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Felicia Day - The Good Knight
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Ablang
Dec 26, 2011, 8:53:49 AM12/26/11
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Technology
The Good Knight
David M. Ewalt, 08.03.11, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated August 22, 2011
Felicia Day turned her gaming obsession into the Web's hottest
production guild.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0822/technology-dragon-age-redemption-felicia-day-good-knight.html
Cyd Sherman is having a bad day. "Friday night, and still jobless," she
confesses in a video diary. "I haven't left the house in a week, my
therapist broke up with me ... and, oh yeah, there's a warlock in my
living room, sleeping on the couch."
Cyd is obsessed with an online videogame, a multiplayer
sword-and-sorcery adventure similar to World of Warcraft. It's a
time-sucking hobby that's contributed to the loss of her job (violinist
in the back row of an orchestra) and therapist ("Cyd, you can't grow if
you're still immersed in an imaginary social environment"). It's also
caused other problems, not the least of which is the fellow player
turned stalker who tracked down her street address and showed up on her
doorstep.
"I've been friendly online, but nothing you wouldn't say to a
co-worker," Cyd laments. "I guess online flirtation can be interpreted
in many ways--especially if you're delusional."
Fortunately things are going much better for Felicia Day, the
32-year-old actress who portrays Cyd in episodes of The Guild, a comic
Internet TV series. Day holds down multiple jobs--actress, screenwriter,
producer, author--and has plenty of reasons to leave the house: If you
saw her on the street, you might recognize her from roles on TV shows
such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, House M.D. and Monk. "Hollywood
typecast me as the secretary," says Day. "I could have worked as the
quirky secretary for the rest of my life, but I decided not to do that."
Instead she started down an unconventional path to stardom and in 2007
wrote and produced the first few episodes of The Guild, releasing them
for free on the Internet. The show became a cult hit, and Day collected
enough donations from fans to finish a full season of shows.
Since launching in July 2007 The Guild has completed four seasons, a
total 58 episodes at seven to eight minutes each. It's been seen 100
million times, won piles of awards, been turned into comic books and
T-shirts, and attracted licensing deals with Netflix, iTunes and Hulu.
It's gone from a self-funded dream to a profitable venture: Since the
second season all production costs (over $10,000 an episode) have been
covered by sponsorships from Sprint and Microsoft.
Day's company, Knights of Good, now has three fulltime staffers, and has
supplanted acting as her primary source of income. It's growing fast,
with several new projects in development, including the fifth season of
The Guild, which launched July 26, and Dragon Age: Redemption, an
original series commissioned by videogame giant Electronic Arts, which
debuts this fall.
As a result, Felicia Day has become a guru to the Internet content
crowd, one of the leaders in a generation of Hollywood stars who are
trailblazing paths on the Web toward big audiences and big money.
According to ACNielsen, 142 million Americans watched video online in
June--over 45% of the entire population--downloading more than 14.4
billion individual streams, for an average total viewing time of four
and a half hours per person. (Let's keep things in perspective: That's
still less time than the average American spends watching regular TV per
day.)
The Guild connects with gamers because Day is one of their own: She grew
up playing videogames, and as an adult developed an eight-hour-a-day
World of Warcraft habit. "It became a little destructive, so I quit cold
turkey and I decided to write something," she says. She wrote what she
knew: a series about a young woman with an online gaming addiction.
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.
Other makers of streaming video say Day's success demonstrates that a
Web series can match or exceed the quality of broadcast TV and become a
legitimate business. "She's done an awesome job," says Jim Louderback,
CEO of the Internet television network Revision3. "It's authentic and
real, and talks to the gaming culture in a way that no other show does."
Revision3 started in 2005 with one program, and today it has 28 shows
and 23 million unique viewers per month. Still, Louderback admits
advertisers haven't caught up. "Much of what we are competing against is
traditional Web and TV dollars, and educating buyers as to why the
audiences we've built are desirable."
One buyer that didn't need convincing was videogame giant Electronic
Arts: When executives at subsidiary BioWare heard Day was looking to
produce her first follow-up to The Guild, they approached her with a
pitch for a show tied into their Dragon Age franchise, paying an
undisclosed amount to fund its production and own the intellectual property.
Louderback is unenthused by the idea of sponsor-commissioned series.
"[Advertisers] exert undue influence on the end product, driving out the
creativity, edginess and independence." But he adds, "If anyone can pull
it off, Felicia can."
For now Day is turning down offers to produce a broadcast series. She's
convinced that Web video provides artists the best opportunity since
television began to disrupt the entertainment industry. Teams can work
quickly and cheaply and find out immediately how well or if they connect
to audiences. "I know that some Hollywood people are like, ‘Why isn't
she doing pilots?'" says Day. "But I'd rather be opening doors for
people behind me to tell different stories."
