>> Amy Draves: Thank you so much for coming. We're thrilled to have you. My name is Amy
Draves and I'm so happy to welcome both Felicia Day and Marcie Sillman to the Microsoft
Research Visiting Speaker Series. Marcie's a familiar voice to NPR listeners in Seattle. She has
been with KUOW for the last three decades as an on-air host, producer, program creator and
most recently is returning to her passion as a full-time arts and culture reporter. Felicia, as you
know, is a writer, actress, producer and online maven. She wrote and starred in The Guild
which has won numerous awards and has authored the memoir You Are Never Weird on the
Internet, Almost. Her YouTube channel, Geek & Sundry has over 1 million subscribers and over
200 million views and there is so much more which I will let Marcie and Felicia take from here.
Please join me in giving them a very warm welcome. [applause].
>> Felicia Day: I feel like we're in the belly of the internet beast. It's wild.
>> Marcie Sillman: I know. There's a lot of people here. Thanks for coming out. I hope all of
you are supposed to be working. [laughter]. You're welcome.
>> Felicia Day: And then all the ones watching online when they're supposed to be developing
software or whatever you do. Sitting here it is hard to remember a time when there wasn't a
cloud and an internet and streaming. We were talking about this over lunch, the fact that it's
not that long ago that you were really excited when you got Gopher and you could find a library
in Serbia and like not understand anything. This is before your time. But I never found a library
in Serbia.
>> Marcie Sillman: You don't remember it, but I do. But I wanted you to start out at the very
beginning about that first discovery of the internet.
>> Felicia Day: Yeah, it was so weird in writing my book that I discovered that my life being my
age I have grown up with the evolution of the internet, what feels like post Serbia libraries on
Gopher. I never really had a time where I didn't know that I could reach out to somebody
through a computer to connect with them and I think that's kind of a generational thing I grew
up with and I'm first and everyone subsequently will be able to do that. I even when I was
doing the audio book I was like I get to do a modem dial-up. It's my favorite thing. I'm like no.
Let me do it again. I bet I can make it better. It's just amazing how far we've come in this world
where we are never not connected and we never had this idea that we couldn't be who we are,
which I think is a very free thing that the technology has given us.
>> Marcie Sillman: But you where this little kind of homeschooled Alabama girl by let's say
hippie-ish parents. This is a distinction. So to you and your brother, I got the sense from this
book that there really wasn't a whole lot of live human interaction beyond this family unit.
[laughter].
>> Felicia Day: No. I grew up in a bubble of oddity and I think that has certainly served me well
in life. I wouldn't be here if I had not grown up weird and that's kind of what I say in the book.
There are some downsides to it in being incredibly self-conscious especially at parties and that's
when I am relieved is when someone can talk about fall out, I am like thank God. There's
somebody I can talk to hear. It was definitely a situation where I got to pursue the things that
interested me regardless of other people's judgment and I think that definitely allowed me to
pursue things like mathematics and video games and technology in a way that I don't think
would have been reinforced as cool or something that I should have been attracted to if I were
in normal environments.
>> Marcie Sillman: Was it your brother who introduced you to video games?
>> Felicia Day: No. It was my mother, actually. She played infocom games. Is there anyone
with infocom in the house? Yeah. A dork, yeah. Leather God, got us a Phobos, which was like
an adult version of… I didn't know that, but she would play that. I would sit in her lap because
my grandfather was a nuclear physicist and he gave us his castoff laptop which was essentially
as big as this chair. I even have a picture of what I approximated what it looked like, what I
remember. And literally it was this big and the screen is here and I was like oh my God. It's so
real. So just in 30 years it has come so far. But that was how I got introduced to them and then
my brother and I got an Amiga, which I don't know if anybody remembers that. Yeah, I know.
This is great; we should have a club. [laughter]. And we played video games on that all the
time.
>> Marcie Sillman: But this is not the only thing that Felicia did. You actually were in drama.
You, I think, danced for a little while. I'm not sure how long.
>> Felicia Day: I did for three hours a day; I went to class. It was, I got out of the house. It was
attractive to me.
>> Marcie Sillman: And, you are a musician.
>> Felicia Day: Yeah, I play the violin, and I played mostly to boredom. I would read voraciously
and we would play videogames and there was still more day to fill up, so I played the violin and
I really loved it. And I played quite a bit, which eventually got me a scholarship to college.
>> Marcie Sillman: So you guys are getting the impression academics, schoolwork, where did
that fit into all of this, because not a lot, right?
