MMORPGs, Evil Geniuses and Vlogging: The Wonderful World of Web Series

Greetings, and a good afternoon/morning/evening to you all!

In my last post I spent a lot of time professing my love for Pride and Prejudice and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Today I’m going to branch out a bit more and talk about web series in general and how they differ from traditional media. 

Web series aren’t as new a media form as you may think. The first series date back almost 20 years, however one of the most revolutionary web series (in my opinion) was Felicia Day’s series The Guild. Felicia Day, Queen of the Internet, used video blogging to tell the story of Codex, an Internet addict, and her online gaming guild.

[Fig. 1: Season 6 banner from The Guild Facebook page]
They call themselves ‘The Knights of Good’

A tale not quite as old as time

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

– Phillip Pulman

Welcome to Papercircuitry, the place where I will be discussing how the consumption of fiction has changed with the development of technology and how classic stories are being reinvented for the Web.

But before we get into that, a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then let us begin…

A long time ago, a young girl was given a set of Jane Austen novels for her birthday. Oh how beautiful they were! The self-professed bookworm could not wait to delve into their pages and explore the world of Pride and Prejudice.

She could not get passed the first chapter.