade on it, as
Speaker 1: they might say. Now. As I mentioned at the top
Speaker 1: of this episode, this year twenty twenty four marks the
Speaker 1: final season of Red Versus Blue, and the series has
Speaker 1: taken a break here and there over the last twenty
Speaker 1: plus years by spinning off mini series which adds more
Speaker 1: lore and intrigue to the story. Some of those mini
Speaker 1: series are far more action oriented than comedy oriented, but
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth would end up being much more about a
Speaker 1: single web series. While that was what got the company
Speaker 1: off the ground, it wasn't the only thing they did.
Speaker 1: For one thing, Rooster Teeth would end up doing a
Speaker 1: lot of commercial work. They would help companies, primarily video
Speaker 1: game companies and retail establishments, they would help them produce commercials,
Speaker 1: and this was another healthy source of revenue for them,
Speaker 1: like they had already shown that they could produce cinematic
Speaker 1: quality content using video game engines, so they would end
Speaker 1: up doing this work on behalf of advertising agencies for
Speaker 1: their clients. But this would mean that members of the
Speaker 1: team would often have to travel as part of their
Speaker 1: jobs to do this work, and that would cause disruptions
Speaker 1: and production. The company did grow, but very slowly at first.
Speaker 1: In fact, they wouldn't hire on employee number eight until
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, five years after they got started,
Speaker 1: and they still didn't even have eight employees. So they did,
Speaker 1: over time start to hire additional staff to help take
Speaker 1: over some of the duties so that this one small
Speaker 1: team wasn't constantly on the verge of working themselves to death.
Speaker 1: In October of two thousand and four, however, jumping back
Speaker 1: a little bit, the company launched a second machinema series.
Speaker 1: This one was called The Strangerhood, and it was a
Speaker 1: comedy featuring characters waking up in a strange suburban neighborhood
Speaker 1: and had a silly kind of Twilight Zone sort of
Speaker 1: vibe to it. This show used the SIMS two for
Speaker 1: that first season. There was a small gap between season
Speaker 1: one and season two, eleven years between the two. The
Speaker 1: second season would actually use the SIMS four game engine
Speaker 1: in order to create the story. They did have a
Speaker 1: couple of other specials and related sort of the mini
Speaker 1: series between those two seasons, so it's not just two
Speaker 1: seasons of material. There's some other supplemental material as well.
Speaker 1: And season two only exists because it was a stretch
Speaker 1: goal for a fundraising campaign that Roster Teeth held for
Speaker 1: a feature film, which we will talk more about later
Speaker 1: in this episode. So the Strangerhood did not see the
Speaker 1: same success as Red Versus Blue. This might explain why
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth migrated away from the property. It didn't try
Speaker 1: to create numerous seasons of that. It just felt like
Speaker 1: they had a limited amount of assets, largely in the
Speaker 1: time department, and so it didn't make sense to dedicate
Speaker 1: a ton of their effort towards something that was just
Speaker 1: not taking off at the same level as Red Versus Blue.
Speaker 1: And in late two thousand and four, Rooster Teeth launched
Speaker 1: a new project called RT Sponsor Cut and as that
Speaker 1: name implies, that project presented exclusive content for folks who
Speaker 1: signed up for a sponsorship, so the company would embrace
Speaker 1: this model more and more in the future. This idea
Speaker 1: that if you subscribe, you get extra content. You don't
Speaker 1: have to subscribe, and you can get all the free content,
Speaker 1: but there will be stuff that you won't have access to. Eventually,
Speaker 1: sponsors would transform into first members, so called because these
Speaker 1: folks would get access to the normal content a little
Speaker 1: earlier than the general public, and they would also get
Speaker 1: access to exclusive content just for first members. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go through every single production Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: ever created, because this company has been around for more
Speaker 1: than two decades and it has tried a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it would just get to be a laundry list
Speaker 1: of projects, many of which I only saw a few
Speaker 1: episodes before the company decided it wasn't working or just
Speaker 1: found a new direction. But as for mashinema style content,
Speaker 1: since that's where they got their start, they did a
Speaker 1: few series using different games. There was Panics, which was
Speaker 1: a comedy set in the first person shooter horror game Fear.
