Is the Escapist dying?

[Ten Foot Bunny]

I've moved on mostly because this is no longer a gaming site, it's no longer a PC-gaming site, it's an scrubs [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.938860-Fallout-4-Mods-are-Now-Live-on-Xbox-One#23666837]" being thrown around without a hint of sarcasm kind of hurts, especially because it's evolved from being a cheeky joke into a bona fide attitude.

The fact that the only major feature remaining on the site is Zero Punctuation doesn't help this problem at all. It also doesn't help that genuinely good. well-written, and well-argued articles now have clickbait titles [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/17084-Upgradable-Consoles-Just-PCs-for-Peasants] to draw in those who want to see console OWNERS (again, not consoles in general) bashed at every turn. That twists the knife deeper. It adds visibility to the notion that not only are console-owners unwelcome by the community, but also the staff.

So I've pretty much left this site for places (mostly Reddit) where I can talk about video games and openly admit to owning a console without knowing that I'm going to be shat on at every turn. Places where I can get news without unnecessary barbs.

You know things are bad when YouTube comments are only slightly more toxic than the treatment of a specific population of gamers here at The Escapist.

 

[Faaip]

Well this is all sounding really familiar ._____.

(just moved here from GT)

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

I've moved on mostly because this is no longer a gaming site, it's no longer a PC-gaming site, it's an scrubs [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.938860-Fallout-4-Mods-are-Now-Live-on-Xbox-One#23666837]" being thrown around without a hint of sarcasm kind of hurts, especially because it's evolved from being a cheeky joke into a bona fide attitude.

The fact that the only major feature remaining on the site is Zero Punctuation doesn't help this problem at all. It also doesn't help that genuinely good. well-written, and well-argued articles now have clickbait titles [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/17084-Upgradable-Consoles-Just-PCs-for-Peasants] to draw in those who want to see console OWNERS (again, not consoles in general) bashed at every turn. That twists the knife deeper. It adds visibility to the notion that not only are console-owners unwelcome by the community, but also the staff.

So I've pretty much left this site for places (mostly Reddit) where I can talk about video games and openly admit to owning a console without knowing that I'm going to be shat on at every turn. Places where I can get news without unnecessary barbs.

You know things are bad when YouTube comments are only slightly more toxic than the treatment of a specific population of gamers here at The Escapist.

Does that mean my one-person crusade to inject more positivity and understanding into this site's community is failing? Well at least i haven't invested too much into the endeavour so far. Unless that is why i have failed. Kitten photos can only cure so much. Haven't really attempted Reddit intergration yet, it intimidates me with various choices and formats. What is the best method of introduction to the place for a scrubling like one'self?

*points to join date* I've been here for a long time. Before Jimquisition, before GamerGate, before a lot of stuff. I was here when the RP board was created, never mind when it was split into RP and Games.

Why do I say this? Because there were cries of the site going downhill back then. When Eggo was banned, when Indigo Dingo was banned, when Darth Empyrean went totally crazy and got herself banned. The site's been dying for years. It's just that instead of latching onto high profile posters getting banned as signs of doom, it's now features that have come and gone.

I'm not going anywhere, and truly hope that the site goes for a while yet.

Teach me everything.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Yeah, I only really keep coming here for the forums. They've always seemed a little more rational and civil than most others, but even that has been fading. All I ever see now are threads about whatever meaningless internet outrage is trending or obnoxious, hyperbole laden "discussion" topics from a certain few members. I've pretty much migrated over to PCgamer for my news articles, but they only have comment sections. If anyone can point me towards a site that has a vibe in the forums similar to how the Escapist was in its hey-day I'd happily make an account over there. There's just no content here anymore. All of the contributors are gone and the same articles and headlines are on the front page for days and days.

 

[Politrukk]

Content creators have been leaving or were shoved off because they couldn't produce the goods.


From what I can see over the years the Escapist hosted shows like Loading Ready Run,Moviebob,No Right Answer, The Jimquisition, Extra Credits, Unforgotten Realms and there must have been others.
Their replacements were just awful and that's if there even was a replacement.

Like them or don't, they pulled in traffic, they all have and had their quirks(and for some reason most of them seem like very angry or -out there- people sometimes but they got the people to come to the site.

And that's not counting the fiasco's and totalitarianism on the forum that have come and gone.

Edit:
Heck nothing against yahtzee but the Escapist's saving grace was having Yahtzee judge movie/game cover art in a snarky manner instead of hiring his let's play companion and just hosting their let's plays here (which arguably take in a lot of traffic).

