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UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM

Company or Community?

Samuel Dekker 4/25/2018 Student number: 5893992 Master Thesis

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

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Page 2

Chapter 1 – Preface

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Page 3

Chapter 2 – An Introduction to Rooster Teeth

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Page 6

Chapter 3 – The Attraction of Rooster Teeth

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Page 12

• Vignette Gavin Rainbow Six Livestream • The Content

• The Appeal

• Becoming more invested in RT, a large group of ‘friends’ • Personality, Fame, Relatability and Intimacy

• The Dream

• The Promise of the Front

Chapter 4 – RT Corp.

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Page 33

• Belonging and the ‘socially awkward and shy’ • The growth of RT and the rise of the fangirl • A changing (digital) landscape

• Online Localities and Fields

• RT Corp. and the Fullscreen Takeover

Chapter 5 – Conclusion

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Page 63

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Acknowledgements

Without the help, encouragement, moral support and, especially, patience of some people I could have never finished writing this thesis. Above all I would like to thank my parents and brother, who were always there for me. Next to that I would like to thank all my friends who supported me these last few years, especially Lisanne de Wit and Remy Koomen. The

knowledge and patience that Peter van Rooden brought to the table as my supervisor has also been vital. And the guidance of Ron Heinrich, as well as Hilda Lanser, Sara Counts and Hilde Smit throughout the process of writing my thesis has been crucial. I would also like to thank all my interlocutors: Sam, Peter, Thijs, Terry, Femke, as well as all the people who welcomed and helped me during my fieldwork, such as everyone in the OCC, the If You’re New And Want To Make Friends group, the RTUK Facebook group and the wider RT community in general. Next to that I would like to thank Annika, Mirjam, Hanna, Emma, Wessel, Sien, Irene Stengs, Phil, Lucrezio, Idil, all of my roommates, everyone in my football team, the UvA anthropology department and my family. Without you I would not have been able to do this.

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Chapter 1 – Preface

In this day and age the internet has become a normal and everyday part of the daily lives of many, especially for the people who grew up with it already being so. Since the last twenty years or so the internet has provided a fertile ground for the creation and assemblage of groups and ‘communities’, based on hobbies and interests in particular.1 Often in contrast with their (offline) daily life, ‘gamers’ and ‘geeks’ found likeminded people on the internet, a digital landscape they were particularly more familiar with than others, including their peers. For some of them Rooster Teeth (RT) became the place of belonging, social network and ‘club-like’ company through which they connected with likeminded others. Almost from its inception in 2003 RT was marketed as a ‘community’ where everyone was welcome, where the community members were involved in the production process of the company, where its employees were like you. RT was and is a good example of the increasing interconnectedness between media and social media. Much more than in the early days of RT, today there is an even larger variety of online localities where ‘gamers’ and ‘geeks’, and everyone else for that matter, can find a place of belonging and where they can connect with likeminded people. More than ever are people able to organize themselves online. In spite, or because of, this development the internet has truly become big business. RT was one of the earlier companies that responded to the urge for people with similar hobbies, interests and consumer

preferences to organize themselves online, to find like-minded spirits and a digital ‘place’ of belonging.

What sets RT apart from other companies is that they found gaps in what the traditional media had on offer; niches that spoke to people like themselves: ‘gamers’ and ‘geeks’. In general this audience knew the ropes of the internet very well, which RT

capitalized on by making their website their center of distribution and by facilitating a, for the time, elaborate social platform where ‘the audience’ could hang out with each other and with the people who worked at RT. To pay for all of this, and to earn some money too, they implemented a ‘Sponsorship system’ that made it possible for members of the site to become

Sponsors, granting them early access to certain content, as well as giving them the feeling

that they were supporting the cast, the personalities who worked at RT. It also made them feel like they were part of the production. Compared to traditional media the ties between the producers (and the cast) and its audience were strong, the lines were short and the division

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between the public and private was relatively vague, for the members of the site as well as the cast.

This was the template of the growth of RT and its community. Fast forward to today and these three cornerstones are still in place.2 RT is still finding niches for ‘gamers’ and ‘geeks’ to enjoy, and increasingly for other audiences too. RT still offers the promise of a community, a group and ‘place’ of belonging, a close connection between community-members among themselves as well as with the cast. The types and amount of content that RT produces has vastly increased, but its attraction is just as much about the content itself as the cast that features in it. RT differs from other (traditional) media in that almost every day a video is uploaded, even just speaking about one division of RT, which often feature the same cast-members. The ‘front’ of RT, the ‘group of friends who hang out, play videogames and have fun together’, has been ongoing for years now.3 For the community-members and fans this performance has given rise to the feeling of a deep connection and a ‘knowing’ of this ‘group of friends’ as well as your fellow fans and/or community members who have lived this with you, or in a similar way as you. Many fans feel a sense of gratitude towards RT (or a specific division like AH), because they have been performing and living their lives parallel to yours, exposing their ‘authentic’ selves for your entertainment, indirectly making it easier for the fans to show who they really are, to express themselves and to ‘put themselves out there’. This has instigated a reciprocal relationship between the fans and the cast-members. The new (and some older) fans gladly grant RT their success, and they gladly give them their money (through buying merchandizing or through being a Sponsor). They are happy with the entertainment and with the people they connect and share their enthusiasm with through fan- and community-activities. However, many ‘old-school’ fans/community members are less happy with their reciprocal relationship with RT. RT has grown a lot and has become different than it used to be: it has become more commercial, the distance between the cast and the community has grown, RT has been (indirectly) taken over by AT&T, one of the largest companies in the world, and on top of all that the old-school community have, in their eyes, lost their communal digital space (the RT site) to which they attached great meaning. They feel like that was the fundament of RT and its ‘community’, and in spite of RT knowing this they nonetheless ‘let it go’. Because of this they often feel like they have lost the close relationship that they once had with RT and its cast-members, as well as with other

2 Note: The three cornerstones being: The niches that RT caters to, the community-aspect, and putting the

‘authentic’ cast at the center of the production.

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community members. In this process they have also lost their powerful position in the production process of RT and in having a say in what direction RT is going. Community members and fans are central in my thesis, and I will use these terms a lot. To add emphasis I will use one or the other deliberately, but sometimes I choose to use one term for my, and the readers, convenience. Many community members and fans use these terms interchangeably in practice as well.

In Chapter 2 I will explain what RT is and briefly summarize its history up until today. In Chapter 3 I will explore the relation between RT, its content and the cast with the community members and the fans. The purpose here is to show what the attraction of RT is, how the community members and/or fans get increasingly invested in its content and the cast, by the inclusive, friendly and familial presentation of RT, as well as the possibility of living

the dream one day. In Chapter 4 I will show how RT changed and has become more

commercial in the eyes of the old-school community members and what the community has meant for them as well as for the ‘newer’ community members. Then I will show how the digital landscape has changed, what different online localities mean and ‘do’ for the involved community members and fans, and what power dynamics are at play here. Chapter 5 will be the conclusion. Ultimately I hope to shed some light on the ways in which people interact and find belonging and ways of being together through the internet, and what this entails when a media company such as RT plays a central role in this.

