Jim Sterling leaves The Escapist

[Barbas]

I don't know what's been happening to the escapist recently.

They got bought by yet another big parent company and many core people - like Susan Arendt and Greg Tito - left some time ago...

Will stay for the newsfeed, ZP (forever!!!) and LRR's stuff. And Bob I guess.
Time to bring back Doraleous and especially Apocalypse Lane, guys!!!

Uh, Greg Tito's still here. At least, he may be. That's the odd thing with a lot of the staff - for the most part, they appear to be clinically dead until poked into life by necromancy. Kross is fun, but apart from him many of the staff don't appear to want much to do with the site or its community. The Community Manager? Unless you light a signal fire, fuhgeddaboudit, son. I think he may have let part of the site die through his inaction.

It's a sad thing to see the creators of a community distance themselves so far from something they were once proud to have founded, to the point at which they almost seem ashamed to associate with it. Or they could just be busy with a million other jobs. Nobody is available for comment, nobody tells us nothin'. So you get a rift between the staff and the forum-goers, people feeling alienated, festering cynicism, apathy, resentment, all that toxic stuff that just makes any situation worse. You get lots of people saying they can't stand the place and yet they're still here for some reason, presumably to complain rather than contribute anything positive whatsoever. Bad trolling, worse Mondays, exclusionary cliques with their associated cattiness, rumour-mongering and antipathy. Heck, I could go on, but we've all seen it on a million playgrounds and in a million horrible teen movies and it happens more or less every time a staff member joins or leaves The Escapist. I won't bore and/or depress you with that tedium.

Spoiler: But then you remember that there are things like this on the internet.

[HEADING=2]WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE![/HEADING]​

[HEADING=2]ZOOOOOOOOOOOOM![/HEADING]​

[HEADING=2]SWOOOOOOOOOOOSH![/HEADING]​

So you know what? It's not all that bad. In fact, it's actually pretty good. I've met some delightful, wonderful and kind people here and, despite The Escapist's problems, no amount of nay-saying or defeatism will change the fact that this is one of the best communities I have had the pleasure of being introduced to. Too many people spend their lives living in the past and not enough time appreciating the things and the people they have now. I for one am excited to see who's going to be our next contributor. The best of luck to Jim Sterling, a man who made me laugh and made me think!

 

[TheMagicLemur]

Welp. That's all my reasons to visit The Escapist gone. The front page makes my eyes bleed, The forum here is despicable, Zero Punctuation hasn't been funny for quite some time, LRR is mainly on youtube and now I can watch Jim Fucking Sterling Son elsewhere. Ciao Escapist!

...

"The forum here is despicable"

Hah! Why do you think I only have like 200 posts on here? It's like wading through sewage.

Also, I agree that ZP isn't great anymore; Yahtzee seems to have slipped into full-on "Get off my lawn" mode. He's still occasionally funny, but I feel like he's a lot less willing to try and understand or accept tastes that aren't exactly his own lately.

I really don't think I'll be renewing my Publisher's Club membership. I like MovieBob's Big Picture (I don't bother with his reviews; he and I have -very- different tastes), but other than that I don't really watch any videos here, and I can get most of the news elsewhere if I want. Jim being here has been the main thing keeping me. Without him, I'm just not sure what the point of hanging around is.

 

[RicoADF]

I'll be following Jim wherever he goes, still got Zero Punctuation to keep me here but that reduces the interesting shows down to 1 currently.

 

[Skull Bearer]

Of course he's leaving, this place has become so toxic ibn the last few months it's amazing it's anything but whiny manchildren left by now.

Good luck fouling your own well.

 

[Mikeybb]

All the best of luck to Jim.
I've got a feeling he's gonna do okay with his new plan.
He's got the audience and the content to make it work.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Ah, this is kind of fun to watch in a weird way.

When Jim joined the Escapist's video galleries, people quit saying he was the death of the site. Now people are leaving because he's the life of the site. Fickle, thy name is Escapist.

Fickle? Definitely. I can't really blame everyone for it though.

Jim's first few months of content were frankly terrible; worse, he was essentially replacing Extra Credits who, while preachy, were informative and more constructive about the gaming medium than any other contributor (save possibly for Sheamus Young).
Hell, 2011 was just a horrible year for The Escapist in general; that's really where I started noticing the increasingly passive-aggressive attitude all-around (and am guilty of contributing, I freely admit).

People changed in those three years, but then again, people just change in general in three years; that's especially true in this blogosphere environment (everything seems to fly at the speed of light now).

Jim's departure comes at a timely moment for me; I'm pretty much done with this site anyway.
The passive-aggressive knee-jerk attitude is thick and infectious, "discussion" of anything game related is a joke unless it's tied to controversy/politics, and unless one already belongs to some clique there's really little worth sticking around for (incidentally, the Dreamer Society was fun, but a change in my work-sleep schedule basically killed my dreaming).

After GamerGate and the responses of certain contributors (MovieBob chief among them; I have zero respect for him or his work, to put it as politely as I can), I'll stick to lurking more; reading reactions more for a laugh and a sigh than anything now. At least until I become bored enough to move on entirely.

 

[Aerosteam]

Well... this is actually good for me.

I can't watch Escapist videos on my tablet and now that the Jimquisition is uploaded on his YouTube channel I'm able to do that.

