Felicia Day is one of the most powerful women on the Internet. The Hollywood actress, who’s best known to genre fans from TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Eureka, and Supernatural, has built her own Internet empire through Geek & Sundry. What began as a YouTube venture has blossomed into a true media company, thanks to Legendary Entertainment’s acquisition in 2015.
For this exclusive interview, we caught up with one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet to talk about her upbringing in Huntsville, Alabama and how she used technology to become a multimedia entertainment mogul.
How do you feel your home schooling impacted your imagination and the ability to create characters and play make believe in Hollywood?
It had a huge impact on life. I was not raised around other children and my two conduits to other people were doing community theater as a kid and using the Internet to talk to people in the very early days on CompuServe and Prodigy. That connection around the things that I loved primarily, not just the things around me, encouraged me to really find my place amongst the subjects that I loved more than just random people. Obviously, my love of fantasy and science fiction and video games influenced the kind of entertainment I loved.
What role did video games play early in your life?
Video games were my escape from my house . My brother and I used to play games on our Amiga and our green screen Compaq “laptop” — it was the size of a table. We played text adventure games and fairy tale adventures and Ultima and all the early RPGs (role-playing games) together. That really was our escape. When we finally got dial-up Internet we connected with people around the video games we loved, especially Ultima. I have a whole chapter about meeting my friends online and finding a place to belong around the games that I loved.
What are your thoughts about how far games have come today, especially as a way for people to connect online and make friends?
It’s amazing. I did so much when I was a kid that that even a wisp of it was so intoxicating. Looking back, I can remember thinking when new games would come out, “Oh my gosh, it looks real!” When in fact you look back and it’s all pixels and all early 3D rendering. The things we have like the Dragon Age games and the Unreal Engine just blows me away. I can imagine in ten years we will literally be living in a game through a holodeck with all the VR that’s out there and evolving as we speak. Escaping into other worlds is something all humans have wanted to do since the beginning of time, since we formed imaginations. And we literally have that almost on our face through the VR that is evolving.
How have you seen the term “geek” or “nerd” evolve over your lifetime?
It’s been a huge transformation, and it’s one-and-one connected to the emergence of the Internet. Geeks and people who are interested in things that weren’t mainstream got pushed to the fringes in real life, and that’s really the architecture of the Internet, people who were outliers and didn’t fit in with the mainstream.
They constructed the Internet to reward people who wanted to congregate around their interests. That really is the definition of “geekdom,” loving something and wanting to love that thing with other people and share that enthusiasm, whether you’re a hockey fan or a comic fan or a fashion fan.
That’s really what ultimately motivates everyone to congregate on the Internet. Having the geek subjects be the ones that were there first has made geek things more accessible, which lends a bigger platform to the creators who make things that are considered geeky, as well as an influx of differing opinions and perspectives in the subjects that we’re really familiar with.
In today’s digital world where books, music, games, and entertainment are all streamed, what role do you see “old fashioned” books playing with your tech savvy fan base?
I see so many fans getting the old fashioned book, not only just to have me sign it, but to be able to create a special place for it. The thing about digital is we’re flooded with it all the time, and it’s so all-encompassing that it almost feels disposable, which it shouldn’t because someone’s heart and soul went into those things. A great thing about a physical book is that there’s only enough space in your life for a finite number, where with digital you can have as much as you want. So the things that really mean something to you in your life take up a physical place, and that really means something more in your life. I’m honored when anybody who is more digital wants to go and have a physical copy of the book. That’s pretty cool.
That is cool. What role has social media played in allowing you to build your empire?
Everything I’ve done from The Guild to Geek & Sundry has been all about social media, and it parallels the emergence of social media. I remember getting a Twitter account very soon after Twitter started and being on these different platforms early because it was a fun way to get news out and connect with our fans. And that connection once I experienced it on YouTube comments when I first uploaded a video years ago, it’s the reason why I’m still here. I’ve had lots of opportunities to jump to mainstream and I never want to lose that “one-click-away from my audience” feeling because it really gives credit to having a person behind that computer, not just a number. That sense of community, whether big or small, is so nice because it’s that feeling of belonging I always searched for as a home schooled kid.
You’re also in the new series Con Man from Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion, which raised $3.2 million through Indiegogo. How have you seen crowd funding change the power dynamics for certain projects in Hollywood?
It’s amazing that the Internet is single-handedly forcing Hollywood to change what kind of content it makes. If you look at any Let it Play YouTuber and a lot of the different Web series, we’re seeing increasingly that the content and the audience, the democracy of the Internet, and the fans supporting and swapping to a content that isn’t mainstream is changing the way that Hollywood funds. And then when Hollywood rejects something, there is another way to make it. That’s really what happened with The Guild. We crowdfunded before Kickstarter was invented through a PayPal button, and it was funded outside by YouTube, which is a tech company investing in content to really make businesses that can make entertainment, but not the traditional way. It always makes me excited to look at a new platform and figure out what to make there, and not have to go by the traditional rules of Hollywood, which is trying to please everyone. You don’t have to please everyone, you just have to please enough.
One of the Hollywood studio companies out there that has focused on genre films and has a very indie feel is Legendary Entertainment. What has it been like being part of that company after it acquired Geek & Sundry?
Geek & Sundry was funded by YouTube for two years and it was an amazing initiative that allowed a lot of companies to start up in the entertainment business. And partnering and selling to Legendary last year was a huge step in being able to make content for multiple platforms. So not only do we still make content on YouTube, but we’re building at our website with editorial staff and we have a Twitch Channel that we stream five days a week, six hours a day. I love that because Twitch is such a community-building place. And we have a whole development slate of bigger projects akin to TableTop for all sorts of platforms, primarily on the Website. But I could see us even making TV shows in the next coming years. So I’m excited because it’s really about the community first, and then the content needs to be second.
TableTop gaming is “old fashioned” in today’s video game age. Why do you think that series with Wil Wheaton has connected with so many people in this digital age?
The way that digital opens up our world to be ourselves and connect to other things we love is an amazing step to accepting yourself and belonging, and it’s that human instinct to take it that next step and that online connection offline. The more you can go face-to-face with your friends, the more fulfilling that acceptance is. There’s nothing better than taking a Friday night and inviting friends over and getting a pizza and playing some Lords of Waterdeep or any number of amazing board games that we’ve shown on our own shows. I love that idea of connecting in real life around the things you love online, and that’s what conventions are for me.
