Poll: Who else is a little depressed about the content loss?

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Not really, never very interested in any of Jim's stuff except his podcasts, I prefer him as a comedian rather than a commentator. Now that he's doing Podquisition I could actually say I'm glad he's gone, or at least I'm glad his leaving lead to the Podquisition.

My areas of interest and Moviebob's never intersected, so I'm utterly indifferent about him and his work.

Never cared for MoS's style of music, it was well done but just not to my taste.

LRR was one of my favourite shows on the Escapist, so losing that really does blow goats. We still have some of their shows though so I'm not suicidally despondent.

The separate Podcasts never worked for me, so I'm not sad to see them go.

EDIT:

Honestly, Susan Arendt was the biggest loss for this website.

Seconded. Podcasts just weren't the same without her. Tito, Goodman, Dievendorf & Clouse did a good job while they were kept together but the separated podcasts just didn't have the same feel.

 

[Nixou]

Can't vote: your poll lacks the "Don't care, it's not like the people who left the site had suddenly ceased to produce content and vanished altogether from the internet" option

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

Hopefully they'll change their mind on hiring this chap [https://twitter.com/TheBrandonMorse/status/532034374796345344] as its resulted in losing another round of I Hit It With My Axe. [http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/were-not-playing-d-with-escapist-ever.html?zx=1ef27205a676f8a0]

Oh nifty. Considering the large number of transsexual people on this site, I'm kind of surprised they decide to hire a guy who publicly broadcasts that he doesn't believe their condition is real. Unfortunately though this is kind of indicative of the direction this site is headed in. Starting to wonder if the theories that the site has been firing anyone who's ever been called a SJW might be true

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Honestly, Susan Arendt was the biggest loss for this website. She was one of the only positive and genuinely joyful people among the cynics and pessimists.

Although to be fair, even her presence couldn't change the direction in which these forums were going.

I agree. I felt like her viewpoint and taste in games was pretty close to mine. I wanted to play the games she wanted to play. Now that joystiq's gone, I'm not sure where I'll be able to find her stuff.

 

[Drakeaos]

K, what happened? I know why Jim left back in November but where is Movie Bob?

 

[Zahri]

K, what happened? I know why Jim left back in November but where is Movie Bob?

He was canned earlier this month.

OT: I'm not really sad. I was watching Jim and Bob less and less with time.

I'd like to point out something regarding some of the sentiment in this thread though, specifically revolving around Jim/Bob and the recently hired Brandon Morse...

Why do their political/ideological views make them a less valid/desirable voice?

Brandon is transphobic, Bob is just a **** in general, Jim... can of worms, there.

Doesn't mean they didn't/won't put out quality content here, and as the new EIC pointed out, the Escapist is currently looking to purge politics in favor of just sticking to the games/comics/tech/cosplay/etc.

In essence, if such holds true, we won't be seeing such remarks from Brandon. If we did and the Escapist held true to this vision they're going for, then he'd likely be canned as well.

And those personal views shouldn't bar him from work either IMO, not if they don't get in the way/intermingle with his current work.

It just seems silly to me...

I just think a wait and see attitude with Brandon specifically is warranted, and that people are too keen on excommunicating people based on a single portion of philosophy that someone disagrees with.

 

[Colin Bagley]

Extra Credits.
Lisa Foils.
Doralious & Associates.
Jimquisition.
Uncivil War.
Big Picture.
Miracle of Sound.
Space Janitors.

All that's left (That's worth paying attention to) is Zero Punctuation and Critical Miss.
And I'm not even sure about Critical Miss.

(Game Theory is OK. But I watched him on Youtube ages before the vids got copy-pasted on here.)

It really does look like this site is Circling the Drain. Unless they suddenly get a surge of new content, it's dead.

 

[Pete Oddly]

On the one hand, I'm sad that The Escapist keeps losing its best talent. I love the site, and the folks that made me love the site keep disappearing from it. I still visit, but I do so far less often now.

On the other hand, I can't be TOO depressed about it, since the people who leave don't just disappear forever. Jim and Bob are on YouTube now (as well as their own websites/blogs), so it's not like I'll never see content from them again. Extra Credits and the Hank and Jed crew (responsible for Doraleous and Associates) have come into their own on YouTube as well, both parties expanding their content to great new shows.

So all in all, it's a mixed bag.

