MovieBob leaving The Escapist

[KazeAizen]

And as far as the "meh meh meh, Bob's political agenda soapbox wwwwhhhhaaaaaggghhhh" well, as you can see it never really rubbed me the wrong way. I looked at some of the "here's what Bob said on Twitter" crybaby links during several of the political arguments that broke out and wafted around the Escapist. None of it offended me. Ooh, someone on Twitter has an opinion... my stars! I never really saw the point in getting worked up about it. It's not like there are a couple million assholes with opinions ranting on Twitter or anything.

Can I like buy you a drink for this statement here? Seriously. Rock on.

People do get passionate about stuff and clearly Bob is one of those people that wears his emotions on his sleeve. He's never made it a secret that he dislikes the kind of culture that was born of the Xbox LIVE era and was genuinely sad about the state of gaming. God forbid someone rant and rave on the web about something. Its like totally unrealistic.

Yeah he engaged in name calling but its not like he's doing it behind people's backs. If anything about these past few months he just found that A) Many people follow him just to debate him because they don't agree with anything and B) Several of his previous followers don't share his opinions on many things and frankly if I were him I'd essentially like to sort through the trash as it were. Get the people you wouldn't want following you anyway out and get new people in if you can. Besides the thing about the Big Picture wasn't that basically given to him as a soapbox show anyway? He could literally talk about whatever he wanted for like 5 minutes so I don't get why people would get mad at him for expressing his political opinions there.

Though what I do find funny is people getting mad at him putting his politics or whatever into movie reviews. I mean this is mostly a gaming site and clearly people aren't aware that movie critique evolved into something beyond "is it good or bad?" way before Bob started doing it. Gaming still hasn't gotten there yet unfortunately and several people appear to not want it to get there but him trashing on Amazing Spider-man or Man of Steel again and again to make a point or bring up troubling metaphors is something other movie critics have been doing for years. He will be missed. Hopefully if he could only maintain one show I'd like it to be The Big Picture. That way I can at least get my trivial nerd knowledge that won't benefit me in any way shape or form in the real world.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Geeze. All it'll take is for Yahtzee, Graham, and Paul to leave and I'll have no reason to come here anymore.

 

[Strazdas]

i dont agree with OP that this was unexpexcted. I expected this to happen eventually ever since he started insulting his audience on twitter. Thats when i stopped watching his stuff and i guess enough of others did as well to impact ratings. I trued to give him another chance later on, but realized just how much i didnt want to watch any of his ramblings anymore.

Its going to be hard for him to stand up on his feet now i think, considering his outside-escapist stuff had very little views and i personally doubt he is going to carry his audience around like Jim does.

https://twitter.com/the_moviebob/status/566318997982179330

comments are gold.

So, whats everybody still visiting? I got Critical Miss and Experienced Points remaining.

I came to this site because of Yatzee, i stayed because of the forum. and while i cant say nothing changed, the site is worth visiting because of the community for me and not because of the content creators.

Though has Miracle of Sound left as well? I noticed that Gavin's been left out of the lists of good content that's still around, and admittedly I mostly follow him on Youtube and Bandcamp now, so if there's been an announcement I must have missed it.

The problem with Gavin's work being viewed on the site is that he creates stuff that really benefits from high quality stream, and escapist still streams very low quality, which means that even youtube is times better quality to watch his stuff. Plus there is a lot more interaction and things made on his youtube channel than escapist site, so if you want to ask him a question or anything youll do it easier on youtube than here. I always end up opening his video here on the site, loading the ads so escapist count it as view, then just watch it on youtube in better quality.

To those going on about his political opinions, have some empathy.

Its not having the opinion that is the problem, its the way he expresses them. If he was a comment writtein in forum rather than contributor he would be banned 10 times over for insults.

Reminds me of when people despised Jim Sterling at first because of his commentary + videos. Then by some miracle, the lad really improved and became an astounding member, if not a top tier guy on par with Yahtzee (is that why Yahtzee decided to do a series with him about making rhymes? Lol).

The difference is Jim actually read the comments and improved his show in accordance, whereas Bob just called us teorrorists on twitter instead.

 

[LG Jargon]

Dear Escapist,

Spoiler

Thank you.
Truly yours, LG Jargon

...A little more? Alright...

You guys need to stop bleeding contributors. I don't know why MovieBob is gone, but he was one of your main content creators and pillars of your regular viewership. I've thoroughly enjoyed both his Big Picture series and Escape to the Movies reviews, despite all the hate he tends to garner from whiny jerk-offs and conservative pissants. Seriously, my regular viewing schedule mostly consists of things harbored by the Escapist.

