Felicia Day

Felicia Day Invites You Into The Guild

The Buffy alum on the webseries hit moving to Xbox Live; plus Doctor Horrible.

December 15, 2008 - The webseries The Guild became quite the internet sensation earlier this year, taking a comedic look at the lives of a group of internet gamers and how things change for them when they decide to meet in real life. Actress Felicia Day (who played potential slayer Vi on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) created The Guild, and wrote all of the Season 1 episodes – a duty she is performing again for Season 2.

Season 2 is a bit different for the series as far as where it’s available – The Guild now debuts exclusively as a free download on Xbox Live, along with MSN Video and Zune Marketplace. After the exclusive window ends, episodes also are available on The Guild’s website, watchtheguild.com.

I recently spoke to Day to get some insight into the creation of The Guild. An avid gamer herself, Day was inspired to create The Guild due to her own love of World of Warcraft. Day also recently starred with Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion in Joss Whedon’s webseries, Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, which we also discuss.

IGN TV: You’ve talked in the past about your own time as a World of Warcraft addict being a big influence on this series. Was there a specific moment where it clicked to you that there was a story to be told about this lifestyle?

Felicia Day: You know, it wasn’t until afterwards. I had people around me like my boyfriend and other friends say, "Hey, this gaming thing is kind of out of hand." Because it was the old school, 40 man raids and you had to be hardcore - Like, trying to coordinate 40 people in a night. Just thinking of that gives me a headache now! But at the time, that was just what happened. And I would be one of the people in the raid – not even the most dedicated one – who would be like, "Oh, I’ll form stonescale eel for eight hours so we can have a flask of the titans," you know what I’m saying? "I will get all that dreamfoil for you." So, not only was I doing all the raiding – like every single night we’d do a raid – but, I would be the one farming extra herbs and stuff. And I wasn’t even the most hardcore. I don’t want to claim credit for being the most nose to the grindstone girl.

So I guess it was after that I kind of realized… We had some people leave our guild right when we were about to hit another boss and it was just so demoralizing, like, "Wow, this is really transient" and I had an existential crisis and my friends intervened. And I quit cold turkey. And it was around that time where I was realizing that hey, I’m kind of bored just waiting around for my phone to ring. Because as an actor, I do quite well, but unless you’re on a series, you’re not working every day, so 90% of your time is being rejected on auditions and sitting around waiting to be rejected at auditions. I decided I wanted to do something creative with the time, other than farming dreamfoil. So, I sat down and wrote a half hour pilot and I was like, "What do I know?" You always have to write what you know, because then it’ll have a greater truth in it and people will relate to it. And the thing I definitely know the best is online gaming and online communities. So, that’s why I said, "Oh, I want to do this about a guild!"

The Guild’s creator, writer and star - Felicia Day IGN: Did you have writing aspirations prior to this?

Day: I have a couple of bad screenplays in my closet, I admit. Probably everybody does. But I’d taken a [comedy] sketch writing class, and in fact my co-producer Kim Evey, she was my first writing teacher. She taught me sketch comedy at a place in LA. So that was my first foray into doing that. I really loved sketch writing, but at the end of the day I was looking to maybe write a long form piece and maybe do TV, so that’s how The Guild came about. I wrote it as a half hour pilot for TV.

IGN: Now that you continue to write episodes, do you have things planned out pretty far ahead or have you had those moments of writers block?

Day: Oh, of course! Who doesn’t, right? For Season 1, it was funny, because we kind of did it as we went along. We shot it with the aim to move to TV for the first couple of episodes. We thought, "Everybody is going to see this and say, ’It should be a TV show!’" And the great thing about it is that once we launched on the web and saw that people responded to it and how it had a life of its own on the web, it just seemed like, ’Hey, this is where the show should be!’ So, as we went along with Season 1, I would rewrite the episodes. Every month we would release an episode, thanks to paypal donations and fans, so I was able to kind of expand the story, but the basic structure was the half hour pilot.

