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? So? In last week's episode about rooster Teeth,
Speaker 1: I talked about the founding of the company and how
Speaker 1: from two thousand and three to twenty fourteen, it would
Speaker 1: both release numerous projects that would shape Internet culture and
Speaker 1: grow as an online focused media company. We covered some
Speaker 1: really early ambitious efforts, like how they launched a crowd
Speaker 1: funding campaign for an independent feature film called Laser Team,
Speaker 1: and how rooster Teeth was the type of company that
Speaker 1: fans would want to work for. They would become fans
Speaker 1: of the company and then say that's who I want
Speaker 1: to end up doing work with, and in fact, some
Speaker 1: fans would be willing to move across borders to become
Speaker 1: part of the team. We ended that episode last week
Speaker 1: by talking about how a different company called full Screen
Speaker 1: would acquire Rooster Teeth for an undisclosed amount of money
Speaker 1: at the end of twenty fourteen. So let's pick up
Speaker 1: there and let's talk about full Screen as well as
Speaker 1: its parent company out our Media and while I was
Speaker 1: working on this episode, it's when I realized that, uh,
Speaker 1: sure enough, I'm actually going to need a third one
Speaker 1: to really cover the important stuff plus the stuff I
Speaker 1: wanted to throw in for various reasons. And part of
Speaker 1: that is because this is a tech podcast. It's not
Speaker 1: just an episode that's kind of exploring rooster teeth and
Speaker 1: what it did and why it was important. It's also
Speaker 1: looking at a lot of this stuff, a lot of
Speaker 1: factors that overlap with rooster teeth, to explain what those
Speaker 1: are and how they work. So I'm kind of using
Speaker 1: this not just as a way to talk about rooster teeth,
Speaker 1: but to talk about important things in general. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about full Screen now. The story of full Screen
Speaker 1: starts with founder George Strombolis, who had worked for YouTube
Speaker 1: as a strategic partnerships manager. YouTube as a platform really
Speaker 1: only has value so long as there are people creating
Speaker 1: compelling content for the platform. That's actually the challenge of
Speaker 1: any platform that relies on user generated content. The stuff
Speaker 1: being posted to the platform. You know, if it's not interesting,
Speaker 1: or if it's not of sufficient quality, well then the
Speaker 1: platform is likely not going to stick around that long.
Speaker 1: So the job of a strategic partnerships manager is in
Speaker 1: part to identify and secure and maintain and grow relationships
Speaker 1: with various content partners. The content creators will find a
Speaker 1: way to monetize their work, and they'll learn strategies to
Speaker 1: maximize their efforts so that they're not wasting their time
Speaker 1: and money and energy on things that aren't going to work.
Speaker 1: They can also find other people to collaborate with all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. That's sort of the benefit they see.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, YouTube gets content that users want to watch.
Speaker 1: At least that's the idea. And of course YouTube gets
Speaker 1: a significant cut, like around thirty percent of the ad
Speaker 1: revenue that content creators bring in. So YouTube has an
Speaker 1: incentive to encourage successful channels, and channels have an incentive
Speaker 1: to work with strategic partners in order to maximize the
Speaker 1: return on the investment they have made in creating their content.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about multichannel networks. These are third party
Speaker 1: organizations that fulfill a similar purpose to a strategic partner
Speaker 1: over at YouTube. So a strategic partnership manager actually works
Speaker 1: for YouTube, whereas multichannel networks are independent third party organizations
Speaker 1: typically and they curate content, they recruit content creators to
Speaker 1: have their channels join this network. Those channels may not
Speaker 1: overtly explain that they're part of the network. They might
Speaker 1: not have a logo or anything that shows this. Maybe
Speaker 1: they have a little bit in the about section, but
Speaker 1: otherwise it's not necessarily obvious. The networks end up making
Speaker 1: revenue by taking a percentage of those ad sales that
Speaker 1: member channels generate, similar to the way YouTube does. This
Speaker 1: means a multi channel network only makes money if the
Speaker 1: channels in that network are also making money. So it's
Speaker 1: sort of like a talent agent. It gets a percentage
Speaker 1: of a creator's pay when they land a gig. You know. Now.
Speaker 1: In return, the channels get support from the network. At
Speaker 1: least that's what's supposed to happen. The network provides publicity,
Speaker 1: they might provide strategy and advice, They might provide collaboration
Speaker 1: opportunities with other members of the network, and perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 1: they provide a sense of stability in an industry that's
Speaker 1: unpredictable to say the least. So Strombolis decided to found
Speaker 1: full Screen in twenty eleven and as a company that
Speaker 1: would help content creators reach the next level on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Full Screen was sort of a multi channel network that
Speaker 1: worked with tons of creators. The idea was that full
Speaker 1: Screen would benefit from working with a large number of channels,
Speaker 1: and the channels would benefit from better promotion on YouTube.
Speaker 1: We're already back in twenty eleven it was getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder to stand out in a really crowded field,
Speaker 1: and as you can imagine, that challenge has only grown
Speaker 1: more over the time, like it's today. Being able to
Speaker 1: stand out in YouTube seems like it's an overwhelming challenge.
Speaker 1: Folks can end up getting promoted, it seems almost at
Speaker 1: random by the recommendation engine, but it's really hard to
Speaker 1: purposefully stand out all on your own. It can be done,
Speaker 1: but it's hard to do so. Full Screen ends up
Speaker 1: racking up this huge list of content partners. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to AT and t's website, full Screen worked with
Speaker 1: quote more than fifty thousand content creators who in h
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty million subscribers and generate four billion
Speaker 1: with a B monthly views end quote. The billion with
Speaker 1: a B was me Beyond that, Strompolis fell into a
Speaker 1: camp of streaming video execs who saw the potential of
Speaker 1: media behind a paywall. Be it a subscription service or
Speaker 1: you know, pay to access this particular video or what
Speaker 1: have you. Meanwhile, we actually have to talk about another entity.
