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Rooster Teeth was a Machinima studio, famous for pioneering the genre before making a name for itself with RWBY.
The studio was founded in 2003 and had a good period of growth before being caught up in the Warner Bros. Discovery merger and being overseen by the Warner Bros. Discovery Global Streaming & Interactive Entertainment arm of the company. A mere two years after the merger it was announced, on March 6th 2024, that Rooster Teeth would be shut down, the upper management finding it to be an unprofitable subsidiary. Warner Bros. Discovery has expressed interest in selling off the rights to Gen:Lock, Red vs. Blue and RWBY but seemingly has no interest in doing so for anything else Rooster Teeth had the rights for.
The company was functionally shut down on May 10th 2024 with a skeleton crew left behind to finish closing up.
Notable works include:[]
Machinima works[]
- Red vs. Blue, made using various Halo titles and even Marathon for a couple of sections. Lasted for 18 seasons.
- The Strangerhood, a Sitcom-esque series based on The Sims 2.
- P.A.N.I.C.S., a miniseries based on the game First Encounter Assault Recon. The acronym stands for People Acting Normal In Crazy-ass Situations.
- RWBY, a series set in modern fantasy world in which humanity is besieged by hordes of monsters, and who fight them back with specially trained hunters and huntresses. The series follows the adventures of four girls going to the premiere school for hunters. As of Fall 2023, it has finished nine seasons out of a projected sixteen before Rooster Teeth was shut down.
Live Action works[]
- Achievement Hunter, a webseries which broadcasts how-to guides on how to get various achievements in Xbox 360 games.
- Achievement Hunter is also home to Halo: Reach Fails of the Weak, where (usually) Jack and Geoff comment on and laugh at Reach players' submitted video mistakes as well as weird things related to latency in multiplayer sessions and AI mishaps in the game, and Achievement HORSE, where Jack, Geoff, and/or other Rooster Teeth employees play one-on-one in user-created Halo: Reach and now Trials Evolution maps with various objectives in the style of the basketball game.
- There's also AHWU (Achievement Hunter Weekly Update), where user-submitted intros are used to begin a weekly round-up of video game news and releases as described by the Rooster Teeth staff. Oh, and they also do hilarious Let's Play videos under the Achievement Hunter name.
- Rooster Teeth Shorts, a webseries that depicts the company's staff in... unusual situations.
- Immersion, a webseries where Burnie and Griffon decide to test various video game facts on Geoff and Gus, seeing if they would work in real life.
- Past Cast, the YouTube blogs of historical figures.
Rooster Teeth Podcast (Formerly "Drunk Tank")[]
- Rooster Teeth's main podcast which: "On a more or less weekly basis the Rooster Teeth (creators of Red vs Blue) crew discuss gaming, films and projects that they are currently working on." However it sometimes will go a bit off topic into more general news and occasionally into the personal, and quite often strange experiences of the RT staff and guests to the show. If the recent video format podcasts are any indication, the recording room is well stocked with beer and liqueur some of which is sent in by fans, Just as the former title Drunk Tank Suggests
Other[]
- Rooster Teeth Animated Adventure, a webseries that turns the funny bits of the Roosterteeth Podcast into a cartoon. Animation by JayOrDan.
- Rooster Teeth Comics, A comic series about the Rooster Teeth staff's daily life. Written by Griffion Ramsey and drawn by Luke McKay, the series ended in Summer 2011 and the Year Five print book will round out the collection by the Christmas season.
- Rage Quit, named after Rage Quit, of course, which features a man who completely loses it while playing frustrating games. Watch Michael go nuts over such tropes as Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence, One-Hit-Point Wonder and others!
Rooster Teeth as a whole is an example of:[]
- Adorkable: Joel, Gavin, Michael and Ben. To a degree, everyone, but those are the ones that often stand out.
- Ascended Fanboy:
- Well, they had nothing to do with Halo to start with, then after the series took off Bungie started taking notice. By the time the third game came out they were getting cameos, and the gametype they invented (Grifball) recently got its own playlist in the latest title Halo: Reach.
- They've also hired their own talented fans for various projects:
- Luke McKay was hired for an official comic strip based on his fan art. He continued doing this for about three or so years.
- Gavin Free was a forum moderator turned intern turned RvB director.
- Ben was hired to code the website at 15 after creating some impressive unofficial RvB-related web applications.
- Monty Oum has also admitted to being a fan of Red vs. Blue.
- Michael was discovered by Rooster Teeth when his Crackdown 2 Orbs video got to the top of r/gaming on Reddit. They were so impressed by it and Michael's other YouTube videos that they gave his own show, Rage Quit, and eventually hired him full-time.