>> Felicia Day: No. I self-taught myself. My mom always had textbooks. We would go to the
textbook store and just kind of read and pick up whatever we wanted, but there was no formal
structure to it. I never took a test before the SAT. I never was measured in anyway. I just loved
learning, and I loved reading and I would just read what I wanted. I never trained for a test at
all. It's really weird to think about. I never had homework. I'm sorry, children in front of me.
[laughter]. I'm getting some stink eye right here. I'm sorry. I just basically did whatever I
wanted. I slept in every day and [laughter] and I'm just going to grind it in there. [laughter].
But I just loved learning so much and I learned at the pace that I wanted to. I was bad in some
respects, especially like in chemistry and history, I was not as well-versed as I should have been,
but in mathematics and reading and literature and other things that really interested me I just
read as far as I could.
>> Marcie Sillman: So you got this scholarship to the University of Texas and you were 16? Is
that right?
>> Felicia Day: I was 15 and I was in a lesson one day and I studied with a professor there
because my mom raised me to be a princess. I don't know. I was tutored by some people in
areas like violin and math and one day he was like what are you doing next year? And I was like
I don't know. I'm really bored. And he's like just come to college. And somehow, I actually
wrote this in the book. I don't have a GED, which I didn't realize until I was writing that I
actually don't have one, so I have a college degree.
>> Marcie Sillman: But no high school.
>> Felicia Day: No high school degree, so I don't know if that disqualifies me somehow.
[laughter]. I'm afraid someone is going to call up and be like you don't have a college degree
anymore. Sorry.
>> Marcie Sillman: I don't think they take them back after you have earned them.
>> Felicia Day: I hope not, because I work really hard for that.
>> Marcie Sillman: I don't think so. The girl that you described is this not only a math and
musical prodigy, but you're really super driven. You're really beyond obsessive.
>> Felicia Day: I wouldn't say prodigy. I just worked really hard. I had the time to devote to the
things that were interesting to me. I think that's really the key to anything, just devoting time
to something in your life think is you that sort of fulfilling sense of I want to do this more. And I
want to build something bigger than just do this for an hour and drop it.
>> Marcie Sillman: Uh-huh. That sounds really nice when you say it like that. Had snuck how
you wrote it.
>> Felicia Day: Well, I hope I didn't brag that much.
>> Marcie Sillman: No, you were obsessed with the perfect.
>> Felicia Day: Oh no, I'm obsessed with being perfect.
>> Marcie Sillman: That part.
>> Felicia Day: It was important, actually seeing in my book, children close your eyes because
I'm not telling you don't get good grades. One of the stories in that college chapter is how I was
obsessed with my GPA. I wanted to be so good and really in the end had I've just gotten a
couple of Bs and learn how to not be perfect, it would have been easier on me later in life
because that perfection is kind of like they say you can get 90 percent of what you want in your
weight pretty well, but that last 10 percent of trying to get that much skinnier is 90 percent of
the work. Is it really that worth it to work that 10 percent and then take away from the other
things that could have enriched me like doing more theater, or just spending more time with
friends and quality of life things? Again, I'm not telling anybody to get bad grades, because I
don't want any parents mad at me.
>> Marcie Sillman: Let's see, you're never weird on the internet. You were weird in college.
>> Felicia Day: Oh yeah. I mean, I never knew I was weird. In college the way you program
your life is you get to be who you are a little bit more, so I think in college you are freer to be
the thing you want to be because you cobble together your interests. You're working towards a
degree, but you can also take electives and, believe me, I took like 22 hours a semester just
because I'm like shiny. But I think in life when I moved to Hollywood to try to be like, hey, I'm
going to be like famous in a second, you get a wake-up call because especially that businesses
very much on your physical appearance and not who you feel like you are on the inside and
then you get self-conscious about who you are, like maybe they are right. Maybe I am this
person they are saying I should be. And that's where I really started to struggle a little bit.
>> Marcie Sillman: It's interesting. You had this double major, math and music, and then how
long did it take you to say goodbye to both of those things and go to LA.
>> Felicia Day: No, it was always a plan, completely irrational, unqualified in every way. I got
my degrees because my dad said you have to have a degree in something reliable before you
try this acting thing. I realize in retrospect that it's because theater was a place I felt like I
belonged and I connected with people, and that sense of belonging is something that I think is
so important and something that I didn't have in my day-to-day life because I was
homeschooled. So theater gave me that joy of hanging out with people, even though I am the
fifth cancan girl from the left. I'm not the star, but I love putting on a show or just working with
other people towards a goal. That's probably why I like rating in World of Warcraft so much
because we're like taking down the bus or like taking down Oklahoma together.