Speaker 1: This one is called Otter Media. And to talk about
Speaker 1: Otter Media, actually we have to talk about anime distribution. Specifically,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about crunchy roll. Because this all
Speaker 1: gets really complicated and jumbled, but it is important. So
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and six, there were some college
Speaker 1: buddies who had recently graduated, and they were thinking about
Speaker 1: how hard it was to get access to anime in
Speaker 1: the United States. You really had to put the work
Speaker 1: in to find anime, and only a few times had
Speaker 1: really broken through to find general distribution in America. And
Speaker 1: even then the anime you found might not be subtitled
Speaker 1: or dubbed into English, which meant even if you could
Speaker 1: access the anime, it wasn't really accessible unless you were
Speaker 1: fluent in Japanese. So they put together a website that
Speaker 1: celebrated anime, and by celebrate, I mean the celebration included
Speaker 1: hosting pirated versions of anime with fan subbed subtitles. That
Speaker 1: means these were versions of anime that fans themselves had
Speaker 1: subtitled in order to make the successible to non Japanese
Speaker 1: speaking audiences. They called this service Crunchy Role. Now, the
Speaker 1: piracy thing meant that anime studios and their corporate overlords
Speaker 1: weren't terribly keen about Crunchy Role. When the small business
Speaker 1: received a significant investment to the tune of four million dollars,
Speaker 1: there was a concerted effort for Crunchy Role to go legit.
Speaker 1: So instead of featuring pirated material, Crunchy Role would try
Speaker 1: to secure licensing to feature various anime films and series.
Speaker 1: This was much more amenable to those various studios and
Speaker 1: aforementioned corporate overlords. So then fast forward to twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: a company called the Chernin Group comes into play. Now,
Speaker 1: the Chernin Group is a media investment company, as in,
Speaker 1: this is a company that invests in quote media, entertainment, technology, sports,
Speaker 1: and consumer and digital media sectors end quote. It was
Speaker 1: founded by a former news Core executive named Peter Chernan,
Speaker 1: thus the Churnin Group, and in twenty thirteen it acquired
Speaker 1: a majority stake in Crunchy Role. Meanwhile, AT and T,
Speaker 1: the telecommunications company, was looking to branch out into media.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't just provide the wires that brought you the content,
Speaker 1: it would provide some of the content running across those wires.
Speaker 1: Other telecommunications companies were doing similar things, notably Comcast, which
Speaker 1: eventually becomes part of NBC Universal, or rather it becomes
Speaker 1: the owner of NBC Universal. So in twenty fourteen, AT
Speaker 1: and T forms a partnership with the Churnin Group, and
Speaker 1: these two companies together create a joint venture and they
Speaker 1: call it Outer Media. Each company, AT and T and
Speaker 1: Churnin Group would retain a fifty percent stake in Automedia,
Speaker 1: so Automedia would act as a kind of holding company
Speaker 1: in One of the things it held was Crunchy Role.
Speaker 1: Shortly after launch, Automedia was taking a good hard look
Speaker 1: at the market to determine what other properties to scoop
Speaker 1: up besides Crunchy Role, and it set its sites on
Speaker 1: full Screen, so Automedia would secure controlling interest in full Screen,
Speaker 1: though George Strompolis would manage to continue to run the
Speaker 1: company as CEO, and other investors would maintain a stake
Speaker 1: in full Screen as well, so it wasn't a full takeover.
Speaker 1: And that wasn't like they everybody. They were kind of
Speaker 1: trying to keep things as independent as possible so that
Speaker 1: Strompolis wouldn't be interfered with too much. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: was going on at this time. Traditional media companies and
Speaker 1: by that I mostly mean television studios and cable networks
Speaker 1: were all trying to figure out how to get into
Speaker 1: the digital scene. It turned out that the stuff that
Speaker 1: worked in conventional television didn't necessarily apply to the online world.
Speaker 1: You couldn't just port a TV network mentality to YouTube.
Speaker 1: For example. The online world allowed for a tighter focus
Speaker 1: on niche interests, and in the cable world things might
Speaker 1: start off that way, but over time they would change.
Speaker 1: And for more evidence of that, you can just look
Speaker 1: at what happened to channels that started off with a
Speaker 1: really tight focus, like the sci Fi Network originally was
Speaker 1: really a science fiction network. Over time it became less so,
Speaker 1: or cartoon network even or A great example is MTV,
Speaker 1: which when it first started was almost exclusively music videos. Gradually,
Speaker 1: content that doesn't quite fit the mission of the original
Speaker 1: channel concept starts to creep in in the cable world,
Speaker 1: and eventually all the cable channels kind of become general
Speaker 1: purpose rather than a channel that centered on a specific
Speaker 1: topic or interest. But online that doesn't necessarily happen. The
Speaker 1: hyper focused channels can maintain that focus and cater to
Speaker 1: a specific audience while still experiencing wild success. This was
Speaker 1: also in an era that bleeds into the pivot to
Speaker 1: video scandal, which I talked about in a recent tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episode, So as a reminder, pivot to video was
Speaker 1: a concept that spawned largely because of Facebook. Facebook famously
Speaker 1: stated that video content drove far more engagement on the
Speaker 1: platform than it really did, and as a result, Facebook
Speaker 1: would put a lot more focus in support behind posts
Speaker 1: that contained video content, particularly video content that was posted
Speaker 1: directly to Facebook as opposed to video content that was
Speaker 1: hosted on an external site and then linked on Facebook.
