The
Philosophy of Felicia Day's The Guild
For
many gamers, the MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game)
World of Warcraft is a way of life. They spend hours upon hours
within the realms of Azeroth as members of either the Alliance or Horde
factions while completing quests, socializing in village markets, exploring
the countryside and forging communal relationships. Although being both
fiction and fantasy, however, the world of WoW also embodies
many of the qualities and challenges from the world at large and thus
allows for philosophical dissertation in much the same way that Ancient
Greece served as the catalyst for Socrates and Plato.
The ability
of a role playing game like World of Warcraft to teach real
world lessons is most represented by the fictitious Cyd “Codex”
Sherman, the lead character of the online webseries The Guild
created by actress Felicia Day. The series, which premiered in 2007,
follows Codex and a group of fellow World of Warcraft-like
gamers as they try to balance their faux personas with those of the
real world. Life outside the game is a struggle for each of them but
they inevitably find valuable and usable wisdom online during each season
of The Guild that is also relatable to their every day lives.
“I’ve
never really felt like I had any control over my life,” Codex
confesses in an early episode of the webseries. “I think that’s
why I like video games. It is so much easier to measure life in experience
points.”
Understanding
life and measuring the value of existence are obviously the major cornerstones
of philosophy. In the book World of Warcraft and Philosophy: Wrath
of the Philosopher King (Open Court, 2009), a number of writers
offer analogies between the works of John Stuart Mills, Adam Smith,
Immanuel Kant and Niccolo Machiavelli and the online world of WoW.
In his essay “A Meaningless World... of Warcraft,” for instance,
Luke Cuddy offers an interpretation of nihilism and Friedrich Nietzsche’s
concept of the Overman. Although he does not specifically mention The
Guild, Cuddy’s observations parallel the journey of Cyd “Codex”
Sherman and her group of online gamers nonetheless.
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The
Guild Expands Into the World of Comics
The
Guild, the comedy webseries created by Felicia Day about a group
of World of Warcraft-style online gamers who have trouble adapting
to the outside world, has found its fair share of success on the Internet
since its inception, including an award-winning first season which directly
led to subsequent installments becoming a staple of Xbox Live Marketplace.
In 2009, the series released a music video, “Do You Want to Date
My Avatar,” which quickly climbed into the top ten on Apple’s
iTunes Chart. While it may seem odd for a concept that has accomplished
as much as The Guild has on the World Wide Web, Day has taken
her creation even further by writing a successful three-issue comic
book for Dark Horse.
“I
waited a year to even agree to do a comic because I needed to figure
out the best way to not interfere with my webseries storyline,”
she explained to Comics Alliance in January 2010. “So
I decided to go back and do a semi-origin story, in a sense. It’s
the journey of Codex before her life as Codex, and how she gets into
playing. It’s kind of a love letter to online video games. That’s
something Dark Horse Senior Managing Editor Scott Allie said when I
finished writing it.”
Codex is
the online moniker for The Guild’s main protagonist,
Cyd Sherman. A shy, reclusive loner with little self-esteem, Cyd’s
life evolves during the webseries thanks to the multitude of screwball-comedy
situations in which she finds herself embroiled. In the comic book,
meanwhile, her life instead spirals downward as she has difficulty dealing
with chronic depression while outside forces likewise cause her to retreat
even further from the real world.
“I
keep fantasizing about an apocalypse,” she tells her therapist.
“That could really get me motivated. I’ve seen a lot of
Internet articles on two-headed calves being born.”
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The
Guild: Guild Talk
The
Guild is one of the most successful and entertaining webseries
of the medium. Following a group of online gamers who have difficulty
coping with the real world, the show is populated with offbeat-yet-relatable
characters and screwball comedy situations on par with any television
sitcom. Part of the appeal, however, is the writing—throughout
the series, creator Felicia Day demonstrates a gift for witty dialogue
that not only makes use of The Guild’s Internet-based
premise but offers keen observations about life, relationships and the
difficulties of navigating reality as well.
“I
just don’t cope well,” main character Cyd Sherman, aka Codex,
comments early on. “With anything. I mean, there’s always
a lot of drama in the game, but at the end of the night you can always
just logoff. You can’t logoff from your own life.”
Other observations
made by Codex include:
“I’ve
never really felt like I had any control over my life. I think that’s
why I like video games. It is so much easier to measure life in experience
points.”
“The
expansion to our game is coming out. New continent, new powers. Most
importantly, new character hair styles. I’m hoping it will help
heal some of the wounds in the Guild. Make us focus on what matters.
It’s about the game, not each other. Dumb humans.”
“It’s
easy to bond over hating something together. The Internet is total proof
of that.”
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The
Guild