Just Another Gen:LOCK Blog

I think that’s what’s partially responsible for the disconnect between how Rooster Teeth responds to criticism, for both RWBY and Red vs. Blue (not really including gen:LOCK because it’s not a Rooster Teeth production anymore): their criticism is coming from fan circles but they feel that they deserve “legit” criticism from major publications (reviews in the wider entertainment sphere are as much about critiquing a show as they are about promoting it). So as a result they will look over critiques from Reddit, Tumblr, even their own website, because they can afford to ignore it.

And for something like RWBY, which is clearly making them money regardless of how many current and former fans raise critiques, they don’t really have incentive to make changes so long as they’re not getting bad press: if RWBY gets mentioned by a major entity like the New York Times it’s usually about how big it got as a property rather than a review.

(Come to think of it, the reason gen:LOCK got the press it did in the first place was because they were sending review copies to mainstream publications – remember that whole “for your consideration” Emmy campaign? They wanted it to be their foray into mainstream animation, only to have that blow up in their face.)

I’m not that involved in the Rooster Teeth fandom these days, nor was I present for the earlier days when the community was much smaller, but I can understand why people feel especially insulted that the company isn’t responding to their criticisms after it used to be responsive to its viewers.

Basically, Season 18 was a reboot called Red vs. Blue: Zero. The whole thing was it was handing over the reins of the series to a different crew, who introduced a completely different cast of characters, in order to breathe some fresh blood into the show. And while some fans were annoyed that it was gonna be a new thing, others (myself included) were optimistic that revamping the show a bit would be good for this series that’s been running for so long.

But then it came out and everyone hated it.

Okay, not everyone, but basically there were a lot of problems with the story, animation, performances, how they handled old characters, etc. that people really did not like. This is where we get into kind of messy territory: basically, fans blamed the director Torrian Crawford for why it was bad. And knowing how fandom works, some folks are passionate enough to be stupid in how they criticize, e.g., sending death threats to the cast and crew over it. Torrian has been pretty vocal on Twitter about how a lot of the choices people hated about the season happened because he had no choice: his team was the only group of people who wanted to work on the show anymore, they couldn’t get the OG cast to reprise their roles because they didn’t want to do it, and so they had to completely start from scratch.

Now, I think Torrian’s in a bit of denial over the fact that overall Zero just wasn’t good, but then again he has a right to be in a bit of denial when everyone’s yelling at him for months on end and some of it actually threatens his safety. One thing he’s talked about is that Rooster Teeth hasn’t really offered him any form of support over this, which is a worrying trend that Rooster Teeth has had when people associated with the company get harassed: we saw it happen with Mica Burton as well as many other black employees, they essentially looked the other way with the whole R*** H****** controversy because he was one of their big names until they couldn’t.

Rooster Teeth had a major restructuring last year that completely overhauled their content distribution model (speculation: probably because of a certain show going vastly overbudget and having a notoriously abusive production environment that led to the head of RT Animation getting fired). Certain shows fall under the category of RT Direct, meaning they’re produced and distributed in-house via Rooster Teeth’s website and the YouTube channel: this applies to stuff like their podcasts, RWBY, and Red vs. Blue.

Other shows, however, are produced under the RT Studios banner, meaning they are produced with the help of producing partners: for example, the Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy is a Netflix co-production, and gen:LOCK being an HBO Max and Outlier Society co-production (because there was no way anyone in RT Animation was gonna work on that again by itself willingly – also I guess it wasn’t profitable).

A bunch of RT Animations shows have apparently moved to the RT Studios model, probably because they’re not profitable ventures under the new model without outside funding (gen:LOCK/Gray really ruined things, huh?). Apparently, Camp Camp is being actively shopped to potential partners so they can keep making it. Jordan also mentions Nomad is in the same situation, but he didn’t say for sure whether they found a partner and it’s being produced right now or they just want to make more and are looking for the means to do it.