Speaker 1: That movement would ultimately decimate writer's rooms across content sites
Speaker 1: all over the web, but it did mean that companies
Speaker 1: that focused on video production were in a pretty darn
Speaker 1: sweet spot as far as the market was concerned, at
Speaker 1: least for the short term. So anyway, Autermedia acquires a
Speaker 1: majority stake in full Screen, and Autteromedia in turn has
Speaker 1: the churnin group in at and T as Mommy and Daddy.
Speaker 1: That's a lot, but don't worry, it'll get a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated as we go on. However, it was full
Speaker 1: Screen in twenty fourteen that makes the offer to acquire
Speaker 1: rooster Teeth, and the company accepted that offer. So why
Speaker 1: did full Screen go after rooster Teeth well as deadlines?
Speaker 1: David Bloom put it in a twenty fourteen article titled
Speaker 1: full Screen buys online video pioneer Rooster Teeth. Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: had proven itself to be an early success story with
Speaker 1: regards to subscription models. You know, the company originally called
Speaker 1: them sponsorships and later called them first memberships. They also
Speaker 1: were a success with merchandise and live events. All of
Speaker 1: these things are potentially revenue generating enterprises. It was clear
Speaker 1: that online delivery was going to be the future of
Speaker 1: content distribution. There was no denying there was a shift
Speaker 1: as there were more and more cable cutters and those
Speaker 1: who would never become cable subscribers to start with. Heck,
Speaker 1: full Screen itself was part of that online distribution world.
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth had found a way to foster a community
Speaker 1: and cater to that community in a way that was profitable.
Speaker 1: That's something that a lot of other content creators hadn't
Speaker 1: quite figured out yet. For example, Rooster Tee's subscription model
Speaker 1: had proven to be popular, so in the earliest days,
Speaker 1: the subscription or sponsorship was twenty dollars for a single
Speaker 1: season of their flagship show Red Versus Blue. At the
Speaker 1: end of the first season, Rooster Teeth sent out DVDs
Speaker 1: of the episodes that contained things like commentary tracks and
Speaker 1: bonus material to all the sponsors. Some folks would actually
Speaker 1: contribute far more than the twenty dollars. In an interview
Speaker 1: on the Recode podcast, co founder Bernie Burns said that
Speaker 1: one supporter sent five hundred bucks and they contacted him
Speaker 1: to find out if this had been an error, but
Speaker 1: the fan said no, no, it was intentional. So Burns's
Speaker 1: conclusion was that people liked to support the stuff they like,
Speaker 1: and that this support meant that the company could actually
Speaker 1: stay afloat despite hefty expenses like file hosting and bandwidth fees,
Speaker 1: because remember, they're hosting all these video files themselves, and
Speaker 1: people are downloading each episode over the internet and then
Speaker 1: watching them at home, So they had to find a
Speaker 1: way to be able to support this because the bill
Speaker 1: for those bandwidth fees would be in the tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars. Sometimes so over time, this subscription would
Speaker 1: change to a monthly fee, and in return for which
Speaker 1: subscribers who are now called first members, would get early
Speaker 1: access to some content, exclusive access to other content, and
Speaker 1: depending upon the level of membership, they sometimes would receive
Speaker 1: physical merchandise as well, including exclusive items that were just
Speaker 1: made for members. And the model totally worked, which showed
Speaker 1: rooster Teeth had a savvy handle on how to do
Speaker 1: business in online media, despite the fact that the co
Speaker 1: founders didn't come from a business background. Okay, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick pause in our history to thank
Speaker 1: our sponsors, but we'll be right back. Before the break,
Speaker 1: I was talking about how rooster Teeth had managed to
Speaker 1: find a model that allowed them to be very self sufficient.
Speaker 1: A huge part of this was how the company had
Speaker 1: put in a ton of work to encourage their audience
Speaker 1: to become a community. You never hear them talking about
Speaker 1: audiences or very rarely, they almost always use the word
Speaker 1: community instead. So the rooster Teeth website hosted message boards
Speaker 1: where fans could congregate and discuss all sorts of topics.
Speaker 1: Some of the folks who worked at rooster Teeth actually
Speaker 1: got the start as community members on those forums, the
Speaker 1: folks at the company would dip into those conversations, and
Speaker 1: that further strengthened this communal bond. I could probably go
Speaker 1: off on a tangent about parasocial relationships because a lot
Speaker 1: of that was happening too. We'll actually have to talk
Speaker 1: about that in the next episode, but we're gonna move on.
Speaker 1: So the article I had mentioned earlier also quotes George
Speaker 1: Strompolis as saying, quote, rooster Teeth is one of the
Speaker 1: strongest and most authentic media brands in the world amongst
Speaker 1: eighteen to thirty four year old male skewing audiences. The
Speaker 1: combination of its massive reach, unique creative voice, and insanely
Speaker 1: powerful community makes it a perfect match for full Screen
Speaker 1: end quote. Okay, but what about rooster Teeth, why did
Speaker 1: the company agree to this acquisition? Well, according to Bernie Burns,
Speaker 1: who was also quoted in that same article, quote, at
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth, we have a long history of creating the
Speaker 1: best digital content in the industry. With full Screen, we
Speaker 1: look forward to continuing that tradition in even bigger and
Speaker 1: better ways. Matt and I are excited about the opportunities
Speaker 1: this alliance will present for our creators and all the
Speaker 1: amazing content it will empower them to produce for our audience.
