What is The Guild?

Yesterday I blogged that it was one year since my affiliation with The Guild began.  I thought I'd back up and give you an introduction to The Guild, and start with the simple question "What is The Guild?"  Sure you could go to Wikipedia or The Guild's website, but here are my words on the subject...

What is "The Guild?"

The Guild is a comedy web series about six online gamers, created by Felicia Day, who writes, produces and stars in the show.

What is a "web series?"

A web series is a TV show, but on the internet.  In the case of The Guild, it's like a sitcom.  Think "Friends" but shorter form (four to eight minute episodes).  In fact, Kim Evey (who produces The Guild with Felicia) has called The Guild as "'Friends' but with gamers" and I think that's apt.

There are now lots of web series out there.  Sometimes web series (or webisodes) are extensions of traditional television shows, like "LOST: Missing Pieces" or "Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy" but there are a bunch of great web series being produced independently that are standalone series.  There are two websites that are great starting points to learn about these many web series, NewTeeVee and Tubefilter.  You can also search Twitter every Wednesday to look for web series suggestions from Twitter users.  The first web series I saw was Kim Evey's hilarious Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine show, which you can see here.

How did "The Guild" come about?

Felicia Day had been acting in LA for a while, had been on Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and in various TV and film projects, but wanted to do more.  She took matters into her own hands and wrote a sitcom pilot for herself, prompted in part by the urge to kick a serious World of Warcraft habit (the online roleplaying game that sort of defines the MMORPG* genre).  Apparently response was positive, yet most people deemed it too "niche" to fly on network television.  Kim, who had recently had a viral hit with the aforementioned Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine show that led to Sony buying the show, suggested that Felicia just shoot it and put it on the web, since her core audience of online gamers were already there.  The sitcom pilot became the first three episodes of the web series.

*Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game

And then success, fame and riches?

Not exactly.  The hope was to get a sponsor or have someone buy the show, but it didn't materialize right away.  Fan response was positive though, and eventually someone suggested they put a donation button on the website and money came in, often in $1 and $5 donations.  As enough money was raised to shoot another episode, they would make one.  In the end, fan donations funded the remainder of Season One.  Those donors have a page on The Guild website to this day, and they truly built the show.  It's been a defining characteristic of the show that still guides the producers today - a close relationship with the fans.

So, are fans still funding the show?

No, Seasons Two and Three were funded by Microsoft and Sprint, and fan contributions are no longer solicited or accepted.  Season One was a hit and received a number of accolades, including awards for best web series from South by Southwest, Youtube and Yahoo.  There were numerous offers to fund/buy the show (I had heard somewhere there were as many as 25 interested parties) but ultimately Felicia decided to go with Microsoft.  In a very un-Hollywood deal, Felicia retains creative control and ownership of the show and Microsoft is simply the exclusive distributor of the show for a certain time period.  The show is truly independent, and while I know some people dislike Microsoft for being a big corporation, they have been a good partner to The Guild and via the Xbox Live platform have helped the show reach many more new fans.

It's a pretty great story.  Two and a half years ago this show was being uploaded to YouTube, and Felicia was posting to every message board and contacting every podcast she could find to get the word out about the show. Now it's heading into a fourth season and is widely available, including on iTunes and DVD.  The other great thing is you can actually read a lot of the first hand account of this show on Felicia's blog.

Where do you come in?

While unemployed and looking for work, I did what you're supposed to do - network, reach out to old friends, keep busy.  I thought that it couldn't hurt to blog, learn more about Facebook, figure out this thing called Twitter as I would likely be trying to get some kind of marketing job.  Along the way I reconnected with Kim, and one day she emailed me saying "maybe while you're unemployed you can help us out at The Guild."  I became the main person handling The Guild's Twitter feed and then did a few other projects I'll blog about in the next few days, including the scavenger hunt

What else?

Hmmm... not sure!  If I didn't answer something you'd like to know, post comments here and I'll try to answer them.