 

[Rabbitboy]

Spoiler: But then you remember that there are things like this on the internet.

[HEADING=2]SWOOOOOOOOOOOSH![/HEADING]​

So you know what? It's not all that bad. In fact, it's actually pretty good. I've met some delightful, wonderful and kind people here and, despite The Escapist's problems, no amount of nay-saying or defeatism will change the fact that this is one of the best communities I have had the pleasure of being introduced to. Too many people spend their lives living in the past and not enough time appreciating the things and the people they have now. I for one am excited to see who's going to be our next contributor. The best of luck to Jim Sterling, a man who made me laugh and made me think!

But it is very bad, that turtle is about to die!

OT: While I think that he sounds more and more like a broken down gramophone player I do wish Jim the very best.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

$1 a month is nothing. Even if I end up not watching his stuff I'll be supporting someone that this fucked up industry needs.

 

[Something Amyss]

They got bought by yet another big parent company and many core people - like Susan Arendt and Greg Tito - left some time ago..

Greg Tito is the one that announced this and unless you know something we don't know, he is the current Editor in Chief here (he replaced Susan)

That's actually his twin brother Craig.

 

[MorganL4]

He'd only been here a few months hadn't he?
Either way, eh. When I see some of his titles that are kind of interesting I find myself watching on occasion but he's never been a content creator I really got into.
Best of luck to him either way.

The Jimqusition has been on The Escapist since 2010. But yeah, he only became an official staff member about a year ago, I am pretty sure he was brought in to fill the gaping whole that Susan left.

 

[jpoon]

Welp, there goes 50% of the reason that I even visit this site. Too bad for the corporate money hats (FU), as soon as Yahtzee leaves I'm betting a vast swath of your visitors will too.

 

[DoPo]

Still, let us remember the good times. I remember when the first Jimquisition came out and everybody hated it.

Hey, I remember the first video Jim did here: Videogames Are Not Movies, Get Over It - somebody had posted it on another forum with...well, very little context, if any. I'm not really sure why they did that but at any rate, I watched it and I actually liked it. Since the I occasionally watched a video of his when I came across it, until one day I just started following them regularly. Frankly, I preferred the initial format of the Jimquistition more, however, I can't deny that as it evolved, Jim really did improve on making his points clear.

At any rate, I could see why some people wouldn't like the Jimquisition, but I don't think it warranted that much hatred.

Well, I'll be supporting Jim on Patreon, now, I guess. I like all his work[footnote]Except Movie Defence Force, but for more trivial and personal reasons than you might imagine[/footnote] and I wish him to go on.

 

[Poetic Nova]

Shame really, but I do wish him the best.
Brings me to only one show I frequently watch on the Escapist now though.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Wow. What's The Escapist going to do without Jim? He was pretty much the star player. I hope they've got something lined up.

 

[RavingSturm]

So Jim's going to be an angry Youtuber?

 

[Elijah Newton]

Aw dude! I LOVE The Escapist! It's a cool website I just found, and it has LOADS of awesome, unique shows like Extra Credi- what? No? Oh.

'S ok, man! They've got tons of other shows like I Hit It With My Axe, Reel Physics, Shut Up Sit Down, or Matt Lees! The list goes on and on!

Hey, that's okay. There are plenty of other great features unique to the site, such as this hilarious guy named Jim Sterling that runs a funny, yet insightful show called Jimquisition that- huh? Really? Again?

That's fine. I'll still continue to come here, rest assured that I can always count on there being a refreshed news headline "DUDE BUILDS SOMETHING OUT OF LEGOS" on the front page. Never gets old!

Also Disney Princesses. Apparently we're big on Disney Princesses around these parts.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I admit that I'm sad to see him go. I hope The Escapist can get something good to fill the gap.
Find somebody with talent and make them famous Escapist, you're very helpful with that. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view/Marter]

As for Jim, I wish him the best of luck, and all good things have to come to an end eventually. Except, this good thing isn't ending yet and I'll be jumping over to that Patreon page. I hope he can continue to do what he loves without the ads.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

Yahtzee has a handy number here with his one video and article a week. He writes some shit and comments on the industry a little. He is not going to rock any boats and unless he decides to throw in the towel he will stay. (I have often said that yahtzee should end Zero Punctuation and do something fresh.)

Jim needs to be a bit of an outlaw to say what he wants to say. I personally can't wait to see how far he can take things without the corporate interference. Unfortunately Yahtzee is the only contributor I regularly watch now. I have given up on Bob and his toxic attitude, the LRR guys are there if I am in the mood and Critical intel is always worth a read. But the real draws to this site are gone. Hopefully they will shake things up a bit and inject some new talent. The problem with having one contributor doing 2 shows a week and god knows how many articles is that if the reader finds them completely insufferable you are losing a ton of traffic. The site needs to diversify and bring in some people with true passion and drive. Many of the contributors here have had those jobs for years and work in their comfort zones. Otherwise this site will be swallowed up in the deluge.

 

[True_color222]

So the Esacpaist lost Jim... Sucked enough when Susan left. Seems like alot of talent is leaving the escapist and the void isn't being filled. I guess I can still come here for Yahtzi and occasionally movie bob... occasionally...