Speaker 1: End quote. Now, the Matt that Bernie mentions in that
Speaker 1: is Matt Hullum, another co founder and at that time
Speaker 1: the CEO of Rooster Teeth. Bernie served as the creative
Speaker 1: director for the company at that time. Both would continue
Speaker 1: to operate in those roles post acquisition, at least for
Speaker 1: the near future. Now, I suspect that one other reason
Speaker 1: that they agreed to this acquisition is the big ol'
Speaker 1: honk and check that they presumably received for this transaction. Again,
Speaker 1: it was never made public how much this was for,
Speaker 1: and Bernie would actually say on that Recode podcast. I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that he had enough money to retire, but
Speaker 1: then he pointed out that if he did retire, it
Speaker 1: would just be so that he could do what he
Speaker 1: was already doing at Rooster Teeth. So I'm sure the
Speaker 1: money definitely helped with the decision making process. Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: was in an interesting position with regard to online media.
Speaker 1: For the first several years of the company existence, they
Speaker 1: hosted all their own content right I mentioned this earlier.
Speaker 1: They didn't jump onto YouTube right away, and in fact,
Speaker 1: YouTube didn't launch until two thousand and five. And remember
Speaker 1: rooster Teeth launched in two thousand and three. So again
Speaker 1: in the earliest days, he would actually have to go
Speaker 1: to the rooster Teeth site. They would have a link
Speaker 1: to the media files that were for each episode. You
Speaker 1: would download the file, you'd watch it on your computer locally. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Burns, rooster Teeth held off on YouTube until
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight or two thousand and nine before
Speaker 1: dipping a toe in, So even when YouTube became a thing,
Speaker 1: rooster Teeth was not immediately on board. Now, part of
Speaker 1: the concern was that early on with YouTube, there was
Speaker 1: no way to monetize videos on the platform and it
Speaker 1: would take some time for that to happen. Google would
Speaker 1: acquire YouTube and then eventually would put into place a
Speaker 1: partner program, And there was also a fear that if
Speaker 1: they did put stuff up on YouTube, it would cannibalize
Speaker 1: traffic from rooster Teeth itself. Burns said on that Recode
Speaker 1: podcast quote, people who were on YouTube and leave YouTube,
Speaker 1: they didn't click away to go to anything else. In
Speaker 1: the quote. Now, seeing as how rooster t that really
Speaker 1: wanted to encourage people to become subscribers or members, as
Speaker 1: well as to encourage merchandise sales. You can understand that
Speaker 1: there was a reluctance to share videos on a different
Speaker 1: site because it's very hard to get folks to leave
Speaker 1: one site and go to another to do something like
Speaker 1: make a purchase. YouTube has a very strong incentive to
Speaker 1: keep people on YouTube for as long as it possibly can,
Speaker 1: So if you did jump on YouTube and you hope
Speaker 1: to get people to come to your site, you actually
Speaker 1: have two organizations that have conflicting goals, and that's just
Speaker 1: not easy to overcome. It's a similar problem content creators
Speaker 1: would run into with social media sites like Facebook when
Speaker 1: they changed the game. You would get a lot more
Speaker 1: engagement if you uploaded your content directly to the platform itself,
Speaker 1: as opposed to posting a link to your content, but
Speaker 1: that meant all the traffic was going in and out
Speaker 1: of the social media site, not your site. So you
Speaker 1: have to weigh the benefits of getting more eyeballs on
Speaker 1: your content by posting where a lot of people are congregating,
Speaker 1: such as YouTube, versus hosting everything yourself, getting the most
Speaker 1: benefit of each individual user, but perhaps having far fewer
Speaker 1: users overall. Ultimately, rooster Teeth would choose to host some
Speaker 1: of its content on YouTube as well as its own site,
Speaker 1: but Burns stress that it was always important to maintain
Speaker 1: your own base of operations because you have no control
Speaker 1: over a third party site like YouTube, and when YouTube
Speaker 1: makes a change, say to its recommendation algorithm or to
Speaker 1: its advertising policy, well that affects you, and there's not
Speaker 1: really much you can do other than try to adapt
Speaker 1: to the changes. On your own site, you have far
Speaker 1: more control. So roster Teeth was living in both worlds,
Speaker 1: and there would be times when Rooster Teeth would actually
Speaker 1: pull or set to private some of the videos that
Speaker 1: previously were publicly viewable on YouTube. So not all the
Speaker 1: stuff that rooster Teeth has uploaded to YouTube is still
Speaker 1: there or still available today. The full Screen acquisition marked
Speaker 1: a big change for rooster Teeth. Now it was neither
Speaker 1: completely positive or negative. Recently, at least at the time
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast, the Rooster Teeth staff
Speaker 1: appeared during a really emotional live stream. This happened a
Speaker 1: day after the announcement that Warner Brothers Discovery was shutting
Speaker 1: down rooster Teeth. They gathered to talk about their experiences
Speaker 1: working at this company as well as with each other,
Speaker 1: and also to share what information they had about what
Speaker 1: comes next. We'll talk about what comes next in our
Speaker 1: next episode. There were a lot of tears in that
Speaker 1: live stream, y'all. You can check it out. It's up
Speaker 1: on YouTube. But one moment that really stood out to
Speaker 1: me was one in which Rooster Teeth employee Chelsea Atkinson
Speaker 1: lamented the full Screen acquisition and talked about how many
Speaker 1: folks were upset at the time. They were essentially saying,
Speaker 1: how could you sell this company? A lot of her
Speaker 1: colleagues appeared to share her feelings about this. The effects
Speaker 1: of that sale would actually take some time to really
Speaker 1: shake out, apart from the fact that the state holders
Speaker 1: at Rooster Teeth got a hefty check for their acquisition.