For Season 2, it was approaching it with fresh eyes. My aim was to have more complex storylines for every single episode, because it was kind of hard to put an A and B story in the first season. But for the second season, I want to make the episodes a little bit longer; add a little bit more story; and explore all the characters, rather than just have it all be from [my character] Codex’s point of view. So that was the goal, and it turned out to be like a feature length script at this point. And I have to say, I wrote it over the summer and I definitely would run into situations where I’m like, "I don’t know what this character is going to do here!" or "I don’t know what to do with this episode!," and I guess it’s just the bravery to write something bad – to be able to have something and rewrite it better. Because unless you have the skeleton built, you can’t put the flesh on… That was a horrible analogy!

IGN: [Laughs] I enjoyed it!

Day: [Laughs]. Okay, good. It was a little gross.

IGN: What was it like to not only see how quickly it built a following, but also – as you mentioned – that people were even willing to pitch in financially. Was that a big surprise to you?

Day: It was a huge surprise. We went around to a couple of networks and were trying to sell the show and they didn’t really get it at the time, which was early in the process. And one of the executives said, "Hey, what about just putting a paypal button up?" We were like, "What?! Nobody’s really done that!" I think maybe a couple of non-fiction webseries do that, but as far as scripted stuff, nobody had done that before. So the cool thing was that we put it up and I’m determined – because my World of Warcraft addiction had kind of transferred to internet addiction. Being online everywhere, all the time is kind of my thing. And we were able to get the word out that we were taking donations. We had no expectations. Somebody donated $100! I emailed them and was like, "Did you misplace your period?" Because I was so surprised! But you know, as the show went on and people liked the stories more and more, we got more and more donations, to the point where actually I think the last episode we actually paid our actors! Because we were shooting only for cost up until then. But just the fact that the fans enabled us to make the show, it’s in part theirs, because they made it happen.

IGN: There’s obviously a lot of attention being paid to shows like yours and the idea of setting up a new paradigm with web original, creator-controlled content. Are you finding other actors and writers are asking you questions and advice?

Day: Yeah. I think a lot of people are trying to do it. A lot of people are trying to make content for the web. I think the ones who are really interested in doing it as a new sort of entertainment, I think those are the ones who are going to succeed, rather than the people who are doing it as a stepping stone to get back into old media. I think it’s interesting. It’s sort of the Sundance [film festival] of our time. This is where people are going to be discovered and be making new content. And the cool thing about it is there are no rules. It’s not like you have to make a two minute episode or a ten minute episode. It’s really whatever your story is. And I know that there are a lot of frustrated people in Hollywood, who aren’t allowed to tell their stories because they’re either not telling them in the way the studios or networks want them to, or it’s not appealing to as many people.

Day with Sandeep Parikh ("Zaboo") in The Guild The cool thing about the internet is I can make a show about gamers that would never get made by traditional means, and I can find an audience for it. So if you want to make a show about knitters or golf instructors, there are people out there who want to see it! I think that it’s kind of the democratization of media in a sense. So I hope that anything I do is paving the way for more creative people to be doing what I’m doing and keeping the rights to their show and being able to get it to audiences around the traditional gatekeepers.

IGN: Season 2 is on Xbox Live which seems like a very good fit – even though it’s not exactly about the same kind of gamers, gamers are gamers.

Day: Yeah, it’s true. They understand what a crit is. They’re going to understand people yelling at each other over a mic. Yeah, it’s a fantastic opportunity. We had so many offers for the show. I was very, very picky and people thought I was crazy a couple of times for turning down some of the deals that I did with the people that I might have been able to work with. It was a tough decision to stick to my guns, but I was really determined to keep the rights to the show and keep the creative spirit of the show going – not round out the corners, and be able to tell the story that we wanted to tell, because I think that’s why our audience loves us. Whatever it is that we’re doing, I feel like they know that it’s true to the stories that I want to tell.