Speaker 1: There was one eight hundred Magic, which used the computer
Speaker 1: game Shadow Run as the engine for its Machinema. There
Speaker 1: was Stroyant that lampooned infomercials and used the Quake engine
Speaker 1: to do it. And there was Supreme Surrender, which is
Speaker 1: a comedy that used the game's Supreme Commander. There was
Speaker 1: also a series later on called Minimations. This would take
Speaker 1: excerpts from Achievement Hunter Let's Play video sessions and would
Speaker 1: animate these excerpts using the game Minecraft. So it would
Speaker 1: be repurposing material that they had already produced for one
Speaker 1: style video and doing it for another. That would also
Speaker 1: be the method for one of the other series that
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth would produce, one that used traditional style animation
Speaker 1: called RTAA Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures that would take excerpts
Speaker 1: largely from the Rooster Teeth podcast and then animate according
Speaker 1: to that stuff. Now beyond Mashinima, Rooster Teeth would branch
Speaker 1: out into lots of other forms of content, so as
Speaker 1: I mentioned that would include traditional animation, it also included
Speaker 1: live action shorts, a social prank show. There were various
Speaker 1: game shows. There was a ridiculous reality show that would
Speaker 1: recreate video game tropes in the real world. That one
Speaker 1: was called Immersion. There were podcasts they did a few
Speaker 1: feature length films, they had a comic book series, and
Speaker 1: they even produced a couple of video games. By two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, using a spare room in Bernie's home
Speaker 1: just wasn't cutting it for the company's HQ. The team
Speaker 1: would relocate to an office in Austin, Texas. This would
Speaker 1: be the first of several moves for the group as
Speaker 1: they would grow and they would pursue increasingly ambitious goals.
Speaker 1: So they moved in two thousand and five, but they
Speaker 1: would relocate again in two thousand and seven, then again
Speaker 1: in twenty ten, and then yet again in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: so they kept on outgrowing their environment and moving into
Speaker 1: a new one, kind of like a hermit crab. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, Jeff Ramsey and Jack Pattillo, who
Speaker 1: had been doing some work with Rooster Teeth on a
Speaker 1: contract basis, would found the Achievement Hunter branch of Rooster Teeth.
Speaker 1: So Jack would become employee either nine or ten. There's
Speaker 1: some disagreement in the company history, but in one video
Speaker 1: Jack famously proclaims himself as employee number nine. The division
Speaker 1: Achievement Hunter would take its name from Xbox Achievements, So
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with achievements. These are goals that
Speaker 1: game developers set inside their own games, and when you
Speaker 1: complete one of these goals, you get a notification that
Speaker 1: you acquired an achievement. So each game has a certain
Speaker 1: number of achievements. They've been capped at different levels throughout
Speaker 1: the history of Xbox, and in turn, these achievements are
Speaker 1: associated with a point value, so when you make an achievement,
Speaker 1: the point value of that achievement gets added to your
Speaker 1: total score. And some gamers put a lot of emphasis
Speaker 1: on their achievement scores, like a lot, a lot, And
Speaker 1: there are even gamers who will seek out specific Xbox
Speaker 1: titles not because they're good games that these folks want
Speaker 1: to play, but instead because these games are notoriously easy
Speaker 1: to rack up achievements. Likewise, there are some gamers who
Speaker 1: will avoid titles that are known to have really tough
Speaker 1: achievements associated with them, particularly games that include online play achievements,
Speaker 1: because those tend to be the hardest to get. And
Speaker 1: this was a terrible idea. I think there are a
Speaker 1: few games out there where the developers created an achievement
Speaker 1: that required you to essentially become the best player in
Speaker 1: the world in order to secure this achievement, and by
Speaker 1: definition that meant that it was a really hard achievement
Speaker 1: to get and that most people would never be able
Speaker 1: to get that, which means they would never be able