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Chapter 2 – An Introduction to Rooster Teeth

It all started as a joke. In 2001 a group of guys who liked videogames from Austin, Texas decided to create a videogame-review website: drunkgames.com.4 The idea behind the website was that they could ask publishers for free copies of videogames, so that they could get drunk, play videogames that they normally would have to pay for, and maybe even make some money at some point. The plan failed however, because no company wanted to be associated with anything with ‘drunk’ in its name.5 A different approach was needed, so they made a short video in the then extremely popular Xbox game Halo, in its most popular multiplayer map ‘Blood Gulch’.6 For many gamers, especially in the US, this game and map signified having a good time together with your friends on the couch in front of the TV, while you were staying up late drinking beer (or something similar).7 In the video the red and blue team members (who in the game had to eliminate each other) philosophized about life and bickered over who could watch through a sniper rifle scope. On April 1, 2003 they released the short video on their new website roosterteeth.com, and this date came to be seen as the date on which Rooster Teeth is founded. This was at a time when videos could not be played on an internet page; you had to click on a link to be able to download it. The video went viral, not through Facebook or YouTube, which did not exist at the time, but mostly by word of mouth, and by people sharing the link with friends per email. Since that time 15 Red vs. Blue (RvB) seasons have been made, RT has become a company with over 250 employees, it releases multiple videos per day and has over 2 million ‘community members’ on their own website, of which about 200.000 are a paying sponsor.89 All ‘founding fathers’ of RT (Burnie Burns, Matt Hullum, Geoff Ramsey, Gus Sorola, Joel Heyman and Jason Saldaña) are still working at RT today, except for one.10

For the first few years after their first video RT continued to create RvB episodes (with the technique called machinima) while the series got an increasingly large and devoted

4 Note: See the archived website here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20021017053539/http://www.drunkgamers.com/index.shtml

5 Source: RT podcast 174:

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/6/d/9/6d993bd317624917/Rooster_Teeth_Podcast_174.m4a?c_id=4692764&expi ration=1496758410&hwt=379d6162e599ad8e2b5eda50aec351bd

6 Note: Halo quickly became the Xbox figurehead game, and ‘Mater Chief’, its main protagonist, its mascot, in a

similar way as Mario still is for Nintendo.

7 Note: For me it actually signified the same, although I did not come to know RT for over a decade later. 8 Source:

https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/rooster-teeth-grace-helbig-hannah-hart-phil-defranco-million-dollars-but-1201997906/

9 Source: https://www.inverse.com/article/29928-red-vs-blue-rooster-teeth-season-15-interview 10 Note: Except for Jason Saldaña

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audience.11 RT managed to do this by adding extended social features to their website in 2004, the community part of the website, on which the ‘community members’ could create profiles, write journals, create groups and take part in forum discussions. RT also introduced a ‘mod point system’, which enabled community members to like and dislike posts. This created an incentive for people to further adhere to the prevailing norms and etiquettes, while it also helped the ‘mods’ in recognizing inflammatory and unwanted posts. Importantly, the ‘founding fathers’ and the cast-members of RvB actively took part in the community-activity. RT also implemented the option for community members to become a Sponsor, granting early access to the RvB episodes as well as a few exclusivities on the community part of the website. At first this was a necessity for RT, because at the time it was expensive to ‘host’ videos online, about 12.000 dollars per month to be precise.12 After the last episode of the first RvB season had been released RT made money by selling its DVD on their website, which aside from the sponsorships made up the majority of their revenue.13 Even though all episodes of RvB were free to download online, and even though the sponsorships did not grant much privileges, especially at the start, most community members bought the

sponsorship and/or the DVD for different, or at least additional reasons: to support RT and to help out with the many costs they encountered. And thus a reciprocal relationship was

initiated.

For the next few years RT grew steadily, while they continued to produce the RvB series. Then, in 2008, RT expanded their production beyond RvB for the first time. They started to record a weekly audio podcast, which (usually) featured Gus Sorola, Burnie Burns, Geoff and Griffon Ramsey (the former wife of Geoff). In the podcasts they mostly talked about popular culture, with the emphasis on tech- and videogame culture, while consuming alcohol. In the same year RT launched its first separate division: Achievement Hunter (AH). This gaming centered division was founded by Geoff Ramsey (together with Jack Patillo) and

11 Explanation: Machinima is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production.

This meant that, in the case of Red vs. Blue (RvB), RT used the Xbox game Halo in the multiplayer mode, so not the main storyline mode in which you follow a more or less linear path while defeating aliens along the way, to create scenes with different camera angles, using the avatars as main characters. Other advantages of using machinima over ‘normal’ computer animation was that people could control (move, shoot, jump, etc.) the avatars just like in the original game, and the only thing left to do was to record it, edit it and add voice acting. It was edited in such a way that a logical narrative was created, while each character/avatar had a slightly different appearance and color and was voice acted by the different founders mentioned above, and a few other people. The duration of an episode was about three to ten minutes, and a season consisted of about twenty episodes.

12 Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238391

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mainly featured video-guides explaining how to get certain Xbox 360 achievements.14 2008 was also the year in which RT launched their first YouTube channel(s). Before RT had been reluctant to start a YouTube channel, because they already had their own website with its own community, and in keeping everything on their own website all the views and its add-revenue would go directly to RT and not partly to YouTube. But in 2008 YouTube was growing very fast, and even though RT would earn less money per view they had the chance to gain a lot of new viewers in total, as well as the increased chance of one of their videos ‘going viral’. So from that point on all videos were released both on their own website as well as on YouTube.

The following years the growth of RT and the expansion of their production intensified. In 2009 RT started to produce their first live-action videos, in which the cast (mainly the ‘founding fathers’) played caricatures of themselves in an office setting.15 In 2010 a few new shows were launched, like Immersion, a show in which two ‘lab rats’ were being dropped in a videogame situation, but in ‘real life’.16 The first (non-machinima) animated show was introduced: a cartoon of funny and/or memorable stories and anecdotes from the podcast. And Gavin Free, an English former community member who was already involved in the production of RvB, started his own channel in which he and his friend Dan were filming things in extreme-slow-motion. Gavin did this to get a working permit to be able to move to Austin, to work at RT fulltime. But one of the first videos, in which a huge water balloon was blown up by Gavin jumping on it, went viral. Today it has been viewed over 170 million times.17 In 2011 the podcast became a video podcast, although the audio version of it was still available to download. The Ramseys stopped featuring in it and Gavin Free and Barbara Dunkelman, both former community members, replaced them. In the same year an event was organized at the RT offices where 400 community members gathered to spend the day with the cast.

