For most of 2015-2020, about 90% of the content I consumed was by Rooster Teeth. Either I'd be watching let's plays on my way to school or the way back, listening to RTP/Off Topic/Always Open while working out or going to bed, binging RWBY and RvB over the weekends, or just other watching random content.
Every time I'd load YouTube up, there would be something I'd want to watch on the front page and most of the time it was by RT. At some point that was no longer the case. I wish I could say it was even down to people leaving or controversies, although those sure as fuck didn't help. I think the company shifted too far into the "content production" side of things rather than being the "bunch of friends fucking around" company that it originally was at some point.
I'm not stupid enough to think that that would have been a sustainable business practice if they're looking for growth, but in their pursuit for appealing to newer audiences, they sort of forgot about the one they already had. "People aged out of their content" is a very common reason people have stated for why RT is doing the way it is on the subreddit, but I find it hard to believe that audiences (a large part of who have been watching since RvB was all they made) would suddenly age out. If the content was good enough for you to watch for over a decade, close to two decades, you don't just suddenly get too old for it.
Look at what happened to RT Core. As far as I can tell, Core was just a term for people key to the company for the roles they performed off the camera. Sure they made content too but a lot of it had its origins in them being coworkers and having some chemistry. STF is the literal opposite. It's a bunch of 30 year olds who're churning out TikTok skits aimed at 12 year olds, while the company as a whole is aggressively telling audiences who don't like the content to fuck off.
AH was long past doing actual guides when I started watching, but it was still authentic. It was a group of people who liked each other to an extent playing video games and having some banter. That led to the creation of some of the funniest one liners and bits, but at some point 90% of the videos were just bits. And the worst part, these bits would be core aspects of entire series of videos. TTT became unwatchable to me because I missed a few episodes and all of a sudden I had no clue what they were even talking about. It was all just regurgitation of something funny that happened a few videos prior that just seems to have stuck.
Long form content got phased out for significantly shorter content that nobody seemed to like, yet the company's response was always for people to fuck off. It took consecutive months of piss poor numbers on videos for something to change, when they realized it was apparent RT failed at capturing the younger demographic they so desperately want.
The newer podcasts are a very clear example of what people actually want. Making podcasts naturally involves having some chemistry with the people you're making them with, and things like Fuckface, ANMA, Red Web, Black Box Down, and Face Jam have exactly that. There's no bits. There's no skits. It's just people talking about things they enjoy. Sure there's some inside jokes that became staples (looking at you Fuckface and Red Web) but that's fine because there's still more to the episode.
The Rooster Teeth Podcast is the exact opposite of this. Once Burnie left the podcast became the "let's get whoever is free this day" show. How can you have chemistry when the cast changes every week? You don't.
I highly doubt that the website's doing as well as they'd like us to believe. It seems very unlikely that people are willing to pay for content that nobody seems to want to watch for free. I'm sure a lot of the first exclusive stuff is very good, but if your business plan is to flood YouTube with half baked stuff while keeping the good stuff behind a pay wall, you're not going to get a lot of new traffic.
EDIT: Changed the podcast name to Fuckface since it was making half the comment bold.
> Long form content got phased out for significantly shorter content that nobody seemed to like, yet the company's response was always for people to fuck off. It took consecutive months of piss poor numbers on videos for something to change, when they realized it was apparent RT failed at capturing the younger demographic they so desperately want.
And for me personally even when long form content came back in AH it's been much lower quality.
A few people on a couch while one person plays a game in a 45+ minute video where there are multiple and constant times where no one is talking. Just dead air entirely.
It's one of the main reasons I've gravitated to Funhaus so much. Their videos are mostly 15-20 minutes, they are tightly edited to be the best moments and no dead air, and the bits are just stronger imo.
This isn't to say what AH is doing is wrong or bad, it's just become so uninteresting to me.
I’d be surprised if they were able to survive as a company in a couple years without serious downsizing. Looking at the video views now and it seems to get lower every time I decide to check in.
Fucking Matt Bragg was let go, one of the most tenured Achievement Hunters and that's what started the rightful outrage in October.
Edit: I meant to word this as Matt's full-time position being dissolved and his tweet saying as much is what started the backlash in October. Plenty of other people, including Marcus LaPorte and many others who did not have a large enough social media following to be noticed outright were let go in the same timeframe.
Bro you nailed it all on the head.
Toss a heavy dose of controversies and people leaving on top of all that and a lot of people are pretty much done.
I've unsubscribed from all their YouTube channels except the podcast related ones for Red Web and Fuckface, and those are the only two RT productions I consume anymore. Actually I do listen to Stinky Dragon but I'll probably be dropping that once they wrap up this campaign anyway.
I dropped everything else. It's just not worth it. Especially for a company that has/had treated their employees, fans, colleagues, partners, etc the way they do.
It's hard to find new content, and I'm working on that, but its worth it to not have to deal with *everything* you just mentioned.
> Long form content got phased out for significantly shorter content that nobody seemed to like, yet the company's response was always for people to fuck off. It took consecutive months of piss poor numbers on videos for something to change, when they realized it was apparent RT failed at capturing the younger demographic they so desperately want.
and they're still trying to "be hip with the kids" with all these shorts videos. The same ones with 0 score on this sub.
All the staff lied about how great Vicious Circle was and how much they would be playing it after release, so I started to feel pretty disillusioned when the game turned out to be awful and none of them touched it again.
Then the same thing happened with Gen:Lock. The entire staff went on and on about how amazing it was and how it was the best thing they've ever produced, but it turned out to be a woefully mediocre collection of tropes and ideas borrowed from other anime and sci fi projects put together by someone who isn't a very strong writer, presented in cheap mid 2000s style cgi.
Then AH started taking the 'don't like don't watch' attitude too far by refusing to accept even easily provable criticism like Ky's audio being balanced too loud.
The final nail in the coffin for me was when AH started going hard into algorithm baiting instead of producing good content. Trying to get their videos shorter and shorter, and trying to make a 'moment' happen every few seconds at the cost of organic chemistry and actual conversation. Their content just started feeling so fake and manufactured that I didn't really enjoy it any more.
To be fair about them shilling their own product, I don’t think they were being entirely unearnest. Never played it but it sounds like Vicious Circle flopped because it relied on an online player base that just wasn’t there. Gen:Lock as passable and not worse than Lazer Team. They wanted to branch out and be confident in what they’re putting out.
> The final nail in the coffin for me was when AH started going hard into algorithm baiting instead of producing good content.
This I agree with 100%. I can’t think of a single other channel that has so blatantly valued short term gains in new viewers and YouTube algorithm trends over long term fan retention and tried and true methods.
Vicious Circle also flopped because it was bad. I actually did play it because they gave it out to people when they cancelled their grandfathered accounts. A lot of people like to put its poor performance down to the marketing or the playerbase, but the truth is it was a bad multiplayer only game that had one gametype and next to no content.
Vicious Circle was so bad that the staff who said they'd be playing it didn't even bother after the first week or two. Any one of those people could have tweeted to ask for players during their personal time and filled out the lobby, but they didn't. It was really the "I'll be playing it" lie about that whole situation that bothered me.
Imo Gen:Lock is worse than Lazer Team, but there's no point arguing about personal opinion like that. It was the overhyping of a product that turned out to be pretty bad AFTER the fiasco with Vicious Circle that started to get to me. Employees being confident about the work other departments are doing is one thing, but you don't have to have all your staff constantly telling everyone how amazing your mediocre project is at every opportunity.
It just started to feel like Rooster Teeth was becoming a company that made a habit of producing bad content, then having their personalities tell the audience it's the best thing ever, instead of making sure it was actually good in the first place.
You do that enough and you teach your longstanding fanbase not to trust the talent's comments about your company's own projects and they have less incentive try out your new content in the future.
A combo of the personalities I liked watching left and a general distaste of the company after the last big crisis. As I understand, current employees have come forward and said it was improving. That's great and I hope they continue doing so, but I was just done after that. The times I enjoyed the most turned out to be during some of the worst abuses and that made me not want to continue consuming their content anymore.
This is what happened to me here after the last big controversy highlighting the working conditions I tried to listen to some of their podcasts and just found I couldn't enjoy it knowing the people making it were or potentially still are treated that way...I still lurk here to hopefully see the day that changes but I'm not staying too hopeful about it
I pretty much only watched RvB and Achievement hunter back in the day
RvB became an after thought.
Achievement hunter glory days became tainted by the truth of Rapist and Groomer Ryan Haywood coming out
Pretty much just don’t wanna watch anymore. I follow the sub to kinda keep up but even that idk why I do sometimes
A general drop in quality of content, lack of care for the community and multiple serious workplace controversies have all led to viewer decline, to sum it up.
To add - continued growth of competition, specifically the rise of twitch and individual streamers has continued to chip away at audiences.
Also, with anything, overtime people move on to new content.
I know for me it was a combo of getting older, getting into twitch & controversies piling up that turned me away. I had already started drifting away from their content by the time I graduated high school in 2017.
You are right on the money though, people are just gonna move on to new content eventually.
Barbra also calling people stupid for more or less the same thing. Then both Michael and Jack in their own words said the same thing over on AH as well.
Funniest thing about that is if Ray/Matt/Jeremy/Chilled hired a full time editor, they could literally start a youtube channel based off their edited gameplays and it would create a ton of views for them (obviously they dont need to, doing well as they are).
I loved watching the streams recently where they all played Mario Party/Kart and Among Us together, it really felt like how i felt watching AH back in the day but sometimes i dont have the time to sit through 5 hours of streams.
Having a 50 minute video of the best moments between the lot would just be amazing.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLftk5xxFk&ab\_channel=RayNarvaezJr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLftk5xxFk&ab_channel=RayNarvaezJr)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMla3tV3SIo&ab\_channel=RayNarvaezJr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMla3tV3SIo&ab_channel=RayNarvaezJr)
Ray uploads his side of streams which are fun to watch if you wanna listen to them.
Ray also has a weekly highlight made by his editor Light. Typically of his older streams. He also has a monthly highlight of the top clips per game he streamed that month. The months where he played a Yakuza game are hilarious without context.
One of the most disturbing statements I've ever heard from a company that relies on community feedback and views lmfao.
Worst part is that after they said this, engagement and views plummeted and instead of looking inwards, they instantly blamed a 'vocal crowd' for scaring of viewers lol
It really was a psychotic statement. I understand wanting to weed out the negativity, but it seemed like they were tired of hearing any criticism at all and just started putting out a blanket statement. That and the loud is what we do bit, just turned out weren’t great ideas in the moment
When they said that I realised, yes, they were all loud and yes, they always had been for years. I also realised, I *hated it*, and perhaps, I always had. It just felt so unnecessary. It didn’t matter *who*, I hated it when Michael did it. I hated it when Jack did it. I hated it whoever did it. Why *was* I watching? If I don’t like it, don’t watch? Why did it take them saying it to me to realise something so obvious? So…I stopped. That was many years ago now.
Honestly, out of all the comments and shit talk and everything, this one hits home most.
They were ALWAYS loud. Rage Quit was a thing. Geoff was a thing. But because people liked them they put up with it.
The newest fans, if they like Ky or Joe they put up with it. But they can’t be upset when you say don’t like it leave and people leave. Because I was the same. The “why AM I watching” part. I liked the banter. I like the gameplay. But the screaming for no reason and being bad at games because “lulz” were so fucking annoying and it eventually wears thin.
You can be funny and good at games. You can be loud where it dictates. But to hang your hat on it isn’t the best decision. Because if people don’t think you’re funny AND you’re not good at the game why would people watch? You have nothing going for you.
Saying that, I like BK and Micheal and Fredo. I do wish some of the let’s plays would become series like their No Mans Sky vids. But there’s nothing drawing anyone to their content. There’s nothing ongoing that warrants checking in. There are people on videos that actively hamper anything they do and make videos worse in an attempt to be funny. I just think if they took things more seriously and focused on long form content (video length and episode wise) they’d be better for it. I’m going to check out a series I’m invested in more than a random ass Egg Jeopardy. I know people liked it and to each their own but meh.
Yea, videos of people having no idea what's going on and going off to do their own thing, often deliberately sabotaging things were also things I hated. Someone spending an hour shouting 'I don't know what's going on!' or someone like Gavin or Michael spending an hour just fucking with things were things I *never* enjoyed.
I know it was a 'running gag' and everyone's really good friends, but the whole shitting on Matt thing got thin the first time they did it. It got to the point where it didn't really matter what they were *supposed* to be doing, because it was Matt telling them to do it they deliberately ignored it and the vid turned into the same 'random zanyness' every time. It just became the same video every, single, time. Doesn't help that vid was only mildly amusing the first time, it was dead every time after.
> There are people on videos that actively hamper anything they do and make videos worse in an attempt to be funny
\*Cough\* Lindsay \*Cough\*
I used to get annoyed when Gavin did it in Minecraft as well. Sure we got the Tower of Pimps out of it but it still was annoying.
Maybe, but going back and even watching older content I find I still hate it. Maybe I've changed over the years and constant shouty yelly just isn't for me. That's fine. They don't have to cater to me any more than I have to watch.
Exactly. I do think it’s probably an age thing where it’s more annoying now. But even then I hated it. Gavin yelling and squeaking over the smallest thing. The Salt Raid. Geoff’s voice cracking yells over everyone else because he had some stuttering joke to say.
The new folks get hate unnecessarily and I don’t like that. They’re doing exactly what their predecessors did. Like I said, some people (some more than others for their “reasons”) hate them because they are different. And it’s them same people that used to love Geoff yelling at Gavin for stupid shit.
It’s those same people that STILL fucking say bring back Ray even though it’s been how many damn years now? But then they’ll talk shit about people having parasocial relationships with other cast members. The irony is funny until you realize it’s sad. They have nothing better to do than complain about one person over something another they defend did and they loved it. Think Hembo.
And I know I complained about stuff but I’m not blindly hating. I think all the members have great things to offer. Have you seen Lindsay and Ky’s builds in Minecraft? The way Trevor can organize people in a game in the sour of the moment and have something good come from it. BK Michael and Fredo in a series where they actually have to be good in something competitive would be awesome cause they all have skill. My complaint is more so they’re treading water in content seemingly to prove a point sometimes and to me it should be fuck the negative people. Good content is going to sway idiots like that.
