The Red vs. Blue phenomenon – pt.2
Winner of four awards at the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences in its debut season, Red vs. Blue has gone on to become the most popular and widely accepted example of the medium. With DVD release in New Zealand (through Vendetta Films), Australia (through Siren Entertainment) and America (through Rooster Teeth themselves), Red vs. Blue has been able to cross the boundary from mere internet fad and into the periphery of mainstream consumers.
The Red vs. Blue: Blood Gulch Chronicles series includes 100 short episodes that were debuted online once a week and form a small part of an over-riding narrative. The show was then split into 5 different seasons that were then released one-by-one on the Rooster Teeth website.
Over time, Rooster Teeth built the franchise up to point where they were getting over a million views of each episode a week, making the show one of the most watched regularly broadcast shows on the internet.
Following on from the success of the Blood Gulch Chronicles, Rooster Teeth also created a stand-alone mini-series’ that were also included with the bonus disc of the Red vs. Blue DVD box set.
Rooster Teeth also went on to produce a more serious, movie-length feature called Red vs. Blue Reconstruction that picked up from the end of the original series. The series now continues in a smaller mini-series form with 4 episode stories being released every few weeks, the first of these, Red vs. Blue Relocated, finished its run at the beginning of March.
Rooster Teeth produce the Red vs. Blue series with Bungie (creators of the Halo series) and Microsoft’s (Halo’s publisher) full blessing. Indeed the crew was even commissioned to produce a special Red vs. Blue for inclusion on the Halo 3 Legendary Edition and has been used numerous times by Microsoft for promotion of the game series.
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