Xbox approached us after we started shooting Season 2 – We started on DVD proceeds. We sold the DVD over the summer, we paid all the cast and crew and then we used every single dollar to jumpstart the first couple of episodes. And then when Xbox Live approached us and said "We want to partner," of course I’m always wary. And the more we talked about it, the more I was like, "Wow, this is the perfect fit, because they get the show, they’re going to get a new audience involved and they’re going to distribute to a broader audience." I have so many people who sent me twitters – "Hey, I just discovered the show on Xbox Live!", and it’s really awesome. And we’re providing it free for the existing fans, so I feel like it’s the best of both worlds.

IGN: Are you currently into any games? Besides the internet addiction, do you still dabble in gaming?

Day: Oh, of course! [Laughs] Blizzard has been very kind to us. We went to BlizzCon this year and had a fantastic time there. I admit it, I cut the line at Diablo III many times, because I’m addicted to Diablo. So I gotta tell you, anything I can do to play that game, really, is going to be happening. We have a World of Warcraft guild that [Guild co-stars] Vork, and Zaboo and me and Bladezz play in online. You can check out our community site if you’re interested in that. And I’ve been playing Fable II, which is really awesome, although I’ve got a lot of scars across my body and I don’t know how to get rid of those. I need to put a tattoo over them or something. That’s the thing I like to do – when I have a couple of hours off, if it’s the choice between going out to a bar people invite me to or stay in and play games, it’s kind of a no-brainer to me. I play games! Even when I’m just really bored or stressed, I’ll go to a casual gaming site or play Geometry Wars. That’s who I am and I want to stay true to that. That’s what I do with my spare time – what little of it there is lately!

IGN: Have you done what your character does in the show and met the people you played with in real life?

Day: Oh yeah, we did. Surprisingly, a lot of them were in Southern California here, so we did have several meetings and it wasn’t as awkward as it is in the show. We heighten it. My goal with the show is always to have fun with the characters, but not make fun of them, because we’re breaking stereotypes. We have three girl gamers in The Guild, and most people are like, "Um, girls game?" But people who actually game know that there are girls who game. They love doing it. They’re disparate people. Everyone’s not just that one stereotypical kind of gamer that they see in mainstream media, and that’s what I’m proud about to show.

The trailer for The Guild: Season 2 IGN: I was curious, when you were selling the show or even still, if people said, "But you’re an attractive woman! You don’t play games!"

Day: Yeah, I used to get that a lot more. I think there’s been something happening. I think the more you play online, the more you talk to the other people you play with, the more you realize, "hey, there are a lot of women." Our real guild has a lot of women in it. That’s because there are a lot of women who game. The more social games get, I think the more women play. It’s who I am.

IGN: Buffy fans are a very dedicated bunch. Did you ever have someone find out they were playing with you and do a bit of brief gushing?

Day: I think I did a couple of times. When we met in person, somebody recognized me from a commercial or something and then they explored more. But you know, people are generally chill. I’m not into the celebrity thing. I don’t want people to look at me at the Coffee Bean and notice that my hair’s uncombed. I’m not really into that. I feel like I’m just doing a job, just like anyone else’s job is just as legitimate and just as cool. Just ’cause I have a little bit more visibility, like you recognize me – not many people, but some people – doesn’t make me any more special or more interesting.

IGN: Joss has said that The Guild was definitely an influence as far as seeing what he could do with Dr. Horrible and where it could live. When did he start talking to you about it?

Day: He started talking to me about it on the [writers’] strike line, like a year ago. He had a Mutant Enemy day where he invited all the casts [from his shows].

IGN: I was there.

Day: You were there?

IGN: Yeah, I interviewed Joss.

