Can non-gamers appreciate The Guild? Yes. Yes they can.

I recently watched both Seasons of  The Guild.  Man oh man did I love it.  In fact, not since Darken Rahl killed a kitten have I been so twitterpated.  So I said to twitter (and subsequently facebook, for they are linked)  “Just finished the guild!”  One of my friends then asks how I liked it, being a non-gamer.

In part, our conversation.

The Felicia Day web series?

Yessir.

I’m curious as to your opinion of it, as most of the people I know that watch it are gamers.

I hearted it. Nerd awkwardness is universal.

I won’t disagree that Nerd awkwardness is universal. It’s just that the brand of Nerd awkwardness can often take away from the humor value. If I’ve never seen Star Wars, then a film like Fanboys may still have some funny jokes, but a majority of the humor is going to go right over my head.

With The Guild, quite a few jokes and stories come from the plot point that the main characters are all play an MMORPG together. So while the nerd thinking he can win a fist fight against a stunt man is funny for everyone, the sequence before it where his friends are pointing out things like “you don’t have a mana pool” and “he did mocap of the mob that always kills you in game” might leave a person asking what that all means.

As to the suggestion that I don’t think of you as a gamer, I would point to the fact that the lengthy conversation of all things nerdy we had at that dance that one time died shortly after admitting to being a gamer myself.
[That last sentence was a miscommunication as there was another conversation going on in the same status update comment.  I fully accept the suggestion that I'm not a gamer.  This is due to the fact that I've an extremely obsessive streak in me that would destroy my life if I bought a subscription to WoW.]

So notice that sentence I wrote up top about Darken Rahl killing a kitten?  Chances are, you have no idea who Darken Rahl is, but you get that what he is doing is so over the top evil that it’s still funny.  Maybe I’m more practiced with this than some, due to the fact that I read far to many Star Wars novels as a kid and there was an analogy to something that doesn’t exist every 2 pages.

As my man pointed out to me today, I might not know what an “husband agro and baby dps”  but I can still laugh at a mom angry that her baby is breastfeeding and her toddlers don’t know how to use the microwave.  The two friends who introduced me to the series are also not W0W players, so yeah, I did look up dps on my iPhone per request while we watched it, but note, I was using an iPhone to look up something I didn’t quite get.  This girl is still a nerd.

So while yes, I’m not a gamer, I still loved the show.  I have had enough friends obsessed with it that I got the basics and what I didn’t get I still appreciate.  My family understood far less of the references in Spaced then me and they still laughed.  I’ll compare it thusly.  Someone might be a wine critic, and the other just provencial frenchmen, but when they both drink, in the end, their just as drunk.  (you might pick at my analogy by saying there are different alcohol tolerances and the like, but then I’d call you a nerd and the conversation will end just as abruptly as the one I had with my friend at that dance that one time.)  (David I’m sorry!)