Speaker 1: to complete their list of achievements for that game, and
Speaker 1: for some folks that can drive them crazy anyway. Achievement
Speaker 1: Hunters started off with videos that explained how to secure
Speaker 1: various achievements in different games, but it quickly evolved into
Speaker 1: a channel that would feature things like let's play style
Speaker 1: videos as well as office shenanigans among the growing staff
Speaker 1: of the department. Some of their most infamous videos were
Speaker 1: live action videos where they would pull pranks on each
Speaker 1: other or just do wild stuff in the office, frequently
Speaker 1: resulting in massive dam image to company property. It was
Speaker 1: almost like Jackass for the corporate world. Also in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, the Rooster Teeth podcast launched. Now, originally
Speaker 1: it was not called the Rooster Teeth Podcast. It was
Speaker 1: called or the RT podcast, as it's usually referenced. Instead,
Speaker 1: back in the early early days, it was called the
Speaker 1: Drunk Tank, and eventually they did change the name. One
Speaker 1: reason that they made this change is that it turned
Speaker 1: out to be really challenging to convince sponsors to buy
Speaker 1: advertising for a show that had the word drunk in
Speaker 1: the title. That's not necessarily an association that ad partners
Speaker 1: are eager to go after. So the first episode of
Speaker 1: Drunk Tank featured Bernie Burns, Gustavo Sola, and Jeff Ramsey,
Speaker 1: three of the co founders of rooster Teeth. Now it'd
Speaker 1: be quite a few episodes before they would find their
Speaker 1: go to podcast crew, which typically but not always, would
Speaker 1: feature Gustavo Sorola, Bernie Burns, Barbara Dunkleman, who would reload
Speaker 1: from Canada to work for Rooster Teeth after first being
Speaker 1: a fan of the series Red Versus Blue, and then
Speaker 1: Gavin Free who would actually move from England to work
Speaker 1: for Rooster Teeth after being a fan of Red Versus Blue.
Speaker 1: In those early days, both of them were community members
Speaker 1: for Rooster Teeth before they would subsequently work for the company.
Speaker 1: The Rooster Teeth podcast would become one of the most
Speaker 1: popular comedy podcasts online, and it like the company would
Speaker 1: go through some pretty major changes, particularly in the summer
Speaker 1: just last year, that being twenty twenty three. For those
Speaker 1: of you who are listening from the future, Gustavo Sorolla,
Speaker 1: who at that point was the singular remaining original podcast member,
Speaker 1: would hand the reins over to a younger group of podcasters,
Speaker 1: which would include Armando Torres, Griff Milton, and Andrew Rosas.
Speaker 1: Barbara and Gavin would step down around that same time.
Speaker 1: Bernie had already left the company by twenty twenty. Tie.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and nine, Rooster Teeth's influence made its
Speaker 1: way into the video game that provided the company with
Speaker 1: their first mashinema engine, that being Halo specifically, it made
Speaker 1: its way into Halo three, which included a new online
Speaker 1: competitive game mode called Griftball. Griftball started as just a joke,
Speaker 1: kind of a throway line in Red Versus Blue, but
Speaker 1: it became a type of community game on Halo servers
Speaker 1: after Bernie Burns made up a rugby style competition using
Speaker 1: Halo matchmaking. So it was a fan made game, a
Speaker 1: fan in this case being Bernie Burns, a fan of Halo,
Speaker 1: and with Halo three, Griffball graduated from being a community
Speaker 1: game type to an official matchmaking game within Halo. Pretty
Speaker 1: cool to see now. On top of that, the voice
Speaker 1: talent and the on camera talent at Rooster Teeth started
Speaker 1: to land opportunities to voice characters in the very games
Speaker 1: that they would feature in their videos. You can hear
Speaker 1: the voices of Rooster Teeth crew in numerous video games,
Speaker 1: including big titles like the Halo series or the Red
Speaker 1: Dead Redemption games. If you are really familiar with them
Speaker 1: and you start playing these games, you might start to
Speaker 1: hear familiar voices as you encounter various NPCs around the world.
Speaker 1: Another important moment in Rooster Teeth's history happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine. The company hired Monty Ohm, an animator
Speaker 1: who would go on to create the series Ruby. Now.