 

[freaper]

Where's the option to not feel anything in particular, one way or the other?

I did like Jim's content, but I follow him on the 'tubes. I enjoyed Moviebob's videos, but I'm not really going to miss them.

I just pop on the Escapist for the news and the occasional forum thread. I'm not married to this place.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

I never actually watched the stuff by any of the content providers that seem to have left recently. I think the last series I watched was... Apocalypse Lane. That was a good little show. And hey, I see we picked up 8-Bit Philosophy. Thought it sounded familiar. Turns out I'm subbed on Youtube because of Thug Notes.

So, not really depressed or down about any losses, since I wasn't really invested in any of the content.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

While I'm sad that MovieBob is gone, I've actually been getting depressed about this site for a lot longer than that. Before, when I'd come home, I could check this site and there would be at least eight, nine, maybe even ten little articles to read. Sure, not all of them interested me, but there was always new content to read about in the news feed. But lately, the news section has just been...meh. Is it really that hard to find stuff to report on? It doesn't have to be completely about video games, but there's got to be some stuff out there to write about. It's Monday, and yet there has only been four new news stories. On the weekends I can understand that, but on a weekday?

So yeah, I'm a little depressed. There just doesn't seem to be as many stories being reported on as their used to be.

 

[Silence]

Well, since Jim and Gav are on Youtube they are not really gone for me. Little disappointed for the escapist, but I think there is the chance that good new shows come. Let us see.

 

[Evonisia]

I'm a bit saddened by the loss of Jim Sterling, if only because I've not really found myself enjoying his Jimquisition episodes to the degree I did most of his The Escapist episodes. I'm not sure why I feel that way about them, but it does make me a tad down. Uncivil War with Yahtzee was really good, too, and the timing of his departure almost makes me think he stayed to close out Season One. It was also a big reason for me getting Alien: Isolation (in addition to the good response, and both of their individual reviews) and I love that game.

The Big Picture was the show I probably most frequented, and I still enjoy going over old episodes on a regular basis. I hope and (figuratively) pray that Chipman restarts it under a different name on his YouTube channel. I wasn't really impressed by the Fifty Shades of Gray review, but I'm just going to assume for now that the biblical levels of cussing was down to him being bitter. Much as my tastes tend to be massively inconsistent with Chipman's, I did enjoy Escape to the Movies for the most part so I'm a bit sad to see that go as well.

It just seems like the site is so lethargic now, though. The content, the news and even the forums to a degree are all slowing down. Perhaps it's just a brief lull, but it's a lull that's not incredibly pleasant to experience.

I feel like I came to the forums at this last 10 or so months of grandness (even with all the PC wanking that happened as a result of the new generation being unveiled and beginning), and it's all become more isolated and despondent since then on both a user and creator level.

 

[Spentzar]

Hopefully they'll change their mind on hiring this chap [https://twitter.com/TheBrandonMorse/status/532034374796345344] as its resulted in losing another round of I Hit It With My Axe. [http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/were-not-playing-d-with-escapist-ever.html?zx=1ef27205a676f8a0]

Reading the blog

Without comparing anybody's struggle to anybody else's, you don't need a degree in social science to figure out that since one of the people in our group is a Jew, six are people of color, two were born handicapped and like someteen are bisexual women it would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we were, hypothetically, to make money for a company that would then give that money to an actively anti-semitic, racist, ableist, sexist or homophobic person.

Those are some pretty hefty accusations to throw around based on one tweet.

Out of all of those things...Brandon would qualify for... none of them, since what he said was levied against transsexuals, not ethnic minorities, jews, homosexuals, or women. If you're going to say someone is a terrible person at the very least have the common decency to use the right pronouns to slander them.

But I guess if they want to overreact that's in their right.

It just seems kind of silly to me how the rest of the blog post goes on to equate Brandon and the Escapist to Fox News and essentially saying that the Escapist enables Brandon to go out and murder someone because giving him money is like giving him an allowance to go buy bullets. Like, clearly this is not even aiming for hyperbole anymore. It's just nuts.

I kinda miss the days when people were able to just tolerate one-another. All of this radical identity politics junk is not good for the soul

 

[James Nettum]

I'm very upset, and I'm not sure what's worse; the lose of content, or the failure of the Escapist to officially address it. They are keeping their readers in the dark while they lose content, which looks very bad (in my opinion).