14 Explanation: The achievement mechanic was first introduced by the Xbox 360, and is currently used on

almost all videogame platforms. On the Xbox 360 each game had different achievements that you could ‘unlock’, in total worth of 1000 ‘gamerscore’ per game. The achievements you unlocked and their accompanying points stacked up, so if you owned five games you could earn a maximum amount of 5000 gamerscore from them. Some of the achievements were difficult to unlock, and for many ‘gamers’ the

unlocking of achievements became an important sub-goal while playing a videogame. An increasing amount of people were comparing gamerscores with others, and this created a competition, an incentive to have a higher gamerscore than your (Xbox-live) friends or even complete strangers.

15 Explanation: Live-action: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action

16 Note: In its first season Gus Sorola and Geoff Ramsey were the ‘lab rats’. An example of an episode: the lab

rats had to fight of four hundred zombies (all dressed- and made up community members) with toy guns, similar to a popular zombie game situation.

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In 2010-2012 AH expanded its production from just video-guides to a handful of shows, the most important being the Let’s Play videos. The term Let’s Play already existed before AH released their first one.1819 When the first AH Let’s Play came out Let’s Plays in general were quickly becoming more popular. The most famous Let’s Player PewDiePie released his first one about a year earlier, while Twitch.tv, the most popular videogame livestream platform, launched in the middle of 2011.20

AH also hired new cast members until it reached what came to be known as the main

six or the main crew, who acted as hosts for AH’s shows. Aside from Geoff Ramsey and Jack

Patillo the main crew consisted of Ryan Haywood, Michael Jones, Ray Narvaez, Jr. and, again, Gavin Free. Ray and Michael had, like Gavin, both been scouted from the community. Michael had made a few Rage Quit videos from his home before he was hired, and he

continued to make them as a series for AH.21 At the end of 2012 the main crew started a weekly Let’s Play series in Minecraft, a game that was extremely popular at the time and became the second best-selling videogame ever, just after Tetris.22 This series is still continuing today, with over 300 episodes made.

The combination of the increasingly popular Animated Adventures, Rage Quit and Minecraft Let’s Play videos, led to a huge increase in ‘Total Views Per Month’ on the RT YouTube channel. In the first quarter of 2012 the channel averaged at about 50 million total views per month, while in December this amount had already doubled to about a 100

million.23 In 2013 the popularity of AH and RT grew further. AH started their popular weekly and still ongoing Let’s Play series in GTA V, which at the moment is the third best-selling videogame ever made. And RT introduced a new anime-style series called RWBY. It was completely animated by RT itself, the four leading roles were al female, and, like most other

18 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Play_(video_gaming)

19 Explanation: A Let’s Play is a video in which one or more people play a videogame, while the viewer sees

what they see on their screen. Sometimes a small part of the screen displays the webcam-footage of the person who’s in-game footage you are watching. The ‘Let’s Player’ usually comments on what is happening in the game, or is role-playing, most of the time with comedic purposes. A Let’s Play can be live, when it is streamed, but often it is a recorded and edited video. Most of the time a Let’s Play features the footage of one person, but some Let’s Plays are the collaborative effort of multiple people who all record their footage and audio, which is subsequently edited into one video. This is the case in most Let’s Plays of AH, in which the main

six are central.

20 Note: PewDiePie is the most popular YouTube celebrity by far, with over 61 million subscriptions to his

channel today. Source: https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie/about

21 Explanation: Rage quit is a well-known term in ‘gamer-culture’. It means becoming so angry, while playing a

game for example, that you quit in a fit of rage. Michael did exactly that while recording it, although with humorous intentions.

22 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games 23 Source: See Socialblade statistics on page 11.

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animated RT productions, the voice-acting was done by well-known RT cast-members. RWBY was an instant hit. The success of AH and RWBY drew a whole new audience into the ‘world of RT’, an audience that was younger and, in the case of RWBY, largely female.

In 2014 I first encountered RT by watching a GTA Let’s Play.24 In that year RT moved into a new studio (and soon multiple studios) at the Austin Film Society.25 RT also started a crowdfunding campaign to make it possible to produce their first fully fledged feature film: Lazer Team.26 The campaign launched in June, and within 3 days over a million dollars had already been pledged, while at the end of the campaign almost 2.5 million dollars had been collected. The filming started in October. It was directed, produced and co-written by Matt Hullum, the CEO of RT, and it starred many well-known RT cast members, notably also three of the four lead roles (Gavin Free, Michael Jones and Burnie Burns). At this point RT understandably had caught the attention of larger corporations, and in November RT was acquired by Fullscreen.27 Fullscreen, which itself is owned by Otter Media, a joint venture of AT&T and The Chernin Group, calls itself ‘the global leader in social entertainment’.28 The takeover is exemplary for recent times, in which the ‘old media’, like the giant conglomerate AT&T, one of the largest companies in the world, try to get a foothold in the quickly emerging ‘new media’ landscape. This was a major change for RT and the community, since up to that point RT had been independent for 11 years.

From 2015 onwards RT grew further and faster, propelled forward by Fullscreen. In July 2015 RT launched their new website, which turned out to have some serious

consequences that I will discuss in Chapter 4. The ‘videogame side’ of RT, that before was mainly occupied by AH, expanded when the so called Let’s Play Family was called into life. New divisions, like Funhaus, were acquired to become a part of the ‘family’. Funhaus was the first division that did not ‘naturally’ emanate from the RT headquarters in Austin, but was acquired in its totality and based in Los Angeles.29 From that point on RT actively sought to ‘expand the family’ by contracting whole divisions like AH and Funhaus, as well as sole video creators and Let’s Players.

24 Note: In Chapter 3 I describe the experience of watching this video.

25 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/3zwg9h/list_of_rt_offices/ 26 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazer_Team

27 Source:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/fullscreen-buy-online-video-producer-rooster-teeth-155759682--finance.html, https://fullscreenmedia.co/2014/11/10/welcome-family-rooster-teeth/

28 Source: https://fullscreenmedia.co/

29 Note: Funhaus mainly produces gameplay videos like AH, but targets an older audience with shorter videos

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On the 23rd of February 2016 my fieldwork had officially begun. The week after I already attended one of the few hundred simultaneous screenings of RT’s first feature film Lazer Team, after my interlocutor Sam invited me to come and see it in Liverpool during a livestream-chat conversation. Just after my fieldwork ended RT changed its Sponsorship system to the ‘First-membership’, which I will get into in Chapter 4. In 2017 RT had grown into a media production company that produces multiple podcasts, quiz shows, animated series, live-action series, Let’s Play series, videogames, board games, news shows, and a lot more. The small gathering in 2011 where 400 community members were present has grown into a yearly convention in Austin (over 60.000 visitors), Sydney (about 20.000 visitors) and London (unknown amount of visitors).30

Socialblade statistics: 31

30 Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTX_(event)

31 Source: www.socialblade.com Note: At the beginning of 2013 RT started new YouTube channels besides

their main one, the Let’s Play channel among others, so the views did not drop after that point, they just moved elsewhere.

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Chapter 3: What is the attraction of RT for their community/fans?