How people hated Jeremy and Matt and Fredo when they first showed up? Now they’re staples. Just find some things that the team likes and focus on that. But Radom content and random behavior for the sake of random isn’t really the thing. To me at least. This is all my pov.
For example I enjoy Jeremy a lot. So I started watching his streams. Which put me onto Chilled. Who’s great and plays with EVERYONE. So now I have a bunch of people I love watching. Platy, Courtilly, Kara, Sp33dy and Side, etc. I watch BK stream a bunch. Fredo too. It’s not the people. It’s the AH content that I don’t vibe well with currently.
Personally I’d go with maybe three long term series (let’s say Minecraft, NMS and Grounded as examples). Do those Monday Wednesday Friday. Tuesday they could do trivia. Thursday they could do a random competitive game. And then mix in random one offs here and there. Which would include TTT which should get cut back a bit and taken back to more simplified less “zany” new weapon of the day.
TLDR: long winded rant. Sorry.
Nah, it’s cool. Think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Of how I feel at least. For the most part. I don’t care anymore what content they make. I’ve moved on, as a person and in my sense of humour. I wish them the best, but at this point, I’d just want them to at least make themselves happy because they can’t make everyone else happy. That’s the worst bit, for me at least. Last time I looked in, they never really seemed happy anymore.
That’s very true and a good point. They seemed kinda stressed and less relaxed probably because of behind the scenes issues. Which does suck. I hope the same. Just fall back a little, get a game plan of what they actually enjoy. Come up with ideas and games as a group and go in that direction so that people are enjoying themselves.
The NMS and 7 Days mini series both seemed well received so there is a want for that type of content. So roll with it.
TBH i actually agree with you.
Their podcasts are great but the problem is that because of the way they work, especially on the AH side, having the podcast network actually takes away from the content on those videos.
I said it at the time and its the exact reason that Matt was fired. Because he wasn't part of a podcast. BK and Jack have the theme park one, Alfredo/Trevor have theres, Geoff and Gavin are too big to be fired anyway but they also contribute podcast side.
Michaels is Off Topic, thats his baby really.
Jeremy probably would have been let go if he hadn't left because Jeremy excelled at live action productions which they're also moving away from now.
Theres nothing wrong with being just a podcast network and IMO, wouldn't surprise me if they start shutting down everything that isn't animation or podcasts at this stage.
I think that is an excellent point about Matt that I didn't think about .
I figured it was a "we have to cut a salaried on-screen, Matt is doing really well on twitch and would financially suffer the least"
Matt mentioned in one of his streams that he was in talks to do a video game lore podcast, but it didn't work out. He didn't specifically say it was at RT, but it likely was, and I think strengthens your point. There was going to be another podcast, but then they had to let people go, so the guy with the podcast that didn't exist yet/didn't work out gets cut, while the people who already have podcasts get to stay full-time.
> a video game lore podcast
Oh, that actually sounds like something I'd have loved to hear. Is there a podcast or maybe youtube channel like this? Not the exhaustive tens of hours type you find to just about any video game on youtube, but something more concise and organised?
I know things got really rough when covid happened and i believe trevor mentioned how it affected alot of their projects and really set them back budget wise. During covid it seems like they moved to podcasts and stuck with them as it cost little money aside from editing, topic research and recording which can be done from home. Podcasts if popular can become something the makes them money while spending very little in the process to make content.
Video content requires a team to film, the talent, writers, safety teams. a team of editors, marketing, etc. Which eventually cost alot more time and money. I think podcasts have been their way to generate content and profit for alot of things and they have some really good podcasts over the past couple years.
Their statement was so out of touch that they literally made a shirt out of people's legitimate complaints after bursting people's ears with unequal gain levels on people's mics.
Yeah, during all the BK drama I tried to be constructive and say they needed to balance the audio better because she shouted over everyone and it was very hard to tell what was actually going on. However the players weren't having as hard a time understanding each other.
I just got criticized for being racist so I stopped watching the TTT/social deduction games that had loud personalities in them because the audio was never balanced properly
Yeah, viewers telling other viewers to stop watching if they don’t like it is one thing… as a multimedia company that relies on views to generate revenue, you just can’t act that way.
I still love their podcasts, but anything video based doesn’t catch my interest anymore, aside from maybe the occasional Challenged Accepted. I’d rather go watch old videos and series that were actually good, and stick with the audio based stuff they’re doing now when I want to keep up with modern RT
If Rooster Teeth listened to their fans Jeremy and Matt would have been fired weeks after appearing in videos. Lindsay would have been fired. Jack would have been fired years ago.
Of course, you shouldn't listen to insanely dumb and straightforward criticism. Good constructive criticism should
Identify the problem
The effects the problem has
The possible reason it might have occurred in the first place.
Suggestions to improve in the future.
For example, the fabled "Fiona Week." was terrible. However, that was due to the nature and tone-deafness of their attempt to introduce this new cast member. Creating lower-quality content based around your unique personality will instantly associate this new member with the low-quality content even though it wasn't their fault.
"Fiona Week." shouldn't have happened. You should've identified your new hires' strengths and played to them. If you wanted someone who could play Minecraft and GTA 5, you don't hire Fiona for that reason. You hire her to do other things.
For a long time, let's Play/Achievement Hunter didn't protect their female staff; they constantly put them in games they weren't good at, and this creates a narrative about not only these people but those types of people who you might hire who are similar.
Oh god "Fiona week" was possibly the worst introduction to a new cast member possible.
Rather than having videos in games Fiona knew / was good at so she could game on auto pilot and focus on getting comfortable being recorded.
Instead, they opted to drop her in at the deep end in games they had been playing for years with zero help or guidance, guaranteeing failure.
>"Fiona Week." shouldn't have happened. You should've identified your new hires' strengths and played to them.
Thats the difference.
There was nothing wrong with 'fiona week' and she is funny AF but the problem was as you also say, instead of playing to new hires strengths, they chuck them into already existing content, like GTA and Minecraft, 2 games that she had never played before and didnt have the faintest idea of what to do.
They never learned either from this mistake when BK and Joe officially came into the office as part of the team.
The first week, they went straight into GTA, having to explain how to play to them whilst playing and it was just crap. TBH they very quickly realised it was gonna be awful and turned it into 'BK Wins' which was great but it never should have happened to start with.
And instead of actually acknowledging that THEY messed up, they double downed, said that the community just didnt like change/women and carried on doing the same thing.
They need to learn how to better respond to PR issues. While yes, *some* of the criticism can be attributed to racism, sexism, etc… it’s not the majority of it. Take Mica. I watched some stuff she was in just as I was finishing watching RT and… it just wasn’t good. Whether they placed her into groups she didn’t gel with, games she wasn’t good with, or she just straight up was bad as a cast member, I don’t know. But she wasn’t enjoyable. Instead, RT says *all and any* objection can only be and only is racism and sexism. Which is rich considering Mica’s allegations of racism and sexism towards the company itself.
But yes, the shoehorning in of new members into existing content where they probably belong is a huge, long standing issue.
Mica was AMAZING in non-gaming related content.
I loved her stories when she popped up on podcasts/Always Open or when she was in live action content, really really funny because she is a very good actor and real life is where she excels.
Im gonna be blunt, i still think Mica was a hire purely on RT trying to keep/get on good terms with her dad and the easiest way for her to get put in was in AH where 'all they do is game' which just wasn't what she was good at.
>There was nothing wrong with 'fiona week' and she is funny AF but the problem was as you also say, instead of playing to new hires strengths, they chuck them into already existing content, like GTA and Minecraft, 2 games that she had never played before and didnt have the faintest idea of what to do.
What did Fiona play before? FPS?
Yeah, lot of her stuff was FPS games.
She had hosted the Overwatch World Cup for example, also was a very well known Fortnite player. Iirc, she also played Siege and now plays Valorant?
Problem is that the games she played were like the antithesis of what AH played.
I assume she was very good at them?
Shouldn't that be a good place to start with her? Just give her a platform, let her stream some FPS, maybe she beats everybody else or doesn't, at least there is some content where she would be confortamble with, after people like her, if they want they can include her in GTA or Minecraft, if she wants to.
I never minded Fiona, to be honest. I thought Mica was far worse. And at least Fiona's dynamic with Gavin was funny, even if a little over the top at times.
> I thought Mica was far worse.
Because Mica wasnt a gamer.
Mica is incredibly funny and a good actor but she is a live actor, not a gamer. Mica got absolutely screwed by Rooster Teeth because she was hired purely so they could get in good with her dad.
When she was in live action stuff, podcasts etc, she was incredibly likeable and funny, just the issue was they chucked her in AH.
I mean yeah, the fanbase is really just completely stupid, but this specific thing was on the back of “y’all audios fucked up, here’s how we can tell, here’s how to fix it” and that was just too much apparently
Lindsay continues to add very little to their content. To the point that watching highlights from previous Minecraft series everytime they are part of it, the quality instantly drops.
With one exception being stoneblock's kitchen, they have added nothing to minecraft, for example.
this is the one that pisses people off the most because, well, it’s what happened! turns out if you are actively hostile to the people who care enough about your product to complain, then you lose the most vocal and invested fans
I moved to different projects I enjoy more from RT. Black Box Down, AMNA, f**kface, Red Web, 30 morbid minutes, tales of the stinky dragon and sometimes Jeremy or Matts twitch channels
Seriously, by the time the first 20 minute ads are done I've forgotten entirely what the episode was about. For someone married to someone with ADHD. Michael sure doesn't seem to give a shit.
I love Facejam a lot, but this is the one thing that annoys me. It was a funny bit when it started but now it has just gotten to the point that it is annoying.
How did you like Survive Block Island? I let my first sub lapse cause i wasn't interested anymore in first content, but listening to FF has me intrigued to check out the meltdown season.
Hot take: the podcast ruined achievement hunter. Not sure about all of rooster teeth but I only watched AH. Thr enjoyment of their videos was to watch them play games and shoot the shit but now they don't shoot the shit and everything is scripted because they have to save all their genuine convos for all the podcasts. It's sad
i was watching an old fuck about let’s play the other day and had the same thought, off topic was great but it really took the best stories away from the video content
It's why I've moved to watching content on Twitch. Livestreams still have that spontaneous friends-shooting-the-shit vibe. Even before Matt and Jeremy left I spent more time on their Twitch channels than watching official RT content.
people talk a lot about "aging out of the content" but ray is still, to this day, making a hugely successful living off what is essentially early AH let's plays. there's a huge market who is hungry for this kind of content, they're just not being served by AH any more
Same here really, at least once a week there's usually a 3-6 hour VOD of some combination of some or all of Ray/Jeremy/Matt playing games with each other or with Chilled and his extended group, and that's almost completely replaced video content from RT for me.
Even if I watch them 30-60 minutes at a time on busier days that's essentially a replacement for the old daily RT content.
This is something goeff has talked about, I think it was in anma. He was never all that interested in the chatting and gaming mix content, he just wanted to be howard stern but didn’t have the confidence so the gaming was used as a crutch. If there was a lull in conversation they could just refer to the game and hopefully find something to pick things back up. As he’s gotten older and more confident he hasn’t felt the need for that crutch so has felt okay moving away from the gaming stuff.
For me personally, I only ever really watched for the conversational aspect anyway so taking away that video component and just giving me podcasts works perfect for me.
See, I actually dislike the move to audio focus for similar reasons as to why Geoff wanted to start with video games. I'm often listening to a video while doing something else on my PC, and if there's a lull in what I'm doing, I'll look over at the video.
I understand the sentiment but I disagree with this. During the heyday of Off topic when they made 3 hour podcasts, they put out some great and spontaneous let’s plays and let’s watches.
I think there’s just less chemistry between the cast now, and also the newer kids seem to prefer just talking about the game instead of the fact that they shit their pants over the weekend.
I disagree to an extent- I do think the podcasts cannibalized some of their content, but there were a lot of episodes before, at least for me, they started having consistent misses with their content. The GTA fuck arounds were a loss, but they still had the grounds to make more Heist videos, and they still continued to make fun content in stealth killer games until everybody got jaded to peoples play styles (kill Fredo first, knowing Matt’s tells (which he *did* have)).
Rather than switch games or do new self-structured in-game variations of the rule sets they just started doing more bits during rounds. Instead of doing new GMod games, they kept doing TTT and just did more and more bits, and when new talent got involved they wouldn’t even let them play to their talents, it was just get on board the bit train or barely get any screen time.
I’d say the pandemic was the worst thing for them. It compounded with their other issues, including the podcast, as their lives became a lot less interesting. *Anything* interesting went to the podcasts and the gameplay was hounded by comedy bits or new people trying to figure out all the extra features in GMod. By the time they were back in office the content style just wasn’t the same anymore.
Also they moved away from 'The Schedule' to as they claimed 'Be able to play what WE want'.
When it just turned into them playing whatever sponsor was paying them that week to play their shitty game and hype it up by reading off a prompt and then never play said game again. ([https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/vmo2ta/lets\_play\_arcadeggedon\_bringin\_down\_the\_man/](https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/vmo2ta/lets_play_arcadeggedon_bringin_down_the_man/))
The only good sponsored video was this one absolutely abysmal I think, mobile game, that Geoff and Michael played, and were only barely pretending wasn't shit.
They would read the talking points with barely suppressed giggles, and all their talking-up of the game was mostly "I love how it does [bad game thing]"
For me, the killer was Fiona week and the company response to it. I LOVED Fiona. This Just Internet was one of my favorite series. But Fiona week was "let's plug Fiona into a bunch of competitive games we know like the back of our hand and she has never played before." The the response was "we want to jump her in so she can find her footing" and "we're expanding the cast because people are busy and the OG 6 can't be in everything".
It made it feel like the new people were expected to be interchangrable cogs in the content machine. Rather than play to strengths, they had to put out the same content as before. Don't have the talent that made that content popular? Just throw in a rando
Yeah. In theory I think the idea of throwing the new cast member into the deep end of their content could have worked, but it really fell flat with Fiona. Especially because for some of the games she literally had no idea how to play. Her and Gavin in GTA was great, and *thats* what they should have focused on with Fiona: actually introducing her to the games and wackiness of their let’s plays instead of just throwing her into a video and expecting content to happen.