>> Marcie Sillman: Yeah, where the sun is out there in the sky. While you were doing this
obsessive grade pursuit in Austin Texas, what role did the online gaming and that whole
internet play for you?
>> Felicia Day: Really, during college is when I discovered the internet. I don't know. This was
about 1995 or something when I first started college and I was like oh my God. Where do I go?
Altavista, what? Where do I go from here? And slowly but surely I rekindled that love of
connecting with people on USENET and on my own horrible website I made, and making
terrible Photoshop which I have pictures of in the book. And really, you know, being obsessed
with Diablo, number one, which I had an Amazon called booty call who I was very advanced in
levels. That was the one thing that threaten my GPA, Diablo. [laughter]. I did play online
games, but Diablo isn't like the kind that you join a guild. That's not the kind of game it is. It's a
little bit more separate, or at least it was back then. It really wasn't until, as I talk about in the
book, Puzzle Pirates and World of Warcraft where I like had a social group where I would log on
every day and play together. That really became a thing and that's why I became obsessed with
it.
>> Marcie Sillman: You became addicted.
>> Felicia Day: Yeah. I was definitely. Yeah, definitely.
>> Marcie Sillman: That's your word, not mine.
>> Felicia Day: Yeah, I did. I'm bragging and addictive, I guess. Yes. I would wake up in the
morning and I would play. My brother invited me to play when the game first started and I
would play at night with him which was very healthy and awesome and actually led to us having
a better relationship, and I had friends online. Then slowly but surely as my acting career
literally was just like this is it. You're going to work a couple of days a month and then nothing
else and I just didn't know how to get ahead because it's not a merit-based world. It just isn't.
It's a very appearance based, not merit-based world and there's a lot of luck. And not to
denigrate it. That's just the parameters that being from a very academic background I didn't
know how to get ahead, really, except by trying to change myself which I started doing. I
wasn't happy with that. Therefore, that equaled become the best warlock I can because effort
equals reward. I loved it.
>> Marcie Sillman: Talk about that community that you had found doing theater. You didn't
really find that in LA. You found that in these games.
>> Felicia Day: Yeah, because LA is really, I did some plays and I did some improv, which was
the closest I came to having a family there. But really, there is a sense of satisfying, of being
able to log on every day and see the same people. It just feels very comforting knowing that
you have a place that you feel like you belong and you're doing stuff together. I wish we could
do something really useful with gameplay like that, like really change something in real life by
raiding. Let's figure this out, guys because it's important, because I would raid every night. I'm
doing good for people. We are building a house. It's like habitat for humanity in a VR world.
Oh my God. I would do that every day. But yeah, it was something that felt good in that I
wasn't happy with my real life and I just kept piling it on because instead of really dealing with
the things underneath that I wasn't happy with, I decided to just raid more.
>> Marcie Sillman: So actually The Guild came out of it as almost the result of your trying to
beat addiction, right?
>> Felicia Day: Yeah, absolutely. I talk about this in my book. The reason I'm here today is
because a couple of people got together and said do you want to join a support group, which
sounds terrible. It's embarrassing. But it was really lovely to have a group to be accountable to.
In a creative world to show up every week and not be able to prove myself to the group and
show progress when they did, and that is really what almost shamed me or frighten me into
stopping playing as much because I saw them progressing out of the support that we were
lending each other and me not because I was kind of tying my hat. I was putting my hat on the
wrong hat rack, so to speak with the long hours.
>> Marcie Sillman: These were people who were writers. They were people who had projects.
>> Felicia Day: Writers, directors, actors, they were all people who were creatively frustrated in
Hollywood and wanted to proceed together. When people ask me how did I become a writer?
How did I become a creator? To me, you can never do anything alone. Even if you are a writer
which is a very solitary act, the idea of showing up and being accountable, not only to yourself,
but other people who are close to you is so, it makes it feel less alone when you are suffering.
Because when you are suffering alone, you feel like it's all me. I'm the failure. I'm the one who
irrationally can't get over this roadblock. But when you hear other people talk about it and
that's why I talk in the book about depression and anxiety, if you are you not feeling alone you
are already on the step to healing, which I think is really important.
>> Marcie Sillman: You are actually very depressed when you joined this group.
>> Felicia Day: Absolutely, The Guild online? Oh yeah. I don't think I realized that and then
when I joined the chicken, which was the group, I know it's just terrible. It was only.
