A short presentation on how Rooster Teeth conquered the machinima market.

1. Presented by Holden Phillips
RED VS. BLUE’S RISE IN MACHINIMA

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. SOURCES
• “Rooster Teeth.” YouTube. N.p.. Web. 07
Nov. 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Rooste
rTeeth/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/rooste
r-teeth-red-vs-blue/
• Strickland, Jonathan. “How Machinima
Works.” How Stuff Works. Infospace LLC.
24 May 2007. Web. 07 Nov. 2015.
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.co
m/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