- Barbara Dunkelman, BlawnDee on their website, has been a long-time forum member and often volunteered to help out at events. She was recently formally hired.
- Badass Beard: Jack has an awesome lumberjack beard, which he sometimes compliments with flannel shirts.
- Bad Boss: Played for Laughs with Geoff.
- Beware the Silly Ones: When Gavin gets his shit together for games, you had better run. Doubles as Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass.
- Brief Accent Imitation: This happens to the Oxfordshire-born Gavin so much you could probably do a drinking game out of it. Happens to Ben King to a lesser extent.
- British Accents: Discussed on the podcast frequently. And mocked in the Rooster Teeth Shorts.
- Butt Monkey:
- Michael is one among the RT staff, as he usually suffers for the amusement of the RT audience. Some of his self-inflicted exploits include getting a bowl of ketchup dunked on him, eating a whole ghost pepper, and eating a big, wooden spoonful of cinnamon. As Miles said, "He's pretty much become the Johnny Knoxville of Rooster Teeth."
- Joel, Jack and Brandon are constantly insulted on the podcast.
- Gavin also recieves lots of crap from everyone whenever he is in town, mostly for being English. No one will let him forget his "headlight fluid" gaffe either.
- If RT Intern Mike isn't fetching coffee for everyone or getting yelled at, he's doing stupid things, like jumping over his own leg, for the staff's entertainment.
- Ditzy Genius: Gavin is clever, but he often makes mistakes or slip-ups which make him come across as a bit stupid. Case in point: headlight fluid.
- Five-Man Band:
- Originally, Rooster Teeth was itself one in terms of the main staff, comprised of Burnie, Matt, Joel, Gus and Geoff. Of course, with many more people working for the company now this is no longer the case. Their Five-Man Band still exists of course, it's just seen less often nowadays.
- The Hero: Burnie.
- The Lancer: Matt
- The Smart Guy: Gus
- The Big Guy: Geoff.
- The Chick: For lack of another position, Joel, though he could also count as The Smart Guy given how intelligent he is.
- Achievement Hunter has formed its own variation with its regular staff.
- The Hero: Geoff, in that he often takes the lead (but he does play up the Bad Boss aspect for laughs).
- The Lancer: Jack, being more calm and patient than Geoff.
- The Smart Guy: Gavin, in that he's good working with tech (he's a slow motion cameraman, so it's to be expected).
- The Big Guy: Michael; somewhat more reactionary than everybody else put together.
- The Chick: Ray, considering he's the calmest of the five.
- Originally, Rooster Teeth was itself one in terms of the main staff, comprised of Burnie, Matt, Joel, Gus and Geoff. Of course, with many more people working for the company now this is no longer the case. Their Five-Man Band still exists of course, it's just seen less often nowadays.
- Internet Backdraft: Invoked. At one point, an angry fan sent a rude e-mail to Gus Sorola, the voice of Simmons who also does most of the tech work for the company. In the e-mail, permission was given to show it and the e-mail address of the sender publicly. So rather than shoot back an e-mail telling the person that Rooster Teeth does not, in fact, prevent their videos from being used on Android or that maybe the person in question should be paying attention in French class rather than watching videos, he simply put a copy of the e-mail, swears, slurs and flamebait all, as well as the persons username on the community site and e-mail. He then fulfilled every person's fantasy of getting back at rude people at work when the RT community came down on the kid.
- Joisey: Michael was a New Jersey resident before he moved to Austin, TX to work full time. He mentions it from time to time in videos.
- Longing for Fictionland: Parodied.
- Never Live It Down: Invoked on the podcast. Nobody lets Gavin forget the "headlight fluid" mess-up.
- Self-Deprecation:
- Whenever Ray does an achievement guide, he will often say he's bad at games, despite having a crazy-high gamerscore of over 300,000 points (with over 350 games at 100% completion) and roflstomping everyone in Max Payne 3 multiplayer.
- Michael frequently posts comments under his personal YouTube account LtMkilla, saying how much Rage Quit sucks or what a loser that Rage Quit guy is. Add in oblivious RT fans trying to defend Michael from LtMkilla and Hilarity Ensues.
- Troll: Gavin can't seem to go into a game without ruining it for everyone else in Rooster Teeth. Some of his antics include creating land mines by hiding TNT under pressure plates and dumping lava over Geoff and Michael's first house in Minecraft. (This was after they essentially "annexed" his house, though.) Extends into real life too, as he often interrupts other people working (he interrupts the Weekly Update part of Achievement Hunter the most frequently) and gets trolled in turn.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: The Achievement Hunter team will all take the piss out of one another and even hit one another from time to time, but at the end of the day they're good friends.