Gavin in Livestream Playing Rainbow Six

It was the last round of the livestream and the winning team would win the whole match. Gavin was standing in the corner of a large kitchen. The body of Jeremy, who was gunned down only moments before, was lying beside him. The opposing team had only two players left alive, while there were still three Achievement Hunters defending the room. Then everything happened very fast. Within a second both Jack and Geoff were shot and killed, and suddenly Gavin, the ‘wildcard’ of AH, the person who I have seen die hundreds of times in the most stupid and unbelievable ways imaginable in almost every game I have seen him play in, was the only one left alive. In the top left corner of my TV screen I could see him tense up. I was sitting on the edge of my seat, seeing in real-time what he was seeing. Then the attackers came..

Gavin shot the first one down, reloaded while crawling back in the corner, and then skillfully killed the last one! The other Achievement Hunters cried out exclamations of joy and

appreciation, while Gavin was punching the air at the same time as I was. Then I immediately closed the YouTube full screen view, to see the chat ‘going wild’ next to the small video player. I quickly wrote ‘MARK NUTT!!!!!!!!!!!’, pressed Enter, and saw it quickly move upwards in between other comments like ‘Gavin!’ or Well done Gavin!!’. I typed it again and

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pressed Enter. Within a few seconds I saw a few other people write Mark Nutt in various ways, and soon there were just as many Mark Nutt as Gavin ‘shouts’ in the chat. I felt a rush of adrenaline and a sense of connection with AH and Gavin in particular, and with all the other viewers, the people in the chat, especially those who mimicked, or replied to, my Mark Nutt comment. It was a moment of collective effervescence, even though I was sitting alone in front of my TV.32

32 Note: My TV is usually connected to my laptop. The Mark Nutt comment I made is an old AH meme, a

reference to a 5 year old Let’s Play of the London Olympics game. In that video Gavin represents the UK, and at the archery section he plays as the archer Mark Nutt. Even though he shoots erratically, his results are very good and he wins the gold medal (the only gold medal Gavin won throughout two whole videos). Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGz2_DhSQTM&index=2&list=PL1cXh4tWqmsFeTVW26DfywLCzAF2v4Cu 8

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In this chapter I will try to explain what the attraction of RT, its ‘content’ and cast is. Next chapter I will go further into what the attraction of the RT community is, and how and why that has changed in the last few years. I will not pay attention to the people who have come across one or a few videos and never encountered or sought out RT content afterwards. My focus is on the people who are engaged with RT content on a regular basis. Whether that means they are into a single, multiple, or all RT ‘division(s)’ or ‘partner(s)’, or just one series. My focus also includes those who have not seen many, or even any, RT videos in a long time, but who still feel connected to Rooster Teeth and its community in some way. This includes the people who are still active in digital community spaces, like the RT forums on the official website, such as some interlocutors of mine in the Oxford Comma Café.

So what is it that attracts these people to RT? Why do so many people faithfully watch their videos every day, buy their merchandize, or fly halfway across the world to go to the RTX convention? During my fieldwork I found that what this ‘attraction of RT’ actually means depends per person, but I found that in most cases it was threefold.

1. You find/found the content entertaining

2. You connect/connected with the cast and/or producers of RT (or a division of RT) 3. You connect/connected with others who share point 1 and 2 with you.

First I will focus on the content itself. As explained in the previous chapter: RT offers a wide range of content, mostly videos, which speak to diverse ‘audiences’. However, aside from a few exceptions, almost all content revolves around videogames, from a greater to a lesser extent. Therefore I chose to take the content of Achievement Hunter, the first RT division focused solely on videogames, with the majority of their videos revolving around video gameplay, as an example for this chapter. I think what makes their content attractive in many cases also holds true for other RT content. To make the reader get a sense of what an AH video is like I start out by describing the experience of watching an AH video. Then I will focus on what the appeal of the RT cast and the company is. Then I will explain the dynamic of what I call The Dream (to work at RT), and lastly I will use Goffman’s theory of

impression management to further enlighten RT’s appeal, as well as the implicit promise RT

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The Content

Many people have asked me: ‘Why would someone watch somebody else play videogames?’ This was indeed something that even I never understood, before I started doing it myself. To get an impression of what an AH Let’s Play video is like, I will now describe how I

experienced watching one. Incidentally this was also the first RT video I ever saw. At the time I was searching for information about an upcoming ‘Heist’ online feature of the game GTA V, and I digitally stumbled upon this video. It is called: Let's Play – GTA V – Heist.33 My description is from my point of view while already being familiar with AH, so not from the perspective of when I saw the video for the first time.

The Heist

Unlike most AH Let’s Plays the video did not start with gameplay footage, but with live-action footage of five of the main six sitting in a real office, looking at the sixth, their boss Geoff, who is presenting the plan of the heist to them (and the audience) in front of a

whiteboard. The setting is immediately recognizable as a heist set-up for any who has played the single player of GTA V, or indeed for anyone who is familiar with heist films and

videogames. After about 6 minutes, which could have been just 2 but for the interruptions and jokes, the presentation of the plan is finished and the live-action footage switches to in-game footage. There too the guys, or rather, their in-in-game avatars, are sitting down while Geoff is standing in front of them, but they are located in a penthouse instead of an office, and Geoff is standing in front of a big flat-screen television instead of a whiteboard. In GTA the avatars are controlled from a third person point of view, and in the top left corner of the screen the name of the person from which point of view you are watching is edited in, like in most other AH Let’s Plays. In this and other GTA Let’s Plays the names are stylized using the same font as the logo of GTA.

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From top left to bottom right: Geoff explaining the plan of the ‘heist’ with the help of a ‘real’ map of Los Santos, the in-game fictional version of Los Angeles. The others sit down and listen. Geoff his avatar ‘still’ standing in front of the others after the switch to the in-game footage. Finally, the initiation of the robbery from the point of view of Gavin.

Also like in most other Let’s Plays of AH the audio of the video was the same as the in-game audio of the avatar you are ‘in’, with the volume turned down a lot to be able to hear the voices of the guys controlling the avatars better. When the situation demands it however, the volume of the in-game audio occasionally is turned up.

It was not the plan to rob a high-profit target like a jewelry store or a bank, which like I mentioned above was not possible in the multiplayer yet. Instead Geoff had thought out an unnecessarily elaborate plan to rob a 24/7 store. As everyone who is familiar with the game would know, the in-game cash reward of robbing such a store is not large at all. Even the preparations of buying body armor and bullets cost them much more than the most

prosperous of hauls could ever cover for. Clearly everyone knew this, and it made it all the more fun to see them taking the plan and their separate roles in it so seriously.

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The guys were preparing for the heist at a leisurely pace in the game while talking and goofing around. Finally, at around the 32:30 mark, the heist was about to start. This meant that there were only about 6 minutes left until the end of the video.

The plan was set. The getaway vehicles, a large truck, several cars, a motorcycle and a speedboat, were ready and waiting. Everyone knew what to do.