The Good Knight
David M. Ewalt, 08.03.11, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated August 22, 2011
Felicia Day turned her gaming obsession into the Web's hottest
production guild.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0822/technology-dragon-age-redemption-felicia-day-good-knight.html
Cyd Sherman is having a bad day. "Friday night, and still jobless," she
confesses in a video diary. "I haven't left the house in a week, my
therapist broke up with me ... and, oh yeah, there's a warlock in my
living room, sleeping on the couch."
Cyd is obsessed with an online videogame, a multiplayer
sword-and-sorcery adventure similar to World of Warcraft. It's a
time-sucking hobby that's contributed to the loss of her job (violinist
in the back row of an orchestra) and therapist ("Cyd, you can't grow if
you're still immersed in an imaginary social environment"). It's also
caused other problems, not the least of which is the fellow player
turned stalker who tracked down her street address and showed up on her
doorstep.
"I've been friendly online, but nothing you wouldn't say to a
co-worker," Cyd laments. "I guess online flirtation can be interpreted
in many ways--especially if you're delusional."
Fortunately things are going much better for Felicia Day, the
32-year-old actress who portrays Cyd in episodes of The Guild, a comic
Internet TV series. Day holds down multiple jobs--actress, screenwriter,
producer, author--and has plenty of reasons to leave the house: If you
saw her on the street, you might recognize her from roles on TV shows
such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, House M.D. and Monk. "Hollywood
typecast me as the secretary," says Day. "I could have worked as the
quirky secretary for the rest of my life, but I decided not to do that."
Instead she started down an unconventional path to stardom and in 2007
wrote and produced the first few episodes of The Guild, releasing them
for free on the Internet. The show became a cult hit, and Day collected
enough donations from fans to finish a full season of shows.
Since launching in July 2007 The Guild has completed four seasons, a
total 58 episodes at seven to eight minutes each. It's been seen 100
million times, won piles of awards, been turned into comic books and
T-shirts, and attracted licensing deals with Netflix, iTunes and Hulu.
It's gone from a self-funded dream to a profitable venture: Since the
second season all production costs (over $10,000 an episode) have been
covered by sponsorships from Sprint and Microsoft.
Day's company, Knights of Good, now has three fulltime staffers, and has
supplanted acting as her primary source of income. It's growing fast,
with several new projects in development, including the fifth season of
The Guild, which launched July 26, and Dragon Age: Redemption, an
original series commissioned by videogame giant Electronic Arts, which
debuts this fall.
As a result, Felicia Day has become a guru to the Internet content
crowd, one of the leaders in a generation of Hollywood stars who are
trailblazing paths on the Web toward big audiences and big money.
According to ACNielsen, 142 million Americans watched video online in
June--over 45% of the entire population--downloading more than 14.4
billion individual streams, for an average total viewing time of four
and a half hours per person. (Let's keep things in perspective: That's
still less time than the average American spends watching regular TV per
day.)
The Guild connects with gamers because Day is one of their own: She grew
up playing videogames, and as an adult developed an eight-hour-a-day
World of Warcraft habit. "It became a little destructive, so I quit cold
turkey and I decided to write something," she says. She wrote what she
knew: a series about a young woman with an online gaming addiction.
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.
Other makers of streaming video say Day's success demonstrates that a
Web series can match or exceed the quality of broadcast TV and become a
legitimate business. "She's done an awesome job," says Jim Louderback,
CEO of the Internet television network Revision3. "It's authentic and
real, and talks to the gaming culture in a way that no other show does."
Revision3 started in 2005 with one program, and today it has 28 shows
and 23 million unique viewers per month. Still, Louderback admits
advertisers haven't caught up. "Much of what we are competing against is
traditional Web and TV dollars, and educating buyers as to why the
audiences we've built are desirable."
One buyer that didn't need convincing was videogame giant Electronic
Arts: When executives at subsidiary BioWare heard Day was looking to
produce her first follow-up to The Guild, they approached her with a
pitch for a show tied into their Dragon Age franchise, paying an
undisclosed amount to fund its production and own the intellectual property.
Louderback is unenthused by the idea of sponsor-commissioned series.
"[Advertisers] exert undue influence on the end product, driving out the
creativity, edginess and independence." But he adds, "If anyone can pull
it off, Felicia can."
For now Day is turning down offers to produce a broadcast series. She's
convinced that Web video provides artists the best opportunity since
television began to disrupt the entertainment industry. Teams can work
quickly and cheaply and find out immediately how well or if they connect
to audiences. "I know that some Hollywood people are like, ‘Why isn't
she doing pilots?'" says Day. "But I'd rather be opening doors for
people behind me to tell different stories."
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