The Level Cap: Interview with Sean Becker

With The Guild Season 3 premiering exclusively on Xbox Live today, I thought it would be cool to give the community a little treat! Exclusively on Xbox Live, you can download episode one here. Those who are waiting for MSN Video have to wait until September. Last night on Twitter, I asked Sean Becker for a quick little text interview. He accepted my quest for him and gave some great answers. Below in a quick and easy format, you can read through the interview. Thanks for all the questions sent in by the community on short notice and I hope you guys enjoy reading what Sean had to say.

1. When and how did you first hear about The Guild?

-I first knew of the Guild from my friend Kim Evey, who is a producer on “The Guild” and Greg Benson, Director of Season 1. I had previously worked with Greg and Kim on Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show and Comedy Gumbo, which were two shows for Sony’s online division, Crackle.com.

2. Other than The Guild, what have been your favorite projects that you have worked previously

-Comedy Gumbo, which is a web show that I co-created with my producing partner, Payman Benz through our company, Awkward Pictures. It’s a sketch show for those who don’t have time to watch a sketch show. Season one is now available online and we just finished shooting Season 2, which will be released this December.

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”Part of the cast with @AndrewSeely and @AlexandraMokh”][/caption]

3. Do you have any other things you are working that don’t deal with The Guild currently?

-See reply to answer to question two. I’ve also done some recent freelance editing work with Second City Entertainment.

4. If you have one, what would you consider your gateway to nerdom if you consider yourself a nerd?

-Being a part of the “The Guild” definitely helps. I am an avid comic-book collector and am now starting to get back into console gaming. I don’t play any MMO games, but just installed World of Warcraft onto my laptop. I’ve been too busy working on “The Guild” and “Comedy Gumbo” to pursue that any further yet.

5. Back to talking about The Guild: Season Two of The Guild had different sponsors, are there any new ones this year? If so, who?

-Its the same sponsors as last year with the main sponsor being Microsoft.

6. From Season One to Season Two, the production equipment increased not only by volume but by quality as well. Is there going to be any increase with equipment moving into Season Three?

-We’re working with basically the same equipment as season 2 so the show will stay consistent. We do get to work with plenty of new locations to keep things interesting.

7. With the success of different YouTubers, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog and The Guild; do you think the future of the film industry could have a large impact online?

-I think its a possibility, but it’s still a far way off. With the popularity of websites like Hulu, it seems that online audiences are expanding their attention span for longer form content. The online format for original content seem most effective because the creators keep the episodes short.

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”500” caption=”@SeanBecker with Robert Welkner (@pennyman)”][/caption]

8. The end of Season Two was very unexpected, but with new characters coming into the story I have been wondering: will Riley and Wade return to Season Three?

-Riley will be there while Wade is off playing Henchman #2 in another movie.

9. How soon will we see Wil Wheaton and his guild during Season Three, if you can answer?

-Soon!

10. Out of curiosity, is there anything that you have not teased yet that you want to get out there? Anything that won’t spoil the story, but something that fans of the series will know what you are talking about.

-Everyone dies in the end. I guess that’s a pretty big spoiler. Forget I said anything!

11. Ever since the first episode was released to the Internet, people have been speculating what MMO the characters have been playing throughout the episodes. With Blizz-Con wrapping up over the weekend, The Guild had its own panel. Is it perhaps that The Guild is based off of World of Warcraft?

-The game is never actually addressed in the show. All we know for now is that it is a WoW-like game that they play.

-BONUS JOKE ANSWER - It’s actually based on Q-bert!

12. During productions, there are always random things that happen that ends in a funny moment. Is there anything that has popped up during film that was most memorable for Season Three?

-Killer scarab. that’s all I’ll say for now. You’ll have to refer to the gag reel which will be released in a few weeks.

13. Felicia Day has been writing the scripts for The Guild since the beginning of the series. With this being your second season on the series, is there anything that you want to apply or write into The Guild that you have yet to do?

-Not really, that’s all up to Felicia. Being a huge fan of these characters, I’m always excited to get the new scripts from her and see we’re the show is going. I’m along for the ride.

14. In Season One, Zaboo and Clara had family members that they interacted with. In Season Two, all the Guildies talked to each other and meet new people that they were surrounded around. Is there a possibility that friends that have been talked about in season two will become a part of the cast? Is there?

-Is there? I’ll have to look back at the script.

15. With The Guild getting more popular, has there been any discussions about extending the length of the episodes? If so, what time spawn were you thinking of each episode?

-The beauty of having a show online is that you have full control on how long it needs to be on an episode to episode basis. For us we write, shoot, and edit depending on what fits the story best. Right now, our episodes range from five to nine minutes. It seems like a fitting episode length for this show and its audience. I do not know of any plans to extend the episode length in future seasons.

Check out The Guild website to check out even more fun stuff from the show.

Posted by Nerd Boy Wonder 25 August Permalink

Nerd Rage: PS3 is better than Xbox 360. The truth hurts.

By Roger Gaw

Before I begin I want to state that this is solely my opinion. It in no way represents the stance of Nerdiest-Kids. Now on to the article.

Let us look at the obvious reasons first shall we? The raw brute power of the PS3 dwarfs that of the Xbox 360. That’s just the common undeniable truth. Now we can move on to the Blu-ray. While Xbox 360 still uses the standard DVD disc, Sony took a look into the future and developed the Blu-ray. The Blu-ray can hold 6 times as much information as a standard DVD. So when all you 360 owners are swapping your discs when you play Final Fantasy XIII just remember that the last time I had to disc swap was for the original Metal Gear Solid about ten years ago. Let’s not even talk about HD-DVD. That failed harder than laser disc.

And now to address the my favorite argument of the 360 fanboys. I’m not a PS3 fanboy by the way, I just call a spade a spade. “The PS3 has no games.” Wow. To be fair it is true that the 360 has a larger library of games than the PS3 because it did come out first. But nobody plays those games anymore ladies and gentlemen. People are playing games that are coming out TODAY! People aren’t playing Xbox games that came out in 2005. They are playing games that came out within the last year or so. And games that came out in the last year or so ARE AVAILABLE FOR BOTH CONSOLES! And don’t give me that exclusive crap. Exclusives are few and far between and the PS3 has just as many or more than the 360. So you can not argue with me that the 360 has better games because most games are multi-platform.

One of the main reasons I’m writing this article is that I’m just sick of people hating Sony for building a great machine. People say it costs too much. But you have to look at what it costs to make the said machine. They are loosing tons of money selling it at $400.00.
And another reason I think people hate it is because Sony completely dominated the last two console wars Nobody could touch PS1 and PS2. And Americans by their very nature want the underdog aka 360 to win. That’s why people rooted for the Giants to beat the Patriots. People hate winners. It’s a fact. On a side note I really do hate the Patriots. Those cheating bastards.

Again I’m not a fanboy. I own both consoles and I just want to give the Devil his due. Sony made a better console. Period. There is some irony to this article though. I’m writing while I’m talking in an Xbox Live party. Because unfortunately that’s all my friends have are Xbox.

So as I say when people hate on me. Don’t hate the player. Hate the fame.

Roger Gaw

Posted by Nerd Boy Wonder 25 April Permalink