I didn't even know about Mana Bar. Seemed like it was supposed to be a spiritual successor to his Let's Drownout LP series.
They fired the Escapist's editor, and the video team, Yahtzee resigns
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From what I've pieced from the occasional mention in Let's Drown Out, it failed to build a regular clientele and those that did show up would do so for the free games while engaging the bare minimum with the 'Bar' part of the establishment. They also tried franchising a little too fast. They opened another one in Melbourne and almost immediately had to close it.
Apparently there was also some bad blood behind the scenes. Yahtzee, who was an investor and silent partner, has alluded to getting swindled by one of his partners. He finally pulled out after bleeding enough money and the bar had to close. At least that's what I make of it. Good luck getting him to talk about any of this, it's clearly a sore subject. Or at least it used to be whenever Gabe would bring it up.
Well, it absolutely is just Zero Punctuation with a different colour pattern. I don't see how the actual review would have been any different, it's just Yahtzee talking, but the tiny visual changes are an amusing middle finger.
Zero Punctuation; but red instead of yellow, Yatzhee wearing glasses and dressed with a black coat and black hat instead of white hat, a dog instead of an imp, and everyone without glasses has googly eyes instead of black bead eyes.
I can't tell if they came up with it on the fly, or they had planned to revamp Zero Punctiation at some point with that as its new look.
To me it just looks like "legally distinct" but played for laughs.
Oh shit. That's a shame. I knew it went under but I figured it was just a case of these things usually fail and way too many people think they can run a hospitality business and then they see the margins and the work hours and realise they have made a terrible mistake.
But yeah I used to play D&D in a bar that hosted a weekly game night. Always bothered me how in a group of dozens of gamers most would spend next to fuck all on food and drink. They always got pissy with my group (it was just a coincidence we were there on gaming night we were totally separate) because we would get preferential treatment from the staff. Like yeah dudes, between us we spend 2 to 3 hundred every session. You guys sit at a table of 8 and one of you bought a pot of tea.
I think also video games aren't social in the way they used to be, where we'd all sit around the same screen with beers playing games. I think it's built into most games that the social element is online play, which I'm not sure the bar situation caters to.
It was basically that, a general case of mismanagement. Misread the market, franchised too soon and bled their one investor dry. But yeah, if I had a nickel for every hipster bar I've seen open and close I'd have the moolah to buy Twitter.
Just watched a bit of the post-FR review stream. They said that they were considering toning the red colour down.
As to the video itself it just feels like another ZP video. Which I have no problem with and is what I expected.
As to the video itself it just feels like another ZP video. Which I have no problem with and is what I expected.
Yeah I went to the Melbourne Mana Bar. Oh boy, I’ve been to a few shitty watering holes in my day but the drinks were expensive and not great and the atmosphere was just not fun. Even the worst of the other bars I’d been to at least managed to be bars. And competition in Melbourne for bars is fucking cut throat. Staying in Brisbane may have worked and netting a nice little regular profitable clientele. But in Melbourne CBD? It’s sink or swim and there’s pubs there older than our house of Parliament.
Fun fact:
Its now been 9 days since an escapist video came out. In their piece on Nicks firing Gamers council commented that it's entirely possible no one at Gamurs even has access to the youtube channel to upload any new content since Nick was in charge of the channel. I have to imagine if they asked for the keys Nick would be legally bound to give them over and I'm sure he'd acquiesce.
What a strange and inept direction to take the company. I work in corporate and unless it was an emergency, like guy spouted racist stuff on a bridge (watched that happen in real time once), you'd do empathy interviews with their team to gage reaction and fallout. Complain about meeting ad revenue goals and boom now you're at 0 for the foreseeable future. Good job.
Its now been 9 days since an escapist video came out. In their piece on Nicks firing Gamers council commented that it's entirely possible no one at Gamurs even has access to the youtube channel to upload any new content since Nick was in charge of the channel. I have to imagine if they asked for the keys Nick would be legally bound to give them over and I'm sure he'd acquiesce.
What a strange and inept direction to take the company. I work in corporate and unless it was an emergency, like guy spouted racist stuff on a bridge (watched that happen in real time once), you'd do empathy interviews with their team to gage reaction and fallout. Complain about meeting ad revenue goals and boom now you're at 0 for the foreseeable future. Good job.
I'm starting to wonder if they will even ever upload the last Zero Punctuation that the Patreon subscribers saw for the general public.
Would he be? Considering they just fucking fired him on the day and locked him out of his company email, he could totally have lost access himself to the password. Our company uses a password manager for example.
I'd say he could easily refuse to help them in any way, so long as he's not actually keeping any company owned property. Companies are supposed to have an offboarding process for a reason.
hmm. The content is owned by Gamurs, I imagine it will go up eventually. I suspect Gamurs literally will have to hire someone to get tubes uploaded, Nick and team were literally in charge of uploads so I doubt Gamurs even has someone to do that function if they havent released it by now...
There was a case about this a while back. The Traffic control manager for San Francisco lost his mind, quit and locked everyone out of the system. He went to prison for obvious reasons, but I think there's standing precedent that they could sue Nick. I think this would fall under malicious behavior and he'd have to go through some legal hassle. He's not the vindictive type, I'm sure if they asked he'd had over the logins and keys. The way he describes Gamurs though they seem pretty inept and may already have the keys, but no talent to get the channel going again.
I was thinking the same thing. If they ousted him without organizing a strategy upon said ouster, it's pretty much on them to figure their own shit out now. If they kicked him out of the house, there's no obligation for him to return they key he has to the cupboard. They should have had their own key to the cupboard, and changed the locks to the house making his access to the cupboard a moot issue.
How could they sue? He's done nothing as malicious as intentionally sabotaging what he was forced away from. He was told to leave, and Gamurs [apparently] had no contingency plan; Nick is under no obligation to aid them now in any way. He even rejected their severance, so they can't even use quid pro quo and bank on good faith for his help. They shot him in the leg, and bullet ricocheted off a wall and hit them in the head.