Geoff and Gavin walked into the store and Geoff immediately pulled out his gun and shouted ‘Give us the fucking money!’ while Gavin reinforced their threat by shouting ‘Put the money in the bag you son of a bitch!’ while he stood next to Geoff with his fists up facing the clerk. The ’heist’, or rather, the robbery, had begun. Automatically Geoff and Gavin received a three star ‘wanted level’ so that the police would start looking for them and shoot on sight (The wanted level is visible in the top right of the screen, and goes from one to five stars. Each level increases the amount and changes the kind of police going after you and the effort they put into stopping you). After Geoff and Gavin ‘completed’ the robbery they were picked up by getaway driver Jack, and they fled towards an alleyway in the vicinity, where Michael was waiting in a large truck. Sirens could be heard in close vicinity and Gavin shouted ‘Oh! The filth are right behind us!’. Immediately after the getaway car arrived Michael ‘closed off’ the alleyway with his truck, so that the police would not be able to follow them. Ray, who during the robbery had provided covering fire from the top of a building opposite the store, was now on his way towards the others on a motorcycle, while Ryan was sitting in the driver seat of one of the two replacement getaway cars in the same alleyway the others were in. Then things started to get hairy. Around the time when Michael blew up the truck together with the first getaway car to create a fiery blockade the police arrived. Only not at the

expected closed off side of the alleyway, but at the other side, which had been left completely open, and was meant for the escape of the crew. This unexpected turn caused some panic. Gavin, notorious for breaking under pressure, was now waiting for Jack to run to and get in the getaway car with him, where he was sitting behind the wheel. The other getaway car, with Ryan and Geoff in it, blasted past him and the police. Jack got in the car with Gavin, but then did something that would never happen in real life: he stepped out of the car accidentally after pushing the wrong button on his controller. Gavin drove of but slammed on the brakes once he realized that Jack was not with him, and he came to a standstill right next to a police car. At that moment, sitting there in the driving seat, Gavin was shot dead by the police, his screen turned black and white, showing the word wasted in blood red letters. Moments later,

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Ray picked up Michael in a small side-alley and they hurried away on their motorcycle. Jack, with no getaway vehicle available to him anymore, ran away as fast as he could and turned into another small side-alley. Then he too was gunned down by the police. Or at least that is what I thought at first, but it immediately became clear, after Michael screamed ‘Oh shit!’ and ‘Friendly fire!’ while Ray simultaneously screamed ‘You killed him!’ even louder, that Michael was the one who had killed Jack while shooting wildly from the back of the moving motorcycle. As they were speeding away both of them had a hard time to stay in character and not to laugh too much. All the while Michael repeatedly tried to defend his actions towards the others who were still living (‘It was a dark alley!’) and Ray kept on emphasizing his mistake (‘You shot him right in the face!’).

The first two deaths had happened within a timespan of less than 30 seconds. During and around that time the audio had been very loud and chaotic because the guys were constantly yelling instructions at each other, using codenames like ‘Eagle One’ and ‘Bravo Two’, which incidentally caused even more chaos. They also shouted loudly at NPCs (non-playable characters) like the police and the store clerk. Gavin died first, and the absence of his British voice was telling. This was because they had agreed to keep quiet after being killed, to create a more ‘realistic’ and immersive experience. This agreement was not made clear to the audience beforehand, and this video was the first in which they applied this rule.

The black and white screen of Gavin, showing ‘Wasted’ after he died. And the point of view of Michael, sitting on the back of the motorcycle, right after he accidentally killed Jack, whose body you can see lying at the end of the dark alley.

To quickly sum up the remainder of the heist: Michael and Ray were rammed off their motorcycle by a police car on the highway, after which they were immediately gunned down while lying on the ground (Ray: ‘Oh I’m dead!’. Michael: ‘Noooo!

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noise*’). Geoff and Ryan actually escaped with the loot on their speedboat, but Ryan, notorious for having a bit of a maniacal in-game persona, decided to double-cross Geoff and killed him pointblank. The loot however fell in the water. Ryan then blew up the speedboat with himself on it, deciding a ‘Viking funeral’ was best. At that point everyone was dead and they all started laughing and talking about how they had died, what went wrong and right, and what they thought had been especially funny.

The first time I saw the video I had not expected to enjoy it as much as I did. From the start of the heist until the last death less than five minutes had passed. But these minutes had been filled with action, funny moments and unlikely sequences of events. Unlike most movies and TV series all of this had been unscripted, which made it really easy to emphasize and

immerse yourself in the avatars and associated players. Even though ‘the players’ had thought out a plan and prepared the escape in some detail, they were in the same boat as the viewers in not knowing how the game and the game mechanics would ‘react’ to it, because of the randomness that is inherent to an ‘open world game’ like GTA. In that way it is a little bit similar to watching sport, in the sense that doing this also entails ‘following’ one or more players who tactically try to accomplish a goal within the boundaries of what is possible, limited by natural laws and the rules of the game. The randomness of situations and sequences that the players are in and have to ‘deal with’ creates excitement and a certain narrative quality for the viewer. Aside from this, the creators of GTA put a lot of effort into making the game immersive and cinematic with touches and details like the black and white screen showing ‘wasted’ or a car horn sounding after a lifeless body falls over forwards hitting the steering wheel. On top of that the creators of the video tried to enhance this experience by editing in a cinematic way and by making it easier to ‘follow’, which is partly made possible by a relative high production value. Most of all though, the players, meaning the cast, purposefully tried to make it easier and more exciting to be immersed with the avatars and what was happening by, for example, staying in character, being quiet after being killed, or yelling at an NPC as if it was a real person. The cast do more than ‘just’ play, they actively role-play and perform with and as their avatars.

The Appeal

When I asked my interviewees why they watched RT videos, all of them first answered saying something along the lines of: ‘Because it’s fun(ny)!’ or ‘Because it’s entertaining!’. For some of them RT was their prime source of entertainment, putting more time in watching

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RT videos than, for example, watching films, series, playing videogames or reading. When I asked Sam about when and why he first started watching Let’s Play videos he told me that his parents, and he himself as well, had asked that question a lot. He then continued to explain how it had happened and why he continued to watch them afterwards.

Sam: So, I always thought the idea of Let’s Plays was really stupid. I had the same attitude that a lot of, I suppose.. parents would have now. It’s like: ‘why are you watching something when you could be doing something?’ It’s obviously a much more passive experience, especially if it’s Minecraft or GTA: I own those games! Why am I watching someone else do it when I.. for no expense, I could just be doing it myself? … It was the LP Minecraft episode, the first one, where Gavin burned down the house that everyone had built. It was only 20 minutes long and I was quite tired so I couldn’t be bothered finding anything else to watch, and I watched it and thoroughly enjoyed it. And within a few episodes I just continued to watch that series. By episode 6-7, you understand those characters, you know those characters. And that’s why I won’t watch, kind of solitary Let’s Players, because if you are one person on your own, you can just play the game yourself and replicate their experience. … A group of six people, like AH or Funhaus, they’ve got a group dynamic that you can never get if you are on your own. … So I suppose that’s why I really started to enjoy AH-content, because it’s got that group dynamic that you feel involved in, because after so many.. to be fair, it was a relatively short time afterwards that you feel invested in the group, but especially now, 2 years later, I’m a sponsor, I know all of the major kind-of people at the company.. I don’t know them but, you feel as though you do, because you can sit there and you can watch any of the content and feel engaged, you feel as if you’re.. not so much a fly on the wall, but just someone else who’s there, on the couch.. watching them play a game and.. (he pauses for a bit) and Gavin screws up. Gavin dives of a bridge, and misses the water! (I nod and smile, indicating I know what he is talking about) and just.. (Sam is laughing, interrupting the sentence) and yeah it’s involving and engaging. And I think that’s why it’s much less of a passive experience than people would think, and I think it’s.. it’s more interesting to sit and watch a group, than play on your own.

