When you talk internet success stories, Rooster Teeth is inevitably one of the names that’s first blurted from someone’s lips.
The internet production company has come a long way from its humble origins and is now an international empire complete with podcasts, movies, TV shows, YouTube series, games, anime, live shows and global fan conventions.
And perhaps surprisingly – considering it was a company started by a group of dudes in their Texas garage – has become one of the shining examples of what the future of gaming culture looks like: as in, not just an endless sea of straight, white dudes.
Through their various productions Rooster Teeth has built a team of people on and off camera that reflect the diverse nature of the community: geeks of different genders, different races and different sexualities.
Barbara Dunkelman and Lindsay Jones, both 27, are two of the brand’s most recognisable faces and most vocal supporters when it comes to diversifying the gaming community.
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The pair spearheaded one of Rooster Teeth’s newest additions in 2016 – the Always Open podcast – which is a forum Dunkelman says covers everything from mental health to sexuality.
“I felt like it was a great thing to do for our fanbase, because we do have a lot of female fans and people of the LBGTQI+ community and a lot of male viewers who like to hear women talk about these things openly.
“The response has been overwhelming. We get tonnes of emails and messages from people saying things like ‘thank you for talking about this, I’ve never seen people on YouTube talk about things like asexuality, mental health and things that don’t often get talked about’.
“We have a young audience that are very influenced by what we do and what we talk about, so it’s great to be a positive role model in that way.”
Jones adds: “A lot of people might think ‘oh, it’s just sex talk’ but it’s not really - we’ve delved into sexual education.
“To be able to talk about those subjects that are normally taboo and to be open with it is wonderful and its created an intimacy with our audience we didn’t always have with a lot of our other productions.”
It’s something that has clearly worked: Always Open debuted in September with weekly episodes and thousands of listeners globally. Yet it did have some gender bias to overcome originally.
“I think the other thing that’s great, and I was just talking to Barbara about this before, is we didn’t want it to be gimmicky,” says Jones.
“Like ‘oh it’s just the girls’ show’ and I feel like all the women at the company are so different anyway that would be a misnomer.
“It’s good content that happens to be made by women.”
“What people are really connecting with is just the fact that we’re being ourselves and we just happen to be women and that’s all there is to it.
“It’s good content that happens to be made by women.”
And it’s not the only good content made by women within Rooster Teeth, with the company’s anime series RWBY – which follows an all-female team of monster fighters – going from strength-to-strength.
Dunkelman and Jones both voice main characters in the show, which debuted in 2013 and is now about to go into its fifth season.
“There’s even talk of a live action RWBY movie,” Jones adds, “Which would be amazing.”
The pair were among several Rooster Teeth personalities recently in Australia for RTX Sydney – a dedicated fan convention for the company and its creations – which was held at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre early this month.
“Every time we come to Australia there’s just so much passion,” Jones says.
“Walking the floor it’s always awesome seeing the fan interaction face to face is so great."
Source: Supplied
