Red vs. Blue's Rise in Machinima

Presented by Holden Phillips

RED VS. BLUE’S RISE IN MACHINIMA

WHAT IS MACHINIMA?• Machinima is a term used to

describe videos that are created using a video game engine as the creation tool.

• The Machinima term was coined by Hugh Hancock and Anthony Bailey in 2000.

• The two founded the Machinima.com website in 2000 as a hub for other machinima creators to show their work.

FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS• The first actual machinima video can

be traced back to 1996 when a group of gamers called The Rangers made a short video called “Diary of a Camper”.

• The video was created using the demo feature in the game Quake.

• The video took off and others soon followed in creating videos in Quake.

• During this initial wave of machinima, the main audience watching the videos were other gamers.

DRUNKGAMERS.COM• The earliest iteration of Rooster Teeth was the

website drunkgamers.com.

• Burnie Burns, Geoff Fink, Gustavo Sorola, Dan Godwin, and Jason Saldana were friends from work that ran the site.

• They created videos of them reviewing games while drunk and some non-gameplay videos.

• One of which, created in 2002, starred Gustavo and made fun of the Apple Switch ad campaign.

• The video was created mainly for their friends, but the next day one of those friends went to work and saw one of his friends watching the video.

• The video had gone viral in less than 24 hours.

RED VS. BLUE & ROOSTER TEETH• The group eventually got bored with the

drunk gamers site and shut it down.

• However, the popularity of the ‘Switch’ parody ad continued to grow and Computer Gaming World magazine wanted to use it on a cd that came with its issues.

• The group reacted by creating redvsblue.com as a new site for the video and as a hub for the animated series they had teased some months prior.

• They began working on content and on April 1 2003, Rooster Teeth had officially formed and uploaded their first episode.

THE MACHINIMA EXPLOSION• The machinima community had mainly stayed

on the pc and revolved around the popularity of Quake.

• Rooster Teeth had no prior knowledge that machinima existed prior to releasing episode 1 of Red vs. Blue.

• The video transcended anything that had been achieved on the Quake videos, and the video exploded with popularity.

• The Rooster Teeth site was linked to Slashdot, Penny Arcade, and Fark on the same day.

• Within a week the video had been downloaded 20,000 times.

• The 2nd episode was even bigger with 250,000 downloads and soon numbers escalated to 750,000 per show.

MICROSOFT AND BUNGIE• Red vs. Blue continued to grow in

popularity and eventually Gus set up a system to monitor the video downloads. This allowed them to see how their videos went viral.

• The videos eventually spread to Microsoft and a day later Rooster Teeth received a call from Bungie.

• Bungie said they were fans of the show and asked how they could help improve the show.

• Features were later added to make creating episodes of Red vs. Blue easier.

• Today, Rooster Teeth is a licensed Halo partner.

ROOSTER TEETH NOW• Today Rooster Teeth maintains a little over 8

million subscribers on YouTube and their videos have over 4 billion views.

• Rooster Teeth has also created several other channels such as Achievement Hunters and Funhaus and they even have a weekly podcast.

• Red vs. Blue remains their biggest video series with 12 seasons as of now.

• The show has progressed through each iteration of the Halo franchise.

• More recent seasons have incorporated more advanced graphic design and even a guest appearance of Elijah Wood (Frodo) in season 10.

SOURCES• “Rooster Teeth.” YouTube. N.p.. Web. 07

Nov. 2015. https://www.youtube.com/user/RoosterTeeth/about

• Rigney, Ryan. “How Rooster Teeth Won the Internet with Red vs. Blue.” Wired. N.p.. 25 May 2012. Web. 07 Nov. 2015. http://www.wired.com/2012/05/rooster-teeth-red-vs-blue/

• Strickland, Jonathan. “How Machinima Works.” How Stuff Works. Infospace LLC. 24 May 2007. Web. 07 Nov. 2015. http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/machinima3.htm

• “Strange Company.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 Oct. 2015. Web. 07 Nov. 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Company

• “Rooster Teeth.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 12 Nov. 2015. Web. 07 Nov. 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooster_Teeth