Monday - The Jimquisition (introduced on Destructoid, brought over to the Escapist, now independent and on YouTube)
Tuesday - Big Picture with Bob "MovieBob" Chipman
Wednesday - Zero Puncuation with Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw; Extra Credits (former Escapist series, left and now on YouTube); PBS Idea Channel; PBS Game Show; Lore in a Minute
Thursday - No Right Answer (and my viewership on that wasn't all that consistent, to be honest)
Friday - Escape to the Movies with Bob "MovieBob" Chipman
Saturday - Toonami (though that's t.v., so it probably doesn't count all that much for this list)

That's not counting the Critical Miss comics or myriad of news articles and other written pieces (like Extra Punctuation, Intermission, etc.), but the main thing that drew me to this site was the video series. If this continues, I fear I may not continue to visit the Escapist all that much in the future... Is there really no way you can keep Bob on?... Like, at all?

...Man, I hate change sometimes. Robin Williams dies, Colbert Report leaves the air, Toonami schedule is shortened, John Stewart announces that he's leaving The Daily Show...God damn, time is a cruel mistress...

Anyways, I guess that's all I had to say. I want the Escapist to stay around and keep being fun, but if this keeps happening...I don't know. It really won't be the same without you, Bob.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

A few months ago, this would have been shocking and just that. However, after all the other cuts and loss of content, I'm glad I decided not to renew my Pub Club subscription.

Jim's gone, LRR's on Patreon (and all the content they make that I like isn't even on this site), MoS posts his stuff on Bandcamp/Youtube early, the CM team admit they're looking into crowdfunding, almost all the podcasts are gone, the news has been coming in slower and slower and with Moviebob leaving the site loses nearly 1/5 of its weekly content.

I'm not going to cry doom and gloom yet, but whoever is in charge of managing this site's budget better start giving Yahtzee a lot more money.

Add to that the lack of video reviews for games, and a severe drop in the number of games reviewed since Jim left as Reviews Editor. I dunno if that spawned the "focus on all things geek" deal, but that alone makes the site seem so behind compared to other video game focused outlets.

Basically I've got this strange attachment to the forums and people here, and the work that Yahtzee does. It's just difficult to seriously peruse this site as a video game one anymore, and with Bob gone a big chunk of the movies/comics/all things geek is going to be missing too. A weird feeling in the air...

 

[Callate]

I didn't always agree with MB. Sometimes I disagreed quite passionately. But I never suggested he shouldn't be at the Escapist, and I'll be sorry to see him go.

More to the point, that's a lot of time and column-inches to fill, and I'm not seeing much sign of what the powers that be are hoping to fill it with. I feel like the only thing that's been added relatively recently is Game Theory, which has never exactly filled me with sunshine and rainbows.

And Twitch streams and podcasts. Because, God knows, you can never have too many Twitch streams and podcasts. (sigh)

Maybe there's some massive untapped well of talented content producers out there that the management has cottoned to, and we'll see a sudden swell of spiffing new content from creators willing to make regular offerings at much lower costs than the regulars we've been losing of late. But I'd like to see some evidence.

 

[Yan007]

Sadly, I think Moviebob leaving/being let go is absolutely awesome. I never liked him and absolutely dislike his general tone, talking down to the "plebe". We could say the Escapist is trimming down the fat.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

If he wasn't an ass, I doubt he'd been fired. Problem is: he's an ass.
He insulted other known YouTubers (e.g. TotalBiscuit, but there are also others)

Good thing that The Escapist doesn't employ those people, or else there might've been some conflict behind the scenes.

His rant yesterday broke it - that was so totally over the top, if you try to ignore that as a prime example of how MB is, you should let check yourself...

His rant yesterday, well, its about a dozen fairly mild tweets. Besides, his twitter sprees don't really cause any controversy besides people that decided that they suddenly hated him back when this:

Spoiler

was distributed, and since Jim left, he had the highest viewed content. Somehow I don't think its because a few mean things he said on Twitter. Hell, the Critical Miss guys substituted an actual strip for a video making fun of MiracleOfSound's noob playing skills a few weeks back, pretty much trolling the poor guy, and the site allowed that. I doubt personal behavior is what is at play. If anything, the fact that Movies & TV is pretty much getting the axe, makes me suspect a merger.

way to over-simplify the issue... a dozen or so mild tweets? he implied that most gamers are rapists dude...
"Catching up on SVU. Trying to remember a point in my life when I'd have been OUTRAGED by that opening scene intercutting assault with violent gameplay/gamers, but GG and the COD era have made it impossible to call an unfair portrayal. Depressing."

that statement right there shows a complete lack of respect for gamers and gaming, and added fuel to the anti-gamer fire.

 

[San Martin]

Either there's change on the wind or the Escapist's going down the drain. In any case, I'm going to leave the site for a month and return on 14th March.

My predictions:

-There will still be almost no content

-People will still be talking about Gamergate and slagging off Anita Sarkeesian, and stupidity will reign supreme.

