DramaFever is an interesting service because it proves that niches are working online. The company has been bringing Korean dramas to U.S. and Canadian audiences, offering users the option to either watch ad-supported shows for free or subscribe to an ad-free version. DramaFever has also been supplying Korean dramas to sites like Hulu.com, and it’s been successful at bringing this type of content to new audiences. Seventy-five percent of the service’s viewers are not Asian, Bak told me during an earlier interview.

The company now wants to use the new influx of money to venture both into new types of content as well as new markets. On top of Bak’s list are telenovelas, which he sees as a natural fit for the company’s focus on TV dramas. And for that type of content, NALA is a great partner: the investment company is headed by Emilio Diez Barroso, whose family owns Televisa. But Bak told me that Bollywood, K-Pop and even TV shows from Turkey have a lot of potential as well.

Geographically, Europe is one of DramaFever’s next targets, with an expansion possibly coming before the end of this year. “Today, we are a North America-focused business,” explained Bak. “As we go into Europe, Bertelsmann is a great partner.”

DramaFever originally announced its Series B round of funding for $4.5 million in March. The round led by MK Capital also includes money from YouTube co-founder Steve Chen and Google product management director Benjamin Ling. Additional new investors include Machinima co-founder and CEO Allen DeBevoise and Lowermybills.com founder and CEO Matt Coffin. And if that wasn’t enough name-dropping already, former Fox Television Entertainment Group Chairman Sandy Grushow just joined the company as an advisor as well.

Check out my previous interview with DramaFever CEO Seung Bak below:

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Check out a complete list of the top 10 publishers on YouTube in January, according to comScore:

Note: This data doesn’t include Vevo, which is tracked separately by comScore. It also just lists views and viewers in the U.S. Worldwide, Machinima had 1.3 billion monthly views and 149 million uniques in January.

Our long-time contributor Liz Shannon Miller recently did an interview with Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise. Here’s how DeBevoise explained his company’s success on YouTube:

Two elements were key to Machinima building that following — first, its approach to platforms, focusing exclusively on YouTube instead of diversifying. “We decided not to put all our content on every platform, instead saying ‘let’s just get this one right,’” DeBevoise said. Machinima currently has over 4.1 million subscribers on the platform.

Machinima is also part of YouTube’s new channel initiative, which was officially announced last October. The other participants of the initiative may not be as big as Machinima, and many of the participating channels only launched in the last few weeks, so it’s a little too early draw any conclusions anyway. However, early data from participants like Phil DeFranco and the VlogBrothers already looks very promising.

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Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise, in the company's West Hollywood offices.

Drama is usually a tough sell for web audiences, but in 2011, Machinima used its primary YouTube channel to distribute three high-profile series: Kevin Tancharoen’s Mortal Kombat: Legacy, Felicia Day’s Dragon Age: Redemption and David van Eyssen’s RCVR. The first episode of Mortal Kombat currently has 16.3 million views, with following episodes averaging four to five million, while Dragon Age and RCVR‘s premiere episodes each racked up over a million views, with subsequent episodes earning solid six-figure viewcounts. In addition, all three shows were nominated for awards at the inaugural IAWTV Awards last month, with RCVR picking up best drama.

While it’s true that both Kombat and Dragon Age are both video game-inspired, the three shows — a gritty martial arts thriller with some supernatural elements, a high fantasy epic and an X-Files-esque conspiracy drama — are relatively diverse in style and content. However, what they have in common, according to Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise, can be categorized as “extraordinary characters in an extraordinary world.”

In a sit-down interview, DeBevoise attributed the company’s success with drama online in large part to its audience of video game enthusiasts. “It’s an adrenaline-oriented audience that engages with mythologies. Other companies have a demographic that’s more random — but we have 95 percent males, and we know there’s content they care about,” he said.

Two elements were key to Machinima building that following — first, its approach to platforms, focusing exclusively on YouTube instead of diversifying. “We decided not to put all our content on every platform, instead saying ‘let’s just get this one right,’” DeBevoise said. Machinima currently has over 4.1 million subscribers on the platform, and is one of the participants in YouTube’s Made For Web channel initiative.

In addition, rather than trying to appeal to all video game fans at once, it started with one small specific audience and then grew outwards. “First, we focused all our energies on Halo [gamers], then grew to shooter games, and then we went broader,” he added. “Machinima now stands for game-centric programming — not just gaming.”

That doesn’t mean Machinima would ever attempt a pivot, though: “Our core gaming audience will be something we never abandon,” DeBevoise said. “But we don’t have to give up gaming content to bring in a new audience. The shelf life on YouTube is essentially unlimited.”