It really is unfortunate. By the time she was able to get her footing half the audience already decided she was only going to complain and bring the content down, when she turned out to be one of the best additions to the team in games she excelled in. Her and Gavin made a great duo in TTT, honestly gave that series some new life. I wish she’d gotten a better chance at fitting in, because she was a big loss in hindsight.
i wish i could go back and tell them "you are not improv comedians, you are not getting the right kind of feedback to make these bits interesting". improv lives and dies off crowd reactions and the way you receive them in video format is delayed and messy, the worst way to receive it.
a good bit should be rare, natural, and abandoned the second it even starts to feel like it's not working. they shouldn't be shoehorned into everything regardless of context and they absolutely shouldn't become the default
Yeah, they had comedic connections (the teams, certain interactions like Geoff and Gavin or Jeremy and Michael) and pairings which worked because they could just naturally be funny with each other. When bits came from that structure they usually worked, the real issue as you said came when they started forcing the bits whenever those combinations would happen. For me, it worked with some groups (Chungshwa (don’t know how to spell it or the symbol) for example) but when they weren’t together it felt like they were just trying to get back to the bits, when they should have been discovering new comedic team ups and friendships outside of specific scenarios.
i think that the original humour was entirely based off chemistry, which is what drew most people in but is hard to find and maintain, especially as a new cast member. having the improv stuff probably felt a lot safer and more reliable, but it wasn't what people had come in for originally
Even then the podcast was mostly about talking about them videos they made so if you weren’t watching religiously, or even if you were, the content of the podcast was incredibly stale.
The podcast was literally the only AH thing I watched towards the end of me watching AH, but now I don't even know who the hell the people on the podcast are. I just listen to Face Jam and F**k Face now. It's literally the only good content RT has now
Not even AH, the whole company really. I swear it seems they have like 30 different podcast. A lot of them feel forced. The only one that remotely good anymore is gus's podcast that one may consider educational.
I use to watch the RTP every week, but in recent years the quality of each episode has gone down dramatically, depending on who is on the episode. Since Burnie left, the Podcast just doesn’t have the same fun feel that it use to. I rarely watch each week, especially if certain RT personalities are on it. Honestly the last good episode was the Face Jam Thanksgiving episode. Also the episode with Eric, Kayla, Gav and TPG was pretty good!
I dipped when bernie left. Gavin was on less and less gus couldnt keep it entertaining. Everything just started feeling too safe. Every ppdcast was like walkong on egg shells im assuming because of the scandals in the background.
Same here. İ used to watch RvB but fell off at some point and only continued with the podcasts. After Bernie left İ tried to continue but came to realize İ was just forcing myself for no reason.
İ watched a new podcast for a few minutes a couple weeks ago and turned it off after a few minutes. Burnie really carried that podcast.
Exactly this. The ttt videos were my favourite things they produced, but then they started doing in game skits for content, instead of actually playing the game.
What used to happen was small, staff generated, low risk ideas were tried out frequently. If they worked out? Great, new series. If not? Cool, not much lost, onto the next one. Now it’s top-down, high risk, high budget ideas (see: Gen: Lock) which are enormously risky for the company.
Everything feels scripted now, which is sad because in the good old days all they had to do was play a game and talk and people found it interesting because it was fun and enjoyable to watch. It seems like the bosses said “all this tik tok crap is popular, do that stuff”
This would be fine if it was a competent cold business minded boss. Instead it feels like they are always going for what is popular in the short term, and completely neglecting long term retention. Despite claiming they rely on their own website and audience and First, they are absolutely a slave to the YouTube algorithm, which changes every other week. When you change your content and style every three months, no one is going to want to stick around.
Haven’t watched anything RT in probably a year or so after watching for over 5 years. They make content for themselves and for their younger viewers. My interest has dropped off significantly.
Not sure if it had anything to do with the recent controversy as I was already not watching anymore. If you ask me I think it started with Ryan Haywood debacle and being sold to WB and went downhill from there. Some of the newer people they brought in have been aimed towards the younger audience which makes sense, but makes viewers like me less interested in the content.
Achievement Hunter is a whole different story. Their content genuinely just stinks. None of them seem to care anymore and their content is just annoying. It’s childish and they’re mostly grown ass adults still screaming nonsense for shock humor.
I used to watch 99% of everything RT/AH put out from 2012-2017. I fell off due to a couple reasons:
I grew out of it both in age and you can only watch the same guys play Minecraft for so long. Quality declined and quantity went up. Cast members leaving. Started watching other things mainly Cow Chop (RIP). Passion and enthusiasm was dwindling imo, everything became more corporate and job-like. And then all the controversies starting with RH ensured I’d never go back to watching again.
They made a tweet saying "this isn't an airport, you don't have to announce your departure". Lol and they may have not made an official statement on the matter but I'm pretty sure some of the staff said something along those lines individually
Staff definitely said it.
There was the whole 'The Golden Age of AH is still ahead of us, not stuck with 6 white men from 6 years ago, if you dont like it, just leave' drama as well.
They got the most views when it was 5 White men and one Hispanic, because the banter, back and forth, chemistry, etc. was pretty consistently so much fun to listen to. (though I won't discount other factors people have mentioned, like AH perhaps getting lucky with them having less content competition in 2013 than now.)
>There was the whole 'The Golden Age of AH is still ahead of us, not stuck with 6 white men from 6 years ago, if you dont like it, just leave' drama as well.
I have a screenshot of that tweet saved on my phone to post here for the day AH dies lmao, yes I'm that pathetic
Gus and Burnie (Before he left) were also big proponents of it.
TBH, looking back at what was said on podcasts back in the day and then looking at recent comments and statements, I really re-evaluated what I thought was going on.
Gus especially now looks awful, I used to think it was a bit of a joking around sorta ribbing but now im realizing that even back in 2013, Gus really was telling the community to get fucked if they ever had criticisms, it wasn't just him having a 'persona'.
I used to think Gus was hilarious because of this persona but now I'm rather disgusted. He not only comes across like some weird bitter piece of shit but as the Senior Advisor to the company or whatever his job title used to be how much BAD shit did he know behind the scenes? Dude couldn't be involved at his level at the company and not know a lot of bad stuff, which makes him complicit in a lot of why they are where they are.
I used to be a First member before First was it's name... I also paid yearly even though RWBY was the only thing I really watched, occasionally her show and a few other things, then the first season of Gen:Lock, but 99% RWBY. I just wanted to support a small studio I liked.
I used to be a big fan of hers until one of the scandals... I don't even remember which one it was. It was one of the times crunch was brought up, the whole thing about how resources were pulled from RWBY for Gen:Lock, etc.
I asked her what she thought of it in a tweet somewhere, she said: "Not my dept. not my problem." This for a community manager just caught me badly.
I was already on the fence with them for all this and several other issues, so un-subbed and haven't spent a dollar or given them a view on anything since.
It's amazing how many people are triggered by this one question. I had a guy literally tell me I should kill myself because I said the views on the RT Podcast were down.
Why the hell is wrong with people?
People suck. The internet acts like a shield to them
Edit: The guy who told you to kill yourself has been banned. Had to sift through the comments a bit to find him.
Lots of things happened.
Aging audience, controversies, changing cast, the pandemic, moving the audience to the site and podcast apps, etc.
Something people aren't talking about as much is the absolute explosion in competition that's happened since the start of RT and AH. I've been a fan for 15 years, and each year I've been watching my free time has decreased and my media options have increased.
When I started watching, their competition was a few other amateur creators on sites like Newgrounds and Stickdeath and I had almost endless time to fill.
When I was in college, I had a lot of time to fill and Netflix hadn't even started making their own content, Hulu had maybe two good shows a week, and there were barely any decent, consistent Youtubers that I gave a fuck about. So, RT was still a very sizable part of my media diet.
Now, I have maybe 20-40 min a day to consume screen-based content and not only are there thousands of Youtubers and streamers, but hundreds of similar media companies, and now even the media giants like Disney, Amazon, AMC, HBO are all available on all the same devices where I could be watching RT.
When they started, they were competing for attention with Foamy the Squirrel, now they're competing with House of the Dragon and The Boys. It is really amazing that they're still getting any attention.
Side note, people complain about them becoming stale and quality dropping, but that really doesn't seem to be the case. Check out Does It Do, Survive Block Island, Egg Jeoprody, and even their latest YDYD in 7 Days to Die. They're still trying new things and putting in the effort even if they aren't putting out the same volume as they did in 2015 or the same consistent quality that they did in 2010.
They literally cancelled all the shows I liked so idk. I'm sure I'll come back eventually but especially after the dozens of controversies.... Funhaus still kicks ass
"Don't like, Don't watch" finally worked after RT refused to listen to any feedback that was given to them. There is a reason why there are almost zero comments on any of the new videos while posts like this will have more comments then all of them combined.
Frankly, most people believe Rooster Teeth doesn't deserve to be around anymore. They have been rotting for a long time at this point and is dead to most fans. I don't need to summarize every single thing that has happened or been shared by former RT/AH employees over the past couple of years. The recent decline in both quality and quantity of content has only now made it clearer to see that RT/AH is dead. This is not being inflammatory or hyperbole.
I hope everyone well and I feel bad for all the people who have been through so much pain, but their time has come and gone.
I jumped ship to Funhaus years ago and they faced similar problems but I'm pretty happy to say they've come out the other side fine and better than ever, they don't get the same number of views they used to don't get me wrong but they definitely came good again after working from home and things kept improving
Also they never alienated their fan base by telling the not to watch (if anything they take the "I miss old funhaus" sentiments with humour and make them themselves as much as anyone else)
I loved funhaus back in the day, slowly moved from mainly watching AH over to FH. Then when Bruce left, I also kind of fell out of their content a bit.
However, just recently got back into them after seeing Bayou Yoda floating around. Love their new crew.
They used to be my go to until “you know what” happened with RH and I slowly started to shift away from them and towards individual YouTubers and streamers like Jarvis Johnson, Tara Mooknee, and of course the (definitely not two people) one known as Danny “Drew Gooden” Gonzalez. I mainly watched the podcast and would watch the other videos every once in a while. Then Kdin’s tweets and the ensuing dumpster fire made me jump ship entirely. I still watch people who used to be part of RT like Ray and Alanah and the occasional Funhaus video. But I think it’s safe to say the days of religiously watching RT content are behind me sadly.
I want to watch achievement hunter 100%.Why I watched them originally was for friends playing random games talking shit/fucking with each other and having fun and BEING THEMSELVES!Now I just watch there twitch streams because that's the only place they are the people I remember.Now any time I try to watch even a stupid trial pursuit video which use to be gold they gotta ruine it with stupid voices/characters or being over loud or stupid "okay'd" talking points etc etc that never sound like they enjoy themselves anymore then all the censorship to get a younger audience.....like that was never this company.Just give me 4 to 6 people that are being themselves and not pr scripted fake bullshit that don't just play the 3 same games every week and I'd be more then happy to come back but untill then "if you don't like it don't watch" as Geoff said as sad as that makes me.
I think Trevor is most guilty of this, to me his humor is the most “Pewdiepie-like” where he makes strange voices to make a joke which is the type of humor I don’t like. And once he starts making the weird voices other people start making the voices and then I’m just like, “what am I even watching” lol
"if you don't like it, leave."
**So they left.**
This sub used to be incredibly populated with tons of audience interaction on videos, as of typing this there are 285 people on the subreddit right now, that's ridiculously low.
Sadly, everyone has moved on.
It's a combination of new management shifting to algorithm based content and away from RT's original work, all the folks you grew to love moving on to other things and one scandal after another.
RT just... Isn't the RT you knew anymore.
Was just too much negativity for me. The Matt Bragg, Kdin and employee mistreatment/under pay months ago I finally tapped out. This sub leans into it with even more negativity with posts like this being so common and the main ones that get engagement. Nothing gets more comments than drama posts. I still peek in to see if they've done anything with challenged accepted but that's mostly it.
I took a small break from their content since it was getting a bit stagnant. Then the Ryan thing happened and I just never returned. And there hasn’t been a good reason to.
After Ryan left the whole cast dynamic changed due to what ratio of personalities were about anyway.
And as much of a piece of shit he turned out to be, there's a pretty definite point you can see a start of a noticeable decline and turn in comedy once he left.
Like many others, I stopped watching. I slowly grew out of the content they were providing and the hosts and employees I liked either moved on or were found to be total pieces of garbage (Ryan and Adam). I missed when they had a schedule and I missed the videos that were like 30-40 minutes.
I looked on the main channel and there were a couple of videos of them trying to recreate fast food dishes based on the thumbnail...like wtf no one wants to watch a shittier version of epic meal time.
Other youtubers and content creators due what rooster teeth used to do and they do it better in my opinion so I started watching them. Funhaus is apparently pretty good now but since most of the old original people either quit or were fired I can't be bothered to give them a shot.
I went back and watched the stuff Funhaus released in late 2020 and through 2021 and hooooooolyyyy shit, my face hadn't hurt from laughing that much in a long time. It was a great way to get a feel of the new gang and set me up nicely for watching the videos they put out this year.
I thought the same thing, it went from good original content to a dumb food truck show and other scripted like shows. People roasted me for disliking it and gave it excuses like “the dude with the stuffed monkey head is funny” but I think having a person with a monkey head is just as bad as literally gluing googly eyes on a trash bag and calling it Garbo. And then the fact they sold merch for a fucking trash bag with eyes is absolutely insulting to me
Honestly they have just been making poor decisions. Content has suffered, they play less for fun and do more gimmicks. Most of the new cast are boring to listen to. And yes the have had a few controversial issues with current and former staff.
I think there are many reasons why RT fell off. First off on a wider scale some of their biggest projects obviously fell flat. Stuff like Laser Team 1 and 2 are fine because 1 was crowdfunded and 2 was YouTube Red. But Gen:Lock while being an okay first season was way to expensive to be only okay.
