The Escapist Was at Pax

EvilRoy

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I have honestly found sweet FA about it online, probably because of the holiday weekend or just maybe a moderate lack of noteworthyness (a lot happened at PAX to talk about, the revival of a competitors website probably isn't high on the list of stuff to talk about), but we do have the text version of a speech by RP.

Here?s the ?written down? version of the speech I gave at yesterday?s pic.twitter.com/SkNJ3lrRnO [https://twitter.com/EscapistMag?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw]

? Russ Pitts no longer @ PAX West (@russpitts) September 2, 2018 [https://twitter.com/russpitts/status/1036299759798050816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw]


That above there is my best attempt of getting the tweet to embed in my post. I give up, but you can click the link and have a read through.

I feel we keep hearing about how the past was shit, but we've heard very little concrete about what will be different/ better about the future. Its a pretty generic "hope with me and we go together into the future" kind of thing - all well and good, but I don't know how well this is going to hold up the next time a controversy comes up. Are we pointedly ignoring it, or talking about it but only the okay-to-talk-about parts or free for all or what. Seems like that's a bomb just waiting to go off, and nobody wants to sit down and figure out how to deal with it. RP hasn't exactly tried to be subtle about what he thinks of the people (authors and community) from the "before time", but hate of the past doesn't exactly translate to love in the future.

The most interesting tidbit out of the speech is that RP started at this something like 10 months ago, so I guess this has been a thing coming for quite some time.

Edit:

I was really hoping I would have something else to throw on here, but man there really is nothing posted aside from this speech and a few other benign tweets here and there. I saw a note about an interview, but I can't seem to find it.
 

Sassafrass

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I mean, we have content now.
That's the best thing that's happened to this place in a couple of years. :p

As for the past being shit, he might be referring to how things were under Archon, but I couldn't tell you for sure. I don't wanna get into it as I'm not sure if the 'speaking ill of the staff' rule applies to staff who have moved on and I'm not really looking to get into a shit flinging contest with people.
 

EvilRoy

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Sassafrass said:
I mean, we have content now.
That's the best thing that's happened to this place in a couple of years. :p

As for the past being shit, he might be referring to how things were under Archon, but I couldn't tell you for sure. I don't wanna get into it as I'm not sure if the 'speaking ill of the staff' rule applies to staff who have moved on and I'm not really looking to get into a shit flinging contest with people.
I'm not gonna disagree with you there, I just kind of assumed there would be more deets to be had on this. If i search escapist and pax I get mostly stuff from 2014. I had to twitter dig to find what little I did. Moviebob had a tweet or two thanking people for coming, yahtzee remained largely silent, even RP only shot out that one tweet and then just complained about airports.
 

ebalosus

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EvilRoy said:
I feel we keep hearing about how the past was shit, but we've heard very little concrete about what will be different/ better about the future. Its a pretty generic "hope with me and we go together into the future" kind of thing - all well and good, but I don't know how well this is going to hold up the next time a controversy comes up.
Pretty much this. How exactly was the past shit? Was it the writers they hired in 2014? Was it what they wrote? Was it the way they wrote it. Even if we can agree that from 2014 to a couple of months ago was a bad time for the site, how are we supposed to know how to avoid that bad time again if we don't put a finger on why it was bad?

"They let too much of the video talent go to keep paying their golden goose (Zahtzee)!" - True...but that began in 2011 with the Extra Credits debacle.

"They hired writers that sucked/had the wrong opinions/were crotroversial!" - First, that's subjective; and second, the success of Jim Sterling challenges that assumption.
 

Drathnoxis

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So, uhhh. Why am I hearing about this in the forums and not on an official post?
 

EvilRoy

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Drathnoxis said:
So, uhhh. Why am I hearing about this in the forums and not on an official post?
?\_:)/)_/?

Maybe it was like a last minute thing. According to a post by Moviebob the room filled in alright so there was interest, but yeah I would kind of expect a "we're going here" post on the actual website.
 

BreakfastMan

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ebalosus said:
EvilRoy said:
I feel we keep hearing about how the past was shit, but we've heard very little concrete about what will be different/ better about the future. Its a pretty generic "hope with me and we go together into the future" kind of thing - all well and good, but I don't know how well this is going to hold up the next time a controversy comes up.
Pretty much this. How exactly was the past shit?
Business was famously shit and they couldn't retain talent. All the talent they attracted, they couldn't pay (at least not on time), which caused a lot of controversy back in the day. That was famously part of the reason Extra Credits left.
 

Elijin

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So...

Russ got facetime at PAX and spent 90% of it bitching about the past and the forbidden topic, rather than talk about what the future of the escapist actually looks like in terms of content? Well that's one way to promote, I guess.
 

Russ Pitts

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Elijin said:
So...

Russ got facetime at PAX and spent 90% of it bitching about the past and the forbidden topic, rather than talk about what the future of the escapist actually looks like in terms of content? Well that's one way to promote, I guess.
Weird. That's not in any way what happened. Almost like you weren't there and are just talking shit ... ?

For the record, the PAX panel had been planned for months. We didn't post about it here because the site tech is so legitimately broken, I only have about 6 spots on the front page to use at any given time.

Yahtzee, Bob, and Graham were there. We had a full room. We watched everyone's "first" videos for the site. We talked about the past (good and bad). Literally no one asked about or brought up the forbidden topic. The amount of time that was spent on "the dark times" was maybe five minutes. And mostly that was Graham, Bob, and Yahtzee telling their stories of why they left (or stayed).

We weren't able to stream or record the panel. We will do another one in the future. I am locking this thread.