Speaker 1: He originally was working on Red Versus Blue, and he
Speaker 1: was known for pulling extremely long hours at his job
Speaker 1: and was an incredible and passionate artist. He would work
Speaker 1: with the company for more than half a decade, but
Speaker 1: tragically he passed away in twenty fifteen after a severe
Speaker 1: allergic reaction. This was two years after his series Ruby
Speaker 1: had premiered, and several Rooster Teeth staff would promise to
Speaker 1: carry on his work on that series. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that in just a bit. We're going to take
Speaker 1: another quick break to think our sponsors, But we have
Speaker 1: lots more Rooster Teeth history to get through. Okay, we're back,
Speaker 1: and we're up to twenty ten. That's when Gavin Free
Speaker 1: would create a new YouTube channel with his friend Dan
Speaker 1: and they called it The Slow Mo Guys. And as
Speaker 1: the name suggests, they specialize in shooting various stuff in
Speaker 1: ultra slow motion. You've likely seen their stuff at one
Speaker 1: point or another. Multiple videos that they have produced have
Speaker 1: gone crazy viral over the years. In fact, I remember
Speaker 1: seeing them even pop up in a Delta Airline safety
Speaker 1: video several years ago. That's how big they got that
Speaker 1: they were being recognized in other forms of media, including
Speaker 1: a safety video on an airplane. In twenty thirteen, Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth would officially acquire The Slow Mo Guy's channel, so
Speaker 1: Gavin was working with Rousti Teeth Back in this time,
Speaker 1: he wasn't working for them yet, but he was doing
Speaker 1: work with the company but had not been hired on
Speaker 1: as an official employee. In twenty eleven, Rooster Teeth would
Speaker 1: hold its first live event in Austin. This was called RTX.
Speaker 1: The original event was relatively modest in ambition, and even
Speaker 1: so it attracted more than five hundred attendees. Now, over
Speaker 1: the following years, Rooster Teeth would hold many, many more
Speaker 1: in person events, some of them would be large enough
Speaker 1: to fill out an entire convention center in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: They would even do live theatrical shows that would sell
Speaker 1: out major venues, and they would hold events in various
Speaker 1: cities and countries around the world. In twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth president Jordan Levin revealed that the RTX event
Speaker 1: had never been profitable and the company had decided to
Speaker 1: cancel the twenty twenty four RTX. This is in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, and the plan was to go back to
Speaker 1: the drawing board to kind of figure out how to
Speaker 1: go about handling live events in the future so that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be a money losing proposition. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, that concern is moot now. Rooster Teeth continued
Speaker 1: to grow, but it was still very, very small at
Speaker 1: this point. By the end of twenty eleven, there were
Speaker 1: only around twenty employees. One of the last to join
Speaker 1: that year was Barbara Dunkleman. As I mentioned, she was
Speaker 1: a fan from Canada who relocated to Austin, Texas to
Speaker 1: work for the company. As a community manager. Then the
Speaker 1: next year, Gavin Free, who again had left England to
Speaker 1: join Rooster Teeth, would officially become an employee near the
Speaker 1: beginning of twenty twelve. He had already done a lot
Speaker 1: of work on Red Versus Blue at that point, but
Speaker 1: now he was an official employee. And I mentioned these
Speaker 1: two specifically not just because they're two of the more
Speaker 1: forward facing members of the company, but also because of
Speaker 1: their situation, right because eavn their home country to work
Speaker 1: for Rister Teeth. That's a huge thing. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: a lot of you out there have never done anything
Speaker 1: like that. I certainly have never done anything like that.
Speaker 1: Some of you may have, though, some of you may
Speaker 1: have left your home country to go work somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And as you know, your work situation is incredibly important
Speaker 1: because in most countries, that's what justifies you living in
Speaker 1: that country, right, and if that situation changes, you might
Speaker 1: be in a bind. Right if your company shuts down
Speaker 1: while you're working in a country that isn't your home country.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe you were required to have something like
Speaker 1: a green card. Well, you are in a challenging experience.
Speaker 1: And so I imagine that Barbara and Gavin and others
Speaker 1: like them are in a pretty stressful situation at the moment,
Speaker 1: more so than your average employee who's also facing unemployment.
Speaker 1: In the near future, the company began to tackle more
Speaker 1: ambitious projects. In twenty twelve, they launched a game show
Speaker 1: called The Gauntlet, in which competitors attempted to win at
Speaker 1: video game related events. Some of the entrants in that
Speaker 1: show would actually later on become Rooster Teeth's staff members.