Machinima has room to evolve, though; DeBevoise looks to premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime as inspiration. “We want to become a more consistent global entertainment commodity. There are always two or or three shows going on on HBO — are we doing that in every category? No, not yet,” he said.

He also looked to the importance of establishing franchises: “What’s our Simpsons? What’s our Sopranos? We need to figure out what our big franchises are.” Zombie comedy Bite Me is returning for a second season March 6, but followups to RCVR, Mortal Kombat or Dragon Age have yet to be announced.

Most importantly, though, DeBevoise expressed interest in finding content that taps into the zeitgeist of this current generation, reflecting upon the way movies like The Godfather resonated during their time. “We think about what would be The Godfather for us — really compelling but really rooted in our audience,” DeBevoise said.

DeBevoise pinpointed several elements that might connect with the Machinima crowd — the CGI aesthetic that permeates both modern gaming and much genre filmmaking, the distinction between a virtual world and the real world — and also the fact that in order to achieve that goal, the company needs a talent base. “We can’t be HBO without great writers or directors,” he said.

It’s overstating to say that what Machinima is doing is the future of all entertainment. But it does represent one of the most important trends of the evolving digital age — content that achieves success by knowing its audience intimately.

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Beginning on Nov. 9, a team of Machinima.com gamers began playing the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 24/7 in four hour shifts, the activity live streamed on Ustream. Their goal? To achieve 15 Prestige status, which essentially meant beating the game 15 times in a row until they reached the highest possible level of achievement. They finally completed the challenge on Dec. 3 — over three weeks later.

While the event served as an epic promotion for Black Ops, Machinima CEO Allen DeBevoise said via phone that no money changed hands between Machinima.com, Call of Duty publisher Activision or game developer Treyarch. Instead, the 15 Prestige live stream was an experiment on the part of Machinima to see if this sort of event would work as a potential opportunity for advertisers.

“A lot of these big games are really a pop cultural event,” DeBevoise said, which was what Machinima hoped to capture — the emotion that accompanies large-scale launch events like the release of a new video game. Because the Black Ops event started the same day as the game’s release, Machinima.com’s players were discovering the game’s secrets at the same time as other gamers, who were interacting with them through live chats and Twitter.

The live stream received a total of 4.1 million live views and 5.1 million on demand views, with a total of 1.65 million hours of video being watched. Those numbers are impressive, though DeBevoise pointed out that those numbers are spread out over a much longer period of time than the typical live stream.

“If a TV exec had been in the room, they would have asked ‘Why would you do a live event that last for three weeks’?” DeBevoise said. “That’s the Olympics, that’s the World Cup — that’s a multi-million-dollar event.” But live streaming doesn’t cost millions, and not only would future events be monetizable through pre-roll ads on YouTube and Ustream, but Machinima “definitely” plans to offer a similar experience to its advertisers — the majority of whom are video game publishers.

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Fox has ordered a pilot presentation of the Reveille/Machinima.com project Heel, which a release describes as “a love story between a man and his sociopathic dog.” The premise seems like one that would fit right in with Seth McFarlane’s animated comedy empire, though writer Chris Cluess has no Family Guy credits to his name — just Mad TV, Night Court, Cheers, SC TV and the 1991 Simpsons video game. (Not too shabby.)

While production is being overseen by Reveille, the Machinima.com team, including executive producers Andy Shapiro and Machinima.com CEO Allen DeBevoise, will work with the writers to help create the seven-to-nine minute presentation. By using “one of the major game engines” (which is as yet unspecified, though options include Unreal, Source, and Crytek) to create the animation, DeBevoise stated that “The creative team can alter camera moves, lenses, angles, character performances and edits in real time, thereby rendering the episodic animated television show into a virtual sitcom style of production.”

DeBevoise also promises that since the content lives in a game engine, new “interactive applications” will be possible for the show’s future as a home video property, with consumers potentially being able to interact with the series like they would a video game. “Because the show is running inside a realtime interactive application,” he said via phone, “You can layer interactive applications on it very simply. Or you can just watch it.”

According to DeBevoise, Fox’s interest in Heel was driven by the quality of the script, not the technology involved. “There are consumer experiences that are added thanks to the machinima process,” he said. “But in the end it has to be a good show. And at the end of the day, Chris wrote a really great script that’s really funny.” It doesn’t hurt, though, that the cost of producing a pilot using machinima is “a lot less expensive when compared to a traditional computer animation budget.”

This is the first project to come from the Machinima Comedy Lab, which was announced in December 2008. And while the lab’s intention was to create content for online distribution, not a major network, if Heel isn’t picked up by Fox for series it might find life elsewhere. And if all that happened was that it ended up on Machinima.com, that wouldn’t be so bad. The network has gone from 37 million monthly views in January 2009 to 108 million monthly views in March 2010.

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