>> Marcie Sillman: They actually sat together in real space. This is not an online virtual group.
>> Felicia Day: Yes. It was me not realizing how unhappy I was. I was operating from
unhappiness and I think it's funny how you can go through life being so anxious and so on
happy but not have the physical know how to acknowledge what your brain is trying to tell you.
You just absorb it as truth. But really it's not necessarily truth. It's your brain basically telling
you pay attention to me. To take care of me, in a way, sometimes.
>> Marcie Sillman: So how many of you first saw Felicia when The Guild went online? Most of
you. I like to do that and then take notes. Talk about that. That came right out of the chicken,
right?
>> Felicia Day: Yeah, so I decided I'm going to prove myself. I'm not going to show up and tell
them that I raided molten core again. I'm going to overcome this and I'm going to finish this
screenplay by the end of the year. It was a very hard process which I talk about in the book of
how hard it was for me creatively to get over that hump. I do think that it was part and parcel
with being a perfectionist. Being a perfectionist was a very, it was something that I in
retrospect feel like really kept me back a lot because you have to experiment. Like you guys
know, you have to beta test. In a way you're not going to create this perfect object, this holy
Grail or something from your brain. It's not going to emerge fully formed and perfect, nothing
will. It might be a happy accident once in a blue moon, but we always look at the lottery to set
our bar, but it's really the day-to-day work that you have to show up to to build something and
refine it and refine it to make it something that you can be proud of. That's what I didn't have
the bravery or the know-how to do.
>> Marcie Sillman: Even after you joined the support group that you were so embarrassed
about joining, and you really felt almost like you were going incognito to this diner, it still was
several months before you produced anything.
>> Felicia Day: Yeah, absolutely, it was months and months.
>> Marcie Sillman: So what kicked your butt and got you to do something?
>> Felicia Day: I just got this panic attack and I had them a lot, but this one was a doozy and I
just realized I was going to die one day and I needed to do something that I was really proud of
just for myself. It wasn't the extra stuff, the career, the people wanting to hear me. That was
not what motivated me. What motivated me was I had to make an imprint on the world in a
way that made me feel meaning or I'm going to die a husk. It was terrible. I really did, I was
very afraid and I think that fear was the only thing that could get me over that hump of getting
over myself of messing up, being willing to fail for trying.
>> Marcie Sillman: I love how The Guild started because if there ever was a DIY video show,
this is it.
>> Felicia Day: Oh yeah. I talk about hunting for trash and borrowing cameras and just like the
weirdest, oh look. It's wallpaper. Now it's a painting. I mean that is literally how The Guild got
made and it was a labor of love and I think through the process of filmmaking, which was kind
of like raiding, which is kind of like making a play, which is kind of like playing in an orchestra.
We were all together adding our unique vision and making a project together. That really is
something I love and that was what introduced me in being, you know, cobbling together a film
shoot on like $1000 or something.
>> Marcie Sillman: Whose money was that in the beginning?
>> Felicia Day: It was me and the director and my producer, Kim. We just kind of pitched in
and we were all like let's make something in our garages, not thinking we had any written result
except maybe having to show people later to be like we made this. And look how wonderful
this script is. Make it a TV show. But really, the minute we uploaded it to the internet and saw
how people interacted with it and had people even respond, hey, I hate you. Even that was, oh,
they saw it. [laughter].
>> Marcie Sillman: You did have a little bit of luck in that YouTube stuck it on its homepage.
Yeah, there was a lot of, and I actually put this together in a talk that I did a couple of days ago,
that I love being in the tech world because tech is based on innovation. The bar to succeeding
and innovating is thinking about something nobody did before. Hollywood, I love the things it
makes but the paradigm of Hollywood is not doing that. It's too risky to do that thing and really
innovate and therefore innovative ideas are not rewarded the way they are in tech. And that's
why I love being on the web or whatever platform it is that is technical because they are so
much more open to creativity within their technology, which people don't actually give credit to
as much in tech. That's definitely a testament to being featured was YouTube, not necessarily
now. They don't really do this, but they curated the page of things they thought were cool.
Just like The Guild succeeded and got to a whole new platform by being featured by Xbox and
being on the dashboard because really, you can make a lot of things. But unless you get the
visibility, especially in this world where we are so saturated with creativity, it's very hard to
break through. And I had been lucky many times in my life and my career to be bolstered and
basically meant toward my tech companies.
>> Marcie Sillman: I'm curious. You had this created need. It was a drive. You had to make
something because you don't want to die a husk, I believe is the word you used. A husk, I love
that. But going forward, because you were sort of producing and then you put the PayPal
button up.