I mean look at the site traffic graphs and then look at this video yahtzee released on youtube VERY recently(35K views, released on june 5th, depending on your timezone that means he either pulled in 17.5k viewers per day or 35K in one day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpEvmqBwVT8

notice the discrepancy?

And that's just for an episodic released a day ago on average that viewcounter moves up to about 70k on average with a 60K minimum and a nigh 175k maximum taking data from the past 6 months.

 

[Politrukk]

Doesn't the fact that this thread was made a couple of days ago and that we're only on page two of replies prove a point at least for the forum?

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

I can't answer the OP's question myself, but I guess here is as good as any a place to say why I am "leaving" (read: not renewing my subscription or coming around as often as I used to).

I was going to make a long involved discussion of it, make a thread, etc. but I don't think anyone will particularly care and I really don't blame them for that since I've only been a single, relatively quite, voice in this crowd I used to enjoy.

I'm leaving because I don't feel welcome or comfortable here anymore. I don't like most of what's under discussion. I know my opinions are going to be seen and taken as inflammatory even though they are not and not intended to be because sometime while I was tending to my family after my mom's passing as thus away from this site for nearly half a year Gamer Gate and all that swirled around that happened. I came back to a place I just didn't recognize - where there had been reasonable, if sometimes immature or irreverent, people talked games now there were heated arguments about SJWs and misogynists and I just don't think the Escapist has recovered from the toxicity that all brought out.

I don't feel like I want to be here or talk to people here anymore because of it - I can say that. It's a feeling of being a stranger in a strange land when I swing by to watch Zero Punctuation and see the forums I used to read and sometimes post in are now something I want to avoid.

Now, that all may not spell doom for the Escapist, and I would rather see it recover than not, but I don't think I'm the only one who intends to quietly click "unsubscribe" and just go about my life without the dose of drama I find here now instead of entertainment. Which is not to say I'll never swing by, but I've been doing that less and less frequently as things have gone on and that trend looks to continue naturally.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

I think as much as I hate to say it, the escapist never really recovered from GamerGate, and the series of people that left during that period, while opinionated, were enthusiastically delivering regular content to the site, and that was a good thing. The podcasts, the nearly daily video content. I didn't like them all, but enough of it was part of my routine web surfing. Now I come here out of habit but there is literally fuck all here to see. The news is dry, and the editorials and analysis is so not as interesting.

I was going to say something to that effect, but you articulated it better. I really noticed the loss of content and the bile on the forum back in those days. I've never found a forum to replace it, but I rarely come back here.

 

[Kameburger]

I really don't understand why there isn't more of an effort to bring in more content onto the site. I think as much as I hate to say it, the escapist never really recovered from GamerGate, and the series of people that left during that period, while opinionated, were enthusiastically delivering regular content to the site, and that was a good thing. The podcasts, the nearly daily video content. I didn't like them all, but enough of it was part of my routine web surfing. Now I come here out of habit but there is literally fuck all here to see. The news is dry, and the editorials and analysis is so not as interesting.

GG had nothing to do with it, the site stupidly got rid of succesful people like Moviebob and didn't do a good job of replacing them, so it's no wonder they're not very popular anymore. Yahtzee is the only reason this site isn't completely dead, once he goes, the Escapist will fall down like a House of Cards(the stupid Clash of Kings promotions have already alienated tons of people).

At least from appearances it seemed as though GamerGate had alot to do with why they let not just moviebob go, but also why the escapist took such a drastic turn from Greg Tito's command of the site. They let go of the more outspoken anti-GG people on the escapist because they were really ramping up the vitriol during that saga. Moviebob was openly supporting harassing sympathizers because he felt the deserved it. Ross Lincoln started penning a column literally titled "Social Justice Warrior" at the time and he was running two of the escapists bigger segments at the time. Meanwhile the escapist forum and readership at the time was decidedly more neutral. But otherwise I agree with you. They never replaced them, and if anything content seemed to be getting rarer.

 

[wizzy555]

At least from appearances it seemed as though GamerGate had alot to do with why they let not just moviebob go, but also why the escapist took such a drastic turn from Greg Tito's command of the site. They let go of the more outspoken anti-GG people on the escapist because they were really ramping up the vitriol during that saga. Moviebob was openly supporting harassing sympathizers because he felt the deserved it. Ross Lincoln started penning a column literally titled "Social Justice Warrior" at the time and he was running two of the escapists bigger segments at the time. Meanwhile the escapist forum and readership at the time was decidedly more neutral. But otherwise I agree with you. They never replaced them, and if anything content seemed to be getting rarer.

