Jim Sterling sheds light on The Escapist's previous parent company

meiam

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To bring this back to Sterling (somewhat)...

The bombshell exposé about rampant sexist behavior, harassment and flat-out criminal assaults at one of the biggest video game companies in the world, which includes but is not limited to the creative heads imposing their sexist views *on the games themselves*, will hopefully be a turning point for the games industry and maybe even a change in attitudes in the overall community. But after reading some of the comments here about how "politics" and feminist critics somehow ruined the former Escapist and poisoned the collective discourse around games, well....I'm thinking that's not very fucking likely.

In any event...Defy Media and Achron ruined this place. No one else. Not some critic on YouTube or some indie game developer. Defy ran the place into the ground, and they own the collapse. Good people left or were pushed out because of them, either because of crap like pandering to publishers or because their bullshit "no politics!" pledge was just a head fake for them to instill their own politics ("Milo Inc." LOL...). Good riddance to them.
Gaming journalism died around that time, like joystick also closed and a ton of other did at the same time (iirc something about add revenue collapsing). Very few survived and a lot of those had to cut down on staff. I think Defy/Archon could have been entirely different entity/people and not much would have changed.
 

happyninja42

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In any event...Defy Media and Achron ruined this place. No one else.
Eh, I wouldn't say no one else. There were plenty of festering shitbags that used to be users on this site, that contributed to the implosion. I recall vividly seeing certain posters names in a response to a thread, and cringing because I knew it meant that the entire subject had been derailed into something else toxic and inflammatory.

It made for a very hostile social group, and attempting to engage in enjoyable conversation in the forums, was like walking a minefield, avoiding entire sections and subthreads, and blocking multiple users for their aggressive behavior.

So yes, Defy and Achron are definitely involved, but they aren't the only ones that set the site aflame.
 
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To bring this back to Sterling (somewhat)...

The bombshell exposé about rampant sexist behavior, harassment and flat-out criminal assaults at one of the biggest video game companies in the world, which includes but is not limited to the creative heads imposing their sexist views *on the games themselves*, will hopefully be a turning point for the games industry and maybe even a change in attitudes in the overall community. But after reading some of the comments here about how "politics" and feminist critics somehow ruined the former Escapist and poisoned the collective discourse around games, well....I'm thinking that's not very fucking likely.
It's not like Jim Sterling is a stranger to sexist behaviour, is it? I never get the appeal with this guy, he's just a hypocrite who always goes after easy targets.
 

fOx

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I shudder to think how empty of any significance or hardship one's life has to be for Sarkeesian to constitute as a "major event".
I completely forgot about her. Has she even done anything of significance in years? With everything happening in 2020, I'm surprised anyone still cares.

I envy people who have the luxury of worrying about anita, of all things.
 

Exley97

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Gaming journalism died around that time, like joystick also closed and a ton of other did at the same time (iirc something about add revenue collapsing). Very few survived and a lot of those had to cut down on staff. I think Defy/Archon could have been entirely different entity/people and not much would have changed.
I'm sure market conditions for online media, especially for hyper competitive games media, didn't help matters. But if there were different people running this place back then, then perhaps Sterling doesn't leave (maybe he ventures off on his own at some point down the road) and you would've still have good content creators here instead of the clowns that Achron brought in as replacements. But to your point, the games media landscape definitely went through tough time (and probably is undergoing another) that saw the closure of some good sites.
 

happyninja42

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It's not like Jim Sterling is a stranger to sexist behaviour, is it? I never get the appeal with this guy, he's just a hypocrite who always goes after easy targets.
He's acknowledged that he was an asshole in the past, and has apologized for his prior behavior, and said he has worked to be better, and more critical about his own work, and his criticisms of other people's work. I'm not sure what "always goes after easy targets" even refers to, as his current content is mostly directed at shitty gamer companies and developers who get away with actual crimes due to their positions of power in an industry that has little to no regulation. Not sure how that's an "easy target" in your book.
 