Speaker 1: So we're going to continue on our journey as the
Speaker 1: company would launch more projects, and again I'm not going
Speaker 1: to list everything because that would be exhausting and also
Speaker 1: wouldn't be very interesting. Now. Like twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: would be another really big year for Rooster Teeth for
Speaker 1: both good and bad reasons. The company would launch several
Speaker 1: new series, ranging from more comedy shows to a sports
Speaker 1: related show to documentaries. Their first feature film, Laser Team,
Speaker 1: would premiere in twenty fifteen, so this was a big
Speaker 1: year and also as a mark of that strategy that
Speaker 1: they were forming with YouTube, Rooster Teeth's film, Laser Team
Speaker 1: would actually become a launch title for YouTube's subscription service
Speaker 1: called YouTube Bread. YouTube was looking for special content to
Speaker 1: acquire for this launch in order to attract people to
Speaker 1: subscribe to YouTube Bread. Laser Team was one of those
Speaker 1: pieces of content, so the movie would become available on
Speaker 1: YouTube Bread for subscribers shortly after it had its cinematic debut.
Speaker 1: So this was one of those cases where you have
Speaker 1: a film that almost simultaneously comes out in theaters and
Speaker 1: on streaming. Is a fairly early example of that, not
Speaker 1: the first one, but an early one. The company also
Speaker 1: saw lots of new hires in twenty fifteen. It was
Speaker 1: on its way to growing into a much larger company.
Speaker 1: It had taken years for Rooster Teeth to get to
Speaker 1: just twenty employees. It would take much less time for
Speaker 1: it to grow dramatically into several hundreds in staff under
Speaker 1: corporate ownership. One new division inside rooster Teeth at this
Speaker 1: time was a games development department, the company that grew
Speaker 1: up around creating content inspired by or featuring video games
Speaker 1: would actually start to make its own video games as
Speaker 1: well as board games. More on that in a little bit.
Speaker 1: The live events department also went into overdrive. Not only
Speaker 1: was Rooster Teeth involved with RTX, which is their big
Speaker 1: annual fan convention, but the company also started putting together
Speaker 1: live shows like Let's Play Live, so the Achievement Hunter
Speaker 1: crew would travel to perform in live theatrical and concert venues,
Speaker 1: and that's a really big step. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: perform for a camera or a bunch of cameras, and
Speaker 1: it's another thing to appear in front of a live crowd. Also,
Speaker 1: the technical requirements of Let's Plays meant there were a
Speaker 1: lot of things that could go wrong. Technically making sure
Speaker 1: that all the camera and video feeds from video game
Speaker 1: footage to the live shots that are capturing the reactions
Speaker 1: of the Achievement Hunter crew, that's considerable. And making this
Speaker 1: a show that could play in different venues meant that
Speaker 1: you could never count on the same setup twice. So
Speaker 1: I can't even imagine how intense the build in process
Speaker 1: was for those shows. Rooster Teeth also overhauled its website
Speaker 1: that year, the company launched an app, because everyone had
Speaker 1: an app. If you were a content company online, you
Speaker 1: had an app. I remember when how Stuff Works launched
Speaker 1: its app because my former co host, Chris Pollette and
Speaker 1: I got together and we shot a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: really dorky crnch videos promoting that app. If you can
Speaker 1: find those online, go ahead and watch them. They are
Speaker 1: incredibly awkward. I love every single one of them, as
Speaker 1: cringey as they are, so I believe they're still online.
Speaker 1: But holy cal that was That was a time, and
Speaker 1: whether anyone actually would adopt your app that was up
Speaker 1: in the air because they got to be so many
Speaker 1: apps that I feel like a lot of people were
Speaker 1: just like, I don't want to install more stuff on
Speaker 1: my phone. I saw a lot of content apps wither
Speaker 1: and die because companies just moved away from supporting them
Speaker 1: like they would launch them, and then within a year
Speaker 1: or two it was like the company had forgotten that
Speaker 1: there was an app there. But at the time, the
Speaker 1: conventional wisdom was that you needed to have an app
Speaker 1: for iOS and for Android for one thing. Designing an
Speaker 1: app that had mobile users in mind from the get
Speaker 1: go was sometimes a little easier than having to retool
Speaker 1: your website so that it would look good and be
Speaker 1: usable on a phone screen. Twenty fifteen was also the
Speaker 1: year that the media company screw Attack would merge with
Speaker 1: rooster Teeth. Full Screen acquired screw Attack in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: so that actually made screw Attack and Rooster Teeth two
Speaker 1: media companies that belonged under the same corporate umbrella. But
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen they decided to kind of join forces,
Speaker 1: and screw Attack moved its content over to the rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth site. The journey of ScrewAttack is another complicated one.