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I have heard these and similar arguments for enjoying RT content so many times. All of my interviewees had similar stories, and in the digital RT community spaces they also kept coming back. When Let’s Play videos were the entry-point, the most important elements that constituted the increasing involvement of the fan- and/or community-member-to-be were: the entertainment value of the videos, their relatively unscripted nature, the humor of the cast-members, getting to know the cast-members and their onscreen and in-game personas, the unique group-dynamic, getting (and feeling) increasingly invested with this group of people, and ultimately the connection that you now feel to have built up with them, and, indirectly, with the people who like you did the same.

The way people ‘consume’ RT content differs per person. This was also true for my interviewees. Sam usually watched RT videos on the large monitor of his PC, sitting in his comfortable office chair, without doing much else, like as if he was watching a film or a TV series. Terry however, usually watched Let’s Play videos at work with his headphones on.He coded at an IT company, and on his desk stood two monitors, one displaying the Let’s Play video, the other whatever he was working on. Focusing on his work he heard the voices of the main six, and whenever they got all excited or started laughing loudly he started watching that screen, sometimes rewinding the video somewhat to see what all the fuzz was about. Femke usually did all kinds of things at once. She often played videogames on her Xbox, while playing an RT Podcast on her laptop, while also occasionally using her phone to ‘Facebook’.

Becoming more invested in RT, a large group of ‘friends’

On RT Reddit and in the RTUK Facebook group every once in a while someone asks how others ‘got into RT’ and what their first RT video was, after which people share their ‘origin’ stories. Often, like with Sam (and incidentally with me as well), their first video was an AH Let’s Play, which they came across or was recommended to them. Usually the subsequent path to becoming a fan and/or a community member went something like this:

Because they enjoyed the video they start to watch more, after which they start to be able to differentiate between the cast members, getting to ‘know’ these individuals a bit better each time. What is equally if not more important is that they start to understand the group dynamic somewhat, making them feel like they are ‘on the inside’ of a group of ‘friends’ having fun together. They start to understand the in-jokes, the personalities of the cast, and their onscreen and in-game personas, which may differ from their perceived ‘real-life’ personas. At some point they ‘come back’ for the entertainment value of a video and, in many cases

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more importantly, this group of people who they now feel a kind of connection to. Like Sam says when he talks about the weekly podcast of AH:

To be honest, the content which is purely the people, or the personalities, without the gameplay, can sometimes be the best. … particularly with the way that the set is designed it really feels like you’re just at the pub with your mates. And their telling you all these ridiculous stories that you’ve never heard before, and it’s fantastic, it’s brilliant.

Through suggestions of YouTube, links at the end of every video, references of cast

members, guest appearances, and in other ways, the RT fans- or community members-to-be are introduced to other kinds of AH content than the Let’s Plays, as well as the non-AH RT content. Because of the overlap of cast-members in RT content, the threshold in ‘getting into’ new kinds of RT content is lowered. In a way it is similar to a friend bringing you to a party where none, or only a few, of your group of friends are present. But your friend introduces you to all his/her other friends, who by association must be alright.

The ‘friend aspect’ is crucial for the attraction of RT and all its divisions, and RT is very aware of this. In basically every RT production friendship is central, as a theme as well as in its presentation. The cast-members are (supposedly) almost always friends of each other, as are the main characters in every (animated) RT series, which coincidentally are predominantly (voice-)acted by the same most well-known cast-members. The ‘friend aspect’ is also apparent in AH videos, and is purposefully reiterated again and again in multiple ways. For example: at the beginning of a Let’s Play in a horror game Geoff explains what is going on by saying: ‘We’re hanging out together, five friends, in what appears to be some sort of an abandoned scary place, and we’re just, I don’t know, playing a game!’34 In series like ‘Battle Buddies’ and ‘Play Pals’ it is just two ‘friends’ playing a videogame together (by Ryan and Jeremy, and Michael and Gavin respectively).

The set-up and layout of the AH office, different sets and videos also contribute to the ‘friend-aspect’ by mimicking ‘real-life’ activities that friends, especially within the target audience, would do together. It is important to note here that most of these activities are typical male activities (within the ‘gamer’ subculture), in which play is central, as well as joking and fooling around. Compared to RT AH is targeting a more masculine, or rather a

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more (teenage) boyish audience. This of course does not mean that there are no older or no female fans, who sometimes feel right at home in this kind of atmosphere.

The sets and accompanying activities:

During Let’s Plays the office looks like a LAN-party is going on. (Fan-art impression.)

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In Heroes & Halfwits the crew sit around a table playing Dungeons & Dragons.

And like Sam mentioned above: the set of the podcast Off Topic makes that it ‘feels like you’re just at the pub with your mates’.

AH goes out of their way to make their office working atmosphere seem more play- than work oriented. During Let’s Plays, but also in separate behind-the-scenes type of videos that they post on their YouTube channel, Facebook page or on Twitter, the crew appears to be constantly goofing around and having fun. All of the above obscures the fact that AH consist of colleagues working together at a company, and instead implicitly and explicitly supports

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the message that AH is just a group of ‘friends’, hanging out and playing videogames

together. Because of this, many fans and/or community members imagine AH (and RT) to be the perfect workplace, and consequently dream about getting a job there. Below I will explain this dream further.

Like Sam says as well, potential fans and community members get increasingly

invested in this group of people, and subsequently also in other RT groups, and ultimately in

the whole company of RT. Many then take the step to literally invest in RT by becoming a Sponsor, or what is now called a First Member or a Double Gold Member, by paying a certain amount every month or year. What they get back from this is the ability to watch all videos a day earlier (or sometimes a week), a discount on merchandize, as well as access to ‘exclusive’ content. This enhances the feeling of ‘being on the inside’. What they also get in return is the feeling of being a part of the growth of RT, making the production of their favorite content possible, and supporting the people they have built up a connection with. I will go into more detail about this in the next chapter.