Day: Well you were there at the genesis. Well, not the genesis, because I think he and [Dr. Horrible writers] Jed and Maurissa and Zack had been talking about it before, but he pitched out the idea to me. "Hey, I just want to do it really cheap on the internet. It’s a supervillain and it’s a musical." And I’m like, "Okay! That sounds fantastic." Because anything Joss does is going to be fabulous, let’s be honest. Even knowing him for years, I’m sometimes intimidated by how creative and brilliant he is. I’m kind of a fangirl! It’s hard to be having dinner with him and still having that touch of fangirl there. It’s flattering to think that he took anything from The Guild, but he definitely, with Doctor Horrible, took web video to a whole new level. For me that’s really inspiring and has inspired a lot of the things I’ve done with The Guild: Season 2. He paved the way with his stature, doing web video when he doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to rough it in any way. Making something so creative that nobody would allow him to make and having it be so successful outside the box… I think we’ll look back on that as sort of a turning point for this new medium. I’m privileged that he would even mention The Guild!

[Editor’s Note: If you still haven’t seen Dr. Horrible, be warned that there are spoilers in the following question - the next question on is safe.]

IGN: Dr. Horrible was a great, classic Joss Whedon story, because it was funny and charming and the songs were fun… and then you die. And it’s really tragic.

Day: Yeah, for me, when I read it in the script, it made me cry. He certainly knows how to tell a story and make you love a character and take it away. I think I wouldn’t have had that end any other way, even though in future Dr. Horribles, who knows if I’ll be there or not. I’ll be there helping out in anyway, because I think what he’s doing is fabulous and the story needs to be told. So crossed fingers that another one happens. The DVD is going to be amazing though. I’ve been recording the musical commentary track. It’s unbelievable. There’s more music in the musical commentary track then there is in the actual show. It’s hilarious. Neil was doing foley for it. It was crazy. It’s another thing where we just got together and did it in somebody’s bedroom and it’s a phenomenon. It’s inspiring for anybody willing to make anything creative. If you’re crocheting or making shows, this is the time to be making it and finding an audience, because the internet has no barriers, really. It’s just all about making it, getting it out there and working really hard to get people to see it.

IGN: Is the commentary track basically telling the anecdotes from the set in song form?

Day: No. There’s a whole other commentary track for that. There’s the banter track, where I make fun of my hair and whatever. And then there’s the musical commentary track, which is an actual musical on to itself. So as you watch the musical Dr. Horrible, you will have a complete musical accompanying Dr. Horrible, with libretto and everything. I think people are a little confused about it, but it is an actual musical. It’s like a radio musical to Doctor Horrible.

Day with Neil Patrick Harris in Dr. Horrible IGN: Are you guys in character or…?

Day: I don’t want to give any more away. But you’ll see. It’s a lot to take in, but you’re going to love it.

IGN: Well, congratulations again on The Guild and the debut of Season 2.

Day: Thanks. The cool thing is when you download it on Xbox Live, it looks like a real TV show. You see it and the logo comes up and it’s The Guild. I can’t tell you how thrilling it was. You download it and you can see it on your HDTV, just like when you download a movie. [Laughs] Not to put myself down, but when you’re on the tiny, tiny screen and then you’re able to watch it in HD on your big set… I don’t know, that was just a huge thrill.

IGN: Who did the animated avatars of you guys for the opening credits?

Day: Thank you for asking! Okay, so here goes – here’s the story on that. Somebody, Matthew Brackney , he emailed me a fan pic. He’s an artist. And he sent me the most fabulous interpretation of The Guild in fan art. So I emailed him out of the blue and I’m like, "Dude, can you do animation?" And he’s like, ’What?!" He was completely thrown. He’d just done a fan thing and he was like, "What are you asking me?" I told him, "I need you to re-animate the credits for me!" He was like, "..Okay!" He came up with that with no notes from me. I was just like, "Hey, have them do stuff that’s cool," and he added the names in. But he came up with that all himself and he animated it almost all himself, so he was basically drafted, and now he’s on everybody’s Xbox and MSN! And we’re going to be able to pay him something for his work. But he was just a fan who sent some fan art in. That’s how The Guild roles. So be careful if you correspond with us - You might get drafted.

The Guild: Season 2 is now available on Xbox Live, with new episodes debuting every Tuesday.