After Machinima Shutdown, Rooster Teeth Revives ‘Inside Gaming’ and Rescues Other Machinima Shows

By Todd Spangler

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Rooster Teeth is serving as a lifeboat for eight Machinima shows — including a revival of “Inside Gaming” — that were stranded after ceased operations last month .

 is housed under Otter Media, the division of AT&T’s WarnerMedia. Under a reorg late last year, Machinima had moved from Warner Bros. to — before 81 Machinima staffers were laid off in January . Machinima also disabled its YouTube channel and moved its creator partners under Otter’s Fullscreen group.

Now, Rooster Teeth is rebooting “Inside Gaming,” a daily news show about games that was once Machinima’s most popular franchise, and will be home to a collection of Machinima titles, including “All Your History Are Belong To Us,” “Titanfall Dropout” and “Boss Battles.”

Tony Goncalves, Otter Media’s CEO and a former DirecTV exec, positioned the migration of Machinima content to Rooster Teeth as reinforcing RT’s appeal to gaming fans. “The addition of highly sought after Machinima programming and its talented creator network enables us to deliver unparalleled access to this coveted content and audience for consumers, creators and advertisers,” he said in a statement.

“Inside Gaming” started at Machinima in 2008, hosted and produced by gaming personality Adam Kovic. Over the years, the brand grew to include daily news updates, reviews, interviews, and awards shows. In 2015, Kovic and the “Inside Gaming” team left Machinima to found gaming channel “Funhaus” at Rooster Teeth.

The new “Inside Gaming” is led by newly appointed editor-in-chief Lawrence Sonntag (an original member of the “Inside Gaming” crew”) and includes Kovic, Bruce Greene and new member Alanah Pearce, a former IGN reporter. Starting Thursday, “Inside Gaming” will present daily news (Monday through Friday) with original reporting, analysis and commentary. Weekend content will provide longer-form dives into current topics in gaming culture, ranging from reporting on cultural movements in the scene, franchise retrospectives, rankings of gaming characters, and reviews of new releases.

“It’s surreal to return to a property that I worked on for years,” Sonntag said in a statement. “Only this time I’m older, wiser, and way better at video games. We can’t wait to share our love of gaming with the world!”

“Inside Gaming” is produced from Rooster Teeth’s L.A. and Austin studios and will be distributed on Rooster Teeth apps and “Inside Gaming” channels including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Twitch. Rooster Teeth’s news channel “The Know” and staffers from Machinima’s social team have been combined with “Inside Gaming.”

In addition to the relaunch of “Inside Gaming,” Rooster Teeth is launching an archive of show’s content from 2008-15 comprising all the non-editorial videos from the show. That includes the “Inside Gaming” podcast and gameplay series “Steam Roulette,” “Inside Gaming Q&A,” “The Sims” and “GTA.”

Rooster Teeth also will bring back other Machinima titles and new content over the coming months including:

• “Hedgehog for Hire”: Sonic is washed up and out of work. He needs cash fast and will do anything to pay the rent. All 100 episodes and eight all-new episodes premiere on March 19.
• “All Your History Are Belong To Us”: Docu-series that details the game development history of favorite games and developers, including “Call of Duty” and “Halo” and Bungie, Blizzard, and Valve. All episodes start streaming March 22.
• “Assassin’s Creed Musical”: Musical numbers exploring the feeling and intentions behind the popular game.
• “Minecraft Horror Story”: Loosely based on FX’s “American Horror Story,” the show follows the story of a cursed house and its different owners and visitors over the course of a century.
• “Minecraft: The N00b Adventures”: N00bly, Minecraft’s newest player, explores and adventures through the game with his newfound pals Snake and Garfunkel.
• “Titanfall Dropout”: In-game series about Dex and Gif, two engineers who have to repair and deploy Titans to the pilots they hate.
• “Boss Battles”: Iconic video game and pop-culture bosses engage in a no-holds-barred battles to the end.

“We’re thrilled to be able to add these iconic titles to the Rooster Teeth library and create new content under ‘Inside Gaming’ as we continue to grow our [subscription VOD service] to match our community’s desire for gaming entertainment that’s authentic, funny and informative,” said Matt Hullum, Rooster Teeth’s co-founder and CEO.

Rooster Teeth is a digital-media pioneer, founded in 2003, whose top franchises include long-running sci-fi spoof “Red vs. Blue.” It was acquired in 2014 by Fullscreen , which then became part of Otter Media (a joint venture of Chernin Group and AT&T). AT&T bought out Chernin Group’s stake in the JV last year and folded Otter Media into the group.

Pictured above: Adam Kovic (l.) and Bruce Greene on the set of “Inside Gaming”