LOS ANGELES — With 125 million viewers watching more
than 1 billion of its videos a month, Machinima may be the most-watched
channel that’s not on TV.
The specialty channel devoted to video-game
aficionados — which offers game walk-throughs, gaming news, exclusive
trailers and original series — is the channel with the fourth most
subscribers on YouTube, itself the world’s third most popular website,
according to online measurement firm ComScore Inc.
Machinima may represent the next best hope of
programming to the so-called Lost Boys, those young male consumers, once
Hollywood’s most dependable audience, who are increasingly reluctant to
leave their video-game consoles and Facebook pages to watch movies and
TV or listen to music. It may also rewrite the rules for Internet
programming.
“You could argue that Machinima is to gaming what MTV
was to music in its early days,” said Michael E. Kassan, chairman and
chief executive of MediaLink, an influential digital-media consulting
firm.
The channel got its start in 2000 as a website for
filmmakers using video-game environments and characters to create
original stories. In 2005, brothers Allen and Philip DeBevoise acquired
the website and turned it into a destination for gaming and gaming
culture.
Machinima has reached beyond its roots. Last year, it
introduced live-action programs, including the zombie apocalypse show
“Bite Me” and the retro “X-Files” show “RCVR.” The shows’ appeal, and
the Internet’s borderless reach, has given Machinima enviable
distribution for original programming.
“With YouTube and the platforms on the Internet,
they’re in every country and on every device. It means we are instantly
global,” Machinima Inc. Chief Executive Allen DeBevoise said.
Machinima is part of what’s been called the “third
wave” in video entertainment, each part of which revolutionized the
entertainment industry, DeBevoise said. ABC, CBS and NBC dominated the
broadcast-television era. Cable and satellite technology opened the
doors to new, more specialized entertainment channels, including HBO,
ESPN, MTV and CNN. Now the Internet is poised to overturn the reigning
paradigm yet again, he said.
Machinima would appear to be proof that YouTube’s
global reach — 800 million users who watch 4 billion videos a day —
allows programmers to amass sizable audiences around niches.
“Machinima has done an impressive job building one of
the largest channels on YouTube, with a viewership that rivals the top
20 cable networks,” said Robert Kyncl, global head of content for
YouTube parent company Google Inc. “They’re successful because they
understand their fans and deliver to them the content they love.”
With YouTube’s help, he said, Machinima “can reach a global audience with the click of a button.”
The size of Machinima’s audience has not gone unnoticed by advertisers.
Telecommunications giant Verizon Communications Inc.
used the gaming network to promote the availability of a selection of
live FiOS TV channels over Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console. Consumer
products colossus Unilever made Machinima, with its heavy concentration
of male viewers ages 13 to 34, a part of its Premature Perspiration
campaign to promote Axe antiperspirant.
“Machinima makes sense for our brand strategy, as
gaming is a huge passion point for our target” customers, Axe Brand
Director Gaston Vaneri wrote in an email. “They helped deliver close to 2
million video views on our Premature Perspiration video content.”
Vaneri said the shifting media landscape presents
challenges for brands, which is why it offers “snackable” pieces of
content wherever its “guys” can be found.
Wired magazine first reported in 2004 on the Lost
Boys — men ages 18 to 34 who were migrating away from TV and spending
more time online, watching DVDs or playing video games. Although a
majority of them still watch five hours or more of TV a day, according
to the annual Magid Media Futures of TV study, 18 percent say they view
one hour or less a day.
“Machinima reaches a notoriously difficult group of
viewers,” said Tim Hanlon, founder and chief executive of the Vertere
Group, an emerging-media consulting firm in Chicago.
DeBevoise and his team spent last year experimenting
with different kinds of content, guessing its core audience was
interested in watching more than game trailers.
“They watch ‘The Walking Dead’ on television; they
watch ‘Game of Thrones’ on HBO; they go see ‘Dark Knight’ from Warner
Bros. in theaters,” DeBevoise said. “So there’s other content that’s not
just gaming. We started thinking, ‘What would that programming model
look like?’ ”
Machinima began distributing “Bright Falls,” a
live-action series inspired by an Xbox 360 game called “Alan Wake.” The
game network also piloted “Bite Me,” an original action comedy about a
zombie outbreak in which the only humans able to survive the
flesh-eating hordes are — in a wink to its target audience — gamers.
Each episode of “Bite Me” attracted 3 million to 4
million viewers — enough to catch the attention of the film and TV
studio Lionsgate and its digital media president, Curt Marvis. The
studio, which used the YouTube channel to promote movies such as “The
Expendables” and “Conan the Barbarian,” partnered with Machinima on a
second season of “Bite Me.” The episodes premiere March 6 on YouTube,
then get stitched together into six half-hour television episodes to air
on Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.’s FearNet cable channel. Ultimately,
they will be available for purchase through Apple Inc.’s iTunes and
Amazon.com.
Machinima’s greatest success came with “Mortal
Kombat: Legacy,” a nine-part series made for about $2 million. The
series, inspired by the tournament fighting game, got 50 million YouTube
views, DeBevoise said. “We’re told it’s the most successful Web series
ever.”
Now Machinima has the attention of Wall Street. In
December, the company retained the investment firm Allen & Co. in an
effort to raise $25 million. The money is intended to finance the
acquisition and creation of more premium content, bolster the company’s
ad sales team and develop technology, said Sanjay Sharma, Machinima’s
senior vice president of business development.
Industry insiders speculate that Machinima is looking
to extend its already-popular brand across additional platforms, such
as Facebook, or to smartphones and tablets powered by Apple or Google
software.
“You’re going to watch Machinima take the base that
they’ve built, which is extraordinary, and build it further with
original programming,” MediaLink’s Kassan said. “Machinima may be that
success story that people point to … the first company to break through
(on YouTube) to the next level.”
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%uFFFD2012 the Los Angeles Times
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