The Guild Is Coming! The Guild Is Coming!

Freakishly popular webshow The Guild is about to return for its second season, and it shows up at a time when webshows are flooding the internet media… airwaves??? Reports of new series, longer runs, big name players, and massive sponsorships have been bombarding… well, those who pay attention to such things.

The WB and CBS have been taking their shots at such series, and sites like Sony-owned Crackle are getting ready to make grander efforts via increased marketing and new releases. If you haven’t visited Crackle, or haven’t visited lately, keep your eye open in the next few days for big additions.

No small amount of credit for the whole affair has to be given to Felicia Day. Star of The Guild, Penny on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and general Twitter phenom, Felicia Day has made her mark on what is basically an entirely new industry.

I can’t help but think of the good old days of television writing, when people rarely said, “Goodbye,” on the phone because every second counted. Try working in your content, and perfecting the script when your show is between three and five minutes long, and you’ve got to convince people to watch the next one. Felicia Day, who also writes The Guild, not only manages this trick beautifully (with such classics as, “Sorry… Lied to my own webcam.”), but has helped mold the entire theory of how to put together such shows.

Now she’s also running at the front of the pack in terms of capitalizing on that success. Tubefilter caught me up on The Guild’s sponsor deals, and it looks like The Guild has hooked Microsoft and Sprint. The Guild is going to roll out on XBox’s Independent Video channel, and MSN, and Sprint is sponsoring season two to the extent that The Guild will apparently even feature in show product placement of Sprint phones.

Such deals, and the general inclusion of big names into the new theater, add a lot of hope to a new market that seems to be attracting lots of fans. A whole new world may be opening, as the ability to create content expands. With a host of options for delivering such content (Tivo‘s download feature – where you can get The Guild - among many, many others), what might have been thought of as merely a growing fad may be right on the verge of becoming a huge mainstream market. Especially, speaking of Tivo, considering that you can now get directly to YouTube via HD Tivo boxes.

But, the news here isn’t about the “news,” it’s just about the return of a hilarious, insightful, and okay… silly show. The Guild is a fairly goofy bit of entertainment that you get to digest in five-minute morsels, but it’s funny, and it rather knows what it’s talking about. The crazy lives of gamers who spend a lot of time ignoring real life has some fairly legitimate things to say about the messed up world of five-second attention spans, and reality-avoidance. Day’s character Codex, who isn’t especially happy with reality, her non-reality addiction, or what happens when world’s collide, is a fun and whimsical look at… frankly, Screening.

If you haven’t managed it yet, catch up quick, and tune in to the new releases which are theoretically starting tomorrow… though it’s hard to say for certain as the site is under construction as I write this.

Here’s the first episode, a Christmas song feature (because I couldn’t resist), and some interview footage.