I'm not terribly convinced of that, I would have expected Moviebob to go ballistic at them if that was the case. I'm suspecting they got him on a embarrassing technicality, like his viewing figures were dropping.

Remember the exodus started because the escapist had allowed discussion of GG on the forum, and other statements from Greg Tito. People like Sterling started leaving because they were no longer happy on the escapist, they weren't "let go", as I understand it.

 

[Kameburger]

At least from appearances it seemed as though GamerGate had alot to do with why they let not just moviebob go, but also why the escapist took such a drastic turn from Greg Tito's command of the site. They let go of the more outspoken anti-GG people on the escapist because they were really ramping up the vitriol during that saga. Moviebob was openly supporting harassing sympathizers because he felt the deserved it. Ross Lincoln started penning a column literally titled "Social Justice Warrior" at the time and he was running two of the escapists bigger segments at the time. Meanwhile the escapist forum and readership at the time was decidedly more neutral. But otherwise I agree with you. They never replaced them, and if anything content seemed to be getting rarer.

I'm not terribly convinced of that, I would have expected Moviebob to go ballistic at them if that was the case. I'm suspecting they got him on a embarrassing technicality, like his viewing figures were dropping.

Remember the exodus started because the escapist had allowed discussion of GG on the forum, and other statements from Greg Tito. People like Sterling started leaving because they were no longer happy on the escapist, they weren't "let go", as I understand it.

Jim left on very good terms with the escapist, especially judging how he was able to negotiate the rights for the jimquisition from them.

In Moviebob's case, like in most cases, is contractually bound to not disclose the circumstances surrounding his departure. This is standard fare for almost all companies. And even when it's not it is generally not in the best interest of either party to publicly disclose that information. It doesn't do either of them any favors and it would probably hurt Bob in his job search. That being said, Bob had indicated on his blog that it was a surprise to him indicating that he did not leave on his own accord. Shortly following bobs departure. Greg Tito, Ross Lincoln and some other notable staff members were let go, which was addressed as a widely reported incident, and twitter accounts particularly from Tito indicated that this departure was not something he had expected. The implications that it was GG related particularly point to Bob's increasingly public twitter wars with GGers, and while Tito was decidedly neutral in tone, as editor and chief he was ultimately responsible. Following that the new and current Editor and Chief made a statement that they were going back to reporting on the fun surrounding games and nerd culture as opposed to focusing exclusively on negative aspects, which was coded language for that viewership taking a severe hit as a result of the politics in gaming and was trying to take a step back from it. That at least was my evidence for believing that GG ultimately tore the site apart.

 

[Kameburger]

I don't remember Moviebob ever doing that(I only just started watching his stuff a few weeks ago, so I never religiously followed his Twitter or anything like that). This reminds me of when Channel Awesome started losing viewers because they thought replacing Nostalgia Critic with Demo Reel was a good idea. They didn't bother to test the new show or anything, they just dove right in head-first and expected fans of the critic to eat the show up and ignored all feedback, not realizing it had serious issues until it was too late to do anything about it. Channel Awesome would've died if Demo Reel kept going, so they had to bring back the critic to bring viewers back. The Escapist is now in the position where if Yahtzee goes, there's no way back.

Getting rid of Moviebob felt like the people at the Escapist were trying to get rid of a fly with a flamethrower. Now Moviebob has a new succesful follow-up show to "The Big Picture" and now the higher-ups are probably kicking themselves over not renewing his contract.

Moviebob on his twitter account started to have meltdowns on a daily basis, at some point saying that Bullying wasn't bad in itself it only had bad targets indicating that he was in favor of GGers getting harassed as they were good targets. In his videos he frequently started to show contempt for his audience, referring to gamers as whining entitled brats, and constantly expressing his despair at having to share the space with them. I think though you're right, it was a shame since his content was good, and it was frequent. His big picture show was actually really interesting, and although he over-reacted to some admittedly bad movies, his critiques were and still are interesting. But on twitter he was literally posting as though it was his own personal chat room constantly and viciously fighting with anyone he thought was wrong. If you search his political videos on youtube, you'll find that Bob tends to adopt an attitude of "you're either with me or you're a danger to the species."

I'm not sure how well he's doing now, but he seems to be doing alright. I suspect he was doing better on the escapist, but I have no proof for that.

 

[sky14kemea]

Not sure how many more times I can post this picture.

Chill, guys.