"But it did get worse."
What if you learned an entertainment company you enjoyed fondly as a young one fell apart? Even worse than that: what if you saw the entire thing coming from a mile away, but not only could you do nothing to stop it, the people in charge thought they were succeeding instead? How exactly what something like that come about?
Well, it turns out that we have no shortage of such examples in the modern world, many I've even highlighted before on this blog. However, today I wanted to highlight one project in particular that was such a specific sort of failure that it can only have happened to one company on one project in particular. That's right, this is about RoosterTeeth and Gen:Lock.
For those who don't know what either of those are, and there are plenty these days, RoosterTeeth started out back in the 2000s as one of those user-created content mills based on the properties of others, much like Machinima was (remember them?), who started with the comedy series Red Vs. Blue. RvB was a Halo parody using in game assets to make comedy skits and observations about the video game and pop pop culture itself. It was very much a 2000s era product, as its very name shows, and could not have been made at any other time.
Red Vs. Blue did well, eventually leading RoosterTeeth into trying something more ambitious. Using their talents, they endeavored to make an original universe spearheaded by a man named Monty Oum. He worked on the last few seasons of RvB and was responsible for such viral videos as Haloid (a Metroid/Halo crossover) and Dead Fantasy, (a Dead or Alive/Final Fantasy crossover) which is a 2000s era project if there ever was one. This new project, of course, would be RWBY.
I'm not going to bother to go into RWBY, that whole thing is a story in itself, but suffice to say it was popular. It was so popular that RoosterTeeth attracted a lot of attention from outside parties, many eager to see if they could cash in on this burgeoning "new" form of entertainment. Naturally, this meant more projects would come about.
One such product is the now infamous Gen:Lock, their attempt at a "modern" mecha series. It is now more well known for its failure than anything it did while it was around. There is a lot to go over, so I recommend watching the video above to get the entire experience. Suffice to say, it was an unbridled disaster, spurring from both the worst aspects of independent creators AND the worse aspects of corporate interference. Gen:Lock runs the full gamut of mistakes, bad luck, ineptitude, and does it in such a way that is almost impressive.
As you watch it keep the events in mind for whatever it is you are passionate about, and remember them. Things can always get worse--don't choose to make them worse yourself. Remember what the purpose of art and entertainment is and try your best to not fall into this hole yourself. A lot of the problems described, especially those that happened near the end, are very much turning into common mistakes today in the here and now. This whole event is becoming far too common, and we should not fool ourselves into thinking it should be acceptable.
That's all for today! November is here, and the weather is turning chilly. Be sure to keep warm and have yourself a rest.
Have a good weekend, and I'll see you next time.
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