Personality, Fame, Relatability and Intimacy

Through prolonged and regular ‘consummation’ of AH content the AH fan establishes a deep, if one-sided, connection with the cast members, particularly with his or her favorite(s). The fan gets a good, although often idealized, impression of what the ‘real’ person behind the onscreen persona is like. This is possible because of the huge amount of screen-time a cast-member is subject to, often in interaction with the other cast-cast-members, playing, talking, joking, arguing, being surprised, being scared and getting angry with each other. Especially in the multiple hour long Let’s Plays, podcasts and livestreams it is just impossible for cast-members to ‘hide behind’ an on screen persona at all times. Particularly during moments when one or more cast-members fail to keep up appearances, due to uncontrollable anger, frustration, shame or laughter, the ‘authentic’ person behind the persona sometimes shines through. Their performance also extends beyond the workplace in multiple ways. In Let’s Plays, and even more so in podcasts, their conversations go further than talking about subjects such as the newest videogames or tech developments. Stories about their daily lives and anecdotes are very common. Furthermore, there have been many occasions in which one or more cast-members were tipsy or even drunk during a Let’s Play, Podcast, or even on

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stage.35 Next to that most of them are very active on social media outside of workhours, like on Twitter. And last but not least: some of the cast-members livestream on Twitch a few times a week from their own home. Ryan Haywood does this twice a week for example, and every so often his kids walk into the room he is streaming from.

Like with many other ‘internet-celebrities’ the cast-members of AH are in a way ‘closer’ to their fans than many other mainstream celebrities. There is a certain fluidity between the perceived private and public sphere of the cast-member that makes the connection with the fan an intimate one. According to Ellcessor this access to the private sphere is precisely what is so attractive to the (potential) fan (2012: 46-66). She states that ‘Internet-based fame depends on the authenticity of a star's self-representation and on the notion of intimacy, experienced through the possibility of interaction rather than through simple familiarity’ (2009: 51). Indeed, the experienced intimacy of the fans/community members with the RT cast-members is hugely influenced by the ‘authentic’ personalities of the cast-members, and by the perceived possibility of interaction with them. According to many of the ‘old school’ community-members I spoke with, the RT website used to be the digital ‘home’ of ‘The Community’, which included the RT employees and its cast-members. When I spoke with them they were often nostalgic about those days, because, among other things, the possibility of interaction with cast-members was not only likely, but relatively normal.

The intimate connection between the fan and the cast(-member) is also enhanced by the specific personalities that the cast-members have, or show to have, which are close and relatable to that of the fan, particularly in their similar interest and experience in popular culture, and videogame- and geek-culture. The perception that someone like ‘you’, someone who is a gamer and a geek, is very popular, even idolized by thousands and thousands of people, is often in stark contrast with the lived experience of the fan.

Today the prejudices towards gamers and geeks seem to have become less negative than they used to be, because these ‘cultures’ have increasingly become more enmeshed with mainstream popular culture. But during my fieldwork I noticed that for many fans and community-members it was and had been very important to have found RT with its relatable stars and role-models, and consequently also people like them in the community. It often had given them more confidence, self-worth, a sense of belonging, and like Sam mentioned as well, the courage to ‘put themselves out there’. They did not have to explain their love for

35 Example: During the Off-Topic panel at RTX 2016 Michael gets very drunk, after which he gives a few insights

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videogames and geek culture to RT and its community, like they often had to do to their parents (among others). Furthermore, now they could even show videos of RTX or Let’s Play Live to their parents, in which the ‘stars’ of RT were on stage, with thousands of roaring fans in the crowd. This was something their parents could understand well, since it was very similar to a pop concert, only the rockstars were geeks and gamers, like their children.

The Dream

Like I mentioned above: there existed the small possibility of what I came to call The Dream. Mirroring the American Dream it is still very much alive today, although the chances of ‘living it’ have become increasingly unlikely. The Dream was, and is, to get a job at RT, especially as a cast-member, or in close (physical) proximity of cast-members. Alternatively

The Dream can also mean to successfully create your own popular channel with videos (or

other kinds of content) by yourself, or, more often, together with a group of ‘friends’, mirroring groups like AH. Often the ultimate goal of this alternative Dream remains the same: to be scouted by RT, or a specific division like AH. The path towards living The

Dream traditionally included being very active in the RT community and by ‘putting yourself

out there’, for example by making RT-like and/or RT related media yourself. Quite a few of the employees of RT were ‘scouted’ from the community in this way, including half of AH’s

main six.

Often The Dream is juxtaposed against the everyday adult working-life. Even Sam, who when I met him had almost finished his Geology Master’s, still dreamed about working at RT. He was practicing how to edit videos regularly, almost as if he did this just in case… He was not the only one. I have seen and personally experienced many more cases like it. For example: in a post on the RT Reddit page a medical student wrote about possibly giving up on becoming a doctor, so that he could chase The Dream.36 And when I was involved as a participant observer in the forum-thread ‘If you’re new and want to make friends’ on the RT website, I was a part of a group in which some were seemingly chasing The Dream. At the time the regulars of the thread were very active, posting many messages each day, and someone proposed to set up a private Discord channel.3738 An invitation that lasted 24 hours

36 Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/6rzz6i/anyone_else_get_that_depressing_feeling/

37 Explanation: Discord is a program for PCs, tablets and smartphones, which is used primarily by gamers to

communicate with each other during online multiplayer games. It is a kind of a mixture between Skype and WhatsApp, meaning that you can communicate by talking into the microphone or by ‘chatting’ with one to up to thousands of people, in open or private channels.

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was posted in the thread and most of the regulars, including myself, joined the channel. A digital space that was more private, intimate and personal than the public forum thread was thus created, in which most of the communication took place in the chat-group. Away from prying eyes the contact between the ‘regulars’ intensified: The banter became a bit more personal and more frequent, people started to play games together, we even drank alcohol ‘together’ (resulting in me being very worried about a girl in Finland who apparently drank for the first time, and drank way too much at that). But ironically this step back from the public sphere was done partly in service to take a leap back into it, to ‘put ourselves out there’. From the inception of the channel there were plans to occasionally join the voice-chat of the channel, not in order to just talk, but to record a podcast of our own in the style of the RT Podcast and Off Topic. To make a long story short: The group mimicked the behavior of groups like AH in almost every way, following the footsteps of many ‘dreamers’ before them.

The dream to become famous has arguably only become more widespread among young adults in contemporary times, even more so with the rise of YouTube, social media and reality TV. For many RT fans/community members, even for the ones who often feel ‘socially awkward’ (to which I will come back in chapter 4), this dream had always seemed impossible, because it was thought to be reserved for the model-like pretty and extremely talented people. But not only did RT make them feel ‘at home’ and create content that

aligned with their hobbies and interests, RT seemed to be a place where ‘gamers’ and ‘geeks’ like themselves could thrive and become famous, while the requirements to do so were in reach. You just had to ‘put yourself out there’, have fun and just be your ‘authentic’ self. So, like with reality TV and the recent ‘vlogger’ phenomenon, in this case the fame does not derive from the ‘stars’ being the embodiment of Aristotelian moral values such as courage or magnificence. Instead, it is partly derived from the exact opposite of such values. AH is not very good at videogames, a fact that they often underscore themselves. The morals that they do embody are, for example, cowardice and, more importantly, commonness.39 This is the fundament for why AH and RT in general are so attractive: morally they celebrate and embody commonness and are accepting towards everyone. This leads to a sort of

psychological attraction: the fame of the ‘RT stars’ is based on the accessibility, on their

commonness, on them being normal people, on them being like you (‘geeks, gamers and

38 Source: http://roosterteeth.com/forum/general-discussion/topic/2247494?page=1262#paginated-results 39 Example: In many in-game and ‘real-life’ situations Gavin Free embodies cowardice and fearfulness, a fact

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nerds’), and them being fine about it, even confident. Furthermore, their attractiveness is based on them being famous. It is much easier to emphasize with someone like Gavin while he plays a videogame, than watching a professional gamer being extremely good at it. It is easier to root for the underdog, for he could be you. And if you try hard enough, maybe you could one day live the Dream.