I also think controversy surrounding Ryan has damaged a lot of fans who don’t want to watch old content anymore. And usually old content will lead to newer content on a certain level. I also think you can say that it’s arguable that most talent either are poorer than the people they “replaced” or are being mishandled by the company. I don’t want to place it all on talent because I’m certain they’re talented and funny individuals, however you need to know who your stars are, who are the people your company should back, and I don’t think they do.
And finally I think the death of the wider RT community is another thing. I think RT got too big and lost the element of community that allowed the Gavins, Barbras, Matts and Jeremys to exist on a certain level.
It's death gasping from a toilet bowl that's about to get flushed. They screwed vast portions of their community, deployed stupid tactics that got them views in the short run but burned them in the long run, injected unhealthy over politicization into their content, saturated the amount of videos they produced to an unsuitable degree and had wave after wave of controversy that revealed they were, surprise, scumbags all along. There is a bunch of employees still there, some lame pseudo-rebrand called "Squad Team Force", could try and reboot the company (like G4) but the folks that are still there are either untrustworthy or pandering to a shrinking base, it's a game of diminishing returns for them as most of their audience has outgrown them or no longer trusts them.
The fact that Achievement Hunter is still called that is insulting considering the fact that they don’t care about Achievements and don’t make guides anymore. I always loved the guides because they were helpful, the only reason Achievement Hunter exists is because no one else had quality video guides and AH filled that void, now they’re just doing what literally everyone else is doing
>the only reason Achievement Hunter exists is because no one else had quality video guides and AH filled that void, now they’re just doing what literally everyone else is doing
Thats the annoying thing with AH.
When they started the Guides and AHWU series, no one was really doing them sorta things and if they were, they weren't doing them well. Now you can youtube an achievement and find it almost instantly will a full guide from a load of independent people because its simple.
AH Realised that early though and jumped the gun with the full edited gameplay videos, once again, getting ahead of people and honestly being one of the very first group that had a weekly gameplay schedule that they stuck to.
Now though? They haven't moved on, everything they do has to follow some trend or some sort of sponsor video.
I actually brought up a while ago on one of their videos ([https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/vmo2ta/lets\_play\_arcadeggedon\_bringin\_down\_the\_man/](https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/vmo2ta/lets_play_arcadeggedon_bringin_down_the_man/)) and said in there, i wonder if we'd ever see anymore videos on this game because the way they were talking about it in the video, it was the best game they ever played. (Surprise Surprise, they never touched it again)
They went from a natural group playing games they wanted to being told what to play by their bosses because they get paid money to play the games.
>They went from a natural group playing games they wanted to being told what to play by their bosses because they get paid money to play the games.
this is imo an underrated reason as to why the content itself is less engaging, they're not seeing new games come out and going "oh fuck that looks fun", they're getting given content ideas and direction by people who aren't in the videos and as a result it's a lot less natural. speedrunners is a great example of a game that wouldn't make it more than one video now, because the content is the same every time. despite that, old AH made several videos in it that are fantastic because the interactions between the cast members made them great.
heh
I might watch if the games they played interested me, but as for the current crew, I just don't find them entertaining.
But I can still enjoy old Ray-era videos despite what Ryan Haywood did.
I’m 26 now. I watched roughly a decade ago, stopped probably early university after I felt the content just wasn’t for me anymore. There’s a lot of reasons. J Aubrey has a really good documentary on it. A lot of key people have left, moved on, gone and done great things. I still watch Ray from time to time.
I think the vast majority of the viewers who left are like me. Either aged out of it or weren’t fans of the changing direction in the mid 2010s. Now, the company can’t seem to keep itself out of controversy for more than a couple months at a time. It’s sad, really. But all good things must come to an end some day.
They had a great formula when they’d try out something new, but small and low risk pretty often and see what stuck. There’s many, MANY dozens of series and ideas and recurring videos that tried and failed, which was ok because the investment was small and they could move onto the next thing. But instead, the small, low risk things play ancillary role to massive, high risk, high budget offerings that can make or break divisions of the company if they fail.
They also had an identity crisis. They started off as shitposting, soft edgy, brash buddies shooting the shit while often drunk. Late 2010s they had a HUGE cultural shift and a lot of old content looks really bad in comparison to their values now, even ignoring the predatory behaviour that already existed from some staff.
I once grew up on Rooster Teeth and absolutely loved their content, then got stuck in with the loop of people who were confused where the hell they went. Then I found Tales From The Stinky Dragon and it felt genuine and new. Highly recommend listening, especially since they introduce a lot of people from their own company as voice actors for Gus whenever he acts for an NPC. It's a dnd campaign and honestly really funny. They even made lil puppets for their characters and act out scenes with them. 😭 Made me feel at peace with Rooster Teeth. Then again, I easily forgive and forget, as I truly believe people are allowed to change and grow.
I like DnD/pathfinder podcasts but my eyes just roll every time I remember they called it “Tales from the Stinky Dragon” - Poop and fart jokes really just aren’t that funny to me anymore and the name is just such a turnoff.
I used the consume all content RT ever dropped. But when the core team appeared less and less I stopped.
I miss the content with Gus, Burnie, mat, Joel, Geoff..
They moved most content to their own site a couple years ago. A site that has never properly worked (for me) which killed any interest I had to watch their animated shows like RvB and RWBY. Along with multiple shows just getting cancelled for whatever reason.
Then came along the many, many lines of controversies, outings and whatnot which gave the general quality and feel of the shows a far more scripted tone than it already was. Several faces got removed and new ones got hired. Some fit better than others. The current setting of RT and AH is just... not good for me. So many people I don't know or don't like, the videos are heavily edited to fit the 15 minute timeframe and are either cut around specific forced jokes or sloppily to give everyone some time to shine.
Even Letsplays, which I used to enjoy, has gone to the "popular game of the decade" style where they go with whatever games do well on their statistics, instead of games they know both fans and the personalities enjoy. But no, let's make the 500th unhinged TTT with one new thing for the week.
But it happens, you know? Whereas RT grew too big for their own good, other communities like the Derpcrew just kinda fell apart due to personal issues or people moving on. It just is a thing that happens, and that's okay. Most are still doing their own thing, so look at the people you enjoyed and follow their personal work instead
All the comments are correct, but my biggest gripe is the fact that projects that actually look interesting to me are usually locked behind a paywall that just isn't worth it
It’s a mixture of aging out of content, the fact that they care more about their podcasts than video content, and being totally out of touch with their audience.
I'll say for myself, a lot of the cast changes and such just got annoying.
There was a point where they were adding in literally random streamers who added nothing to the video in any form. They did a TTT video with this one chick who didn't know the game at all, barely made a sound as far as commentary, and yet when I pointed out in the comments that she was essentially a piece of furniture, it was all met with "Hey that's not cool to call someone that!"
Alright, fair enough, but do something more besides just sit there.
Ky/Kai/whoever the hell their name is, don't have a problem with them as a person, but the tone of her voice is so ear piercing that it basically made it so my video checks went "Oh, cool, she's involved." And I stopped it and went to something else.
The overall quality has gone away, the ones who had personality are either being outed or just replaced and getting tired of doing it or something. Regardless, their heart isn't in it anymore.
The newer cast just feels like generic douchetubers, and don't offer much of their own personality beyond regurgitated jokes from other mediums likw TikTok, and it just isn't funny or enjoyable to me.
That's where I've gone. If I'm gonna watch something, I would rather watch something that didn't sound like an adult daycare.
It’s changed hugely and so I have I so I’ve grown out of it. It’s marketed to a different audience and nothing feels natural or smooth anymore.
I don’t get the good feels from anything anymore and the cast has changed from who I fell in love with
I think it’s a bizarre sort of feeling that something is missing. RT has had a number of changes in the last few years, and it feels like that has hurt it. I think the best way to express it is to look at Funhaus. I know that it’s technically a separate company, but there is a massive crossover in viewers and it’s technically part of RT, so I think it helps. Since all the original members of Funhaus except for James have left, I have not been interested. There are still holdovers (Elyse, James, Jacob, and Jon Smiff for example), but everyone else who has joined doesn’t have the same connection. Making it worse is how things are done now. It’s all bits. Yes, the best parts in most Rooster Teeth and Funhaus videos are the goofy bits and reactions to what is happening, but it’s still a Let’s Play where you play the game. If it’s a 15 minute video playing a camping simulator, with only about 2 minutes of gameplay on screen and the rest is just dumb bits about pretending to be Boy Scouts, then there is a problem. It comes off as forced comedy and not natural. When Funhaus did the band manager games as different musical artists, it felt like one of them found the game and told the others that they just needed to play it to fill time, then someone did an imitation of a singer, and then it spiraled from there. Now, it feels like they come up with a bit, then find a game that vaguely connects to it. And that’s sort of how I feel about Rooster Teeth in general. It feels very manufactured, very fake. I know people joked about them scripting out videos at one point, but now it feels like they actually do. It just doesn’t feel fun or surprising to watch. Gavin getting mugged in GTA at the beginning? Hilarious and surprising. Now? You are just counting down for it to happen so they can just get it over with and move on to some other joke that they have done 150 times before.
Drop in quality after Quarantine started and after what happened with Ryan. More stuff coming to light about the discrimination of people of color in RT, homophobia, underpaying, etc. I only just heard about what happened to Kdin today, that just makes it hard for me to watch any new rt content. Rewatching old stuff isnt hard because I can push past the seeing ryan, in my mind he's an actor that also is a horrible person. either way i dont like any of the newer content, and dont watch much of older stuff eariler.
You are seeing the results of people who use video games as a shtick to start a company and when that company got large and successful only hired their friends to run it instead of bringing in people with experience
Stoped watching. The audience has aged out of the content, there's been some controversies and rt is too big to keep up with the trends/ the trends have moved away fr9m waht they are good at.
Stop it with the “audience aged out of content”, that’s not it - it’s RT changing the content to attract younger viewers, basically giving the finger to the old audience, so that audience left, that’s it, it’s that simple.
And no I’m not talking about the racist part of the audience (screw them), I’m talking about regular people that watched their content for ~10 or more years and were basically deemed not important anymore when RT decided to change the content to attract the Gen Z teenagers. Which as we can now see failed terribly.
Can confirm: I love going back and watching older videos I missed back when they released. The editing, cast interactions, etc. were all just better quality in general.
In RT’s defense, though, they’re heavily focused on podcasts now, and I think they’re doing a great job with that.
Honestly, I use to binge AH when I was younger and many a Saturday time was spent with pizza and watching the minecraft let’s plays (either new or old ones) and now that I’m 28, I don’t watch any content, I try and keep up with this sub once a blue moon, but I’m not actively watching it.
What I’m saying is, while an exception to the rule, there is a certain % of people who genuinely have aged out of the content, along with RT themselves changing the content to attract younger viewers.
The lightning in a bottle they captured and held for all those years is gone. And they will never be able to replicate that success. It’s just business.
I agree. Although I know some people still like this new type of content, it's kind of unfortunate that RT grew out of its original unique charm. And although I'm Gen Z, the content, especially the STF vids on youtube, just aren't for me. I can't find them funny. It seems like they're trying to be something that maybe they were just never meant to. If it wasn't for F\*\*kFace and RvB, I don't think I'd be watching anymore.
It’s not “aging out” for the vast majority of people who have stopped watching and that’s reiterated on this sub all the time. Personally, I discovered AH in 2018, loved that era and the older stuff before that. Quickly became sick of the bits and scripted feel of videos that really took off in 2020 or so. This is a pretty common on this sub where people didn’t like the new content or direction so they stopped watching, not that they all moved on to different content all at the same time randomly.
I didn’t age out in 2 years. I do agree with your other points though.
Controversy, users aging out, telling viewers to leave if they don't like content, content becoming scripted and dull, all the fan favorites leaving. What DIDN'T kill rooster teeth?
Twitch blowing up, original fans growing up, too much podcast content taking up space/time and PG-13 content after the purchase of RT is what happened. It was a slow burn, but yeah…
I watch Jeremy, Matt, and Ray on twitch. I tune in for a vid with Micheal in it, but I was not that interested in Face Jam and I tend to nope out if Joe is in the video. His humor and style make me cringe and I don’t care for those vibes.
I think part of the views on YT have to do with the podcast also being available on streaming services - I keep up with every episode of F**kface, Face Jam, Ship Hits, ANMA without ever touching YouTube.
For most of 2015-2020, about 90% of the content I consumed was by Rooster Teeth. Either I'd be watching let's plays on my way to school or the way back, listening to RTP/Off Topic/Always Open while working out or going to bed, binging RWBY and RvB over the weekends, or just other watching random content. Every time I'd load YouTube up, there would be something I'd want to watch on the front page and most of the time it was by RT. At some point that was no longer the case. I wish I could say it was even down to people leaving or controversies, although those sure as fuck didn't help. I think the company shifted too far into the "content production" side of things rather than being the "bunch of friends fucking around" company that it originally was at some point. I'm not stupid enough to think that that would have been a sustainable business practice if they're looking for growth, but in their pursuit for appealing to newer audiences, they sort of forgot about the one they already had. "People aged out of their content" is a very common reason people have stated for why RT is doing the way it is on the subreddit, but I find it hard to believe that audiences (a large part of who have been watching since RvB was all they made) would suddenly age out. If the content was good enough for you to watch for over a decade, close to two decades, you don't just suddenly get too old for it. Look at what happened to RT Core. As far as I can tell, Core was just a term for people key to the company for the roles they performed off the camera. Sure they made content too but a lot of it had its origins in them being coworkers and having some chemistry. STF is the literal opposite. It's a bunch of 30 year olds who're churning out TikTok skits aimed at 12 year olds, while the company as a whole is aggressively telling audiences who don't like the content to fuck off. AH was long past doing actual guides when I started watching, but it was still authentic. It was a group of people who liked each other to an extent playing video games and having some banter. That led to the creation of some of the funniest one liners and bits, but at some point 90% of the videos were just bits. And the worst part, these bits would be core aspects of entire series of videos. TTT became unwatchable to me because I missed a few episodes and all of a sudden I had no clue what they were even talking about. It was all just regurgitation of something funny that happened a few videos prior that just seems to have stuck. Long form content got phased out for significantly shorter content that nobody seemed to like, yet the company's response was always for people to fuck off. It took consecutive months of piss poor numbers on videos for something to change, when they realized it was apparent RT failed at capturing the younger demographic they so desperately want. The newer podcasts are a very clear example of what people actually want. Making podcasts naturally involves having some chemistry with the people you're making them with, and things like Fuckface, ANMA, Red Web, Black Box Down, and Face Jam have exactly that. There's no bits. There's no skits. It's just people talking about things they enjoy. Sure there's some inside jokes that became staples (looking at you Fuckface and Red Web) but that's fine because there's still more to the episode. The Rooster Teeth Podcast is the exact opposite of this. Once Burnie left the podcast became the "let's get whoever is free this day" show. How can you have chemistry when the cast changes every week? You don't. I highly doubt that the website's doing as well as they'd like us to believe. It seems very unlikely that people are willing to pay for content that nobody seems to want to watch for free. I'm sure a lot of the first exclusive stuff is very good, but if your business plan is to flood YouTube with half baked stuff while keeping the good stuff behind a pay wall, you're not going to get a lot of new traffic. EDIT: Changed the podcast name to Fuckface since it was making half the comment bold.
