Viva La Dirt League Photo: Supplied
With more than 5.5 million subscribers on YouTube and in excess of 2.4 billion views on their channel, Viva La Dirt League are most definitely world famous - but mostly outside of New Zealand.
The “bunch of nerds who play games and make comedy sketches about games” have come a long way. Firm friends and business partners, Adam King, Rowan Bettjemen and Alan Morrison launched their channel in 2011 combining their love of video games with film-making.
Crowdfunding is not for the faint hearted. But the fans of the trio rallied around and have raised an astonishing $4 million to fund a new studio for the crew in west Auckland.
For the group - which took the plunge and went full time in 2017 - the new studio is the tangible result of 12 years of hard work.
Adam King Photo: supplied
The new studio will allow the group to take things to the next creative level Adam King told Culture 101’s Perlina Lau.
“It's like a culmination of all the things that we've needed for the longest time, a couple of permanent sets for our shows, one for our series Bored, it's a tech store set.
“And then also an interior medieval set, essentially, because New Zealand is strangely very devoid of castles and buildings prior to the 1700s.”
The $4m raised was testament to their loyal following, King said.
“As a New Zealander, asking for money is just the most personal cringe-inducing thing you could possibly do. Luckily, we know that our fans love us so much, that they're so generous with not only the time but also with opening their wallets. So, we were comfortable enough knowing that we could ask for money essentially, from our fans.”
And those fans are all over the world, he said.
“America, Europe, Britain are some of the top ones, Australia is a really big one as well.
“Although we're getting a lot of growth in the last couple of years in India and Southeast Asia, which is really cool.”
In fact, New Zealand is a small chunk of their audience.
“Sadly, we don't have many New Zealand fans. It's below 1 percent of our total audience.”
The wider world seems to embrace the New Zealand sense of humour, he said.
“The world really loves the New Zealand sense of humour, but New Zealanders, I don't know whether or not you'd call it tall poppy syndrome, or it's just we have that cringe of seeing ourselves in media.”
The trio are now hooked up with a big time US agency CAA which was opening doors for them, King said.
“Just to be able to turn to someone who can talk to some of the most powerful people in the world, or at least one or two degrees separated from some of the most powerful people in entertainment in the world, and make things happen.”
Now with a new studio and a growing audience Viva had plans to move into animation, podcasting and host a weekly variety show, King said.