The Promise of the Front

In his famous and pivotal book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Goffman introduces the theory of impression management: the ways in which people perform, intentionally or unwittingly on the frontstage in interaction with (or in front of) others, to influence the perception that the others have about you and/or the situation you are in (1959). Above I mentioned that the community member and/or fan is able to get an impression of what the ‘real’ person behind the onscreen persona is like. But naturally the RT cast-members are only visible on the frontstage, whether they feature in a Let’s Play video, in a two hour long podcast, or when they are sending a tweet. Although Goffman ‘placed’ impression

management in the bodily presence of others, he wrote the book long before the internet even

existed, and I think his theory is especially applicable to my (digital) case. All the (digital) performances that I researched during my fieldwork, whether from RT cast- or community members, were enacted on a frontstage in front of an ‘audience’. In ‘online’ impression

management the audience plays a larger role than in Goffman’s times, because almost all performances are ‘done’ in front of a potentially very large audience. Furthermore, other than

the spoken word the written one, or the one spoken in a video, stays visible and interpretable, and is therefore subject to possible scrutiny for a long time. As a side note, I would like to make clear that I am not saying that the impression management by RT, and its community and fans, is all just an act, just like Goffman is not saying that the frontstage performance is just ‘an act’. Goffman very openly borrows his terminology from dramaturgical studies and uses this to shed light on ‘real life’. However, in a way my case is somewhere in between theater and ‘real life’, which in my eyes makes Goffman’s theories even more interesting in relation to my research.

The most important part of Goffman’s theory is that ‘any projected definition of the situation also has a distinctive moral character’, and that ‘Society is organized on the

principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way’ (ibid.: 24). But crucially: ‘an individual who implicitly or explicitly signifies that he has certain social characteristics

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ought in fact to be what he claims he is’ (ibid.: 24). In other words: When applied to this case the apparent authenticity of a RT cast-member and RT as a whole has a promissory quality towards the community-members and the fans. In my view, the most important implicit and explicit promises RT makes are:

1. A meaningful and inclusive community truly exists

2. They are like their audience: authentic gamers and geeks, you could basically be

friends

3. The Dream is (still) possible 4. Their content is entertaining

So when disruptions seemingly take place in relation to these four points it results in friction. Next chapter I will explore the friction in relation to point 1. Point 2 is being taken very seriously by the cast of AH (which I still use as an example for the wider RT). Many of them have gaming related tattoos, they have bodies in all shapes and sizes and in their presentation they emphasize them being friends with each other and (potentially) with the audience. Point 3 is closely related to point 2. The best way to get the message across that they (AH) are like their audience is to recruit cast-members from that same audience. The last person who was recruited this way was Jeremy Dooley, who replaced Ray Narvaez, Jr. as a main crew member in 2015. In the eyes of many community members and fans he is seemingly living

The Dream. He is a current fan-favorite, and many AH fans feel like they have a close

relationship with him, for he in a way represents them, the reality of the Dream, and the fulfillment of RT’s promise at the same time.40 Point 4 is a difficult one, for what is

entertaining is highly subjective. But when, for example, AH releases a sponsored Let’s Play video that features a videogame that clearly is not that good nor is it any fun to play, and they still have to act like they enjoy it but do not fully succeed in doing this, the ‘realness’ that is presented gives of mixed messages (ibid.: 28). When their genuineness is so clearly out of sync with their experience it sometimes sparks a backlash of reactions in the comments. On the one side people defend the sponsored nature of the video and on the other side people complain and say they do not feel taken seriously as fans, that RT has become too

commercial, or that AH has lost its charm, because it has become too visibly ‘produced’,

40 Example: someone posts a message on Reddit only to say that he likes him as a friend.

https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/805qdl/to_jeremy/. And even in April 2018 fans highlight and appreciate this: the most liked comment of a Minecraft Let’s Play says that Jeremy is ‘still a true fan’. In other words: one of ‘us’. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVjEhalxtE8

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instead of them ‘just’ being friends playing videogames together.41 ‘They have literally becoming a production crew rather than entertainers’ (sic) sums up many of the critical notes I have seen about AH during my research.42

However, the promissory nature of the apparent authenticity of RT is not a one way street. The fans and community members must show themselves to be ‘authentic’ as well, towards RT as well as each other. What this ‘authenticity’ means depends per digital locality.43 To give an example of this promissory dynamic: I did participant observation in the RT UK Facebook group and in the Discord group, which were localities where people were less critical towards RT becoming more commercial than in other localities I did

research in. People were very positive about, as well as very supportive towards, RT and each other. It was almost as if being negative, either about RT, ‘the community’ or community-members was a taboo. I think this was the case partly because these places were more

fandom-like than the other places I researched, meaning that they saw themselves as ‘fans of’ RT, in a way separate from or subordinate to RT, while the old-school community members saw themselves as being and having been a ‘part of’ RT and its production and growth. In these fandom-like localities they took the implicit promises of RT very seriously, which meant that they treated RT and the fellow fans ‘in an appropriate way’, and they acted like RT, the community and the fans really were what and who they claimed they were. This meant that they acted like there really existed a meaningful community, in which everyone was welcome (Point 1). The cast of RT as well as your fellow community members and fans

really were gamers and geeks, friends even, and should be treated accordingly (Point 2).

There really existed the possibility of living the Dream, so you should never criticize fellow fans when they ‘put themselves out there’ in whatever way they try to achieve this (Point 3). And, last but not least, the content of RT really is entertaining, and to say otherwise, to RT itself or your fellow fans, would, in these localities, in a way disqualify you as being a real fan (Point 4). 41 Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtLqzG_KLpM 42 Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/7545yq/do_all_the_latest_lets_plays_feel_kind_of_rushe d/

43 Explanation: Locality is the concept that I will use from now on to describe online locations, spaces and

platforms. It is a field where different norms and etiquettes apply, and these often change over time. The concept of ‘locality’ is currently used by ‘digital’ ethnographers and ‘online’ anthropologists to go beyond the ‘earthly’ term location and the ‘up in the air’ term network. Locality and localities are ‘inhabited places’ that are ‘knowable’ and can be digital as well as non-digital ‘environments’ (Pink et al.: 123-130).

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32

When disruptions of a performance appear that undermine one of these four points, the legitimacy and the great meaning community members and fans attach to RT and ‘the community’ can be questioned. In the next chapter I will elaborate on this.

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