 

[Evonisia]

I'm very upset, and I'm not sure what's worse; the lose of content, or the failure of the Escapist to officially address it. They are keeping their readers in the dark while they lose content, which looks very bad (in my opinion).

Yeah, I may not have watched Top 5 with Lisa Foiles (though I do intend to go over them) but only discovering she's not here any more based on a Twitter and Facebook post is just peculiar, especially because as far as I can tell she wasn't fired.

Moviebob, conversely, was fired so I'm not sure whether it would have been in good principal to announce his departure.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Hopefully they'll change their mind on hiring this chap [https://twitter.com/TheBrandonMorse/status/532034374796345344] as its resulted in losing another round of I Hit It With My Axe. [http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/were-not-playing-d-with-escapist-ever.html?zx=1ef27205a676f8a0]

Reading the blog

Without comparing anybody's struggle to anybody else's, you don't need a degree in social science to figure out that since one of the people in our group is a Jew, six are people of color, two were born handicapped and like someteen are bisexual women it would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we were, hypothetically, to make money for a company that would then give that money to an actively anti-semitic, racist, ableist, sexist or homophobic person.

Those are some pretty hefty accusations to throw around based on one tweet.

Out of all of those things...Brandon would qualify for... none of them, since what he said was levied against transsexuals, not ethnic minorities, jews, homosexuals, or women. If you're going to say someone is a terrible person at the very least have the common decency to use the right pronouns to slander them.

But I guess if they want to overreact that's in their right.

It just seems kind of silly to me how the rest of the blog post goes on to equate Brandon and the Escapist to Fox News and essentially saying that the Escapist enables Brandon to go out and murder someone because giving him money is like giving him an allowance to go buy bullets. Like, clearly this is not even aiming for hyperbole anymore. It's just nuts.

I kinda miss the days when people were able to just tolerate one-another. All of this radical identity politics junk is not good for the soul

First off I said lets not speak of Mr.Morse in my Original post! Stop trying to get this thread locked.

That said: He did say he believes that homosexuality is a choice, which most homosexuals will say is a homophobic thing to say. Either way he's made consistent statements that verge on the homophobic and transphobic. Now DROP it.

Back on topic: As excited as I am for Lilian K it'll never bring back Uncivil War.

 

[tilmoph]

The only content that left that I cared about was Lisa Foiles, and she was gone ages ago. Never watched or cared about Bob, Miracle of Sound were good but I caught most of there stuff on YouTube anyway, Jim was hit and miss for me so meh. I'm rather excited about the new people coming in since I wanna see what they'll be doing. I know Liana's doing the cosplay thing, which seems pretty neat, but I don't know what Lizzy or ohgodpleasenoflamewars are going to be doing, but Lizzy is rather funny and talented as a writer, at least in the couple of things I've seen from her, so that really has my interest.

I'm also curious who or what else the Escapist will pick up. Either way, at least 2/3 of the new hires are net gains in my view, and the third... ohgodpleasenoflamewars!!!

Ahem, I meant I don't know anything about so can't make a call, but am curious to see what they'll produce.

 

[James Nettum]

The folks behind "I Hit It With My Axe" have announced that they will not be returning to the Escapist. (You can read why here, but brace yourself for salty language: http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2015/02/were-not-playing-d-with-escapist-ever.html ) "Miracle of Sound" announced the same. (Right here, with less-salty language: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1skrne2 ) Both of these series have been quiet for a while, and now will be staying that way.

There has been a lot of content lost in a very short amount of time with no official comment from the Escapist. Some editors have very graciously contributed to the many forum discussions that have come up. But there hasn't been a "state of the Union" article of any sort for the content consumers who don't use the forums. (I have been following this site since 2008 but have only now started posting in the forums, for example.) Personally, I think this is a bad move. A user shouldn't have to dig though 17 pages of a thread about Movie Bob to find a very well-written but buried explanation from an editor, along with a promise that new content was on the way. In fact, a casual user will likely just see content disappearing without any explanation whatsoever.

What do people think? Should the Escapist make an effort to update their consumers on their future plans? Should we just wait it out? Is there another point of view I'm missing? I'm eager for some civil discourse on the subject.

EDIT: I had started this as a unique thread to address the subject of whether or not the Escapist should make an official statement, but it has since been merged with the poll over whether you're depressed about the change in content. Sorry if it reads like I'm thread 'jacking.