"It's like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters, it seemed like a horrible idea that could have ended the world, but has actually turned out pretty well."
Read The Full Interview
GameSpy Examines the Teeth of the Rooster
By Dave Kosak
An interview with the creators of Red vs. Blue focuses on their latest project using the Sims2 engine.
All it took was a gang of gamers, a few copies of Halo, some video capture equipment, and some creative letter-boxing. Suddenly, Halo went from being a great game to the perfect movie set, and the gang of gamers became Rooster Teeth productions. Their short Internet films spread across the 'net through word-of-mouth, and their first series -- "Red vs. Blue," featuring two argumentative teams of Halo Spartans -- is already on its 43rd hilarious episode.
Recently the team at Rooster Teeth went in a very different direction and launched a new series using The Sims 2 as their game engine. "The Strangerhood" parodies sitcoms and reality TV with Rooster Teeth's own blend of snappy dialogue and quick camera takes. From Halo to Sims? That's a pretty crazy leap.
We sat down and talked with Rooster Teeth founders Matt Hullum, Gustavo Sorola, and Geoff Fink about their new series, filming with The Sims, and what they thought of Halo 2. Actually, we didn't really "sit down" with them. We e-mailed them, edging us closer to a future where humans need not come into personal contact with one another at all. Here's how it all went down:
GameSpy: Congratulations on the new series! Strangerhood is on its second episode. What's the response been like so far?
Matt: Thanks. Response has been really great, even from our parents, and they never like anything we do.
Gus: It's been overwhelmingly positive. We're glad that people have been so accepting of a project so different from our first one.
Geoff: My mother hates it, and she hates me. I'm so ashamed.
GameSpy: Are you seeing a lot of crossover with your Halo fan-base, or is it pretty much a whole new audience?
Matt: We've had a lot of crossover, but the cool thing is seeing new fans online that found our site for the first time because of the Strangerhood or through the Sims2 community. Surprisingly, your diehard Sims2 fan and your diehard Halo fan usually tend to be somewhat different people. Go figure.
Gus: There has definitely been quite a bit of crossover. I enjoy getting e-mail from people talking about how they like The Strangerhood, and how that Red vs Blue thing is kind of cool also.
Geoff: It's like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters, it seemed like a horrible idea that could have ended the world, but has actually turned out pretty well.
GameSpy: Would you have considered doing Strangerhood if EA hadn't given you so much support? Or was it an idea you were already cooking up?
Matt: The Strangerhood was one of several ideas we had been kicking around for a while. When we were first introduced to Sims2 at the last E3, we immediately realized it would be a perfect fit for the story. Luckily EA thought so too.
Gus: We are always looking at new games that are coming in order to try and find new games we can use to tell other story ideas we have. Sims2 happened to be one of the games we were really excited about. and when we finally got to take a good look at it back in May at E3 we realized that it would be great for what we wanted to do.
Geoff: It was either that, or Mary Kate and Ashley Go To The Mall. It was a tough choice, but we are comfortable with our decision.
GameSpy: ...big Sims fans, then?
Matt: Absolutely, and of the entire Sim franchise. I'm still trying to catch up on all the sleep I missed after discovering the original SimCity years and years ago.
Gus: Of course! Several years back Burnie made a house in the original Sims and filled it with a bunch of friends of his (most of whom now work with Rooster Teeth) and let them live their daily lives. If I remember correctly, I died in a fire that resulted from trying to bake a cake. I wasn't so much a fan after the game killed me.
Geoff: He still can't bake a cake to this day. He's scarred.
GameSpy: About how many people do you have there at Rooster Teeth?
Matt: Ten. And two cats. And some deer. And I think an armadillo has been going through the trash. We're in kind of a rural area.
Gus: There's a few of us. The people most involved in the day to day production aspect would probably be Burnie, Matt, Geoff, Gus, Jason and that armadillo. I'm really glad we brought that little guy on board. Jason is really working out well.
Geoff: The armadillo is kind of pushy. I don't think he likes me. - Geoff
GameSpy: Is it a stretch to be doing both projects at once, or have you guys been expanding?