Speaker 1: At one point it spun off a group called game Attack,
Speaker 1: which also was part of the Rooster Teeth network, But
Speaker 1: then in twenty nineteen, Game Attack would leave Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: to become an independent project and screw Attack would essentially dissolve,
Speaker 1: and the only thing that would remain from ScrewAttack was
Speaker 1: a series called Death Battle, which is still a thing,
Speaker 1: at least as of the recording of this episode. One
Speaker 1: event in twenty fifteen that had a massive impact on
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth was the death of Monty Ohm. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the previous episode, Ohm came up with the
Speaker 1: concept for the series Ruby Rwby and had spent countless
Speaker 1: houtur is working on company projects. I mean he slept
Speaker 1: at Rooster Teeth on many occasions. He had a deep
Speaker 1: passion for his work. In early twenty fifteen, he had
Speaker 1: a catastrophic allergic reaction and he later passed away, and
Speaker 1: his death shook the company, which was a very tight
Speaker 1: knit community itself. Ohm was very well liked and respected
Speaker 1: within Rooster Teeth, and his passing brought up questions as
Speaker 1: to the future of Ruby. His colleagues pledged to continue
Speaker 1: the series om had created and to see it through
Speaker 1: to the story's conclusion. Whether they will actually be able
Speaker 1: to do that or not still remains an open question.
Speaker 1: We'll probably talk about that a little bit in the
Speaker 1: next episode. In twenty sixteen, Rooster Teeth would debut a
Speaker 1: series called Day five. Now I call this one out
Speaker 1: not because it's particularly special, but because I'm in it
Speaker 1: kind of but only barely. And I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever actually spotted myself in the one shot that I'm
Speaker 1: in so way better. In twenty twelve, I attended my
Speaker 1: one and only RTX event. I was just there incognito.
Speaker 1: I wasn't there as a guest or anything. I was
Speaker 1: there as just an attendee. I was checking it out
Speaker 1: and I had the chance to be an extra in
Speaker 1: a scene for Day five. So the concept for the
Speaker 1: series was that a mysterious effect hits the earth. It
Speaker 1: causes anyone who falls asleep to die. So a very
Speaker 1: small group of people figure this out and they try
Speaker 1: to stay awake in order to avoid death. But the
Speaker 1: longer they remain awake, the harder they find it to
Speaker 1: tell reality from hallucinations. And it's called Day five because
Speaker 1: it's the fifth day of being awake. Anyway, while we
Speaker 1: shot this scene in twenty twelve, the series itself would
Speaker 1: not premiere until twenty sixteen. It took a really long
Speaker 1: time in development to get the story right. Still can't
Speaker 1: see me though, but I am there. I'm laying on
Speaker 1: the street in Austin, Texas. Also in twenty sixteen, a
Speaker 1: new channel formed in Rooster Teeth. This one was called
Speaker 1: cow Chow and it would largely focus on couch based
Speaker 1: co op let's play sessions with lots of comedy and
Speaker 1: more than a little bit of destruction, which would lead
Speaker 1: to issues with the channel's various landlords. The Couchop Crew
Speaker 1: would ultimately locate their studio in Los Angeles, but after
Speaker 1: three years of making content, they shut down as several
Speaker 1: prominent members would leave to pursue other opportunities. Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: would also partner with another media company called kind of Funny,
Speaker 1: founded by former IGN editors Greg Miller and Colin Moriarty.
Speaker 1: Kind of Funny would not become a direct Rooster t subsidiary. Instead,
Speaker 1: they leaned on Rooster Teeth to handle duties like merchandise
Speaker 1: sales and ad sales for Kind of Funny properties. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take another quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about one of the early controversies
Speaker 1: that broke out from Rooster Teeth. But let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsors, and we're back. So,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned before the break, we would be entering
Speaker 1: into a time where controversies would start coming out of
Speaker 1: the company. Not that there were never controversies in Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth earlier, but for a long time the company was
Speaker 1: such that one it was small enough that it wasn't
Speaker 1: really getting that much attention from mainstream media. Two it
Speaker 1: was kind of insulated by its community. You have a
Speaker 1: lot of community members who are personally invested in Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth and the health of that company, and as part
Speaker 1: of that investment, these members, these community members helped protect
Speaker 1: the company for good and for ill. Sometimes they act
Speaker 1: as almost insulation from outward criticism or outside criticism. But
Speaker 1: that didn't mean that bad things weren't occasionally happening. I
Speaker 1: mean that's just going to happen with any organization, especially
Speaker 1: as it gets larger. You're eventually going to get people
Speaker 1: who either make bad decisions or are bad people, or
Speaker 1: they're just mixed with other folks that they don't work
Speaker 1: with very well and problems arise. So around this time,
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth would hire on Mika Burton, the daughter of
Speaker 1: actor LeVar Burton. Mika would work with Achievement Hunter, among
Speaker 1: other departments. Now I mention her specifically not because of
Speaker 1: her father, because no matter who her dad is, she
Speaker 1: actually did really great work with Rooster Teeth. I liked
Speaker 1: her work all by herself. Instead, I mentioned Mika Burton
Speaker 1: because she was someone who first shed light on an
Speaker 1: unpleasant side to Rooster Teeth, the company side. Because again,
Speaker 1: community members were mostly familiar with the content the company produced,
Speaker 1: which included things like podcasts that seemed to give a
Speaker 1: behind the scenes look at people's lives and what was
Speaker 1: going on at the company. But it's kind of like
Speaker 1: social media, where you post the stuff you want people
Speaker 1: to know about, and you don't necessarily talk about the
Speaker 1: stuff you would rather folks not know about, which seems
Speaker 1: kind of counterintuitive because if you listen to any of
Speaker 1: those Rooster Teeth podcasts, the hosts talk about really personally
Speaker 1: embarrassing stuff, but it's not stuff on the level of
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here with Mika Burton. So Burton