On the plus side, my otherwise nonsensical plan will have afforded me more free time in which to do more productive things, for example bitching about Prince on prince.org. I don't think people over there even know what an 'SJW' is, thank god.

 

[Nazulu]

I don't even care that he's going. I couldn't stand him from the beginning. The way he speaks and his wording is obnoxious, and I never felt he said anything worth a damn.

But best of luck to him anyway. Hopefully the Escapist isn't actually falling apart too.

 

[Bat Vader]

Hopefully The Escapist still does March Mayhem this year. I remember they didn't do it one year and I was pretty sad because I have always found it pretty fun.

 

[martyrdrebel27]

Can someone post some of his 'bad twits'?

I only hear about those, I don't use twitter (seems like a dumb site), I went there to check boobs twits, but there's too many stuff, I can't find the supposedly 'bad ones'.

"Catching up on SVU. Trying to remember a point in my life when I'd have been OUTRAGED by that opening scene intercutting assault with violent gameplay/gamers, but GG and the COD era have made it impossible to call an unfair portrayal. Depressing."

"The only "negative image" anyone is taking away from #SVU is that college-age conservabros who rant about "SJWs" are subhuman shits..."

and at first glance that might not seem that inflammatory but you have to look at what he's really saying. which is "gamers with opinions other than mine are subhuman shits."

then, and this isn't anything anyone else pointed out, but i feel it bears repeating. he retweets about how GamerGaters are misogynists and whatever else, placing his hat in the pro-feminism ring. then tweets this...

"SECOND THOUGHT:

Reese Witherspoon in her cute lil' cop outfit cuffs Sofia Vergara to a bedpost. Out of my head, please, movie-people."

for the record, it's a normal police uniform. his assertion that it's a "cute lil' cop outfit" is as demeaning as a husband saying his wife has a job because she wanted a hobby. "oh, look at that cute lil' outfit, she's playing cop!" then proceeds to reduce the two to a sex fantasy.

again, this last example isn't anything anyone else is pissed about, that i've seen, but for someone claiming pro-feminism to say that shit is tone-deaf at best and down right hypocritical at worst.

 

[CommanderZx2]

He really went off the rails on twitter and the movie reviews have been pretty awful. I'm sure Escapist will replace him with someone better in the near future.

 

[Silenttalker22]

It's been an eye-opening night. I always liked Bob, even if I felt he was a little biased. The Big Picture was always informative, and his movie reviews were hit and miss in even attempting at being a little objective, but always analytical. Yes, I know know his stance on being objective, but there's a line where someone's not even trying to consider if they're just preaching.

I don't follow his Twitter, but thanks to several comments here, I've explored it. Holy crap. I was awestruck, and felt a little dirty. I've liked Bob so much, and I had no idea he could come off as such a blowhard. Likewise, I had no idea he was so quick to post and re-post childish snipes about core gamers and GG'ers; all the while cheerfully wanking off feminists from every direction. The sheer frequency of his jabs at GG that showed nothing but bias and contempt. I've only even followed the GG discussion lightly and can still tell that it, as a whole, isn't deserving of the relentless childish behavior on display there.

I thought Jim was an isolated incident in, both having an audience at the Escapist, and being the purified essence of SJW. This makes me sad.

 

[Mister K]

I come here mostly for the forums and news. A content provider leaving certainly is a bummer, but I won't leave this site because of it.

 

[TaboriHK]

The worst part of this by far has to be the gloating by the "he insulted his audience" crowd. I certainly wasn't a fan of everything Bob did (maybe even most things), but I'm even less of a fan of people who pretend to be wounded by someone's twitter content. You don't like it, debate him on there, don't whine about it here, or worse, smugly imply now that the "writing was on the wall after he disrespected his fans." I despise this 'they should lose their job for disagreeing with me' culture.

And yes, he comes across as a total blowhard on twitter. So what?

 

[ConanThe3rd]

Whilst I could care less for his nonsensical claptrap re: Gaming (Dood needs to wake up, smell the coffee and realise that the world didn't just magically went to shit after Super Mario Bros 3 came out) his film acumen is truly his 18 stat and he's not driven me wrong there.

I just hope that the loss of an editorial doesn't make his new project shoot off into the moronosphere like New Game OverThinker.

 

[Colour Scientist]

That's a shame.

I literally only come here for the forums now and even they're going down the shitter.

I don't think I'll be renewing my PubClub, this is a very different site from the one I joined.

 

[sky14kemea]

Try and watch the hostility guys. He may be leaving the site but that doesn't mean he's open season for insults.

Also:

if only we knew someone already active on the website that could do movie reviews... [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/2-50-Reviews])

I feel a bit rash about saying this so soon, but I second this. Marter's reviews are pretty darn good and I'd like to see them get more attention.