Exley97

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Eh, I wouldn't say no one else. There were plenty of festering shitbags that used to be users on this site, that contributed to the implosion. I recall vividly seeing certain posters names in a response to a thread, and cringing because I knew it meant that the entire subject had been derailed into something else toxic and inflammatory.

It made for a very hostile social group, and attempting to engage in enjoyable conversation in the forums, was like walking a minefield, avoiding entire sections and subthreads, and blocking multiple users for their aggressive behavior.

So yes, Defy and Achron are definitely involved, but they aren't the only ones that set the site aflame.
Sure, but who invited a lot of those shitposters? Who set out the welcome mat for a certain type of individual? Who actively courted folks from the Chans FFS? Who in their right freakin mind, regardless of their political philosophy, would have thought THAT was a good idea? And I know, not all the shitposters were from a specific group that will remain unnamed, and that some of the assholes that came here just wanted to shitpost in response to their shitposts. But you can find a very clear start of when the Forums began to descend nto an absolute hellscape.

So yes, the decline of the forums sped things up here. I know firsthand how bad it got, as I was pretty active on the megathread and related discussions (I had one particularly awful forum member accuse me of of driving another member to a suicide attempt because my posts were causing them "mental anguish" or some bullshit). But hey, that's the type of environment Achron wanted - free speech, anything goes, censorship sucks, yada yada yada.

Look, the shitposters were BAD. And they made the forums unbearable. But they came here for a reason. Achron was going after a specific audience. And he got it.
 

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This also feels disingenuous. It's like arguing Jigsaw isn't setting up murder in the Saw movies. When you say that hundreds of games people played from their youth were sexist, you are insulting something people like, to go further and then say that by playing those games, every single person that has played them could potentially be sexist themselves further insult those people.
Hence, why I hate her and have no respect. The others were right to be angry, but should have argued with facts (which many did), but they got overshadowed by loud racists/sexists assholes who did not know when to quit. Then you have all of the fighting, with me or againtst me, or you're "evil or on the wrong side" bullshit we see on Twitter.



Eh, she liked Uncharted 3 somehow claiming the story was so good she felt the gameplay "interrupted" it. Also, she said in a podcast the controls sucked.
The story was meh, despite me liking it okay enough, but I can see where she was coming from on the controls. Before the patch Naughty Dog decided to change the control set up for no reason, and a patch came in a couple weeks later to make it more like Uncharted 2.

 
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Specter Von Baren

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To bring this back to Sterling (somewhat)...

The bombshell exposé about rampant sexist behavior, harassment and flat-out criminal assaults at one of the biggest video game companies in the world, which includes but is not limited to the creative heads imposing their sexist views *on the games themselves*, will hopefully be a turning point for the games industry and maybe even a change in attitudes in the overall community. But after reading some of the comments here about how "politics" and feminist critics somehow ruined the former Escapist and poisoned the collective discourse around games, well....I'm thinking that's not very fucking likely.
So long as you paint with a brush the size of Alaska, you will never make the change you want.

In any event...Defy Media and Achron ruined this place.
No. The mods ruined it. I left before Gamergate or whatever happened. These forums were already dying because every conversation would degenerate into the same topic and go over the same arguments. Things should have been cracked down on that anyone making any post at all related to sexism, regardless of their side, would have that post removed. The topic needed to be ended so that the community could become less divided, focus on the things they agreed on and enjoyed. The topic deserved to be talked about but it was clear that, at least on these forums, it wasn't going anywhere until time had passed.

Eh, I wouldn't say no one else. There were plenty of festering shitbags that used to be users on this site, that contributed to the implosion. I recall vividly seeing certain posters names in a response to a thread, and cringing because I knew it meant that the entire subject had been derailed into something else toxic and inflammatory.

It made for a very hostile social group, and attempting to engage in enjoyable conversation in the forums, was like walking a minefield, avoiding entire sections and subthreads, and blocking multiple users for their aggressive behavior.

