How the Guild Wars 2 Community Brought an In-Game Magazine into the Real World

Tens of thousands of people came together to raise money for their local Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals this past year. One of the most interesting fundraising projects was the Tyrian Gazette, an incredible collaborative effort put together by Alchemy Art Group, the artists of the Guild Wars 2 community, and ArenaNet itself. The goal was to raise money to create a magazine that one might come across if they lived in one of the many cities within Guild Wars 2’s world of Tyria.

The Tyrian Gazette’s initial goal was $35,000 USD to be raised through crowdfunding on Indiegogo. A portion of those funds would be donated to Extra Life when the project reached certain milestones after that amount was reached. The project wound up attracting over 1,500 backers and raised over  a staggering $120,000 USD. That broke through three Extra Life donation milestones, meaning that the Tyrian Gazette project was able to donate $11,500 USD to Extra Life to help sick and injured kids across the US and Canada!

We talked with Melanie Sayre, part of the Alchemy Art Group and the organizer of the Guild Wars 2 Artist Collective, on how this project came to be and what made it so special as both a fundraising project and an artistic endeavor.

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Jack Gardner: How did this project come to be and how did Alchemy Art Group get the official sponsorship of ArenaNet?

Melanie Sayre: Alchemy Art is also the GW2 Artist Collective, which is a partner with ArenaNet. We’ve been doing projects as charity efforts for a few years now. My business partner, Sara, and I always push for new and inventive ways to showcase the world of Guild Wars 2 while still allowing for individual talents to shine through in the final project.

JG: Why do you think Tyrian Gazette was so well received?

MS: We have the privilege of projects behind us and the support of a wonderful company! I’m hopeful that the campaign itself shows how hard our staff and participants work at making these projects come together.

JG: It’s polished and brought together over 80 contributors – how difficult was it to juggle all of that input?

MS: It’s never easy, but there are a lot of feedback loops, especially with the artists. There’s a team of three of us on the artistic side that handle the process for the art, and two on editorial that handle the writing. To keep everything streamlined and on task, we have check-ins and constructive feedback given at each step. It can be time consuming, but ultimately it helps keep everyone on the same page, the project more well-rounded and keeps a conversation going between all the various pieces and parts that go into the book.

JG: Did you run into issues with keeping a coherent style when working with so many talented artists with their own flair?

MS: It’s always a challenge in the projects to do that overall! Asking yourself what the goal of each project is leads to a “look” that you’re aiming for, generally. Even the design of the book itself has its own coherence, one that we’re honestly very proud of!

JG: How does the book frame the events of the game? Are there any player-specific adventures included a la EVE Online’s EVE: True Stories comic series?

MS: The book goes up through the most recent story arc’s prologue, though it’s also important to remember that the people “reading” this aren’t the main protagonists. The book is catered to a reader that’s akin to a day-to-day citizen in the main cities (such as Divinity’s Reach). It’s interesting as a book because to fully understand why some decisions were made, you have to remember what the book aims to do – which is to educate and inform someone who doesn’t have the same information the player character (“The Commander”) has.

We do, however, have a “Spoiler” section near the middle that addresses current events, but otherwise the “Commander” is widely absent from the entire book, but on purpose. It’s very hard to keep a person engrained if we replaced their player character with a random Joe, so the player character is referenced, but not at length.

JG: Does the book create new in-universe characters to serve as the editors, freelancers, editor-in-chief, etc.?

MS: The Gazette balances a fine line in that respect – basically all items in the book are meant to not “call attention” to something, or create an implausible or impossible circumstance (so no events that couldn’t have happened or changes the actual lore of Tyria, and so on). In that, for the sake of flow and some humor, yes, characters are created, but none that would alter the world or canon of the Guild Wars 2 universe. We’re very careful about that, and our overseeing team watches for that carefully!

JG: How would one get their hands on the book itself and its related merchandise now that its crowdfunding campaign has completely sold out?

MS: Once we’ve gone through and fulfilled the pledges, we’ll be opening up the remaining books to the community. In the meantime, you can request to be on a waitlist via email, but we’ll publicly announce it later.

JG: Where did Extra Life fit into the campaign? What prompted that decision?

MS: In years past, we’ve always let the contributors vote on which charity they wished to support. With the last book we did, the vote came down to Extra Life and Save the Children, both of which were close to many of our staff. This year, we were again able to make a choice on the charity we wanted to support, and we decided to line up with ArenaNet to support them in their efforts, since we could also support and donate during the stream.

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A huge thank you to Melanie for taking the time out of a busy convention schedule to answer some questions about this wonderful project she helped to bring together!

Don’t forget to sign up for Extra Life to help sick and injured kids in hospitals around the US and Canada by playing games!