Speaker 1: Two of Rooster Teeth's staff, Carrie Shawcross and Christa Maras,
Speaker 1: would travel to New Zealand to walk from the filming
Speaker 1: location for Hobbiton in Lord of the Rings to the
Speaker 1: filming location for Mount Doom. That's a one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty mile trek, and they titled it a Simple Walk
Speaker 1: into Mordor, and it really highlighted how ill suited the
Speaker 1: two were to take on such a task, which of
Speaker 1: course made for really great content. The company also released
Speaker 1: a trailer for Ruby that year. That was the animated
Speaker 1: series dreamed up by monteaum So. Ruby features a group
Speaker 1: of four young women, that being Ruby, Rose Weiss or
Speaker 1: Vice Schnee, Blake, Belladonna, and Yongshao Long and their initials
Speaker 1: create the title r W B Y that's pronounced Ruby.
Speaker 1: It's a fantasy science fiction series in which there are
Speaker 1: monsters and monster hunters, plus lots of different intrigue, and
Speaker 1: it's a highly stylized series. It's in many ways a
Speaker 1: real departure from much of Rooster Teith's other content. It
Speaker 1: would go on to find its own passionate audience beyond
Speaker 1: the company. It also would become the subject of lots
Speaker 1: of debates does Ruby count as anime or not? And
Speaker 1: there are passionate people who argue either side of this
Speaker 1: particular debate, And I am not going to get into
Speaker 1: it because that is not my area of expertise if
Speaker 1: I even have an area of expertise. Ruby would debut
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen. RTX attendees got the first chance to
Speaker 1: see the very first episode before anyone else outside the
Speaker 1: company had had seen it, and after Monteaum would pass
Speaker 1: away in twenty fifteen, other members of Rooster Teeth decided
Speaker 1: to continue the series without him because they wanted both
Speaker 1: to finish the story they had started and also to
Speaker 1: honor Home in the process. So when the show debuted
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, it quickly found an audience, and it
Speaker 1: has had nine seasons, which they call volumes, with a
Speaker 1: total of one hundred and sixteen episodes so far as
Speaker 1: of last year. The aforementioned Kerrie Shawcross is the showrunner
Speaker 1: for the series and has said that he hopes to
Speaker 1: find a home for Ruby so that he and the
Speaker 1: team can finish the stories that they've begun. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth received a Webby Award for Best Animated Series.
Speaker 1: This was for Red Versus Blue, and at this point
Speaker 1: the company was well known in online circles and was
Speaker 1: getting recognition from the mainstream media as well. It was
Speaker 1: still largely seen as a company that made content for
Speaker 1: a younger web centric audience, so think like teens to
Speaker 1: young adults, and according to numerous podcast episodes, the folks
Speaker 1: in Austin didn't really seem to be that aware of
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth in general, so it's not like they were
Speaker 1: a big deal in their hometown, but the company was
Speaker 1: finding some wider recognition. Some employees in particular, occasionally found
Speaker 1: themselves singled out by mainstream publications which would run features
Speaker 1: on this little upstart media company out of Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: and it was starting to really gain traction. Also in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, Jack Pattillo would spearhead a charitable effort that
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth would embrace over the following decade. It was
Speaker 1: part of Extra Life, which is a charitable event that
Speaker 1: raises money for the hospitals that are in the Children's
Speaker 1: Miracle Network. Many participants in the event just in general,
Speaker 1: not just at Rooster Teeth, but many people who are
Speaker 1: fundraising for Extra Life, will stream themselves playing games in
Speaker 1: sort of a video game version of a walkathon to
Speaker 1: raise money for their chosen hospital. I've done this a
Speaker 1: couple of times in the past, pulling twenty four hour
Speaker 1: sessions of playing Minecraft in order to raise money. But
Speaker 1: Patillo's efforts meant that Rooster Teeth would raise more than
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars for their chosen hospital that first year,
Speaker 1: and then every year he would really strive to beat
Speaker 1: that number to great success. Patillo says that he plans
Speaker 1: to do an Extra Lifestyle fundraiser this year twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four despite the fact that the company itself is shutting
Speaker 1: down all right now. In our history, we're up to