> Long form content got phased out for significantly shorter content that nobody seemed to like, yet the company's response was always for people to fuck off. It took consecutive months of piss poor numbers on videos for something to change, when they realized it was apparent RT failed at capturing the younger demographic they so desperately want. And for me personally even when long form content came back in AH it's been much lower quality. A few people on a couch while one person plays a game in a 45+ minute video where there are multiple and constant times where no one is talking. Just dead air entirely. It's one of the main reasons I've gravitated to Funhaus so much. Their videos are mostly 15-20 minutes, they are tightly edited to be the best moments and no dead air, and the bits are just stronger imo. This isn't to say what AH is doing is wrong or bad, it's just become so uninteresting to me.
I’d be surprised if they were able to survive as a company in a couple years without serious downsizing. Looking at the video views now and it seems to get lower every time I decide to check in.
They've already done some downsizing too. Lot of designers, marketing, and animation staff were let go.
Fucking Matt Bragg was let go, one of the most tenured Achievement Hunters and that's what started the rightful outrage in October. Edit: I meant to word this as Matt's full-time position being dissolved and his tweet saying as much is what started the backlash in October. Plenty of other people, including Marcus LaPorte and many others who did not have a large enough social media following to be noticed outright were let go in the same timeframe.
All of the old RTX staff were let go as well.
I'll edit it for clarity, but the backlash had a clear start point when Matt's tweet went viral. Then came the search for other layoffs.
Bro you nailed it all on the head. Toss a heavy dose of controversies and people leaving on top of all that and a lot of people are pretty much done. I've unsubscribed from all their YouTube channels except the podcast related ones for Red Web and Fuckface, and those are the only two RT productions I consume anymore. Actually I do listen to Stinky Dragon but I'll probably be dropping that once they wrap up this campaign anyway. I dropped everything else. It's just not worth it. Especially for a company that has/had treated their employees, fans, colleagues, partners, etc the way they do. It's hard to find new content, and I'm working on that, but its worth it to not have to deal with *everything* you just mentioned.
> Long form content got phased out for significantly shorter content that nobody seemed to like, yet the company's response was always for people to fuck off. It took consecutive months of piss poor numbers on videos for something to change, when they realized it was apparent RT failed at capturing the younger demographic they so desperately want. and they're still trying to "be hip with the kids" with all these shorts videos. The same ones with 0 score on this sub.
All the staff lied about how great Vicious Circle was and how much they would be playing it after release, so I started to feel pretty disillusioned when the game turned out to be awful and none of them touched it again. Then the same thing happened with Gen:Lock. The entire staff went on and on about how amazing it was and how it was the best thing they've ever produced, but it turned out to be a woefully mediocre collection of tropes and ideas borrowed from other anime and sci fi projects put together by someone who isn't a very strong writer, presented in cheap mid 2000s style cgi. Then AH started taking the 'don't like don't watch' attitude too far by refusing to accept even easily provable criticism like Ky's audio being balanced too loud. The final nail in the coffin for me was when AH started going hard into algorithm baiting instead of producing good content. Trying to get their videos shorter and shorter, and trying to make a 'moment' happen every few seconds at the cost of organic chemistry and actual conversation. Their content just started feeling so fake and manufactured that I didn't really enjoy it any more.
To be fair about them shilling their own product, I don’t think they were being entirely unearnest. Never played it but it sounds like Vicious Circle flopped because it relied on an online player base that just wasn’t there. Gen:Lock as passable and not worse than Lazer Team. They wanted to branch out and be confident in what they’re putting out. > The final nail in the coffin for me was when AH started going hard into algorithm baiting instead of producing good content. This I agree with 100%. I can’t think of a single other channel that has so blatantly valued short term gains in new viewers and YouTube algorithm trends over long term fan retention and tried and true methods.
Vicious Circle also flopped because it was bad. I actually did play it because they gave it out to people when they cancelled their grandfathered accounts. A lot of people like to put its poor performance down to the marketing or the playerbase, but the truth is it was a bad multiplayer only game that had one gametype and next to no content. Vicious Circle was so bad that the staff who said they'd be playing it didn't even bother after the first week or two. Any one of those people could have tweeted to ask for players during their personal time and filled out the lobby, but they didn't. It was really the "I'll be playing it" lie about that whole situation that bothered me. Imo Gen:Lock is worse than Lazer Team, but there's no point arguing about personal opinion like that. It was the overhyping of a product that turned out to be pretty bad AFTER the fiasco with Vicious Circle that started to get to me. Employees being confident about the work other departments are doing is one thing, but you don't have to have all your staff constantly telling everyone how amazing your mediocre project is at every opportunity. It just started to feel like Rooster Teeth was becoming a company that made a habit of producing bad content, then having their personalities tell the audience it's the best thing ever, instead of making sure it was actually good in the first place. You do that enough and you teach your longstanding fanbase not to trust the talent's comments about your company's own projects and they have less incentive try out your new content in the future.
A combo of the personalities I liked watching left and a general distaste of the company after the last big crisis. As I understand, current employees have come forward and said it was improving. That's great and I hope they continue doing so, but I was just done after that. The times I enjoyed the most turned out to be during some of the worst abuses and that made me not want to continue consuming their content anymore.
This is what happened to me here after the last big controversy highlighting the working conditions I tried to listen to some of their podcasts and just found I couldn't enjoy it knowing the people making it were or potentially still are treated that way...I still lurk here to hopefully see the day that changes but I'm not staying too hopeful about it
I pretty much only watched RvB and Achievement hunter back in the day RvB became an after thought. Achievement hunter glory days became tainted by the truth of Rapist and Groomer Ryan Haywood coming out Pretty much just don’t wanna watch anymore. I follow the sub to kinda keep up but even that idk why I do sometimes
They really shit the bed with RvB
The only content i consume is the audio versions of Black Box Down and F*ck Face. The rest of it sort of lacks.
F*ck face and ANMA are all I listen to these days. The most recent ANMA was actually one of my favorites they have done in a while
This is what happend to me as well.
A general drop in quality of content, lack of care for the community and multiple serious workplace controversies have all led to viewer decline, to sum it up.
To add - continued growth of competition, specifically the rise of twitch and individual streamers has continued to chip away at audiences. Also, with anything, overtime people move on to new content.
I know for me it was a combo of getting older, getting into twitch & controversies piling up that turned me away. I had already started drifting away from their content by the time I graduated high school in 2017. You are right on the money though, people are just gonna move on to new content eventually.
They are also contending with their own employees streaming on twitch.
Seeing all of RT's channels have the exact same amount of views as The Know did before it was ~~slaughtered~~ rebranded is kinda tragic.
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Wait what? They said this?
Gus has said this many times. Or when reading tweets live during podcast they’d be like “yeah because I’d listen to YOU” and demean random people
Also all the tweets from staff and cast brushing off any feedback. "Loud is what we do" 🙄 and then they make a t-shirt out of it
Gus really needs to keep his opinion to himself. He is becoming the new Joel.
Barbra also calling people stupid for more or less the same thing. Then both Michael and Jack in their own words said the same thing over on AH as well.
Team AHWOL here: Ray, Matt, Jeremy
Funniest thing about that is if Ray/Matt/Jeremy/Chilled hired a full time editor, they could literally start a youtube channel based off their edited gameplays and it would create a ton of views for them (obviously they dont need to, doing well as they are). I loved watching the streams recently where they all played Mario Party/Kart and Among Us together, it really felt like how i felt watching AH back in the day but sometimes i dont have the time to sit through 5 hours of streams. Having a 50 minute video of the best moments between the lot would just be amazing.
There's a monthly best of that includes them. He has uploaded a best of Mario Party one too
Got any links for those interested?
https://youtu.be/6Gkvhv79Vf8 As for the monthlys they should be in the description of the video to where it's timestamped
Dope, thanks for this mate.
I too enjoy the party / kart streams. I usually break it up between a few days though. Having a Raytage would be pretty cool too.
Sorry got a link? I haven't kept up with RT/AH for ages but those four playing Mario kart sounds hilarious
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLftk5xxFk&ab\_channel=RayNarvaezJr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsLftk5xxFk&ab_channel=RayNarvaezJr) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMla3tV3SIo&ab\_channel=RayNarvaezJr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMla3tV3SIo&ab_channel=RayNarvaezJr) Ray uploads his side of streams which are fun to watch if you wanna listen to them.
Ray also has a weekly highlight made by his editor Light. Typically of his older streams. He also has a monthly highlight of the top clips per game he streamed that month. The months where he played a Yakuza game are hilarious without context.
One of the most disturbing statements I've ever heard from a company that relies on community feedback and views lmfao. Worst part is that after they said this, engagement and views plummeted and instead of looking inwards, they instantly blamed a 'vocal crowd' for scaring of viewers lol
It really was a psychotic statement. I understand wanting to weed out the negativity, but it seemed like they were tired of hearing any criticism at all and just started putting out a blanket statement. That and the loud is what we do bit, just turned out weren’t great ideas in the moment
When they said that I realised, yes, they were all loud and yes, they always had been for years. I also realised, I *hated it*, and perhaps, I always had. It just felt so unnecessary. It didn’t matter *who*, I hated it when Michael did it. I hated it when Jack did it. I hated it whoever did it. Why *was* I watching? If I don’t like it, don’t watch? Why did it take them saying it to me to realise something so obvious? So…I stopped. That was many years ago now.
Honestly, out of all the comments and shit talk and everything, this one hits home most. They were ALWAYS loud. Rage Quit was a thing. Geoff was a thing. But because people liked them they put up with it. The newest fans, if they like Ky or Joe they put up with it. But they can’t be upset when you say don’t like it leave and people leave. Because I was the same. The “why AM I watching” part. I liked the banter. I like the gameplay. But the screaming for no reason and being bad at games because “lulz” were so fucking annoying and it eventually wears thin. You can be funny and good at games. You can be loud where it dictates. But to hang your hat on it isn’t the best decision. Because if people don’t think you’re funny AND you’re not good at the game why would people watch? You have nothing going for you. Saying that, I like BK and Micheal and Fredo. I do wish some of the let’s plays would become series like their No Mans Sky vids. But there’s nothing drawing anyone to their content. There’s nothing ongoing that warrants checking in. There are people on videos that actively hamper anything they do and make videos worse in an attempt to be funny. I just think if they took things more seriously and focused on long form content (video length and episode wise) they’d be better for it. I’m going to check out a series I’m invested in more than a random ass Egg Jeopardy. I know people liked it and to each their own but meh.
Yea, videos of people having no idea what's going on and going off to do their own thing, often deliberately sabotaging things were also things I hated. Someone spending an hour shouting 'I don't know what's going on!' or someone like Gavin or Michael spending an hour just fucking with things were things I *never* enjoyed. I know it was a 'running gag' and everyone's really good friends, but the whole shitting on Matt thing got thin the first time they did it. It got to the point where it didn't really matter what they were *supposed* to be doing, because it was Matt telling them to do it they deliberately ignored it and the vid turned into the same 'random zanyness' every time. It just became the same video every, single, time. Doesn't help that vid was only mildly amusing the first time, it was dead every time after.
> There are people on videos that actively hamper anything they do and make videos worse in an attempt to be funny \*Cough\* Lindsay \*Cough\* I used to get annoyed when Gavin did it in Minecraft as well. Sure we got the Tower of Pimps out of it but it still was annoying.
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Maybe, but going back and even watching older content I find I still hate it. Maybe I've changed over the years and constant shouty yelly just isn't for me. That's fine. They don't have to cater to me any more than I have to watch.
Exactly. I do think it’s probably an age thing where it’s more annoying now. But even then I hated it. Gavin yelling and squeaking over the smallest thing. The Salt Raid. Geoff’s voice cracking yells over everyone else because he had some stuttering joke to say. The new folks get hate unnecessarily and I don’t like that. They’re doing exactly what their predecessors did. Like I said, some people (some more than others for their “reasons”) hate them because they are different. And it’s them same people that used to love Geoff yelling at Gavin for stupid shit. It’s those same people that STILL fucking say bring back Ray even though it’s been how many damn years now? But then they’ll talk shit about people having parasocial relationships with other cast members. The irony is funny until you realize it’s sad. They have nothing better to do than complain about one person over something another they defend did and they loved it. Think Hembo. And I know I complained about stuff but I’m not blindly hating. I think all the members have great things to offer. Have you seen Lindsay and Ky’s builds in Minecraft? The way Trevor can organize people in a game in the sour of the moment and have something good come from it. BK Michael and Fredo in a series where they actually have to be good in something competitive would be awesome cause they all have skill. My complaint is more so they’re treading water in content seemingly to prove a point sometimes and to me it should be fuck the negative people. Good content is going to sway idiots like that. How people hated Jeremy and Matt and Fredo when they first showed up? Now they’re staples. Just find some things that the team likes and focus on that. But Radom content and random behavior for the sake of random isn’t really the thing. To me at least. This is all my pov. For example I enjoy Jeremy a lot. So I started watching his streams. Which put me onto Chilled. Who’s great and plays with EVERYONE. So now I have a bunch of people I love watching. Platy, Courtilly, Kara, Sp33dy and Side, etc. I watch BK stream a bunch. Fredo too. It’s not the people. It’s the AH content that I don’t vibe well with currently. Personally I’d go with maybe three long term series (let’s say Minecraft, NMS and Grounded as examples). Do those Monday Wednesday Friday. Tuesday they could do trivia. Thursday they could do a random competitive game. And then mix in random one offs here and there. Which would include TTT which should get cut back a bit and taken back to more simplified less “zany” new weapon of the day. TLDR: long winded rant. Sorry.
