The Guild - making understanding gaming addiction accessible to all

Felicia Day knows what it is like to be addicted to video games. Indeed, she has talked about her World of Warcraft addiction quite openly.

Her web series The Guild  (www.watchtheguild.com)has given gamers a rallying point of readily identifiable personalities and mannerisms that they know from their own lifestyle, and shows all the different dramas that can take place when people interact in a fantasy world, and then interact offline.

However, this sort of satire is not quite new.  Something Awful had several running bits about addicted gamers meeting in restaurants and stumbling through menus and satiracal articles about the game itself such as this one that ran in 2005 about "How to properly enjoy World of Warcraft":

If you follow the link, and if you are not a gamer, you will not be able to make sense of what is being said, very likely, since it's all written in gamer lingo.  The jokes in the Something Awful article will only make sense to people who have actually played the game.

This is where Felicia excels.  She understands the gamer lingo, but has learned to make the language and characters that inhabit virtual worlds both hopelessly addicted to video games, but also accessible and understandable by a mainstream audience.  Her success in doing this has not only created a web series appreciated by fans of video games, but by fans of high quality comedy and satire as well.

By opening the door into the gamer psyche, Day has created another, unexploited opportunity.  I think every psychotherapist and psychologist dealing with someone who has a gaming addiction should see The Guild, especially if they have not played video games themselves and have patients that are struggling with a gaming addiction, as Day's show nails many of the common psychological problems and personalities that are attracted to gaming. In The Guild, everyone is trying to escape from something.

Codex - twenty something, social anxiety disorder, turns to gaming to escape her problems and stop dealing with other people. Yet in the series, she's forced to do nothing but.

Zaboo - Turns to gaming to get away from a controlling, overbearing mother, and becomes obsesed with Codex, the object of his affection and (unwilling?) liberator. And with the mother out of the picture, and Codex rejecting him, Zaboo reverts to being another woman's slave (Riley), a donimatrix.  Relationships forged via online gaming can often be extreme like this, because the anonymity of the Internet can often bring out more raw aspects of a person than a relationship forged through other more realistic means can.

Vork - amusingly accesible eccentricity, Vork's situation is that he views the world in a very unique way.  These people often turn to gaming since the rest of the world doesn't seem to understand them or even try.

Clara - Clara is running from her marriage and children, she wants to be the pole dancer and cheerleader for the rest of her life and avoid responsibility.  When her husband confronts her, she does what many addicts do, and tries to pull him in with her into her addiction.

Tinkerballa - Denial is more than a river in Egypt - Tink's issue is she uses the other Guild members to raise her own self esteem by eliciting a manic superiority complex and being a bitch. This plays out to the point where in Season 3 she joins an entirely different Guild just so she can look down on her former teammates.

Bladezz - Acts out online and is an obnoxious teenager, asserting himself sexually and claiming his own space; while at home he continues to be treated like a child.  Adolescents often turn to gaming to feel independent and more adult -- BLadezz is no exception.

As you can see, the characters of the Guild convey real life issues that millions of gamers and non-gamers alike can learn to understand.

Given all that, the series is a silly, hillarious satire -- but as in all truly well written comedy -- there are grains of truth and lessons to be learned through the satirical mirror Day provides.  Beware the trappings of gaming addiction!

CJF