Speaker 1: left Rooster Teeth just two years after she joined the company,
Speaker 1: and later, and somewhat reluctantly, she cited issues she had
Speaker 1: with the company itself, things that she faced like abuse and,
Speaker 1: according to a message she posts on Twitter, being abandoned, blacklisted, ignored,
Speaker 1: and most of all not believed. When is your dad
Speaker 1: going to hate us? Now was a bigger concern than
Speaker 1: my well being. I knew I had to go, That's
Speaker 1: what she posted on Twitter now. She shared those thoughts
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, that was two years after she had
Speaker 1: already left the company, and it was also during the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter movement. When she shared this, members of
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth spoke out about their failure to listen to
Speaker 1: Burton and to take her concerns seriously, and to speak
Speaker 1: up against those who would dismiss her and abuse her,
Speaker 1: and to be good allies. It was not lost on
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth's audience that the company was largely built off
Speaker 1: the work of a bunch of white guys, and while
Speaker 1: these guys weren't necessarily bad people, they weren't always the
Speaker 1: best allies either. Burton was really reserved in her statements.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to make the whole matter about herself
Speaker 1: or her situation. Instead, she wanted to stress the importance
Speaker 1: of listening and learning. She said, that's what the company
Speaker 1: really failed to do. But Burton's statements would not be
Speaker 1: the last from a former employee voicing grievances against the company,
Speaker 1: including implications and accusations that the company failed to protect
Speaker 1: black employees from abuse. We'll talk more about another of
Speaker 1: those in the next episode. Anyway, back to twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: At this point, Mika Burton has just been hired on
Speaker 1: and we don't know anything about those problems yet. It
Speaker 1: would take four years for that to kind of start
Speaker 1: to trickle out. At twenty sixteen, Rooster Teeth Games officially
Speaker 1: released the title Ruby Grim Eclipse. This was based off
Speaker 1: the animated series Ruby, originally developed by a fan of
Speaker 1: the company named Jordan Scott. Rooster Teeth actually hired Jordan
Speaker 1: Scott in twenty fourteen. I think they even announced it
Speaker 1: publicly at RTX that year, and then they continued to
Speaker 1: develop the game that Scott had created. It entered full
Speaker 1: release on Windows on July fifth, twenty sixteen, and it's
Speaker 1: a co op hack and slash action game. Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: Games would serve as both a video game developer and
Speaker 1: a video game publisher for independent titles, while Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: would publish games from developers like Team Chaos and Invisible Collective.
Speaker 1: The next actual Rooster Teeth Games title, the one that
Speaker 1: they would produce themselves, was an asynchronous shooter game called
Speaker 1: Vicious Circle. This game released in August twenty nineteen two
Speaker 1: let's say mixed reviews, not that that many people actually
Speaker 1: bought the game, which switched to a free to play
Speaker 1: model just a couple of months later, complete with refunds
Speaker 1: for those who had purchased the game at full price.
Speaker 1: Earlier gamers complained that the title had limited content and
Speaker 1: not much replay value, and the lack of a strong
Speaker 1: community around the title meant there just wasn't much to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a team based game, and if there's
Speaker 1: no one online, there's no one to team with. And
Speaker 1: not only was that team based, one player would take
Speaker 1: on the role of the monster that you were supposed
Speaker 1: to kill. So if there's no one on, there's no
Speaker 1: one to be the monster or the monster hunters. So
Speaker 1: it sort of fizzled out. In fact, not just sort of.
Speaker 1: According to streamdb dot info, the peak number of online
Speaker 1: players at any given time was just three hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty three players total. Like that's not good. Vicious Circle,
Speaker 1: by the way, would become one of the favorite targets
Speaker 1: for finger pointers who were looking to explain why Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth was headed in the wrong direction or why things
Speaker 1: just didn't seem to be as good as they used
Speaker 1: to be. Now, I'm not saying that the quality of
Speaker 1: content at Rooster Teeth was actually in decline, but for
Speaker 1: some folks, that was the conclusion they came to, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the blame fell on a perceived lack
Speaker 1: of focus at the company. There was this perception among
Speaker 1: this particular circle of critics that Rooster Teeth was just
Speaker 1: trying too many things and throwing spaghetti at the wall
Speaker 1: to see if anything was sticking, when they should have
Speaker 1: been focused on keeping the quality of their flagship content
Speaker 1: at a high level. Now, again, that's not me saying this,
Speaker 1: it's this group of critics. You also have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind that at this point, the company is more
Speaker 1: than a decade old, right, You've got the people who
Speaker 1: have been creating the content, some of whom have been
Speaker 1: working on it since the beginning, and burnout is a
Speaker 1: real thing. So a lot of people were kind of
Speaker 1: handing the reins over to a new generation of storytellers.
Speaker 1: And this transition meant that things would start to change.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the style of narrative would change, the style of
Speaker 1: animation or presentation might change, the tone would change, and
Speaker 1: with that would come critics who don't want anything to
Speaker 1: ever change. Right, there are folks who just despise change.
Speaker 1: And I get it, Like when you find something you love,
Speaker 1: you don't want it to see it change because then
Speaker 1: it's no longer the thing. That you fell in love with.
Speaker 1: I totally understand that this was a case with Ruby,
Speaker 1: for example, with Monty Ohms passing, there was this deep
Speaker 1: concern within the fan community that Ruby itself was going
Speaker 1: to go astray, that it was going to move away
Speaker 1: from Ohms's vision, and that without his guidance, it was
Speaker 1: going to become something else. As for my own opinion,
Speaker 1: at this point, my tastes in content were actually changing.
