games™ chats with the creator and star of The Guild, founder of YouTube channel Geek & Sundry and champion of gaming culture, Felicia Day, to celebrate the launch of her new book.
So what was the main driving force behind writing a memoir about your life so far as a gamer and a creative?
I think being honest was the number one thing that I went into the process thinking about. I think that the more authentic you are in life, and the more honest, the more people can relate to you. One of the most important things with the book is that people find the book useful, whether it’s emotional, story-wise, funny… I wanted to make sure there was a message underneath for everyone else, and the only way to do that is to be emotionally engaging, and that requires a lot of honesty.
How necessary do you feel it is for a writer to have gone through something emotionally intense?
I think everybody’s process is different. I’m sure there are perfectly stable people who have very boring lives who are amazing writers. I think that creative people tend to have more emotional ups and downs, I think studies prove that, but I don’t think that’s necessary for anything, necessarily. There are always exceptions to the rule, but I think that especially when you’re doing something personal and you want to engage somebody on a very gut level, then emotion does help in connecting with people and making them relate to a journey, whether they’ve done the exact same thing or not.
How do you feel about the games industry right now?
With the negative side of it, there’s a cultural thing going on where negativity and aggression makes you seem cooler, and I understand that. But, nine times out of ten, if you provide a positive environment people will be like ‘Oh, okay! I can do that too!’ It’s really just about encouraging that. And, honestly, games are not overwhelmingly negative. I think if you look at the numbers, I think the people who love games are the overwhelming majority, but you have incidents where enough negative people have gotten together to define the dialogue around gaming, and I think that is the destructive part that has tainted [the perception] of gaming with bad behaviour. And I don’t think that’s actually the case.
The Guild was a series about gamers but also about their relationships with each other. How important is it to have evergreen aspects to your videos?
I mean, I hope it holds up because it’s got that universal theme of creating a family. And the beautiful thing about gaming is that it brings people together who might not ever meet in person, and relate to each other. There are a lot of societal barriers we have between ourselves – race, background, religion, age – and those are transcended online, and that’s really the heart of The Guild. We don’t have to be unconsciously biased by what we look like. We can actually connect, despite all those things that society says we wouldn’t have in common. And that’s the great thing about geek culture and gaming in general and why I love it. Hopefully, that’s why people can relate to the Guild many years later, because those universals are still true, that the internet allows us to overcome those barriers. The Guild is about online gaming. It was really just about the online community that a character was able to create and be fulfilled by. That’s really the heart of it.
Why do you feel the entertainment industry has been reluctant to accept that games have massive appeal?
I think there’s not a lot of cross-over between gaming and other avenues. It’s a relatively closed-off system because, quite frankly, gamers don’t have a lot of time to consume a lot of other kinds of entertainment but games! Games are very immersive, and that’s why I love them. I can escape for hours at a time into another world. It’s just really appealing to me, the artistry of it and the community of it. I think gamers have been off on their own for a while but obviously the size of the industry is attracting some interest from mainstream Hollywood, but Hollywood is a business. Unless there’s business to be had amongst gamers, then appealing to a niche content – and they think gaming is niche – that’s not a business proposition for them. But I think you see a lot of internet content that’s more popular than TV shows, as far as gaming content goes. Basically, it’s just going to get more and more attention as the business of online video gets bigger. Hopefully that’s a good thing? If not, there’ll still be gamers, no matter what. [laughs]
So how would you recommend people get into the kind of video-making you do?
I think it just depends on what you want to do. If you’re a vlogger, just start talking to the camera and find your voice. Don’t even post videos, maybe, just do it as a diary until you feel like ‘Oh, I’ve figured out what I want to say and the unique thing I want to communicate to everyone.’ I think the most important thing is to figure out how to make it not feel like work. You have to be passion-driven in the video business because sometimes it can be a very long haul to success. If you’re just doing it for external reasons, you’re going to lose interest if you don’t get positive reinforcement from the external world. Or, if you just become famous overnight for something you don’t love, then it’s unfulfilling. I would say find out what you want to say first, whether it’s with a vlog, which you can do by yourself, or volunteering for other people’s videos, just to be a PA and help and see how other people do it. There are a lot of other video-making aspects behind the camera and around the camera, and you don’t necessarily need to be the face of it to make things. I think we’re attracted to the glamorous stuff, which is the stuff that gets you famous, which is the face stuff. But really, the stuff behind the scenes is just as important and fulfilling if that’s what you want to do with your life. So volunteer, track down people in your area, say ‘Hey, let me just help you’, and you can learn that way as much as doing it by yourself in isolation.
Do you feel like your acting background helps with presenting YouTube videos?
