Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. In any new idea, there are always people behind the scenes who make it possible. There are people who clear away hurdles. There are people who act as sounding boards. And sometimes there are people who can force you out of your comfort zone so you can create. For actress Felicia Day, this was Kim Evey. Kim Evey was an actress and teacher who taught a writing class at ACME Comedy Theater. And that is where she met Felicia Day.
Felicia Day grew up as a self-described feral child. She and her brother were mostly home-schooled, as in she was at home when other kids were at school. Her father was a doctor and her grandfather was a physicist. Her mother ran their home schooling, but it was basically Felicia learning thing she wanted to learn..or felt others wanted her to learn with very little structured curriculum. She had been taking violin lessons since she was 2, was able to use her violin skills, a supportive college professor and an almost perfect SAT score to get into University at age 16, despite no school transcripts.
Felicia graduated with a double major in math and music and did what all math/music majors do after graduation, she moved to California to be an actress. After a rough start, Felicia started booking commercials and got her first big break playing Vi, a potential vampire slayer in the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It looked like she was on her way to making it.
But then Buffy ended and Felicia was still only getting the occasional commercial and TV episodes. With not a lot going on, she found herself getting more and more into playing video games. She found a place where she could feel wanted and like she was accomplishing something by playing World of Warcraft for hours a day. She joined a guild that start doing progressively harder missions. Those missions could take hours. And there would be hours preparing in the game to be ready for the mission.
Felicia later realized that she had depression and fell into hours and hours of online gaming as an escape. She made occasional attempts to do things, such as going to Kim Evey’s ACME Comedy Theater screenwriting class, but even after that she fell back into gaming.
Felicia and Kim Evey ran into each other at a commercial audition and Kim invited Felicia to join a women’s support group she was involved with. Felicia forced herself to join. But she fumbled her way through the group. Felicia told the group she wanted to write a sitcom pilot about the gaming world and they all loved the idea and supported her. For the next few months, she would lie about the progress she was making while occasionally shaming herself into doing something, such as creating characters.
In December, Felicia finally came clean about her fake progress and the group was still supportive. This made Felicia feel even more guilty. The next day, December 21st, 2005, Felicia decided she would write the sitcom pilot by the end of the year. 10 days to write a full pilot. With 5 hours left in the year, she finished. It had probably been the hardest thing she had ever done. But she was happy that she had forced herself to finish something. She considered the creative process to be “…like a wobbly, drunken journey down a very steep and scary hill, not knowing if there’s a sheer cliff at the end of it all.”
But then she tried selling it and found out that not only were no studios interested, but no studios even had any idea what the show was about. Gaming was a very niche area in popular culture and online gaming was even more niche in 2005. Very few, if any, of the Hollywood decision makers had even heard of online gaming, much less had any knowledge of it. Going back to her support group for comforting after all this rejection, Kim Evey had an idea. Why not make the show herself and show it online. Kim had a viral YouTube short in 2005, soon after YouTube launched and thought that having a show about online gamers being online might be a great way to reach their audience. Kim offered to produce, another member Jane offered to direct and they could split the costs 3 ways. And thus The Guild was born.
To say The Guild was an online viral hit would be understating the online impact it had. They only had enough money to film 3 episodes, and that was after they beg, borrowed and pleaded for freebies to build the set and man the filming. Episode 3 was put on the front page of YouTube. They put a PayPal Donate button and that allowed them to raise enough money to expand to a full 10 episode season.
Felicia had a successful (online) show and with success comes people. Everyone who had turned Felicia down previously now wanted a part of this successful show. But Felicia kept turning them down, because she couldn’t bear to sell her show. She decided to invest in herself and it paid off. They had put Season 1 DVDs up for sale to finance Season 2, when Microsoft came up and offered to pay full costs for seasons 2 (and eventually seasons 3 through 5) and all they wanted in return was to have it debut on X-Box Live. Having a show about online gamers being financed and promoted by one of the biggest gaming consoles pushed The Guild to even more success.
Felicia’s reputation grew. During the 2008 writer’s strike, Joss Whedon, who had originally hired Felicia for her run on Buffy, was so impressed with The Guild, that he decided to self produce an online show and hired Felicia to be one of the stars. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog came out in June 2008 to rave reviews and awards. When the video game sequel Dragon Age II came out, Felicia was hired to create an online 6 part web show, Dragon Age: Redemption. In 2012, YouTube picked Felicia as one of the studios they would fund. And her new studio, Geek and Sundry, was created. Geek and Sundry created several popular shows, Critical Role (which spun off onto its own network), Tabletop (with Wil Wheaton) and Vaginal Fantasy (a romance book club discussion), as well as several shows starring Felicia.
Felicia sold Geek and Sundry to Legendary Productions in 2014 and left in 2016, partly due to burnout. Since then, she’s written two books: An autobiography and a book on how to kindle your creativity, as well as several Guild comic books to continue the story.
But if it wasn’t for the support and pushing of Kim Evey, Felicia Day would not have had all the success she has. Do you have someone who is pushing and supporting you? Are you pushing and supporting someone else? Ideas and innovation rarely happens in a vaccum. We all need that support for our dreams and a push to get started.