/ Cory Doctorow / 6:01 am Thu Aug 4, 2011

How Felicia Day's online gamer serial makes good TV, good business and good art

Forbes's David Ewalt has a really good profile on Felicia Day's innovative work in producing uncompromisingly niche-focused, medium-cost Web video that is both more artistically satisfying for her than TV was, and more lucrative.
But when Day showed the script around, it fell flat. Studio execs “didn’t even understand the concept of gaming,” she says. “It was like a foreign country to them.” Agents advised her to drop it and write a script for an established program. But Day wanted to tell her story. So she produced the first few shows herself, borrowing equipment, recruiting actor friends, and shooting in her living room. It was, she says, the scariest thing she’d ever done—but it worked.

“The minute we uploaded a video and started getting feedback and interacting with our audience, it was so much more fulfilling than anything I’d done before,” she says. “There was no point for me to go and try to sell it as a TV show, especially when we put in a PayPal button and people started donating.”

Committed fans were key to the success of The Guild, and Day cultivated them carefully, using Twitter and Facebook to build two-way relationships. “We shoot a season once a year, but maintain our social network all year, because we’re committed to our audience,” she says. “They support us, we support them.”

Her devoted core audience, young and Internet-savvy, quickly attracted attention. Sprint subsidized production of The Guild in return for a short “sponsored by” message at the beginning of each episode. Microsoft paid to debut each season exclusively on Xbox Live, the Zune Video Marketplace and MSN Video. Episodes go to the Web four weeks after they complete that exclusive run.

Felicia Day: Mogul In The Making (via Copyfight)

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  1. If Hollywood is stuck in a rut (see previous cgi-effects post), then this is where the future lies.

    1. Hollywood isn’t stuck in a rut, Hollywood is the rut – as Day said, the studio execs didn’t even get it. Hollywood would have to get a lot smarter to capitalise on someone like Day.

    2. I hope so, The Guild has been much more enjoyable than, I was going say all but a few movies, but I can’t think of a Hollywood movie I’ve enjoyed more than The Guild. It all comes back to having a good story and decent enough actors to tell it. Most big Hollywood movies seem to ignore the story all together hoping to distract with pyrotechnics.

  2. i love The Guild, and i wholly and completely admire Felicia Day for her work, her honesty, and her passion. she deserves all the success she has, and then some.

  3. Hollywood, like the big name gaming companies, have so much money involved that they go for the “sure thing”. Proved concepts that have stood the test of time.

    To a degree this is a variation of the long tail concept:
    https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Long_Tail

    And this also lines up with the issue of micro-loans. That is, banks have over time become so accustomed to only loaning out sums to big projects that when someone wants much smaller sums to bootstrap a local one they see it more a topic for consumer loans then industrial.

  4. The Guild is more entertaining than 98% of the crap on TV.  Hollywood studios spend so much time an money trying to make shows that are acceptable to huge demographics that they don’t bother with trying to make them GOOD.  It’s basically inoffensive noise that will distract a few million people in between commercial breaks.  The Guild is actually fun and intelligent, and that’s why the gamers who the show caters to love it so much – not just because it’s “about them”, but because it’s actually a good show.

    1. I’m not much of a gamer (at least not WoW, et al) but I enjoy The Guild quite a bit; I think really, it’s just a good show.

  5. My wife and I both lament the end of a season on the Guild and look forward to the next one.  Neither of us is a WoW type gamer, but it wouldn’t be accurate to say we weren’t gamers, since she’s had her addiction to Dragon Warrior and I’ve had mine to Empire since we were kids.

    But I agree with jmcgarry, it’s just a really good show. It just happens to be about geeks and gaming, and geeks are more likely to get some of the more subtle jokes.

  6. We had the pleasure of meeting Felicia and Amy (Tink) last year at Fan Expo in Toronto. My 11 year old son was so shy, and they made him feel very appreciative of him being a fan (even remembering his name the next day). She’s a great artist, but more importantly a great person towards her many fans.

  7. I enjoyed the Guild, but the best thing about The Guild is that it inspired Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-long Blog.

    1. I think I could even forgive Neil Patrick Harris for The Smurfs if there was a whole season of Dr. Horrible.

  9. Am I the only one bothered by the, “Mogul in the Making”, headline?  Seems to miss the point entirely…

  10. For the benefit of those of use unfamiliar with the subject, it would have been helpful for the name of the show to be mentioned in the headline or the first sentence of the boinboing summary. I actually had to skim the summary twice to catch it. Maybe I’m not a good skimmer, but on the other hand this important detail wan’t mentioned until the third paragraph of a quote.

    1. I concur, you don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy The Guild. I played strategy games when I was younger, but WoW and the like never interested me. I tried, once, and, much like the bumbling husband in the show, I was mostly dead and bored. I’ve even successfully hooked a few friends (who, like me, lack television) on The Guild who’s gaming experience begins with Tetris and ends with Solitaire.

  12. “Do you want to date my avatar?”

    “I just want…I just want to groom her!”

    The Guild rocks.  Alternative models of content distribution rock.  Rock on.

  14. The Guild really exceeded my expectations, especially season 3 (my farts smell like tacos :D)  anyone else remember her from season 7 of buffy the vampire slayer?

  15. It’s funny but the Guild actually keeps a lot of its really WOW specific references on the low-down.  If you’re familiar with the game it’s actually keeping things fairly generic (generic as in MMORP’s).  It’s focus is the people, their characterization, and the odd contradictions that creep into those people’s lives with a virtual obsession as well as and how they interact dynamically online/offline.  Her recent debut in Eureka was welcome, and her and Mr. Wheaton (who was in The Guild and has been in recent episodes of Eureka) are a ‘breath of fresh air’ cliche uncliche.  Very savvy people.

  16. The great thing about the Guild is that the archetypes are familiar to anyone who’s ever been part of *any* online community, or any kind of nerdy pursuit involving people with… less developed social skills. I recognize the personalities from an IRC hangout I spent too much time on in college, and in friends who were obsessed with MUDs. You don’t have to be a gamer, you’re just more likely to have met these people. :)

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