Matt: Our waistlines have been expanding, because all we do is eat and play video games. Working on two shows at once is very difficult. I'm sure if we ever saw our families, they would complain about how little time we spend with them.
Gus: The only thing expanding around here is the amount of work. Last weekend I was awake for almost 70 hours straight doing work on the projects. By the time I finally went to sleep I was hallucinating that everyone had little green diamonds above their heads.
Geoff: Don't let Gus fool you with his "how hard I work" mumbo jumbo. He's just as fat as the rest of us.
GameSpy: What's the future here? Paramount-sized movie lots filled with game machines producing hundreds of series and feature machinima films? Or are you going to just stick with a couple projects?
Matt: We're going to try not to bite off more than we can chew. Right now we're operating at our max, but hopefully down the line we'll be able to grow and continue doing new stuff. Our fans have been really good to us, so we want to be good to them by not getting overextended and turning out lesser quality work.
Gus: We are very happy with where we're at right now. I like the idea of having a small close knit group that does all the work because we really act like our own check and balance system when it comes to new ideas. We all work really well together and can maintain pretty tight standards in quality.
Geoff: We can only juggle so many balls. Two to be exact. Two balls. I guess that's not really juggling though, in the strict sense of the word.
GameSpy: Which brings up a good question. Machinima! There's actually an Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences. Do you guys buy into the idea that this is a whole new art form? Or are you just doing your thing?
Matt: When we first started Red vs. Blue we thought we were completely original. We never imagined that there were other people out there using video games to make movies, much less that it was a new art form with a hard to pronounce name and an official organization. Seeing the work that other people are doing has been really inspirational. Machinima is definitely growing fast, and as more games like Sims2 add in movie capturing features, it's likely to grow even faster.
Gus: I refuse to recognize the difficulty to pronounce the word "machinima." I say let's work together and re-brand this type of movie making "rendervision." See? Doesn't that sound much better? Plus you don't have to constantly ask people if you're saying it properly. Rendervision ... it just rolls off the tongue.
Geoff: I don't like words.
GameSpy: Okay, so let's talk about Strangerhood. In Red vs. Blue, the plot was pretty evident to anyone who played Halo -- or any CTF first-person shooter, for that matter. Two teams, two bases, the red guys hate the blue guys and vice-versa because that's just the way it is. But with Strangerhood, you have to introduce the plot from scratch. Moreover, you've got like a dozen characters. Was it hard to get something going from the ground up? Was it tough to capture the Internet's short-attention-span audience, many of whom probably didn't read this entire question?
Matt: What..? Sorry, I got distracted somewhere around the fifth line of your question. Yes, it is difficult to introduce characters and plots and ideas with absolutely no common point of reference for the audience whatsoever, and to do so in five-minute chunks released every couple weeks compounds that difficulty. We have one big advantage with The Strangerhood though, in that it's basically a satire of TV sitcoms and reality shows. Hopefully, viewers will make the connection and that will draw them in that much faster. So far it seems to be working.
It's definitely different. The basic premise of The Strangerhood gets set up in the first couple of episodes, then after that people can watch any episode they want or skip any episode they want, much like in a conventional sitcom. Since it isn't in a serial format it may actually lend itself better to short attention spans.
Geoff: Far too many words. Didn't I just say I hated them? Sheesh.
GameSpy: You built the Strangerhood sets yourself. Are you whizzes with the Sims2 build mode? Did you have to do anything funky, like remove whole wall sections to get just the right angles?
Matt: We have to do a lot of funky. We have multiples of almost everything, the lots, the houses, the rooms in the houses; we even have multiple versions of the same character with different personality traits. When angry Wade gets to wrap for the day, happy Wade might still be on the clock.
Gus: When it came time to design the houses I think we each looked at the houses we had to make and then made one house our own personal project. I had to make Dutchmiller's house, and I just couldn't see Dutchmiller being the type of person who likes a bathroom attached to his master bedroom. So, logically, I put it down the hall. I think he really appreciated that extra bit of thought and it shows in his performance.
Geoff: I sometimes do a funky little dance when we are making the episodes. I think everyone finds it inspirational. Gus smells funky when we make the episodes. Everyone just finds that gross.