So yes, Defy and Achron are definitely involved, but they aren't the only ones that set the site aflame.
Exactly! The problem was people not being able to come together on their commonalities.

Hence, why I hate her and have no respect. The others were right to be angry, but should have argued with facts (which many did), but they got overshadowed by loud racists/sexists assholes who did not know when to quit. Then you have all of the fighting, with me or againtst me, or you're "evil or on the wrong side" bullshit we see on Twitter.
I agree. It was not a good time. Once a topic becomes that heated, everyone can turn into an asshole.
 

happyninja42

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Sure, but who invited a lot of those shitposters? Who set out the welcome mat for a certain type of individual? Who actively courted folks from the Chans FFS?
I dunno. I can say that I found the site independent of those examples you cited, mostly because of Yahtzee. And freely registered myself. Did someone send up the Douchebag Signal and summon the hordes of people to the forums for a place for them to spray bile? No clue, my personal experience was just that it was what I would consider the, perhaps slightly above average number of Internet Shitbags, that can be found pretty much anywhere, who were just REALLY dedicated to arguing with everyone.

Again, this is just my personal experience with the site back then, but I posted there multiple times a day, for several years around the Dark Times, and from my perspective, I remember people talking about shitty business practices, and how the site was dying, and the number of shitposters seemed to be a higher %, but I attributed that to people like myself, who were visiting less frequently, because of the toxicity. So I'm not sure if the site got flooded with them, or if it was just everyone else left the party, so it was nothing but a Shitbag Sausagefest at that point.

I will admit, that my involvement with the site, and most gaming related sites, is fairly limited to forums, and maybe a few content elements. I mostly don't care about things like developer discussions, or speculation articles about a game from 10 years ago, and how it impacted the sociopolitical whatever of some country where it was huge, or whatever. I don't really care that much. The older I get, the less I enjoy the culture of gaming. Which is somewhat depressing since I've been playing video games since the early 80s, and consider it my primary activity/pastime. But the level of toxicity associated with it, on every level that I've seen, the legions of fanboys that divide themselves into factions based around franchises or developer companies, going to war with each other over stupid shit like "which platform is better?" just, makes me tired. So tired, of all of it. So maybe I just didn't engage in the majority of the festering shitshow that was the old site. I know people in the forums talked about how terrible it was, in the nebulous rest of the site, but all the shit behavior I witnessed, was from their own forums, and themselves.

That's certainly why I stopped posting here for several years. Had nothing to do with Susan, or any others on the staff. The community is why I said "yeah, fuck it. I'm out."
 

Exley97

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Did someone send up the Douchebag Signal and summon the hordes of people to the forums for a place for them to spray bile?
Yes. That's exactly what happened. I know, because I was there watching it unfold. Other sites and forums were clamping down on a certain subject (that will again remain nameless), and Defy Media, specifically Achron, said they weren't going to "censor" [read: moderate] people that wanted to engage in that bullshit. Theyre were posts on the chans and KotakuInAction about how great the Escapists forums were and that Archon was welcoming them in. They were boasting about how they had a direct line to Archon and (later) complained about he wasn't doing enough to ban "Anti" agitators (I know, because I made their cute little "enemies" list).

So yes, they literally sent up a douchebag signal. And like I said, they got the audience they wanted.
 
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Is this really appropriate? I mean we're not supposed to talk about Gamergate, but people are obviously, clearly referring to Gamergate supporters, indulging in petty vendettas going back years. It's not exactly in the spirit of the house rules.

For the record, I was a Gamergate supporter. I distanced myself from the movement after a couple of months, but I'd still say that most of the GG supporters on the Escapist were pretty nice people who were constantly antagonised by others on the forum.
 

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Is this really appropriate? I mean we're not supposed to talk about Gamergate, but people are obviously, clearly referring to Gamergate supporters, indulging in petty vendettas going back years. It's not exactly in the spirit of the house rules.
'Tis a silly rule.
 

