Poll: Who still watches Extra Credits?

[Raika]

I never watched it to begin with. It was always a little bit too pretentious for my tastes.

 

[Verlander]

Reading some of the comments on here, it seems that EC was dropped around the time that Jimquisition was picked up, and the old community seems to have dropped off the face of the Escapist and replaced with Jim fans. I remember that good ol' transition phase where there was nothing but hate for Jim, while EC was the top watched show on the site *puffs a pipe*

I'm an oldie, and love Extra Credits. The whole show is angled against the "twattish" gamer stereotype, whereas Jim tries to rally them. Different sides of the same coin perhaps, but one that I have a firm allegiance with. Long live Extra Credits!

 

[i7omahawki]

My citation is above, if you want more or to continue this then please message, as this is pretty off-topic, and I don't have the energy to reply to such a wall of text.

Don't worry about it, it seems that we don't actually disagree much at all. You disliked a term they used, I thought it was useful. As for the actuality of gaming addiction, neither of us deny its existence nor the importance of battling it, especially within the community and industry itself. This is something Extra Credits do though (see other people's complaints about the 'Gaming Addiction' episode, which I agree was a major break of flow and perhaps should've been separated from the series), so I don't understand why you disliked them on that basis.

Their use of compulsion wasn't to trivialize or completely differentiate gaming addiction from other addictions, but to show how it occurs and how it can be treated without the misleading comparisons of nicotine and heroine, which as you've said, work very differently towards a similar end: addiction.

More on topic, at least your complaint was directed against a specific point and could be debated . I'm not sure which side of the fence you've settled on, and to my mind it doesn't matter too much, I feel we've both made ourselves clear enough. (And the following is not directed towards you at all, just to be clear)

As for the people complaining of 'pretension' however, I have to ask: Have you seen any of the other content here on the Escapist? Yahtzee is supremely pretentious, ignoring multiplayer sections entirely, and lifting his own bias towards some arbitary standard of game criticism (See: Games should stand on single-player alone.) Moviebob injects so much political-sociological contexts into movies/games/comics that you'd think each movie was the national treasure of some fascist or liberal super-state. And Jim, well...his 'ironic' posture as a self-indulgent game journalist smacks of actual delusions of self-importance.

Of those, Extra Credits is easily the least pretentious. It doesn't pretend to be the most important show about games, it doesn't pretend that its opinions and judgements are universally true, and often concedes that it doesn't know it all, and you should perhaps look elsewhere for specific answers. They want to talk about games, and the important issues around them. That isn't pretention, that's passion.

 

[robert01]

I watched them for a couple weeks. Then they had that multi part release on how you can't get addicted to gaming, but the one guy goes on and on about how gaming was ruining his life, in the exact same fashion that an addiction would.

Lost all desire to watch them.

 

[F-I-D-O]

I watch every new episode on PATV. However, I'm not going to register on another gaming focused forum (ExtraConsideration I think is what they called it) to comment on it. And since it's not here, no one mentions it (face it, there were no non-video associated threads about EC until that nasty break up).

 

[klaynexas3]

i love extra credits. just watched the newest episode actually. it's a very intelligent show with one tangent into the emotional range of things with James' bad experience with gaming compulsion, but i feel it hit home quite well for those who have compulsions or addictions to certain things, even if they aren't video games. it helped me out a bit actually with my own compulsions. but besides that episode, the others are back on the intelligent stand point of things which is always great.

 

[Zaverexus]

Absolutely. Its the best video game commentary you'll find, on this site or any other.

 

[Darks63]

I stopped watching after the first month because the whole tone of the show to me was "I'm right so you should listen to me and only my opinion is the right one" Also it was kind of a downer show when i come here to be entertained not depressed about small issues.

 

[Titan Buttons]

I haven't missed an episode even when they moved to Penny Arcade TV. The 2 eps that James took over the show can't really be seen as out of the blue since EC was always about trying to better peoples understanding of videos and how they can effect life then getting views.

I never really believed EC to be a comedy so I don't get why it not having as many jokes would turn someone off the show, as that seems to be a main reason people stopped watching.

 

[Ympulse]

Extra Creditz is the only reason Penny-Arcade gets traffic from me. Juss' sayin'.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

Personally, I watched the show religiously every week when they were here and I did follow them to Youtube, but I got massively turned off of the show when James hijacked two whole episodes to talk about how he used to play games so much that he didn't function as a human being. The humor was gone, the intelligence was gone, the whole show had become a forum for James to lecture us about how terrible games had been for him... I have not watched a single episode since. What about you guys? Are you still watching the show or did you lose interest?

That two-parter was truly a fluke. Ever since that topic got wrapped up, it's been back to the way it used to be. Just in case you didn't know and you might want to give it another chance.