>> Felicia Day: Before Kickstarter, yeah. I guess, I don't know. Someone suggested it to me. I
had no idea that anybody would donate. I mean, it was crazy.
>> Marcie Sillman: People make five-year plans, ten-year plans. Did you have like a five-day
plan even?
>> Felicia Day: I don't have a five-day plan today. I had a panic attack last night. Your book
tour is over tomorrow; what are you going to do next? You have nothing. [laughter]. I know.
You are, the look on your faces are like you are crazy. Yeah, but I think that need to sort of
always be creating is good and constructive and it can leave me smiling down or upward.
Really, it's the audience, the supportive audience that keeps me going. People ask me, do you
have a marketing background or PR? What's your angle? And I don't have an angle. I just think
like am I a random person who likes my work, what do I want to see next? That's literally the
baseline. How do I make it easy for a random person who likes what I do to get what they like
and get it easily wherever they are? That's really been the whole modus operandi of my swami
career which is not swami at all.
>> Marcie Sillman: You also act in other people's things. I'm curious, besides the fact that they
pay you and you pay yourself to make stuff, what you get that's different if you're in Buffy as
opposed to being in The Guild?
>> Felicia Day: You get a platform. The platform, The Guild, really, you reach a lot more
audience and I think it's something that tech companies give away very easily. I miss the days
when there were those slots for the curation versus just the advertisement because the ability
of tech companies to champion creativity is there. And I think in the need to monetize you give
the keys over just to Hollywood. That means you are only going to get the things that
Hollywood approves, which are not necessarily innovative which I think appears better with
audience on tech platforms such as my opinion. But I also love to show up to a set and not
worry if craft service is there. Or no, we're going over time. We have to pay the crew. We
don't have the time. We've got to wrap it up. And also the dollars are not there yet to have the
infrastructure of a television show. Like Supernatural, I worked on for four seasons. I loved
showing up and just being another character, but also the fact that 300 people are on that crew
in order to make that volume of content. They make 22 episodes a season, 22 hours of
content, and everybody is a specialist and to be able to have that volume you have to have the
soundstages. You have to have the people who are qualified and to be able to pay them their
rate. And we're not there yet. We are seeing Netflix and Amazon and all these other places
kind of be contenders like that. But even in Geek and Sundry we have very polished content,
but it costs a tenth of what a TV show costs. Until the dollars, which are advertising dollars, go
to reward those more niche content then this is where we are at and we can just push the
envelope as much as we can.
>> Marcie Sillman: That question of monetizing internet content goes beyond entertainment.
Journalism is also thinking about that as well. Not all of us can just put a Kickstarter or PayPal
button up, so where do you think ultimately that money will come from if it will?
>> Felicia Day: I think the gatekeepers control the money and if you want to make a television
show it's probably going to go through traditional television unless you are making something
really low budget like community access or something. The Guild was made on very reasonable
funds and that was an outlier, obviously, but it's not the only person that can do that. I think
it's really interesting as audiences spread over a lot more kinds of content, it's definitely a
struggle akin to the music business. How do you justify spending $3 million on an hour of
content when a blogger in their garage is getting more views? I think it's a struggle that in the
end will lift up personality as a legitimate business, kind of like the blogger and internet
personality things, but at the same time you'll have more experiment and more
experimentation with other platforms making television like content. Because really, just
because it's on one platform doesn't mean that it's on another. My experience with The Guild
is that The Guild found new audience wherever it went even on like Hulu three years after it
was released I would get new fans from every platform. And as people see that their
investment in content has a long tail to it unlike the quicker and dirtier stuff, I think emphasis
will come back around to that kind of stuff, hopefully. Because that's what I like to make, things
that will last a long time versus more immediate. That's just my temperature.
>> Marcie Sillman: Would you ever sell it to anybody?
>> Felicia Day: The Guild?
>> Marcie Sillman: Yeah, or your Geek and Sundry?
>> Felicia Day: It's sold. [laughter]
>> Marcie Sillman: Well, there you go. And you own none of it?
>> Felicia Day: I don't own, but I am the creative head of it and I have quite a lot of creative
control. I sold the company to YouTube, so YouTube invested in like 100 startups and a lot of
them didn't succeed, but some did and mine was one of them and I got bought by Legendary
which is a very, especially by Hollywood standards, a very innovative, very geek friendly
company. And they allow me to do what I want because they know that I know my audience,
which I think makes them very unique in the space to really trust the audience to kind of lead
content especially in the digital world. It's very hard to be independent and scale bigger.