I think certainly acting helps. I think anything you do, whatever you’re learning, adds to who you are and makes you more unique. So the more different kinds of learning you can do, the better, because you’re going to add to whatever you do in a unique way. I’m a trained actor, I’ve studied for many many years, I still continue to study by taking improv classes. It’s really helped me. You never stop learning, hopefully! But I think, with YouTube, you don’t necessarily have to be trained in anything. That’s the great thing and also the bad thing. It’s open to everybody, so the world is full of people expressing themselves in video, and you shouldn’t feel inhibited by not doing something just because you’re not trained. Half of the things I’ve learned as an actress, the most valuable ones have been while I was hired to do something, on set. So you should certainly educate yourself, but doing is definitely part of the learning process, especially in video-making.
Do you think it’s difficult from the outside to see how much work goes into something seemingly easy like Let’s Plays?
Well, with video-making in general, I think the average person doesn’t appreciate how many people are on set. When I’m on Supernatural, there’s like a hundred people on set, and a couple of hundred others who are processing the videos behind the scenes and making it possible. The sheer scale of film-making is hard to appreciate unless you’re in it. And even on The Guild, we had a very small crew, but it wasn’t just one person and a camera, which I think the audience thinks. Especially scripted content, you know, that requires a whole other set of work because writing and making something simple and easy to shoot and put on screen on especially no budget, it was very challenging.
I always say that if something is simple it looks easy, but if it looks easy it probably requires the most work. Whether you’re doing an Olympic jump or you’re writing a screenplay, if it looks effortless it probably requires way more work. I think YouTube personalities are under-appreciated. It’s not just a person throwing a camera up in their bedroom. Some of them might be, but anything that’s good and stands out, it’s not just somebody putting no effort into it. You have to appreciate everyone’s artistry, whether you’re a Let’s Player or a Viner or a vlogger, it’s very surprising how much goes into it, even if it’s just one person doing it. It’s all-consuming.
Is it important to have a full grasp of what film-making entails?
I think it’s really important to be educated about everybody’s job on a film set. You’re making a family and everyone’s working towards the same goal together. Everyone has different expertise, and I think the biggest thing I’ve learned over the years is that if you know a little bit about something, you can really appreciate the people who know a lot about something. And at the same time, you can understand their language, their limitations, and the places they want to go better. Especially as a producer, behind the scenes, having been behind the camera in various ways, I understand the limitations for budget, I understand the vision of somebody in order to make that happen. In film-making, you need to specialise, but it is good, especially if you want to do producing, to be able to empathise with everyone on set to be able to make the best thing possible.
The humour and tone to your writing and videos is very inclusive. Has that been a deliberate aspect of what you do or does it just come naturally?
It’s definitely something that drives everything I do, making people feel comfortable with themselves, and introducing them to new things. Just celebrating and connecting with people. That’s why I love web content, and why I try, in everything I do, to add to people’s lives and make people feel good about themselves. I think in life we are made to feel ashamed by who we are, or shy about expressing our interests or passions, not knowing how to connect with people. I came from a very sheltered background and I was raised to think agnostically about the world, that we can all enjoy things together if we’re just given an entry point. So, especially in the world of gaming, I wanted to express myself in a way that showed that the stereotypes are not what we have to live with, or truth. A lot of the time we’re ruled by things unconsciously in those areas that we’re better off forgetting.
In the current economic climate, would you advise people to go head-on into a massive project like The Guild, or go for a more solo venture?
I think you should do what you want! You should follow your impulses and try new things! I always knew I wanted to be in entertainment, making scripted content, telling stories. So that was where I went. But there weren’t really Let’s Plays back then at all… I think I probably would have gotten into it back then. But if you’re not interested in film-making, or narrative content or writing but you love videogames, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try to do Let’s Plays or do some vlogs about your observations about videogames. You don’t have to write a whole scripted things to tell stories; you could be a cartoonist or… there’s just so many creative outlets! If you don’t know what it is, then try a bunch. Try ten things! Spend a year discovering your voice and what attracts you and what feels effortless, and that will be very good time put in. Rather than seeing someone else’s success an being all ‘Oh, I want that!’ That’s not necessarily your success.
How can newcomers distinguish themselves when trying to get into making videos online?
Well, I would definitely try to think about what you have that’s unique. What do you want to say about the world? When you watch other people’s things, what would you do different? What inspires you? Sometimes it’s really about digging and saying ‘What is it that I am offering that’s not out there right now? What inspires me to pick up a camera?’ Cobbling together your own sort of vision. Sometimes you have to just try it out. There’s a lot out there, but if you love the medium then you’ll be able to be inventive and creative about what you would change about the people you like or don’t like. Start from there. It’s about an emotion that you have about what you’re doing: either joy, like you can’t wait to share this with people, or like ‘I could totally do that better’. Both of those things are very valid motivations!
