About Edgeworks Entertainment

Edgeworks Entertainment is a video production company specializing in webseries and new media. Founded in 2005 by Alexander Winn, Edgeworks productions have been praised by the Editor-in-Chief of WIRED magazine, showcased on MTV and NPR, featured as the cover stories of the Dallas Observer and the Houston Press, and have garnered over 90 million hits to date.

After an exciting first run with the multi-award winning Halo 2-machinima series The Codex and The Heretic, Edgeworks has returned with its first live-action webseries, The League of Ordinary Gamers, which has opened to an enthusiastic fan response and great reviews.

The Codex took machinima to new levels of professionalism, catching Microsoft by surprise, and its success and popularity was directly responsible for the Game Content Usage Rules implemented by Microsoft in 2006. Edgeworks continues to see the internet as the future of film and video, and is poised as one of the premiere new media production companies on the internet today. For more information, contact us.

Edgeworks Entertainment. On the edge. Off the charts.

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History of Edgeworks Entertainment

One could say that Edgeworks Entertainment began at 5:00 in the afternoon on November 9, 2004. On that day, Ryan Luther got together with Alexander Winn to try out Halo 2, which had only been released that morning. Like many players, they were eager to try out the new-and-improved multiplayer features that had been advertised so heavily. To that end, they began exploring the new multiplayer maps, discussing first impressions as they went.

One map called Waterworks featured an enormous cave with a structure in the middle. While wandering the map, Alexander and Ryan bounced ideas back and forth about what the function of the structure could have been. Idea led to idea, and before long they had an entire story mapped out centering on that structure, which they had taken to calling "the Codex." Combining Ryan's love of video games and Alexander's passion for filmmaking, they decided to take that story and turn it into a machinima series.

Production on The Codex began almost immediately. Following an erroneous rumor that Bungie was going to release Halo 3 on February 9th, 2005, the Codex Crew picked that date to release their first episode. A pre-release trailer was posted, and the response was so immediate that the Codex website used up its full monthly quota of bandwidth in two and a half hours. A week later, having found new hosting space, Episode 1 was released to rave reviews.

What followed was seven months of rapidly rising popularity, with numerous instances of press coverage and international attention, culminating in a captivating series finale during which the Codex website registered over 2 million hits in just three days. The series included a cast and crew of over forty people, and featured an original musical score as well as numerous digital effects and a cumulative feature-length running time.

The next year, again on February 9th, a prequel series was announced called The Heretic. Produced that summer and including revolutionary custom CGI sequences of a caliber never before seen in the Halo machinima community, The Heretic quickly became a hit in its own right, beginning another flurry of public interest and popularity.

After the completion of The Heretic, Edgeworks underwent a fundamental transition: no longer a purely machinima-oriented production team, Edgeworks began to reform itself into a broader new media company, releasing websites and community-building tools in addition to its new live-action webseries. This signaled the company's shift toward a broader and more comprehensive focus, and underlined Edgeworks' commitment to utilizing the unique aspects of online production, marketing and distribution in new and innovative ways.

At Edgeworks, we believe that the Internet, with its immendiate access to the audience, its collaborative culture and its broader range of possible content, is the future of the entertainment industry. We are challenging the idea that only multi-million dollar studios can produce stories worth watching, and we are demonstrating that with a talented group of passionate people, a loyal fanbase, and a clear vision of the future, a new kind of storytelling can arise out of thin air.

Since its founding in 2005, Edgeworks has firmly established itself as a presence in the new media community, and as new series and productions continue to be developed, Edgeworks Entertainment continues to live up to its motto: "on the edge, off the charts."