Really, that's really the key. One person in their garage can make an impact, but can they
sustain, you know, leveling up, so to speak? And that's really when I talk about my anxiety and
depression is going through that adjustment of being not just in front of the camera, behind it,
on multiple levels and trying to scale instantly without infrastructure was very challenging. It
goes to show that just like Supernatural has 300 people on it. In order to scale the
infrastructure you do have to have a bigger team in order to make consistent content over
years. I still want to be making content even in front of the camera or behind it in 5 to 10 years
and you really do have to have that patron to be able to support that.
>> Marcie Sillman: You're Never Weird on the Internet ( Almost), are you yourself when you
are online or is there an online Felicia and this is the performative Felicia?
>> Felicia Day: I think that I definitely swear less in my tweets than I do in person, but other
than that, I'm very proud of trying to just be me. I think that's the heart of the book. I am
literally who I am here and I actually fight to warts my works because I think that the deification
of personality doesn't help anybody in trying to attain their own goals. It's not about me,
especially creativity is not about the person who is creating it. It's about how you affect other
people. If I can bust down stereotypes and show people that they should be proud to say that
they are a gamer and connect with people and like the things they like, we should never round
the corners of our authentic selves because we are selling ourselves short. Anytime anyone
tries to shame me or tell me I should be different or I should be doing this, I always go back to
my gut and I know that I'm doing the right thing. It may not be the right thing for somebody
else, but it's the right thing for me. That's what I try to be online. I treat it like my own IM. If I
do like my brother with it, I will hopefully delight the world with it. And that doesn't please
everybody, but that's the digital world. You don't have to please everybody. You just have to
please the people who you feel supported of. I think that's the beautiful thing about the
internet.
>> Marcie Sillman: And that's the nice side. I can't end this and open it up unless I ask you
about Gamergate because there's a lot of women sitting in this room, the world of gaming went
through a really horrible episode, long episode. A lot of these things happened to you although
you were relatively quiet publicly on that particular subject. In that sense of shaming, and
doxing and misogyny and animosity, are we coming out on the other side from your point of
view or does it still continue?
>> Felicia Day: When you have anonymity, like the beautiful thing about the internet is that
you can feel like you belong matter what you believe. And that is the dark side too, that people
can feel that this attitude is acceptable because a thousand people in this chat room where this
forum think that's cool. Labeling all hatred online and misogyny and all of those things just to
one label is not accurate. I talked in my book about I'm sure we all remember those means of
gamer girl, that gamer girl mean that went around for years about sort of litmus testing women
especially who were finding a voice in a world where they were not necessarily represented.
When you see somebody expressing enthusiasm about something regardless of their gender or
anything, and you slap them and say you are not good enough for me, that makes me so angry.
And I think that's the root in all of those, and I saw that for years and I relate a couple of
experiences that I had towards it and I never really recounted how much they deeply affected
me. I felt like I belonged to gaming and in fact, these people were telling me I didn't. It's such a
small minority, but on the internet you can feel like you are being mobbed by 30 people telling
you you are horrible. I would not attribute everything to that label. I think that was a horrible
incident that just kind of showed that there were some people who were very unhappy and
decided to join forces and do it and it ruled gaming in a way that it does not, because gaming to
me is beautiful. It's a thing that brings people together. It's an art form and it's something that
I would rather do with my time than consume any other kind of media. The fact that in a
broader sense all of gaming is painted with that is something that I want to stand up to against.
But just ignoring it and pretending that it didn't happen is not the case because you want to
strengthen people to be able to stand up against that if it happens again to them on a small
scale or on a large scale. I do believe that gaming is improved in a sense that more voices are
standing up against that kind of thing and the more we form a community in a positive way, the
more that small minority voices like that will be drowned out.
>> Marcie Sillman: It's 2:02 and here's what I'm supposed to tell you. At 2:15 Felicia will sign
books back there.
>> Felicia Day: I'm in a weird corner over there.
>> Marcie Sillman: In a cornerback here.
>> Felicia Day: So come on through, come on down.
>> Marcie Sillman: But now is your chance to ask 13 minutes worth of questions. Right there.
>>: So at PAX this weekend, eh?
>> Felicia Day: Yes, I'm going to be at PAX so if you… Oh did you have a question? [laughter].
>>: Well I did. [laughter]. I'll be at PAX too, so it will be great. But my question is how could
we make Xbox Live better for Codex?
