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They were funny and now .. not so much

For those of you who haven’t heard of The Guild then you’ve missed out what is a uniquely hilarious trip into the world of a group of overly awkward, unlikely friends who spend a good portion of their time communicating in the make believe world of and MMORPG. Done in 2-6 minute bursts, the coolness of the show was not only that it was steeped in gamer/geek dialogue and inside jokes only us nerds could get, but the cast was this unlikely lot of nerds everyone could relate to. At the centerpiece of this crew was the star and creator of the show, Felicia Day. As the red haired, nebbish gamer girl whose gamertag is Codex, she did a lot of fourth wall narrating while interacting with the other members of the guild in their requisite hovels.

The writing, awkward comedic timing and just the mere premise of a 3-minute show was what made it so entertaining. Slowly but surely this “little” web series started to go viral and then, deservedly they got some major sponsorship in the form of Sprint and got some heavy spin on Xbox Live. Suddenly a show which would only take up 30 minutes of your time to watch a whole season was getting “popular.” Typically that’s the bell toll for a downfall but season 2 delivered just was well as the first and Felicia, well she was becoming sort of a nerd A-lister. She was for a while also a very accessible nerdebrity often times engaging in facebook chats and being very social with her fan base. That definitely gave her mad geek props and helped promote the show even more. She was also making appearances at all the cons, getting major great press, and the show itself  was getting the attention it definitely should have received from the start.

That was season 2 — and now bring on the schwag

gettin my guild on

Prior to season 3 premiering earlier this month on Xbox Live The Guild gang made a really bad music video called, Do You Want To Be My Avatar? That video premiered  at Comic Con and to say it was terrible would be giving too much credit. It was hopeful that this was just some slight journey down the “sell-out road”  and that would be the end of it. We had been waiting a while for season three and were all a tizzy when we started hearing talk of it. Then the episode premiered and 3 minutes later .. it was an awkward, humorless head-scratcher of an episode. All the internet buzz was about former Star Trek TNG starWil Wheaton (a.k.a. Wesley Crusher) showing up at the end as the bizarro opposing guild but it was at the very end.

Okay it’s the first episode but consider that this show is 3-minutes long. It’s not a lot of time to deliver clever, geeky comedy with an ensemble cast but for two seasons, they did. So what happened here. You could blame the show getting too popular propelling these actors into a level of fame they never had thus causing them to lose focus on how they got famous in the first place. Now there was merchandising, a popular leading lady and a bigger budget — so one would think they would dancing the mad dance of success and focusing all their talents on hitting one out of the park right? Not so much.

The episode had the characters out of their element  waiting at a Gamestop for an expansion pack, referenced stuff form last season people had forgotten about or didn’t care about and it just seemed like without the construct of their MMO world it just didn’t work. Putting that aside, the rampant product placement and overall stupidity of the fact that they would be camping out for an expansion pack just made it all seem like an utter waste of three minutes. By the time we get to the big reveal it’s more like big deal.

It’s like every episode of the office, without the office except they have way more time to save a plot line that doesn’t involve office hijinx. So let’s hope  that Felicia and her gang get their guild juices flowing and give us a season 3 that doesn’t look like newbie fan pandering and product placement.

Here’s the thing, every now and then somebody does something so cool and geeked out that it deserves all the props.  This one has been floating around for a while but it’s awesome in it’s timelessness. For this edition of Friday Flashback we pay homage to some of the classic games of the 80s in the most absurd way we can … By showing a video of Lego Arcade. This stop motion masterpiece shows off an astoundingly good reproduction of old games like Frogger and Space Invaders. Created by a guy who goes by the name of MICHAELHICKOX . It’s the ultimate in geekiness and we bow to it’s greatness. Enjoy the trip down memory lane, Lego style

Next week, tune in for part 2.

Usually I have something witty, snarky or thoughtful to say about these videos.

1: Knife kills are awesome, thrown knife kills are doubly awesome
2: Blood on the screen is cool: Drippy blood on the screen OMFG

I cannot wait for this game.

Recently we posted a piece about the NPD report revealing a 29% drop in videogame sales and there was a comment made about what the big three companies might do to combat this. Here’s what I wrote …

Speculation is also out there that this decline may spark another price drop from the big three. There has already been buzz about the PS3 unveiling a slimmed down version of their console much like Microsoft did with their non-hard drive model last year.

Well guess what? The rumors were true as Sony revealed at the Gamescom convention yesterday in Cologne, Germany. Just shy of it’s 3rd birthday the console is now basically half priced at $299. Whether or not this will be the start of a price war or  the way that Sony finally gets to shine at number one remains to be seen. The Wii is already at that price and the 360 console at that price range is only 60 gigs and has no blu-ray player. Granted not everyone has the hardware to really enjoy watching blu-rays (fancy TV, surround sound system) but the mere fact that you can now get one that can also play games at that price point is a fairly attractive incentive.

Price drop or not though Sony still has to offer system sellers the likes of Halo or Mario and of course their PSN is a long way off from competing with Xbox Live which is already years ahead of them in usability and proficiency. This may be the jump start they need though especially going into the fall with many major titles still on the way. Being able to play them on a more affordable system could prove a worthy rationale for gamers and parents who may be thinking about getting a console as a gift for the holiday season.

Best line from the video … “Our target audience is anyone with electricity.”

This is nothing short of brilliant. Please, watch The Guild (and buy their DVDs)