Exley97

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It's not like Jim Sterling is a stranger to sexist behaviour, is it? I never get the appeal with this guy, he's just a hypocrite who always goes after easy targets.
You're correct in your most recent post, I'm getting off track on a different subject and one that is banned here, so I'll steer it back to Jim's video.

How is he going after "easy targets" exactly? He's pissed off some pretty big game companies and executives over the years. And when he's criticized smaller developers like Digital Homicide, it's because those games were some pretty egregious ripoffs.
 

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Game companies have repeatedly tried to lean on sites to try to get them to provide favourable coverage, and use whatever dirty tricks they can to get smaller reviewers and commentators to play along with them.
Why stop there?

Companies can break shows on major networks by refusing to advertise on them. One of the major British newspapers, The Daily Telegraph, refused to report on a massive scandal at the bank HSBC because of how much HSBC spent advertising in the paper (eventually the political editor resigned over it and went public). One of the UK TV breakfast shows got blackballed by a major Hollywood agent because they gave an unflattering review of one of their actors in a movie. This is bread and butter stuff. If I were to complain about... that event and those people... they were making a fucking massive hoo-hah about pretty much the most trivial end of a ubiquitous media issue.

Really, I think Nick C. is right that safeguarding media would be best achieved by a subscription model. Problem is, people are used to getting stuff for free: start billing them, too many go elsewhere.
 

Jarrito3002

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To bring this back to Sterling (somewhat)...

The bombshell exposé about rampant sexist behavior, harassment and flat-out criminal assaults at one of the biggest video game companies in the world, which includes but is not limited to the creative heads imposing their sexist views *on the games themselves*, will hopefully be a turning point for the games industry and maybe even a change in attitudes in the overall community. But after reading some of the comments here about how "politics" and feminist critics somehow ruined the former Escapist and poisoned the collective discourse around games, well....I'm thinking that's not very fucking likely.

In any event...Defy Media and Achron ruined this place. No one else. Not some critic on YouTube or some indie game developer. Defy ran the place into the ground, and they own the collapse. Good people left or were pushed out because of them, either because of crap like pandering to publishers or because their bullshit "no politics!" pledge was just a head fake for them to instill their own politics ("Milo Inc." LOL...). Good riddance to them.
I agree with this but I was lapsed user and what in the world was a Milo Inc?
 

Houseman

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Really, I think Nick C. is right that
I forgot where we were for a second and started thinking "Nick Cannon said that?"

But I actually paid for a subscription to the Escapist, once upon a time. That was when they were covering THE EVENT THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED, and hosting interviews with people on both sides. Y'know. Actual journalism. But then they walked all that back, started banning users for having Vivian James avatars, deleted all their articles on the subject, lost all their content providers, banned discussion of the issue, and all that jazz (not in that order).

Maybe I'd pay for such a subscription again if they ever go back to that kind of hard-hitting journalism. That's what I want more of. That's what I'd pay to support.
 

Exley97

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I agree with this but I was lapsed user and what in the world was a Milo Inc?
While he was SVP of Defy Media and running the Escapist as GM, Achron, aka Alexander Macris, was also the CEO of -- and I shit you not -- "Milo, Inc." , which was Milo Yiannopoulos' now-defunct media company. And for the record, this was 2017 -- AFTER Yiannopoulos was fired from Breitbart for those unfortunate comments.
 

Jarrito3002

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While he was SVP of Defy Media and running the Escapist as GM, Achron, aka Alexander Macris, was also the CEO of -- and I shit you not -- "Milo, Inc." , which was Milo Yiannopoulos' now-defunct media company. And for the record, this was 2017 -- AFTER Yiannopoulos was fired from Breitbart for those unfortunate comments.
I was here Gemmer Gete and swept up in that hard on the pro side and after I dipped out of that for a long winded reason. This information right here makes ALOT of things make more sense and its scary looking back.