CraveOnline: I feel like YouTube is changing the paradigm for what could be considered “successful” creative content. When you premiere a series, what makes it a success for you? Is there a certain number of hits that is just has to hit, or is it the amount of reaction?
Felicia Day: I think that if a show excites people. It’s really about surprise and excitement, to me. If you try to play the numbers game, and you make content just to get numbers, you’re going to probably make the lowest kind of base level. To me, that’s not what I do well. I don’t appeal to everyone well. I appeal to fewer people in a much stronger way. That’s what fandom is to me, and what creates fans for everything I make. That’s just my approach to videos. The qualifier is that if people get super-excited for the next one, there is the baseline for me as far as whether we’re adding a personality or adding a series. You need a passionate fanbase. Otherwise you won’t be able to sustain yourself and make a huge impact. I want to make things that have an impact on people’s lives, versus they’re just passing time with it. Those are the things I want to make.
I really enjoy that you have a part of your channel that’s dedicated to fantasy romance literature. I feel like that’s an aspect of geekery that doesn’t get enough attention because everyone’s focused on video games and comics and movies. Are there any other avenues of geekdom that you feel need to be highlighted more, or deserve their own programming?
[Laughs] I certainly think that board gaming… Tabletop is definitely one of our biggest shows, and it was a show that everybody told me not to make because it “not fun,” it was “too produced,” and it was about board gaming, which “nobody liked.” Which was completely proven wrong in the numbers and the passion of the community around board gaming. And the thing about board games, is just like video games, there’s not just one kind of board game. So Tabletop is this awesome general overview of the world of board gaming but we’re also working right now with a show around Magic: The Gathering, which is a specific kind of game that I feel has a huge fanbase, and I particularly love. I wanted to make show about it because I found it and love it. We’re also adding a war gaming blogger to our channel. Although that’s much more niche, I think that there is a fanbase there. So if we grow interest in that there could be another, bigger show involved later on.
I think you’re right, in that I love Vaginal Fantasy. It’s a book club. It’s a tongue-in-cheek panel that we have every month, reading a romance novel with a genre twist. This month we’re doing lesbian historical, and we’re reading Tipping the Velvet, which is an amazing book. We have a guest blogger […] for Geek Week. That’s something that I love, that was an organic part of my life, and I wanted to share with everyone. I was kind of bowled over with how many people wanted to join forums and read along with us and create their own group and meet up around the world to share their love of these books they have.
So there are some niches here and there. I love scripted content. We have a superhero show coming out later. We have a paranormal investigator show coming out later this fall as well. I think scripted also creates the biggest kind of fandom that I love. That’s why we’re focusing on that.
I talk to a lot of people who say “Stay away from scripted content, it’s too dangerous on YouTube.”
You know I never take the easy route, but it’s always proven to me to be the most rewarding road. Like I said, Tabletop, everyone said don’t do it and it’s our biggest show. It has created a cultural upswing in board games. I mean, when we feature a board game the sales of that board game go up like 2,000 percent. […] So we’re making a huge impact on the industry that is an independent industry. For me, that is an amazing story and something that is affecting everyday people’s lives, whether they’re the person who loves making board games or the person who just found a board game and is having Board Game Night at their house for the first time in their life.
And for scripted shows, listen, what affects our lives as geeks the most? It’s scripted. To say that you can’t do scripted content on one of the biggest platforms in the world… it may be a little harder, and yes, there’s bigger risk because you’re investing more money into it, but unless you invest you’re not going to reap rewards that are bigger. You can certainly take the easy route and do very, very low budget stuff that covers gossip and celebrities, but that video doesn’t last beyond the moment. I want to make things like The Guild [so] that you can go to Best Buy and buy a DVD of something I made in my garage, next to a multi-million dollar movie. That’s more exciting for me and for us as a team. That’s what we love doing. If we’re not doing what we love then there’s no point, right? [Laughs]
So is there an “endgame” for Geek & Sundry? Is “this” the endgame or is there a cable station someday?
I’m definitely not ruling that out. There are certain things that work really awesomely on the YouTube platform. Whether we take things off of the YouTube platform in the future, that remains to be seen. Honestly this is the central core of what Geek & Sundry is, is YouTube.com/GeekAndSundry. Now that we’ve transitioned to more Smart TVs, where people are broadcasting their cable box, I hope that Geek & Sundry is something that people will click on in the future, knowing that they’re going to get content that they love. […] It’s certainly an upheaval of a time, and I’m excited to see where it goes, and make sure that we continue to do work we believe in every step of the way.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
