- Joined
- Jun 10, 2021
And post on r/funhaus that highlights the major points, archived below.
It blows my mind how he makes around 2.6k € in fucking LA.
- Lawrence starts saying he doesn't want this to "talk shit" the entire time about his former employers.
- Fullscreen initially only wanted SOME of the Inside Gaming crew, but they stood united and were all hired together.
- Lawrence indicates Fullscreen didn't pay them as much as promised after taking a chunk of the revenue.
- Lawrence saw the atmosphere being "spend money now, worry two years later" with decisions and consequences. (Both at Machinima and Fullscreen.)
- Lawrence claims Machinima and Fullscreen would push the talent harder and harder to get even a tiny drop of blood from a stone.
- When Lawrence saw the same signs at Fullscreen/RT as he did in Machinma he proclaims "This was suppose to be the good one!"
- Lawrence goes into the history of how MCNs get into subscription services (ala Rooster Teeth's membership). Says original content would get too expensive for little gain in trying to compete with Netflix. Says executives would incorrectly think people would flock to pay for these services and skip Netflix.
- Says RoosterTeeth creative mentality changed once "premium content" became the focus and a lot of pressure was put onto people to make it successful (and you would be considered a failure if you didn't hit a quota).
- Lawrence says this did expand his creativeness and gave him some opportunities he wouldn't get if he didn't try them out. Shaun says it didn't mean you would get financial benefit from it.
- Lawrence claims Machinima was only paying him $35-40K yearly in LA and it was one of the reasons he quit. Sean said he was only making $36K as a community manager for Fullscreen.
- Another reason Lawrence became independent was seeing years of people below him in terms of creativeness were moving up the ladder and getting paid more compared to himself.
- "It was do your job, and do these other things too. Do your job and fix these monetary issues we keep getting ourself into." -Lawrence "Yeah, the workload was insane there." -Shaun
- Lawrence said crunching at work one day to then go to a full day taping where he got eliminated early in the video, and had to sit on the sidelines all day, was a tipping point for him wanting to quit.
- Rooster Teeth laying off 25% of the Inside Gaming crew, despite working hard to manage the brand, was essentially the final nail in the coffin for Lawrence to quit.
- Lawerence says working for MCNs did give him a core audience and help his independent projects grow.