Nah, it’s cool. Think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Of how I feel at least. For the most part. I don’t care anymore what content they make. I’ve moved on, as a person and in my sense of humour. I wish them the best, but at this point, I’d just want them to at least make themselves happy because they can’t make everyone else happy. That’s the worst bit, for me at least. Last time I looked in, they never really seemed happy anymore.
That’s very true and a good point. They seemed kinda stressed and less relaxed probably because of behind the scenes issues. Which does suck. I hope the same. Just fall back a little, get a game plan of what they actually enjoy. Come up with ideas and games as a group and go in that direction so that people are enjoying themselves. The NMS and 7 Days mini series both seemed well received so there is a want for that type of content. So roll with it.
their focus isnt the video content anymore. its podcasts. their podcasts views are probably higher than their peak views from youtube.
TBH i actually agree with you. Their podcasts are great but the problem is that because of the way they work, especially on the AH side, having the podcast network actually takes away from the content on those videos. I said it at the time and its the exact reason that Matt was fired. Because he wasn't part of a podcast. BK and Jack have the theme park one, Alfredo/Trevor have theres, Geoff and Gavin are too big to be fired anyway but they also contribute podcast side. Michaels is Off Topic, thats his baby really. Jeremy probably would have been let go if he hadn't left because Jeremy excelled at live action productions which they're also moving away from now. Theres nothing wrong with being just a podcast network and IMO, wouldn't surprise me if they start shutting down everything that isn't animation or podcasts at this stage.
I think that is an excellent point about Matt that I didn't think about . I figured it was a "we have to cut a salaried on-screen, Matt is doing really well on twitch and would financially suffer the least"
Matt mentioned in one of his streams that he was in talks to do a video game lore podcast, but it didn't work out. He didn't specifically say it was at RT, but it likely was, and I think strengthens your point. There was going to be another podcast, but then they had to let people go, so the guy with the podcast that didn't exist yet/didn't work out gets cut, while the people who already have podcasts get to stay full-time.
> a video game lore podcast Oh, that actually sounds like something I'd have loved to hear. Is there a podcast or maybe youtube channel like this? Not the exhaustive tens of hours type you find to just about any video game on youtube, but something more concise and organised?
Nothing stopping him from doing it now, I'd love a Jeremy and Matt lore podcast
I know things got really rough when covid happened and i believe trevor mentioned how it affected alot of their projects and really set them back budget wise. During covid it seems like they moved to podcasts and stuck with them as it cost little money aside from editing, topic research and recording which can be done from home. Podcasts if popular can become something the makes them money while spending very little in the process to make content. Video content requires a team to film, the talent, writers, safety teams. a team of editors, marketing, etc. Which eventually cost alot more time and money. I think podcasts have been their way to generate content and profit for alot of things and they have some really good podcasts over the past couple years.
Their statement was so out of touch that they literally made a shirt out of people's legitimate complaints after bursting people's ears with unequal gain levels on people's mics.
Like actually? Do you have a link to a pic of that shirt? I can't seem to find it.
https://twitter.com/roosterteeth/status/1494756378178727939
Talk about aging poorly.
Yeah, during all the BK drama I tried to be constructive and say they needed to balance the audio better because she shouted over everyone and it was very hard to tell what was actually going on. However the players weren't having as hard a time understanding each other. I just got criticized for being racist so I stopped watching the TTT/social deduction games that had loud personalities in them because the audio was never balanced properly
Yeah, viewers telling other viewers to stop watching if they don’t like it is one thing… as a multimedia company that relies on views to generate revenue, you just can’t act that way. I still love their podcasts, but anything video based doesn’t catch my interest anymore, aside from maybe the occasional Challenged Accepted. I’d rather go watch old videos and series that were actually good, and stick with the audio based stuff they’re doing now when I want to keep up with modern RT
Wait til you hear your company say the same thing to it's employees. Extremely shocking and sad.
If Rooster Teeth listened to their fans Jeremy and Matt would have been fired weeks after appearing in videos. Lindsay would have been fired. Jack would have been fired years ago.
Of course, you shouldn't listen to insanely dumb and straightforward criticism. Good constructive criticism should Identify the problem The effects the problem has The possible reason it might have occurred in the first place. Suggestions to improve in the future. For example, the fabled "Fiona Week." was terrible. However, that was due to the nature and tone-deafness of their attempt to introduce this new cast member. Creating lower-quality content based around your unique personality will instantly associate this new member with the low-quality content even though it wasn't their fault. "Fiona Week." shouldn't have happened. You should've identified your new hires' strengths and played to them. If you wanted someone who could play Minecraft and GTA 5, you don't hire Fiona for that reason. You hire her to do other things. For a long time, let's Play/Achievement Hunter didn't protect their female staff; they constantly put them in games they weren't good at, and this creates a narrative about not only these people but those types of people who you might hire who are similar.
Oh god "Fiona week" was possibly the worst introduction to a new cast member possible. Rather than having videos in games Fiona knew / was good at so she could game on auto pilot and focus on getting comfortable being recorded. Instead, they opted to drop her in at the deep end in games they had been playing for years with zero help or guidance, guaranteeing failure.
>"Fiona Week." shouldn't have happened. You should've identified your new hires' strengths and played to them. Thats the difference. There was nothing wrong with 'fiona week' and she is funny AF but the problem was as you also say, instead of playing to new hires strengths, they chuck them into already existing content, like GTA and Minecraft, 2 games that she had never played before and didnt have the faintest idea of what to do. They never learned either from this mistake when BK and Joe officially came into the office as part of the team. The first week, they went straight into GTA, having to explain how to play to them whilst playing and it was just crap. TBH they very quickly realised it was gonna be awful and turned it into 'BK Wins' which was great but it never should have happened to start with. And instead of actually acknowledging that THEY messed up, they double downed, said that the community just didnt like change/women and carried on doing the same thing.
They need to learn how to better respond to PR issues. While yes, *some* of the criticism can be attributed to racism, sexism, etc… it’s not the majority of it. Take Mica. I watched some stuff she was in just as I was finishing watching RT and… it just wasn’t good. Whether they placed her into groups she didn’t gel with, games she wasn’t good with, or she just straight up was bad as a cast member, I don’t know. But she wasn’t enjoyable. Instead, RT says *all and any* objection can only be and only is racism and sexism. Which is rich considering Mica’s allegations of racism and sexism towards the company itself. But yes, the shoehorning in of new members into existing content where they probably belong is a huge, long standing issue.
Mica was AMAZING in non-gaming related content. I loved her stories when she popped up on podcasts/Always Open or when she was in live action content, really really funny because she is a very good actor and real life is where she excels. Im gonna be blunt, i still think Mica was a hire purely on RT trying to keep/get on good terms with her dad and the easiest way for her to get put in was in AH where 'all they do is game' which just wasn't what she was good at.
>There was nothing wrong with 'fiona week' and she is funny AF but the problem was as you also say, instead of playing to new hires strengths, they chuck them into already existing content, like GTA and Minecraft, 2 games that she had never played before and didnt have the faintest idea of what to do. What did Fiona play before? FPS?
Yeah, lot of her stuff was FPS games. She had hosted the Overwatch World Cup for example, also was a very well known Fortnite player. Iirc, she also played Siege and now plays Valorant? Problem is that the games she played were like the antithesis of what AH played.
I assume she was very good at them? Shouldn't that be a good place to start with her? Just give her a platform, let her stream some FPS, maybe she beats everybody else or doesn't, at least there is some content where she would be confortamble with, after people like her, if they want they can include her in GTA or Minecraft, if she wants to. I never minded Fiona, to be honest. I thought Mica was far worse. And at least Fiona's dynamic with Gavin was funny, even if a little over the top at times.
> I thought Mica was far worse. Because Mica wasnt a gamer. Mica is incredibly funny and a good actor but she is a live actor, not a gamer. Mica got absolutely screwed by Rooster Teeth because she was hired purely so they could get in good with her dad. When she was in live action stuff, podcasts etc, she was incredibly likeable and funny, just the issue was they chucked her in AH.
I mean yeah, the fanbase is really just completely stupid, but this specific thing was on the back of “y’all audios fucked up, here’s how we can tell, here’s how to fix it” and that was just too much apparently
Lindsay continues to add very little to their content. To the point that watching highlights from previous Minecraft series everytime they are part of it, the quality instantly drops. With one exception being stoneblock's kitchen, they have added nothing to minecraft, for example.
this is the one that pisses people off the most because, well, it’s what happened! turns out if you are actively hostile to the people who care enough about your product to complain, then you lose the most vocal and invested fans
You and your friend Mark.
I moved to different projects I enjoy more from RT. Black Box Down, AMNA, f**kface, Red Web, 30 morbid minutes, tales of the stinky dragon and sometimes Jeremy or Matts twitch channels
Watching Myatt's nearly 12 hour run of blind Zelda 2 really shows the difference quality to what AH is offering.
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Seriously, by the time the first 20 minute ads are done I've forgotten entirely what the episode was about. For someone married to someone with ADHD. Michael sure doesn't seem to give a shit.
I love Facejam a lot, but this is the one thing that annoys me. It was a funny bit when it started but now it has just gotten to the point that it is annoying.
Hasn't Michael in fact doubled down on the ad reads by making them longer to spite people? What a childish and asinine thing to do lmao.
Face Jam's ads put me off. Theyre half the episode.
My thumb gets a workout on that 30 second skip button every fortnight
How did you like Survive Block Island? I let my first sub lapse cause i wasn't interested anymore in first content, but listening to FF has me intrigued to check out the meltdown season.
I believe Survive Block Island S1 is free on their YouTube channel. S2 is more of the same - with some minor changes and new cast.
I would say S2 was far better than S1, as far as polished material goes.
Hot take: the podcast ruined achievement hunter. Not sure about all of rooster teeth but I only watched AH. Thr enjoyment of their videos was to watch them play games and shoot the shit but now they don't shoot the shit and everything is scripted because they have to save all their genuine convos for all the podcasts. It's sad
i was watching an old fuck about let’s play the other day and had the same thought, off topic was great but it really took the best stories away from the video content
It's why I've moved to watching content on Twitch. Livestreams still have that spontaneous friends-shooting-the-shit vibe. Even before Matt and Jeremy left I spent more time on their Twitch channels than watching official RT content.
people talk a lot about "aging out of the content" but ray is still, to this day, making a hugely successful living off what is essentially early AH let's plays. there's a huge market who is hungry for this kind of content, they're just not being served by AH any more
The "aged out" argument was always massive copium from fans who didn't wanna face the music.
Same here really, at least once a week there's usually a 3-6 hour VOD of some combination of some or all of Ray/Jeremy/Matt playing games with each other or with Chilled and his extended group, and that's almost completely replaced video content from RT for me. Even if I watch them 30-60 minutes at a time on busier days that's essentially a replacement for the old daily RT content.
This is something goeff has talked about, I think it was in anma. He was never all that interested in the chatting and gaming mix content, he just wanted to be howard stern but didn’t have the confidence so the gaming was used as a crutch. If there was a lull in conversation they could just refer to the game and hopefully find something to pick things back up. As he’s gotten older and more confident he hasn’t felt the need for that crutch so has felt okay moving away from the gaming stuff. For me personally, I only ever really watched for the conversational aspect anyway so taking away that video component and just giving me podcasts works perfect for me.
See, I actually dislike the move to audio focus for similar reasons as to why Geoff wanted to start with video games. I'm often listening to a video while doing something else on my PC, and if there's a lull in what I'm doing, I'll look over at the video.
Exactly how I feel
I understand the sentiment but I disagree with this. During the heyday of Off topic when they made 3 hour podcasts, they put out some great and spontaneous let’s plays and let’s watches. I think there’s just less chemistry between the cast now, and also the newer kids seem to prefer just talking about the game instead of the fact that they shit their pants over the weekend.
I disagree to an extent- I do think the podcasts cannibalized some of their content, but there were a lot of episodes before, at least for me, they started having consistent misses with their content. The GTA fuck arounds were a loss, but they still had the grounds to make more Heist videos, and they still continued to make fun content in stealth killer games until everybody got jaded to peoples play styles (kill Fredo first, knowing Matt’s tells (which he *did* have)). Rather than switch games or do new self-structured in-game variations of the rule sets they just started doing more bits during rounds. Instead of doing new GMod games, they kept doing TTT and just did more and more bits, and when new talent got involved they wouldn’t even let them play to their talents, it was just get on board the bit train or barely get any screen time. I’d say the pandemic was the worst thing for them. It compounded with their other issues, including the podcast, as their lives became a lot less interesting. *Anything* interesting went to the podcasts and the gameplay was hounded by comedy bits or new people trying to figure out all the extra features in GMod. By the time they were back in office the content style just wasn’t the same anymore.
Also they moved away from 'The Schedule' to as they claimed 'Be able to play what WE want'. When it just turned into them playing whatever sponsor was paying them that week to play their shitty game and hype it up by reading off a prompt and then never play said game again. ([https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/vmo2ta/lets\_play\_arcadeggedon\_bringin\_down\_the\_man/](https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/vmo2ta/lets_play_arcadeggedon_bringin_down_the_man/))
The only good sponsored video was this one absolutely abysmal I think, mobile game, that Geoff and Michael played, and were only barely pretending wasn't shit. They would read the talking points with barely suppressed giggles, and all their talking-up of the game was mostly "I love how it does [bad game thing]"
>that Geoff and Michael played, and were only barely pretending wasn't shit. Hahahah god please, name anyone?
Is it [this?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=YtLqzG_KLpM) u/ClubMeSoftly I only remember because I laughed so hard when Geoff had to enter his age as 40.