Speaker 1: I felt a lot of the stuff that Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: was producing was really aimed at a younger audience, and
Speaker 1: that's totally fine. It just meant that the content was
Speaker 1: starting to not resonate with me as much as it
Speaker 1: had when I was younger. I was sticking with the
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth podcast because that largely still felt in line
Speaker 1: with what I had found entertaining with the original company,
Speaker 1: and I had become personally invested in hearing more about
Speaker 1: the misadventures of the various hosts, sort of that parasocial
Speaker 1: relationship thing going on there. But I didn't get the
Speaker 1: feeling that the company was necessarily losing focus. I didn't
Speaker 1: agree with that criticism. I did get the feeling that
Speaker 1: there were some corporate forces that were starting to affect
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth's direction, and that perhaps the decisions of the
Speaker 1: company were in the process of making were somewhat at
Speaker 1: odds with what the folks at Rooster Teeth had actually
Speaker 1: wanted to do. In other words, sometimes the company comes
Speaker 1: in and tells you to do something, and while you
Speaker 1: might not agree with the decision, you don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: the power to say no anyway. Rooster Teeth Games would
Speaker 1: develop only one other video game title itself published others,
Speaker 1: but only one other video game title would be produced
Speaker 1: by Rooster Teeth Games. That was actually a remaster of
Speaker 1: Ruby Grim Eclipse, and that happened in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: So not only did they only publish one more in
Speaker 1: house game, it was a remaster of a previous game
Speaker 1: they had published. The division also developed card and board games,
Speaker 1: including Million Dollars Butt the Game and Achievement Hunter Heist.
Speaker 1: I've got Million Dollars Butt, but I've never played Achievement
Speaker 1: Hunter Heist, even though it looked cute when I saw
Speaker 1: the promotional video for it. Now, this seems like we're
Speaker 1: getting to a pretty good place to stop for episode two.
Speaker 1: As I said when I first started putting these together.
Speaker 1: I didn't even plan on it being two episodes, but
Speaker 1: as I was working on this one, it got to
Speaker 1: a length that was just unmanageable. It would have been
Speaker 1: like a two hour podcast. Now we're still technically in
Speaker 1: the early days of Rooster Teeth, at least as far
Speaker 1: as it being part of a much larger corporate entity.
Speaker 1: But I do have one more thing I want I
Speaker 1: want to say that happened in twenty sixteen that does
Speaker 1: relate to that particular part of Rister Teeth's existence. In
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, AT and T made a huge announcement it
Speaker 1: planned to acquire the media company Time Warner. Now, the
Speaker 1: history of both AT and T and Time Warner is
Speaker 1: super long and incredibly complicated, including issues with things like
Speaker 1: monopolies and antitrust lawsuits and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to go into all of that here,
Speaker 1: but we will say that Time Warner had already been
Speaker 1: through a pretty phenomenal flop of a merger with America
Speaker 1: Online back in the day, sometimes referred to as one
Speaker 1: of the worst mergers in corporate history, So could AT
Speaker 1: and T avoid the pitfalls that AOL had encountered previously?
Speaker 1: With its merger with Time Warner. In a word, no
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, the merger would actually take almost two years
Speaker 1: to complete. The deal closed into twenty eighteen, so we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about this in the next episode. And also
Speaker 1: four years after that, AT and T would actually divest
Speaker 1: itself of Time Warner. Now at that time AT and
Speaker 1: T had renamed this division as Warner Media, and in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two they sold WarnerMedia to Discovery Communications. So
Speaker 1: this is where all the Warner stuff comes from. Because
Speaker 1: you know, I've talked about Warner Brothers Discovery shutting down
Speaker 1: Rooster Teeth, but we hadn't actually talked about Warner yet.
Speaker 1: That's because we're not even at the point where Warner
Speaker 1: as part of the media oversight for Rooster Teeth. But
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, the wheels are set in motion for
Speaker 1: that to happen. Anyway, that announcement was so far above
Speaker 1: the head of everyone at Rooster Teeth, and the deal
Speaker 1: would take so long to complete that it wouldn't immediately
Speaker 1: have an effect on the company, but eventually it would
Speaker 1: make a huge difference. Eventually. All right, this is where
Speaker 1: we're going to say goodbye for now. On Wednesday, we
Speaker 1: will have part three of this, and that really will
Speaker 1: be the end of it, because I'm not going to
Speaker 1: go on and on and on. But again, it's a
Speaker 1: great opportunity to talk about lots of other things in
Speaker 1: the tech world, like the different monetization strategies multichannel networks,
Speaker 1: the fact that you had this one model for revenue
Speaker 1: generation that was working for this one company, and whether
Speaker 1: or not that would be applicable to other channels out there.
Speaker 1: Some channels did find some success doing stuff that Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth does, others would find that that just wasn't working
Speaker 1: for them. And also this conflict between traditional media that
Speaker 1: desperately wanted to tap into online distribution because clearly that's
Speaker 1: where things are headed at this point, and the fact
Speaker 1: that they're so firmly entrenched in an older strategy that
Speaker 1: works for terrestrial media that would be a huge issue.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest problems that I think Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: would encounter is working for a corporation that ultimately didn't
Speaker 1: have a full understanding of how the online digital world
Speaker 1: worked compared to the traditional television media world. I know
Speaker 1: that my own personal experience working for an online media
Speaker 1: company that at one point was part of a more
Speaker 1: conventional television cable based company was really frustrating because of
Speaker 1: that disconnect, So we'll talk more about that in the
Speaker 1: next episode. We'll also talk about some other really unfortunate
Speaker 1: controversies that came out of Rooster Teeth and some times
Speaker 1: of real upheaval, including an unfortunate time where the company
Speaker 1: had to lay off a significant portion of its staff
Speaker 1: for the first time in its history. But that's for
Speaker 1: the next episode. In the meantime, I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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