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How an Online-Only TV Series Stays Successful
ChronoDragon writes "The Wall Street Journal points out that it is possible to make a successful web series without the backing of a studio. With the release of a music video, Do you Wanna Date My Avatar, and the start of Season of 3, the web series The Guild is ready for even more success. The Guild, created by Felicia Day (Doctor Horrible), is a low-budget comedy series about a group of MMORPG gamers and their interactions both online and off. While there are a lot of references that will be instantly recognized by gamers, the show is still very accessible to non-gamers."
You mean that its easy to stay successful when you make your media convenient to your users? Perhaps the RIAA/MPAA can learn something from this....
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
World of Warcraft: Destroying relationships with girls since... well, the day it came out.
-- No. I mean this. I've got about six female friends that either bought it as a anniversary or birthday present, or their boyfriend bought it... and the relationship has always ended within eight months after that fateful purchase. My last friend got so fed up that she took the laptop (with the CD still in it) and smashed it in the driveway, drove over it a few times, then hit it with a hammer. Then she called all her friends and went to have ice cream. That game is pure evil -- it makes boys think dating a high level elf huntress is better than having a real girlfriend.
Legions of geeks coming to the defense of the game in 5...4...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
They weren't terribly profitable until they shacked up with microsoft and got distributed via the live. They sold some t-shirts and the like, but didn't really hit it big until they stopped 'self publishing' (i.e. uploading to youtube) and got a distributor (microsoft live).
Oh, and wall street journal articles and front-page slashdots don't hurt either.
If you have access to the Blizzcon feed via DirectTV or the internet, there is an extensive interview with Felicia Day and accompanying video regarding the background, making, and future of the Guild.
It's around 5:45 PM in the Saturday feed. It's in a filler time that many people who bought the package might not have watched.
Alas for the majority of us, she talks about how so much of the needed resources are loaned to her from friends and other kind people who want her to succeed. While that's all well and good, that can't be counted on as a viable business model. (Almost any business can be profitable if it can acquire most or all of its resources for free and convert them into a product to sell.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy The Guild, and am quite impressed how good the show is with what they have to work with, but if all TV had to be made with the tiny budgets they work with (each episode is like 10 minutes long, very limited sets, etc), you wouldn't get shows like Star Trek, Babylon 5, Firefly, or Battlestar Galactica, to name but a few.
I for one, am happy that at least *some* bigger budget shows are made (yes, yes, not all big-budget shows are any good - some are just big money holes), but I'd like to see a successful larger-budget online show, to pave the way for a gradual move to more television being online.
My last friend got so fed up that she took the laptop (with the CD still in it) and smashed it in the driveway, drove over it a few times, then hit it with a hammer. Then she called all her friends and went to have ice cream. That game is pure evil...
The game itself is neutral. Playing the game isn't evil, just a waste of time. However, willful and wanton destruction of other people's properly certainly could be considered pure evil! (Wouldn't just hiding the CD be sufficient?) Elf Huntresses don't get pregnant, don't sleep with your best friend, don't throw out your porn or videogame collections, don't embarrass you in public, don't run up you credit cards, and don't smash up your car... how is that not better than a real girlfriend? (Sure, the Elfess doesn't put out, but then my wife, having just had an operation, isn't putting out right now either!)(Actually, my real life girl friends have never slept with my best friend. They have, however, gotten pissed off, run off and married strangers they had only known a few weeks. All the other complaints are real and have actually happened to me.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
As another comment noted, they were not really that successful until actually receiving distribution. As a cast member in a web series (Break A Leg) we have been struggling not to gain an audience, respect, or critical acclaim since we have all of that. We just need money. Even the brushes we've had with sponsorship and major network distribution tend to fall apart through no fault of our own. It's just the way the business works.
We poke fun at The Guild from time to time, but it's a great show. I don't think though that's it's really a model of how to "stay successful" as an online-only series. You can't replicate what they did or follow their path like a recipe.
It just doesn't seem possible to actually BE successful as a web-only series, if success is defined at all in terms of money, without real money backing you. We even had a marketing firm whoring us around for awhile, and while it led to a few sponsorship deals here and there it never really led to independence for anybody from their day-to-day careers. There's just no real monetizing of the online-only series going on unless you have a patron or distributor who's willing to take a loss on you in order to get some other intangibles out of it.
That said, Break A Leg has a major distribution deal in the works, but it only proves the point. We're never going to be "successful" sticking to the web. The internet was just a way to get our show out there, and the show initially was just a way to showcase our talents (as writers, actors, editors, sound designers, directors, cinematographers). We need someone to get us OUT of the internet in some form in order to really get us see and heard of on a scale massive enough for everyone to quit their jobs.
Oh well, that's just me ranting. I love internet episodics, I hope they never go away. I just also hope some way materializes for people to earn real money doing them without needing a Microsoft distro deal or a major network buy-out.
Part of The Guilds success is no doubt due to their vast built in audience... A show for players of Puzzle Pirates or City of Heroes/Villains has much less of a potential audience. It also no doubt helps that those audiences are used to fan made material and have very low expectations as to writing, acting, and production values.
(As a side note: Has everyone forgotten RvB already?)
I don't however agree with summaries conclusion that the video's are 'accessible to non gamers'. I'm a gamer (though mostly out on the fringe, UO, CoX, YPP!), and I found them somewhat hard to understand because the terminology used was so WoW centric.