And when your brand is essentially yourself, how much do you think people should share online?
To me, I think that’s it’s very hard to withstand bullying of any kind, online or offline. We’ve had many instances of that kind of bullying and dogpiling and things like that, but it’s not new! It’s not new, and I think it’s the growing pains of a culture that’s been very closed-off suddenly becoming a lot more popular and getting a lot of new, diverse voices. People who don’t want to feel like outsiders want to be inside gaming. So, this is just a vivid example of something like that happening. I think the braver you are, the better. You shouldn’t limit yourself, but you should be cautious because there are always going to be extreme people. The online world is forever, so you need to be very cognisant of that, but at the same time don’t censor yourself because of who you are. And the more you can take control of your world, the better. You don’t have to let people comment on your videos in a negative way; you can delete those things. The more I’m online, the more intolerant I am of people coming into my house, so to speak, whether it’s my Twitter or my YouTube channel, and dirtying the environment with their hatred. There’s a difference between someone who’s unthinking or maybe has a pattern of a behaviour that they don’t realise is negative and hurtful, and someone who is deliberately out there to hate, or express themselves in a way that is not constructive for anybody. More and more I’m just like ‘I don’t need you!’ [laughs] Life is too short!
When people can connect to each other it can be really positive, but it also allows negative people to also come together. How do you deal with that?
If you allow negative behaviour to dictate the tone, you’re letting them win. So it’s about fostering just as much motivated positivity as the negativity. Their power is in banding together, and on the other side you feel like everyone feels like this. Like in politics, the most vocal people are the fringe people. So it’s almost incumbent upon us, and me as the head of my company or my brand, so to speak, to give the tools to the people who like what I do to band together just as equally. I see this most vividly on my Twitch channel – I started streaming video games for fun, and then that crossed over to creating a whole channel for Geek & Sundry, and our community is amazing. I would want to meet every single one of those people in person because of the people who run my Twitch channel and all the moderators. Really, it’s about taking the tools available to you and taking control of the tone. Not driving people away, but giving them a chance to be positive or go somewhere else. There are a lot of alternatives, the world is big enough for all of us. You don’t have to please everybody.
What grabs your attention these days in your limited free time?
I don’t have tons of time any more, I don’t have four or five hours at a time to immerse myself in an MMO any more, which is sad but that’s just an inevitablility of what I’m doing right now. I love games that I can connect with other people. I love story-based games. Really, it’s about world-building and the kind of world that transports you somewhere else, whether it’s through art or the mechanics of the game or the connections with other people. I think that’s what always attracts me, no matter what. With gaming, there’s so much diversity now, with indie games on Steam, and mobile, competitive games, MMOs, all that stuff. There’s so much of a selection out there, so the things that attract me are the things that stand out as having a very clear artistic vision behind them.
Do you ever feel like you’re stuck in videogames because so much of your content has been focused on that?
Well, my company Geek & Sundry has a focus on games, and we’re definitely trying to do more. We just hired editorial staff to focus on indie games, mobile, multiplayer games. It’s certainly a focus of the business that I do. If I have a Friday night free, I’m definitely playing a game rather than watching a movie, that’s just who I am. It’s something I’ll always go back to. But I want to be a film-maker, I want to be in television, I want to continue making web shows that I love. I tend to gravitate towards things I would consume myself, which are kind of geeky, but I don’t think anything is limiting. It’s better to have parameters so your imagination can take off, versus ‘Here’s everything! Do something!’
Which creative role have you most connected with over the years?
I just love making things. I love working with other people to make things. Whether I’m in front of the camera or behind, I do like being in control. Or at least having a voice in the whole creative process, not just the acting. Although, I love acting; I do a lot of it for other people. It’s kind of a relief sometimes [laughs], but ultimately I do like to help steer the creative vision, even if I’m just helping somebody else’s vision happen. So that’s what I love to do with Geek & Sundry, some of the other projects I’m writing, with TV… We’ll see what happens. Certainly, creating is my favourite, whether it’s just me in a room with a camera or with a crew of fifty. I can write a comic in my office or I can be on a set where I’ve written something. I think you can create in your bedroom and do a web comic and that’s just as cool as being on a set with 200 people. Creativity is anywhere you are and it can be channelled into anything you do. You just have to focus on it, and make sure you’re not leaving it by the wayside to do what other people need from you.
Felicia Day’s book, You’re Never Weird On The Internet, is available now from all good bookstores, online and IRL. For even more lengthy interviews you should check out our Games Masters series of digital specials.
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