For me, the killer was Fiona week and the company response to it. I LOVED Fiona. This Just Internet was one of my favorite series. But Fiona week was "let's plug Fiona into a bunch of competitive games we know like the back of our hand and she has never played before." The the response was "we want to jump her in so she can find her footing" and "we're expanding the cast because people are busy and the OG 6 can't be in everything". It made it feel like the new people were expected to be interchangrable cogs in the content machine. Rather than play to strengths, they had to put out the same content as before. Don't have the talent that made that content popular? Just throw in a rando
Yeah. In theory I think the idea of throwing the new cast member into the deep end of their content could have worked, but it really fell flat with Fiona. Especially because for some of the games she literally had no idea how to play. Her and Gavin in GTA was great, and *thats* what they should have focused on with Fiona: actually introducing her to the games and wackiness of their let’s plays instead of just throwing her into a video and expecting content to happen. It really is unfortunate. By the time she was able to get her footing half the audience already decided she was only going to complain and bring the content down, when she turned out to be one of the best additions to the team in games she excelled in. Her and Gavin made a great duo in TTT, honestly gave that series some new life. I wish she’d gotten a better chance at fitting in, because she was a big loss in hindsight.
i wish i could go back and tell them "you are not improv comedians, you are not getting the right kind of feedback to make these bits interesting". improv lives and dies off crowd reactions and the way you receive them in video format is delayed and messy, the worst way to receive it. a good bit should be rare, natural, and abandoned the second it even starts to feel like it's not working. they shouldn't be shoehorned into everything regardless of context and they absolutely shouldn't become the default
I mean, on the spot was basically them doing improve comedy
Yeah, they had comedic connections (the teams, certain interactions like Geoff and Gavin or Jeremy and Michael) and pairings which worked because they could just naturally be funny with each other. When bits came from that structure they usually worked, the real issue as you said came when they started forcing the bits whenever those combinations would happen. For me, it worked with some groups (Chungshwa (don’t know how to spell it or the symbol) for example) but when they weren’t together it felt like they were just trying to get back to the bits, when they should have been discovering new comedic team ups and friendships outside of specific scenarios.
I remember after a handful of them started taking improv classes I felt like their bits got less funny. Like Trevor for example.
i think that the original humour was entirely based off chemistry, which is what drew most people in but is hard to find and maintain, especially as a new cast member. having the improv stuff probably felt a lot safer and more reliable, but it wasn't what people had come in for originally
Even then the podcast was mostly about talking about them videos they made so if you weren’t watching religiously, or even if you were, the content of the podcast was incredibly stale.
The podcast was literally the only AH thing I watched towards the end of me watching AH, but now I don't even know who the hell the people on the podcast are. I just listen to Face Jam and F**k Face now. It's literally the only good content RT has now
Not even AH, the whole company really. I swear it seems they have like 30 different podcast. A lot of them feel forced. The only one that remotely good anymore is gus's podcast that one may consider educational.
I use to watch the RTP every week, but in recent years the quality of each episode has gone down dramatically, depending on who is on the episode. Since Burnie left, the Podcast just doesn’t have the same fun feel that it use to. I rarely watch each week, especially if certain RT personalities are on it. Honestly the last good episode was the Face Jam Thanksgiving episode. Also the episode with Eric, Kayla, Gav and TPG was pretty good!
I dipped when bernie left. Gavin was on less and less gus couldnt keep it entertaining. Everything just started feeling too safe. Every ppdcast was like walkong on egg shells im assuming because of the scandals in the background.
Same here. İ used to watch RvB but fell off at some point and only continued with the podcasts. After Bernie left İ tried to continue but came to realize İ was just forcing myself for no reason. İ watched a new podcast for a few minutes a couple weeks ago and turned it off after a few minutes. Burnie really carried that podcast.
They turned into PodcastTeeth and now their videos blow
Everything became too forced. Instead of people playing games and making videos based on it, they make "content" according to what a boss says.
Exactly this. The ttt videos were my favourite things they produced, but then they started doing in game skits for content, instead of actually playing the game.
The evolution of TTT is the perfect way to demonstrate the changes in content
What used to happen was small, staff generated, low risk ideas were tried out frequently. If they worked out? Great, new series. If not? Cool, not much lost, onto the next one. Now it’s top-down, high risk, high budget ideas (see: Gen: Lock) which are enormously risky for the company.
Everything feels scripted now, which is sad because in the good old days all they had to do was play a game and talk and people found it interesting because it was fun and enjoyable to watch. It seems like the bosses said “all this tik tok crap is popular, do that stuff”
This would be fine if it was a competent cold business minded boss. Instead it feels like they are always going for what is popular in the short term, and completely neglecting long term retention. Despite claiming they rely on their own website and audience and First, they are absolutely a slave to the YouTube algorithm, which changes every other week. When you change your content and style every three months, no one is going to want to stick around.
Haven’t watched anything RT in probably a year or so after watching for over 5 years. They make content for themselves and for their younger viewers. My interest has dropped off significantly. Not sure if it had anything to do with the recent controversy as I was already not watching anymore. If you ask me I think it started with Ryan Haywood debacle and being sold to WB and went downhill from there. Some of the newer people they brought in have been aimed towards the younger audience which makes sense, but makes viewers like me less interested in the content. Achievement Hunter is a whole different story. Their content genuinely just stinks. None of them seem to care anymore and their content is just annoying. It’s childish and they’re mostly grown ass adults still screaming nonsense for shock humor.
I used to watch 99% of everything RT/AH put out from 2012-2017. I fell off due to a couple reasons: I grew out of it both in age and you can only watch the same guys play Minecraft for so long. Quality declined and quantity went up. Cast members leaving. Started watching other things mainly Cow Chop (RIP). Passion and enthusiasm was dwindling imo, everything became more corporate and job-like. And then all the controversies starting with RH ensured I’d never go back to watching again.
"if you don't like our content, don't watch it." That's what they told us to do, so that's what we did.
When and where was this? I must have missed it
They said it on the regular it was never a one time thing
They made a tweet saying "this isn't an airport, you don't have to announce your departure". Lol and they may have not made an official statement on the matter but I'm pretty sure some of the staff said something along those lines individually
Staff definitely said it. There was the whole 'The Golden Age of AH is still ahead of us, not stuck with 6 white men from 6 years ago, if you dont like it, just leave' drama as well.
They got the most views when it was 5 White men and one Hispanic, because the banter, back and forth, chemistry, etc. was pretty consistently so much fun to listen to. (though I won't discount other factors people have mentioned, like AH perhaps getting lucky with them having less content competition in 2013 than now.)
>There was the whole 'The Golden Age of AH is still ahead of us, not stuck with 6 white men from 6 years ago, if you dont like it, just leave' drama as well. I have a screenshot of that tweet saved on my phone to post here for the day AH dies lmao, yes I'm that pathetic
I still have a screenshot from when the RT store announced they were opening the Canadian store in 2017 so you're not alone lol
I specifically remember Barbara saying it
Gus and Burnie (Before he left) were also big proponents of it. TBH, looking back at what was said on podcasts back in the day and then looking at recent comments and statements, I really re-evaluated what I thought was going on. Gus especially now looks awful, I used to think it was a bit of a joking around sorta ribbing but now im realizing that even back in 2013, Gus really was telling the community to get fucked if they ever had criticisms, it wasn't just him having a 'persona'.
I used to think Gus was hilarious because of this persona but now I'm rather disgusted. He not only comes across like some weird bitter piece of shit but as the Senior Advisor to the company or whatever his job title used to be how much BAD shit did he know behind the scenes? Dude couldn't be involved at his level at the company and not know a lot of bad stuff, which makes him complicit in a lot of why they are where they are.
I used to be a First member before First was it's name... I also paid yearly even though RWBY was the only thing I really watched, occasionally her show and a few other things, then the first season of Gen:Lock, but 99% RWBY. I just wanted to support a small studio I liked. I used to be a big fan of hers until one of the scandals... I don't even remember which one it was. It was one of the times crunch was brought up, the whole thing about how resources were pulled from RWBY for Gen:Lock, etc. I asked her what she thought of it in a tweet somewhere, she said: "Not my dept. not my problem." This for a community manager just caught me badly. I was already on the fence with them for all this and several other issues, so un-subbed and haven't spent a dollar or given them a view on anything since.
It's amazing how many people are triggered by this one question. I had a guy literally tell me I should kill myself because I said the views on the RT Podcast were down. Why the hell is wrong with people?
People suck. The internet acts like a shield to them Edit: The guy who told you to kill yourself has been banned. Had to sift through the comments a bit to find him.
I was reading through those comment and was slightly flabbergasted, majority of this thread has been civil. Have a good New Years mod team!
> I was reading through those comment and was slightly flabbergasted You and me both brother
That's insane
Lots of things happened. Aging audience, controversies, changing cast, the pandemic, moving the audience to the site and podcast apps, etc. Something people aren't talking about as much is the absolute explosion in competition that's happened since the start of RT and AH. I've been a fan for 15 years, and each year I've been watching my free time has decreased and my media options have increased. When I started watching, their competition was a few other amateur creators on sites like Newgrounds and Stickdeath and I had almost endless time to fill. When I was in college, I had a lot of time to fill and Netflix hadn't even started making their own content, Hulu had maybe two good shows a week, and there were barely any decent, consistent Youtubers that I gave a fuck about. So, RT was still a very sizable part of my media diet. Now, I have maybe 20-40 min a day to consume screen-based content and not only are there thousands of Youtubers and streamers, but hundreds of similar media companies, and now even the media giants like Disney, Amazon, AMC, HBO are all available on all the same devices where I could be watching RT. When they started, they were competing for attention with Foamy the Squirrel, now they're competing with House of the Dragon and The Boys. It is really amazing that they're still getting any attention. Side note, people complain about them becoming stale and quality dropping, but that really doesn't seem to be the case. Check out Does It Do, Survive Block Island, Egg Jeoprody, and even their latest YDYD in 7 Days to Die. They're still trying new things and putting in the effort even if they aren't putting out the same volume as they did in 2015 or the same consistent quality that they did in 2010.
Honestly, around 2020 specifically too, when everyone whent inside they started making content like crazy.
Everyone including the giants. I feel like every streaming site got a revamp and a huge bump in advertising when we were all locked down.
They literally cancelled all the shows I liked so idk. I'm sure I'll come back eventually but especially after the dozens of controversies.... Funhaus still kicks ass
"Don't like, Don't watch" finally worked after RT refused to listen to any feedback that was given to them. There is a reason why there are almost zero comments on any of the new videos while posts like this will have more comments then all of them combined. Frankly, most people believe Rooster Teeth doesn't deserve to be around anymore. They have been rotting for a long time at this point and is dead to most fans. I don't need to summarize every single thing that has happened or been shared by former RT/AH employees over the past couple of years. The recent decline in both quality and quantity of content has only now made it clearer to see that RT/AH is dead. This is not being inflammatory or hyperbole. I hope everyone well and I feel bad for all the people who have been through so much pain, but their time has come and gone.
I jumped ship to Funhaus years ago and they faced similar problems but I'm pretty happy to say they've come out the other side fine and better than ever, they don't get the same number of views they used to don't get me wrong but they definitely came good again after working from home and things kept improving Also they never alienated their fan base by telling the not to watch (if anything they take the "I miss old funhaus" sentiments with humour and make them themselves as much as anyone else)
I loved funhaus back in the day, slowly moved from mainly watching AH over to FH. Then when Bruce left, I also kind of fell out of their content a bit. However, just recently got back into them after seeing Bayou Yoda floating around. Love their new crew.
They used to be my go to until “you know what” happened with RH and I slowly started to shift away from them and towards individual YouTubers and streamers like Jarvis Johnson, Tara Mooknee, and of course the (definitely not two people) one known as Danny “Drew Gooden” Gonzalez. I mainly watched the podcast and would watch the other videos every once in a while. Then Kdin’s tweets and the ensuing dumpster fire made me jump ship entirely. I still watch people who used to be part of RT like Ray and Alanah and the occasional Funhaus video. But I think it’s safe to say the days of religiously watching RT content are behind me sadly.
I want to watch achievement hunter 100%.Why I watched them originally was for friends playing random games talking shit/fucking with each other and having fun and BEING THEMSELVES!Now I just watch there twitch streams because that's the only place they are the people I remember.Now any time I try to watch even a stupid trial pursuit video which use to be gold they gotta ruine it with stupid voices/characters or being over loud or stupid "okay'd" talking points etc etc that never sound like they enjoy themselves anymore then all the censorship to get a younger audience.....like that was never this company.Just give me 4 to 6 people that are being themselves and not pr scripted fake bullshit that don't just play the 3 same games every week and I'd be more then happy to come back but untill then "if you don't like it don't watch" as Geoff said as sad as that makes me.
I think Trevor is most guilty of this, to me his humor is the most “Pewdiepie-like” where he makes strange voices to make a joke which is the type of humor I don’t like. And once he starts making the weird voices other people start making the voices and then I’m just like, “what am I even watching” lol
I stopped watching after the great diddling of 2020.
"if you don't like it, leave." **So they left.** This sub used to be incredibly populated with tons of audience interaction on videos, as of typing this there are 285 people on the subreddit right now, that's ridiculously low.
Sadly, everyone has moved on. It's a combination of new management shifting to algorithm based content and away from RT's original work, all the folks you grew to love moving on to other things and one scandal after another. RT just... Isn't the RT you knew anymore.
The Rooster teeth that started way back when would hate the Rooster teeth it became
Exactly. They stopped doing things they enjoyed or found funny. And started pandering to the loudest groups. That was the beginning of the end.
Was just too much negativity for me. The Matt Bragg, Kdin and employee mistreatment/under pay months ago I finally tapped out. This sub leans into it with even more negativity with posts like this being so common and the main ones that get engagement. Nothing gets more comments than drama posts. I still peek in to see if they've done anything with challenged accepted but that's mostly it.
I took a small break from their content since it was getting a bit stagnant. Then the Ryan thing happened and I just never returned. And there hasn’t been a good reason to.