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, and this is when I realized that I
Speaker 1: would have to break this episode up into two. But
Speaker 1: we've got a really good place to split our episodes
Speaker 1: coming up in twenty fourteen, because a major event would
Speaker 1: happen that year that would completely change the course of
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth. So in twenty fourteen, first of all, there
Speaker 1: was a group of fellas out in California who created
Speaker 1: a comedy media company called Funhouse spelled Funhaus. That group
Speaker 1: included James Williams, Sean Poole, Matt Peak, Lawrence Sontag, Bruce Green,
Speaker 1: and Adam Kovic. Many of them came from other web
Speaker 1: content companies that had either fold or had downsides significantly,
Speaker 1: such as Mainema Mashinima had not got out of business
Speaker 1: at this point, it still existed, but it had downsize
Speaker 1: quite a bit and changed dramatically. Or some of them
Speaker 1: had worked for a more traditional content company like G
Speaker 1: four TV, but that particular media company went through its
Speaker 1: own long and protracted demise. As I covered in a
Speaker 1: previous episode of tech Stuff many many years ago. Funhouse
Speaker 1: would create its own series and content, focusing largely on
Speaker 1: let's play style videos in which the cast would play
Speaker 1: a game or sometimes a series of games while they
Speaker 1: would just make jokes, and they would also launch other
Speaker 1: series that showcase the team's sense of humor, their writing,
Speaker 1: and their performance styles. While they would collaborate occasionally with
Speaker 1: their Austin counterparts, they mostly were left to do their
Speaker 1: own thing, with some caveats, which we'll get to in
Speaker 1: the next episode. I mentioned earlier that Roster Teeth would
Speaker 1: tackle hugely ambitious projects, including feature length films. Well. The
Speaker 1: first of those attempts that made it beyond the pre
Speaker 1: production stage was a film called Laser Team Lazer. This
Speaker 1: movie featured four hapless protagonists, each of whom dons a
Speaker 1: piece of some alien made armor. And each piece of
Speaker 1: armor has its own abilities and was meant to go
Speaker 1: to a specific person, a human champion who had been
Speaker 1: secretly training for this moment his entire life. But instead
Speaker 1: the armor bonds with these four idiots who just happen
Speaker 1: across it, and then they have to defend the Earth
Speaker 1: from an extraterrestrial threat and hilarity ensues. Rooster Teeth launched
Speaker 1: an indie Gogo crowdfunding campaign for a Laser Team, and
Speaker 1: their goal was to raise six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now,
Speaker 1: this was not going to be enough money to actually
Speaker 1: fund the filmmaking. Instead, it was really to show potential
Speaker 1: investors that there was a passionate audience for this film,
Speaker 1: so it was kind of like seed money to help
Speaker 1: secure additional funding. By the end of the campaign, they
Speaker 1: had raised nearly two point five million dollars their goal
Speaker 1: was six hundred and fifty thousand, and it made the
Speaker 1: project the most top funded film on indieg Go at
Speaker 1: that time, so they were able to secure the rest
Speaker 1: of their funding because people said, oh, well, if folks
Speaker 1: are passionate enough to pour their money into something that
Speaker 1: doesn't even exist yet, then it's worth supporting. And they
Speaker 1: released Laser Team in twenty fifteen, and it's fine. I mean,
Speaker 1: it has its moments, but it really wasn't my cup
Speaker 1: of tea. I was kind of hoping for something that
Speaker 1: would appeal to me more. It's not bad, it just
Speaker 1: kind of forgettable for me. But still, it was really
Speaker 1: cool to see a media company that started out just
Speaker 1: releasing short videos that were made in a Halo game
Speaker 1: engine graduate into a fully fledged movie production company. That
Speaker 1: was really fascinating. Now beyond the film, Rooster Teeth would
Speaker 1: release a whole bunch of different series, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to go into all of them, but they included
Speaker 1: shows that had titles like Social Disorder, Ten Little Roosters,
Speaker 1: the cute little mystery series on the Spot, Screenplay, and
Speaker 1: Happy Hour, among others. And I just want to stress
Speaker 1: how incredible it is for an upstart media company that
Speaker 1: was tackling a feature film to also be launching a
Speaker 1: half dozen new properties and still support ongoing shows like
Speaker 1: Ruby and Red Versus Blue. That is a ton of projects,
Speaker 1: and the company at this point is still fairly modest
Speaker 1: in size. I mean, it's much larger than twenty people
Speaker 1: at this point, but still not like a major studio.