>> Felicia Day: Codex has a random gamer?
>>: Yeah. Well, not random but a specific personality.
>> Felicia Day: A specific personality, a game? I love Xbox. I think the environment is friendly.
I think more tools to be able to form permanent friends, groups on there would be nice, you
know, guilds so to speak. It is a closed system but it feels friendly to me, designwise. And I love
the ability to curate. I think customization in a sense, but not just customization for yourself,
but for friend groups would be really nice. And I guess it would be nice to have more video on
there. As somebody who was literally made by Xbox video, I'm sad to see there's not more of it
on there and especially if you are tailoring it to a gamer, there is a lot of content out there. But
just like the curation wand helped me on YouTube and on Xbox, there are voices that you guys
could use as your mascots in a sense for your personalities. I think that would help, or at least
curation of video to supplement gaming.
>> Marcie Sillman: It strikes me that they should all be taking lots of notes so they could make
it to order. Right there.
>>: I would just like to express my appreciation personally. The Guild I think articulated a dark
time for a lot of us, post-recession, the malaise, the directionless depression and stuff, all that.
And you had a great impact on me personally and a lot of people I know, so thank you very
much for that.
>> Felicia Day: Thank you. That is beautiful. [applause].
>> Marcie Sillman: Amy?
>> Amy Draves: I have an online question for you. In terms of scaling projects, how do you go
about finding and choosing people to work with? And then the second part of her question is
any predictions on the future of collaboration?
>> Felicia Day: Yeah, I think it's really tough and that's something I really had to struggle with
when I started Geek and Sundry. I just thought I was going to make a bunch of content and I
didn't realize that the infrastructure to make all that content was going to be a huge
monumental thing to build. And that was something I just naïvely didn't expect. I didn't know
anything about business. And really, creativity only soars when it's supported by people around
that vision, right? I mean, not to say that it's all support driven but in fact, the infrastructure is
just as important as the UI to show off that creativity. And the ability to interact with it and
share it, the nuts and bolts are just as important as the creativity because without all of those
you don't get your voice out. It's part and parcel to be able to build a good infrastructure with
personality in a company just as much as anything. As far as managing people, I was terrible. I
came out of a world where I did everything myself, so delegating was really something I had to
learn and I think to build a great team you have to, if you are the leader of the team, you have
to be ruthless with yourself and realize you are terrible at this. You are bad at this. Hey, what
am I bad at? How am I doing? Always checking in and seeing where you can improve and fill
the holes of what you can do, because no one is a monolith, with the best people who
enthusiastically love that thing too. It's like Swiss cheese. You are a Swiss cheese block. How
do you fill up the holes with the right people to make a solid Guda? I don't know? [laughter].
That was a terrible analogy.
>> Marcie Sillman: I actually like that one.
>> Felicia Day: Okay, good. I think I will take it back to my boss.
>> Felicia Day: Cheese people are like how dare you? Swiss is not Guda, you Philistine.
[laughter].
>> Marcie Sillman: Okay. Standing next to Amy there is a hand. You.
>>: So you obviously juggle a lot of different projects and a lot of different things online. I
obviously work here at Microsoft but also do a lot of online content creation and I never feel
like I have enough time to do everything. How do you juggle and balance all your different
projects?
>> Felicia Day: It's really hard. I mean, especially when you wear a million hats. Like the digital
world kind of enables that and requires a lot of hats, but every so often I'll be like this hat is
very heavy. Why is it so heavy? To me my hardest thing is making sure that my time is as
valuable as my time is to other people. A lot of the time when I'm having an anxiety attack or
have a project to get done, I actually think of myself as another person. When I'm anxious or
depressed I think of myself as a child and I give myself a hug. That really improves my mood in
loving myself and being gentle with myself and not being frustrated with myself. Emotionally, I
get through like that and then, you know, as far as creativity, I'm showing up with a date with
myself. I'm as accountable to myself in showing up for the time that I carve out for myself as
anybody else needing it. I make up people. I'm sorry I have a meeting with Judy. And I'm like
I'm Judy. [laughter]. But like in doing that it makes people actually -- because people do have
an attitude and they are like well, I need your time. So just because it's for you it means you
are self-centered. No. It means I'm showing up for myself. So for me I always put dates with
myself or work sessions with myself and pretend I'm Judy. It actually works. It goes far because
you only get great things by slowly accumulating them. Everything isn't overnight and
instantaneous.
>>: Your secret is out.
>> Felicia Day: Dammit. I'll have to change my name and my calendar.