GameSpy: What about lip-syncing? You re-record the dialogue so that it fits with the sims' mouth movements, right?
Matt: Often, yes. It is a trial and error process, with a lot of errors. We sometimes end up re-recording dialog to match the shot, but sometimes we find a better shot that matches the dialog we already have recorded. The tough part is usually changing the words in the line without changing the meaning of the line, so that it looks right but still advances the plot or character development as we need it to.
Gus: We bought a couple of thesauruses to help with all the synonyms we need in order to make sure our audio looks like it fits well with the video.
Geoff: Mostly we use the thesauruses for the armadillo. He is short, and needs to use them to sit on.
GameSpy: C'mon, isn't that frustrating? Don't you just want to put a fist through the monitor sometimes?
Matt: No. Monitors are expensive and our hands are frail and weak from too little exercise. Occasionally, though, you do want to grab an exceptionally annoying sim actor and drop him in a pool with no ladder.
Gus: Only when Dr. Chalmers' annoyingly weak bladder kicks in again and you have to take a break so that he doesn't soil himself for the fourth time in a day.
Geoff: Gus pees more than any sim. He has the bladder of a pea.
GameSpy: About how long does it take to film a five-minute episode? And then how long does it take to edit?
Matt: The filming and editing happens almost simultaneously, so it is difficult to say. It takes over a week right now, but we're getting better at it as we did with Halo and Red vs. Blue.
GameSpy: How exactly would you, uh, 'coach' a sim? Seems to me they'd be troublesome actors. I can't even get two of them to agree who should use the toilet, much less stick to a script.
Matt: That is a challenge. And bribing them with simoleons never seems to work.
Gus: As Matt mentioned we luckily have clones of every character so when Wade1 is being grumpy and a jerk we just put him in the other room and then walk Wade2 in to take his place. I imagine it's much like what working with the Olsen twins on Full House was like.
Geoff: Gus has a Full House poster in his bedroom. It's true!
GameSpy: It looks like you've got some professionals on your staff. Kathleen Zuelch and Matt Hullum have, like, real Hollywood movies on their resume. Is the team at Rooster Teeth generally industry folk? Basically, what are your day jobs? Or... is THIS your day job?
Matt: rofessionals? You've clearly never seen any of the movies we worked on.
Gus: Sadly, the only industry I'm a part of is the IT industry. I say sadly because I hate it. If you work in the IT industry or have even met anybody who works in IT, you know exactly what I mean.
Geoff: I'm a slum lord. I exist on the rent Gus gives me to live in my spare bedroom.
GameSpy: Where'd you get the name 'Rooster Teeth?'
Matt: It's a euphemism for a popular quote from Red vs. Blue.
GameSpy: So..... What do you guys think of Halo 2?
Matt: Pure awesometasticness, as Caboose might say.
Gus: Every night I'm up till at least 3AM playing online with a bunch of friends. It's definitely hurting productivity.
Geoff: It's hurting my sleep schedule. Gus screams like a girl when he gets fragged.
GameSpy: What do you think you'll do with the Red vs. Blue series now that Halo 2 is out? Will you keep 'filming' in Halo 1?
Matt: We've already released an episode using Halo 2. We can't say too much more about what future episodes will bring at the moment. We don't want to give any future plot points away.
Gus: I'm afraid I have to give you the standard "no comment" answer on that one. We don't like to give out any spoilers or talk about future plotlines. I'm really happy with the storyline we came up with for the transition from Halo to Halo 2.
Geoff: Gus has already said too much. What a jerk.
GameSpy: And lastly, any hints as to what we can expect from the future episodes of Strangerhood? C'mon. We won't tell anybody.
Matt: Okay cool. We'll tell you all the big secrets right after the interview!
Gus: The last time I told someone spoilers about upcoming episodes Matt got mad and locked me in the cage. I don't want to go back in there.
Geoff: Wade and Griggs have a baby in Season Four.
GameSpy: Thanks for your time! Keep up the funny and we'll keep laughing at it!
Matt: Thanks. Keep up the spy.
Gus: Later. I have to feed the armadillo now.
Geoff: Bye. I love you.
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