"In an environment where anybody can watch anything, nobody can watch everything." That's a philosophy that drives Rooster Teeth, the Austin-based video company that has developed a huge and devoted audience for its online shows, even going back to a world before YouTube. When people are uploading 400 hours of footage to YouTube every minute, how does a group of Texans stand out?
At a panel during South by Southwest Interactive, Rooster Teeth's Creative Director Michael "Burnie" Burns talked about how the company began and how it has grown into an Internet empire that earns 150 million views per month and hosts events that draw tens of thousands.
As a computer science student at the University of Texas in Austin, Burns found himself inspired by another UT student: Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. So Burns and his friend Matt Hullum decided to try their hands at making a movie. They were still in an era of tube TVs and VCRs, so the filming and editing processes weren't quite as easy as they are today.
They ran into an unexpected problem. They had to get the movie in front of people, which was as much of a challenge as making the movie itself. They could apply to be a part of film festivals big and small, sure. And then? "You hope the right 200 people see your movie," Burns said.
That changed in 2001 with a parody video. Burns wrote a humorous take on the old "Apple Switch" videos, which showed actors against a white background talking about switching from PC to a Mac. The parody was about video games instead of computer software, and Burns discovered something interesting after putting it online: It spread organically. People started finding it without him having to send it to those people directly.
This was years before the popularity of streaming video sites like YouTube, so viewers had to download the video directly to their computer's hard drive -- a concept that feels ancient a mere 15 years later.
Still, even with that distribution hurdle, the ad parody spread. Instead of stressing out over those 200 viewers, Burns and company could potentially reach anybody with an Internet connection.
With that idea, Burns and several friends started developing the show that launched Rooster Teeth: Red vs. Blue.
The show could be described as kind of a puppet show told with a video game. Using the popular Xbox game Halo, Burns and his friends told scripted stories by adding voice to in-game character animations that were controlled via the game. Today, such videos are common that the genre has a name: machinima. You might have even seen the technique used in television ads for the video game retailer GameStop.
Burns hosted the first episode of Red vs. Blue on a spare computer in his office at his telecommunications job in Austin. That seemed like a fine idea until someone from IT came to his office to tell him that all of the company's bandwidth was being hogged by that spare computer. People were finding and sharing the video so much that the server couldn't keep up with the load.
That first episode of Red vs. Blue got 3,000 views and resulted in write-ups from some of the biggest sites at the time, including Fark, Slashdot and the web comic Penny-Arcade.. Episode two got 250,000 views. By the end of one month, the series had more than one million views.
(Strong language warning for the video below.)
The downside? The show wasn't making money. There were no pre-roll ads back then to provide income for video creators. Still, there was excitement in seeing people enjoy what the team had created.
Then the first web hosting bill arrived. Red vs. Blue's viral success was going to cost $15,000.
But Burns and his friends did what they've continued to do for more than 10 years since: They adapted. They started creating merchandise to sell to fans -- a tactic they learned from another very popular online series at the time: Homestar Runner. They sold DVDs, t-shirts and more, and they started going to events to spread the word about what they were doing.
Oh, and the name? It comes from an early, popular line in Red vs. Blue ... sort of. The original name was considered too vulgar for the State of Texas to award a business license to. (Think of another word for a rooster, then think about what teeth do.)
Red vs. Blue is about to start its 14th season this summer. On the back of that and other Rooster Teeth properties, the company has grown tremendously. They now host their own convention in Austin, RTX, which drew 44,000 fans last year and is expected to be even bigger this year. There's also a sister event in Australia. The group also just released its first feature film, Lazer Team, which was funded by $2.48 million in crowdfunding from fans on IndieGoGo.
Rooster Teeth plans to continue expanding, adapting and experimenting, but to them it's the smaller, more dedicated fans that matter most rather than the millions of casual fans. Live events are key to that, and they hope to keep meeting their biggest fans for years to come.