>> Marcie Sillman: In the dark T-shirt right there.
>>: I wanted to know, you are talking about making time. Do you still have time to play games
and what are you playing right now?
>> Felicia Day: The good thing is I made gameplaying into my work by streaming, which actually
didn't start that way. I started streaming about a year ago only because I just had to do
something for myself that got me back to where I started. And I love streaming and out of that
we started streaming on Twitch with Deconscendra [phonetic] we stream five or six days a
week now. I love the interaction with the audience and it really got me back to my roots of this
is a small community and I kind of know a lot of the people in there as people and we are doing
something together. Regardless, aside from that there are games like Pillars of Eternity that are
not really stream friendly as much, but they are amazing. Wasteland II was one of my favorites
last year. I have been playing Witcher III and I love Indie games and I really wanted in the
future to turn my focus more towards Indie because AAA they've got it covered. They are the
Hollywood block buster of gaming, but there is so much innovation and design and just
boundary pushing in Indie games right now. It's such an amazing scene that I would love to put
more of my voice into and my company's voice into also. I remember Xbox Live that all the
Indie games, I saw those way more often back then, so hopefully you guys can push those a
little bit more because those are really where the jewels are to me in the world of games.
>>: Tomorrow there is an Xbox thing going on between two and four.
>> Felicia Day: Okay, cool. I wish I could be here. I'm at PAX with this guy.
>> Marcie Sillman: I've been ignoring the side of the room, so yes, you.
>>: I brought my girls because they are homeschooled and I wanted them to see a successful
homeschooled woman. I was wondering what kind of thoughts do you feel you wish you could
tell yourself when you were younger and homeschooled, you know, what you know now or that
kind of stuff that you know now that you didn't know then.
>> Felicia Day: I would say that don't base your self-worth on your achievements as much.
That's what I found myself doing. I became that girl that I have a 4.0 or I won the -- and I think
that's kind of the external gratification sort of sells yourself short. And then you think about the
end result more than the process. I think that's the best thing I have learned is to have a love of
learning for yourself and sign up for a daily work of it, because if you are just driving yourself
forward I need to win this thing, you don't enjoy 90 percent of your literal hours. I guess for
homeschooling, you know, I had a very unstructured homeschooling. Hopefully, your children
are a little more structured. Let's just wake up whenever. But at the end you have the
opportunity to really pursue something that you love and get a leg up on. Getting out and
meeting people and being part of like I said, building communities around activities you love
and just really supporting things that you love. I would never be here unless I love violin and
my mom had literally got me any of the best lessons in the area. Or just going in and taking
watercolor at the community college. I did it. I was like a 10-year-old sitting next to an 80-yearold doing watercolor. And those things really foster a love of learning in me that serves me well
nowadays.
>> Marcie Sillman: Amy, you had one last question, I think.
>> Amy Draves: There are a couple of things. One is in response to the cheese comparison
there has been a lot of appreciation.
>> Felicia Day: Oh my God, the cheese analogy is hitting it.
>> Amy Draves: And then Joseph asks, what is the best current show on TV or online which no
one is watching?
>> Felicia Day: Allowed. Game of Thrones is really this sleeper hit that no one knows about.
[laughter]. I think, the thing about right now is that there is such a glut of content and it's really
hard to find things. There's a show called Catastrophe. It's a half-hour comedy. It's out of
Britain. I love British comedy the most. I love Doctor Strange, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norill.
That's an amazing thing. Right there. That was a great show that I feel like people didn't talk
about it enough because I love that book and I thought they did a great adaptation. There's
awesome stuff online and I think the more that we can really, if you find somebody that you
really love especially on a small scale, be proactive and create a community around there
because that really is the key to keeping a creator going. Also, having content mean more to
you, I think we have gone beyond the point where we are just passively having movies shoved
in our faces and TV, yes. That's great, but it's really the experience around those and that's
what Buffy showed me much longer ago about creating community around a creation. It really
enriches people. There's the charity work. We have a Team Human around our Twitch channel
that does charity work and knows people and each other in real life. I think that's really
something that tech should facilitate, the enabling of community around content in a more
seamless way and I appreciate it whenever I see that. So that's it.
>> Marcie Sillman: Thank you guys. Now you all have to go do all these things, especially the
Xbox people. [laughter]. So Felicia is going to be back there signing books and you can buy
books I think.
>> Felicia Day: Yes. You can purchase books. If you don't have one I will sign it. I will see all of
you there. Thank you so much.
>> Marcie Sillman: Thank you. [applause].