I’ve finally taken some time to get caught up on the phenomenon that is The Guild.

It’s low-budget, high-fun, and it is not unlike the projects that Corey and Steph concocted in Vancouver years ago.

For us, those short film projects – written, produced, and directed by the dangerous duo – were a hobby, a way to spend some time and keep ourselves feeling somewhat creative.

We found interesting solutions to problems while making those shorts. We made some lasting, some tenuous, and some short-lived friendships. We secretly wondered what might happen if someone with power and fame discovered what we were doing and discovered us.

But we worked on the projects because they were a laugh, not because we held any real expectation that they’d be anything more than that.

The premieres of each short were an excuse to get together with the cast and crew and drink too much and laugh at ourselves and the fun we’d had. They usually adjourned to some karaoke box for more drinking and singing and laughs.

Today, Felicia Day and the cast and crew of The Guild have been able to turn that experience into careers.

Granted, things started slow, but the online distribution model led to a bunch of donations through PayPal and word of mouth – us geeks really know how to get the word out – built a burgeoning empire.

Okay, maybe “empire” is too strong a word, but Day and her cohorts have some heavy duty sponsors for season two of The Guild, and distribution not just online, but online over the Xbox 360 gaming platform.

And Day has kept all rights to her idea.

I wonder, in the era of YouTube and blogs and social networks, if Corey and Steph and the rest of us could have created a little new media empire out there. Created a short, fun, goofy little film – like the one about Xena and her estranged “brother” in which I played some bizarre variant of Joxer – and managed to parlay careers out of it.

A part of me hopes that someday the Feet First Productions archive makes it online. For posterity if nothing else.

Part of me, though, would rather they don’t. What would be the point of being discovered now, ten years older, ten years wiser, ten years more sarcastic and cynical?

Ten years carries a lot of weight. Literally and figuratively.