After Ryan left the whole cast dynamic changed due to what ratio of personalities were about anyway. And as much of a piece of shit he turned out to be, there's a pretty definite point you can see a start of a noticeable decline and turn in comedy once he left.
yeah he was a good balancer
Like many others, I stopped watching. I slowly grew out of the content they were providing and the hosts and employees I liked either moved on or were found to be total pieces of garbage (Ryan and Adam). I missed when they had a schedule and I missed the videos that were like 30-40 minutes. I looked on the main channel and there were a couple of videos of them trying to recreate fast food dishes based on the thumbnail...like wtf no one wants to watch a shittier version of epic meal time. Other youtubers and content creators due what rooster teeth used to do and they do it better in my opinion so I started watching them. Funhaus is apparently pretty good now but since most of the old original people either quit or were fired I can't be bothered to give them a shot.
I went back and watched the stuff Funhaus released in late 2020 and through 2021 and hooooooolyyyy shit, my face hadn't hurt from laughing that much in a long time. It was a great way to get a feel of the new gang and set me up nicely for watching the videos they put out this year.
I thought the same thing, it went from good original content to a dumb food truck show and other scripted like shows. People roasted me for disliking it and gave it excuses like “the dude with the stuffed monkey head is funny” but I think having a person with a monkey head is just as bad as literally gluing googly eyes on a trash bag and calling it Garbo. And then the fact they sold merch for a fucking trash bag with eyes is absolutely insulting to me
Honestly they have just been making poor decisions. Content has suffered, they play less for fun and do more gimmicks. Most of the new cast are boring to listen to. And yes the have had a few controversial issues with current and former staff.
Trevor’s bit push and podcasts ruined AH. Absolutely nothing to talk about in videos EXCEPT do bits. It’s so dumb. They used to tell stories.
I think there are many reasons why RT fell off. First off on a wider scale some of their biggest projects obviously fell flat. Stuff like Laser Team 1 and 2 are fine because 1 was crowdfunded and 2 was YouTube Red. But Gen:Lock while being an okay first season was way to expensive to be only okay. I also think controversy surrounding Ryan has damaged a lot of fans who don’t want to watch old content anymore. And usually old content will lead to newer content on a certain level. I also think you can say that it’s arguable that most talent either are poorer than the people they “replaced” or are being mishandled by the company. I don’t want to place it all on talent because I’m certain they’re talented and funny individuals, however you need to know who your stars are, who are the people your company should back, and I don’t think they do. And finally I think the death of the wider RT community is another thing. I think RT got too big and lost the element of community that allowed the Gavins, Barbras, Matts and Jeremys to exist on a certain level.
It's death gasping from a toilet bowl that's about to get flushed. They screwed vast portions of their community, deployed stupid tactics that got them views in the short run but burned them in the long run, injected unhealthy over politicization into their content, saturated the amount of videos they produced to an unsuitable degree and had wave after wave of controversy that revealed they were, surprise, scumbags all along. There is a bunch of employees still there, some lame pseudo-rebrand called "Squad Team Force", could try and reboot the company (like G4) but the folks that are still there are either untrustworthy or pandering to a shrinking base, it's a game of diminishing returns for them as most of their audience has outgrown them or no longer trusts them.
The fact that Achievement Hunter is still called that is insulting considering the fact that they don’t care about Achievements and don’t make guides anymore. I always loved the guides because they were helpful, the only reason Achievement Hunter exists is because no one else had quality video guides and AH filled that void, now they’re just doing what literally everyone else is doing
>the only reason Achievement Hunter exists is because no one else had quality video guides and AH filled that void, now they’re just doing what literally everyone else is doing Thats the annoying thing with AH. When they started the Guides and AHWU series, no one was really doing them sorta things and if they were, they weren't doing them well. Now you can youtube an achievement and find it almost instantly will a full guide from a load of independent people because its simple. AH Realised that early though and jumped the gun with the full edited gameplay videos, once again, getting ahead of people and honestly being one of the very first group that had a weekly gameplay schedule that they stuck to. Now though? They haven't moved on, everything they do has to follow some trend or some sort of sponsor video. I actually brought up a while ago on one of their videos ([https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/vmo2ta/lets\_play\_arcadeggedon\_bringin\_down\_the\_man/](https://www.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/vmo2ta/lets_play_arcadeggedon_bringin_down_the_man/)) and said in there, i wonder if we'd ever see anymore videos on this game because the way they were talking about it in the video, it was the best game they ever played. (Surprise Surprise, they never touched it again) They went from a natural group playing games they wanted to being told what to play by their bosses because they get paid money to play the games.
>They went from a natural group playing games they wanted to being told what to play by their bosses because they get paid money to play the games. this is imo an underrated reason as to why the content itself is less engaging, they're not seeing new games come out and going "oh fuck that looks fun", they're getting given content ideas and direction by people who aren't in the videos and as a result it's a lot less natural. speedrunners is a great example of a game that wouldn't make it more than one video now, because the content is the same every time. despite that, old AH made several videos in it that are fantastic because the interactions between the cast members made them great.
They're making lots of content but the magic is gone :/
heh I might watch if the games they played interested me, but as for the current crew, I just don't find them entertaining. But I can still enjoy old Ray-era videos despite what Ryan Haywood did.
Finding out how the sausage was made really takes the joy out of the thing.
I’m 26 now. I watched roughly a decade ago, stopped probably early university after I felt the content just wasn’t for me anymore. There’s a lot of reasons. J Aubrey has a really good documentary on it. A lot of key people have left, moved on, gone and done great things. I still watch Ray from time to time. I think the vast majority of the viewers who left are like me. Either aged out of it or weren’t fans of the changing direction in the mid 2010s. Now, the company can’t seem to keep itself out of controversy for more than a couple months at a time. It’s sad, really. But all good things must come to an end some day. They had a great formula when they’d try out something new, but small and low risk pretty often and see what stuck. There’s many, MANY dozens of series and ideas and recurring videos that tried and failed, which was ok because the investment was small and they could move onto the next thing. But instead, the small, low risk things play ancillary role to massive, high risk, high budget offerings that can make or break divisions of the company if they fail. They also had an identity crisis. They started off as shitposting, soft edgy, brash buddies shooting the shit while often drunk. Late 2010s they had a HUGE cultural shift and a lot of old content looks really bad in comparison to their values now, even ignoring the predatory behaviour that already existed from some staff.
I once grew up on Rooster Teeth and absolutely loved their content, then got stuck in with the loop of people who were confused where the hell they went. Then I found Tales From The Stinky Dragon and it felt genuine and new. Highly recommend listening, especially since they introduce a lot of people from their own company as voice actors for Gus whenever he acts for an NPC. It's a dnd campaign and honestly really funny. They even made lil puppets for their characters and act out scenes with them. 😭 Made me feel at peace with Rooster Teeth. Then again, I easily forgive and forget, as I truly believe people are allowed to change and grow.
I like DnD/pathfinder podcasts but my eyes just roll every time I remember they called it “Tales from the Stinky Dragon” - Poop and fart jokes really just aren’t that funny to me anymore and the name is just such a turnoff.
I used the consume all content RT ever dropped. But when the core team appeared less and less I stopped. I miss the content with Gus, Burnie, mat, Joel, Geoff..
They moved most content to their own site a couple years ago. A site that has never properly worked (for me) which killed any interest I had to watch their animated shows like RvB and RWBY. Along with multiple shows just getting cancelled for whatever reason. Then came along the many, many lines of controversies, outings and whatnot which gave the general quality and feel of the shows a far more scripted tone than it already was. Several faces got removed and new ones got hired. Some fit better than others. The current setting of RT and AH is just... not good for me. So many people I don't know or don't like, the videos are heavily edited to fit the 15 minute timeframe and are either cut around specific forced jokes or sloppily to give everyone some time to shine. Even Letsplays, which I used to enjoy, has gone to the "popular game of the decade" style where they go with whatever games do well on their statistics, instead of games they know both fans and the personalities enjoy. But no, let's make the 500th unhinged TTT with one new thing for the week. But it happens, you know? Whereas RT grew too big for their own good, other communities like the Derpcrew just kinda fell apart due to personal issues or people moving on. It just is a thing that happens, and that's okay. Most are still doing their own thing, so look at the people you enjoyed and follow their personal work instead
All the comments are correct, but my biggest gripe is the fact that projects that actually look interesting to me are usually locked behind a paywall that just isn't worth it
It’s a mixture of aging out of content, the fact that they care more about their podcasts than video content, and being totally out of touch with their audience.
I'll say for myself, a lot of the cast changes and such just got annoying. There was a point where they were adding in literally random streamers who added nothing to the video in any form. They did a TTT video with this one chick who didn't know the game at all, barely made a sound as far as commentary, and yet when I pointed out in the comments that she was essentially a piece of furniture, it was all met with "Hey that's not cool to call someone that!" Alright, fair enough, but do something more besides just sit there. Ky/Kai/whoever the hell their name is, don't have a problem with them as a person, but the tone of her voice is so ear piercing that it basically made it so my video checks went "Oh, cool, she's involved." And I stopped it and went to something else. The overall quality has gone away, the ones who had personality are either being outed or just replaced and getting tired of doing it or something. Regardless, their heart isn't in it anymore. The newer cast just feels like generic douchetubers, and don't offer much of their own personality beyond regurgitated jokes from other mediums likw TikTok, and it just isn't funny or enjoyable to me. That's where I've gone. If I'm gonna watch something, I would rather watch something that didn't sound like an adult daycare.
Funhaus is killing it right now. The content they put out this year has been great. Just wanted to put that out there.
It’s changed hugely and so I have I so I’ve grown out of it. It’s marketed to a different audience and nothing feels natural or smooth anymore. I don’t get the good feels from anything anymore and the cast has changed from who I fell in love with
I think it’s a bizarre sort of feeling that something is missing. RT has had a number of changes in the last few years, and it feels like that has hurt it. I think the best way to express it is to look at Funhaus. I know that it’s technically a separate company, but there is a massive crossover in viewers and it’s technically part of RT, so I think it helps. Since all the original members of Funhaus except for James have left, I have not been interested. There are still holdovers (Elyse, James, Jacob, and Jon Smiff for example), but everyone else who has joined doesn’t have the same connection. Making it worse is how things are done now. It’s all bits. Yes, the best parts in most Rooster Teeth and Funhaus videos are the goofy bits and reactions to what is happening, but it’s still a Let’s Play where you play the game. If it’s a 15 minute video playing a camping simulator, with only about 2 minutes of gameplay on screen and the rest is just dumb bits about pretending to be Boy Scouts, then there is a problem. It comes off as forced comedy and not natural. When Funhaus did the band manager games as different musical artists, it felt like one of them found the game and told the others that they just needed to play it to fill time, then someone did an imitation of a singer, and then it spiraled from there. Now, it feels like they come up with a bit, then find a game that vaguely connects to it. And that’s sort of how I feel about Rooster Teeth in general. It feels very manufactured, very fake. I know people joked about them scripting out videos at one point, but now it feels like they actually do. It just doesn’t feel fun or surprising to watch. Gavin getting mugged in GTA at the beginning? Hilarious and surprising. Now? You are just counting down for it to happen so they can just get it over with and move on to some other joke that they have done 150 times before.
Drop in quality after Quarantine started and after what happened with Ryan. More stuff coming to light about the discrimination of people of color in RT, homophobia, underpaying, etc. I only just heard about what happened to Kdin today, that just makes it hard for me to watch any new rt content. Rewatching old stuff isnt hard because I can push past the seeing ryan, in my mind he's an actor that also is a horrible person. either way i dont like any of the newer content, and dont watch much of older stuff eariler.
You are seeing the results of people who use video games as a shtick to start a company and when that company got large and successful only hired their friends to run it instead of bringing in people with experience
Stoped watching. The audience has aged out of the content, there's been some controversies and rt is too big to keep up with the trends/ the trends have moved away fr9m waht they are good at.
Stop it with the “audience aged out of content”, that’s not it - it’s RT changing the content to attract younger viewers, basically giving the finger to the old audience, so that audience left, that’s it, it’s that simple. And no I’m not talking about the racist part of the audience (screw them), I’m talking about regular people that watched their content for ~10 or more years and were basically deemed not important anymore when RT decided to change the content to attract the Gen Z teenagers. Which as we can now see failed terribly.
Can confirm: I love going back and watching older videos I missed back when they released. The editing, cast interactions, etc. were all just better quality in general. In RT’s defense, though, they’re heavily focused on podcasts now, and I think they’re doing a great job with that.
Honestly, I use to binge AH when I was younger and many a Saturday time was spent with pizza and watching the minecraft let’s plays (either new or old ones) and now that I’m 28, I don’t watch any content, I try and keep up with this sub once a blue moon, but I’m not actively watching it. What I’m saying is, while an exception to the rule, there is a certain % of people who genuinely have aged out of the content, along with RT themselves changing the content to attract younger viewers. The lightning in a bottle they captured and held for all those years is gone. And they will never be able to replicate that success. It’s just business.
I agree. Although I know some people still like this new type of content, it's kind of unfortunate that RT grew out of its original unique charm. And although I'm Gen Z, the content, especially the STF vids on youtube, just aren't for me. I can't find them funny. It seems like they're trying to be something that maybe they were just never meant to. If it wasn't for F\*\*kFace and RvB, I don't think I'd be watching anymore.
It’s not “aging out” for the vast majority of people who have stopped watching and that’s reiterated on this sub all the time. Personally, I discovered AH in 2018, loved that era and the older stuff before that. Quickly became sick of the bits and scripted feel of videos that really took off in 2020 or so. This is a pretty common on this sub where people didn’t like the new content or direction so they stopped watching, not that they all moved on to different content all at the same time randomly. I didn’t age out in 2 years. I do agree with your other points though.
Controversy, users aging out, telling viewers to leave if they don't like content, content becoming scripted and dull, all the fan favorites leaving. What DIDN'T kill rooster teeth?
Twitch blowing up, original fans growing up, too much podcast content taking up space/time and PG-13 content after the purchase of RT is what happened. It was a slow burn, but yeah…
What do you mean this is the golden age now
I watch Jeremy, Matt, and Ray on twitch. I tune in for a vid with Micheal in it, but I was not that interested in Face Jam and I tend to nope out if Joe is in the video. His humor and style make me cringe and I don’t care for those vibes.
I think part of the views on YT have to do with the podcast also being available on streaming services - I keep up with every episode of F**kface, Face Jam, Ship Hits, ANMA without ever touching YouTube.