Speaker 1: It's this sort of bootstrapped startup that's doing all this.
Speaker 1: And of course people were working their butts off to
Speaker 1: get all this to happen, and and we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that in the next episode too, but this is
Speaker 1: where we get to the event that really caps off
Speaker 1: this episode and will serve as the launching point for
Speaker 1: next episode. And it happened in November twenty fourteen. So
Speaker 1: a company called full Screen, which in turn was a
Speaker 1: subsidiary of another company called Otter Media, would acquire Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth for an undisclosed amount of money. This would be
Speaker 1: the event that would redefine Rooster Teeth and change the
Speaker 1: course of the company over the following decade. Now, you
Speaker 1: could argue this move is what would spell out the
Speaker 1: eventual end of Rooster Teeth itself, but I would argue
Speaker 1: it's impossible to say if Rooster Teeth would have flourished
Speaker 1: without this acquisition. The company had clearly developed hugely ambitious
Speaker 1: goals and it would have been really hard for them
Speaker 1: to achieve those goals on their own. So in many ways,
Speaker 1: being acquired by a larger concern was potentially a roadmap
Speaker 1: toward achieving these goals, and if they didn't do it,
Speaker 1: maybe they couldn't achieve all the stuff they wanted to.
Speaker 1: So they were in a pretty tough position to say no.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would have been really kind of self
Speaker 1: defeating at least at the time, I'm sure, But as
Speaker 1: it would turn out, this acquisition would be the starting
Speaker 1: point for what would lead to the situation where Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth would shut down. So in our next episode, I'll
Speaker 1: explain more about full Screen and what they were all about,
Speaker 1: as well as their parent company, Outter Media. Then we'll
Speaker 1: talk about the complicated series of corporate maneuvers that would
Speaker 1: happen well above the heads of people working at Rooster Teeth.
Speaker 1: They had nothing to do with it, but there was
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that was happening at top levels
Speaker 1: of the companies that owned Rooster Teeth that would have
Speaker 1: a big impact on them. So we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: these corporate changes actually filtered down to affect the people
Speaker 1: at Rooster Teeth and how it would manifest and shape
Speaker 1: the way the company operated. We'll also talk about important
Speaker 1: people in Rooster Teeth like Bernie Burns, who chose to
Speaker 1: step away from the company for various reasons, and will
Speaker 1: talk about some of the really ugly controversies that are
Speaker 1: merged out of the company within that ten year period
Speaker 1: of twenty fourteen to today. And of course we'll explore
Speaker 1: the reasons and timing of the company shutting down. But
Speaker 1: for now we're going to step away from our history
Speaker 1: lesson and we will rejoin in the next episode. I
Speaker 1: hope you're enjoying this retrospective look at Rooster Teeth. It's
Speaker 1: a company that created a lot of stuff that I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed for many years, and while admittedly I've stepped
Speaker 1: away from some of their content, Like I haven't watched
Speaker 1: Red Versus Blue in many seasons. I have no idea
Speaker 1: what the storyline is at this point, but I have
Speaker 1: watched other stuff that they have created subsequently and still
Speaker 1: remain a fan of the the company and their shows.
Speaker 1: I think it's one that's worth really exploring. For one thing,
Speaker 1: while they're shutting down, it remains true that Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: is one of the most successful online media companies to
Speaker 1: come out of the early two thousands. You know, most
Speaker 1: of those other companies that created stuff in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands either went into long term hibridation and only
Speaker 1: occasionally become active again, like Homestar Runner, or the people
Speaker 1: behind them have moved on to totally different things and
Speaker 1: they don't do online content anymore, and their names are
Speaker 1: largely just left in the history books. So it is
Speaker 1: pretty phenomenal that Rooster Teeth has stuck around as long
Speaker 1: as it has. So in our next episode, we'll keep
Speaker 1: ongoing with the Rooster Teeth story. We'll cover what happened
Speaker 1: in the last decade. And in the meantime, I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.