With Zero Punctuation puttering--will the Escapist survive?

[Ljs1121]

I don't really think Yahtzee's going downhill. I've enjoyed the most recent episodes just as much as I enjoyed the older ones.

Even if he did burnout and die, I think we'd be all right. The Escapist is bigger than Zero Punctuation. I'm sure a few hardcore Yahtzee fans would be upset and leave, but overall it's hard for me to see this place falling apart without him.

Everything ultimately becomes mundane. Deal with it. It's hardly the end of the Escapist.

And here's another fact; Even the Escapist will one day go the way of the dodo. So enjoy it while it lasts.

[sub]I think I just depressed myself - I need to go change my underwear.[/sub]

Oh lawd... This site is indeed gonna die someday... At the rate I'm going, that means...

[sub]I might never get my Neo badge[/sub]

OMG that thought absolutely terrifies me D:

 

[Vault101]

snip

1. thats like your opinion

2. I'm not here for ZP anyway, I'll watch the videos but its not the main draw for the site..aside from forums jimquisition is probably my favorite video

my point is that while YES ZP is the biggest draw I don't think the hypothetical decline of ZP would mean a death for the site....a decline mabye but not death....

honestly if the only thing between the site going under is one video series then there are some serious problems

 

[Saviordd1]

Enough people will still watch it for the site to survive unless the quality gets dreadful (I haven't watched it in years and don't know whether it's any good now).

When Extra Credits left and there was the whole payment scandal the site lost a fair amount of traffic, I suppose if ZP got suddenly removed then the escapist could plausibly die. Interestingly enough searches for Zero Punctuation are down this monthhttp://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/escapistmagazine.com, so maybe there's something in this.

Oh, and this is totally off-topic but holy fuck we don't get a good write up at Alexa:

Relative to the general internet population, Males are greatly over-represented at escapistmagazine.com.

Confidence: high

Relative to the general internet population, people who did not go to college are over-represented at escapistmagazine.com.

Confidence: high

Relative to the general internet population, people browsing from home are over-represented at escapistmagazine.com.

Confidence: high

Relative to the general internet population, 18-24 year olds are greatly over-represented at escapistmagazine.com.

Confidence: high

To be fair we also had over-representation in the "got some college" and "went to college" categories.

That said I don't how any of this is surprising, or really bad.

 

[sammysoso]

Methinks you are assuming your views on Zero Punctuation are shared by the majority of viewers.

 

[Shocksplicer]

I'm pretty sure "puttering" is the wrong word for this context.

That is all.

Get back here and offer a better input. What word would you recommend?

Faltering, declining in quality, fading into mediocrity.
Happy?

 

[lechat]

i still like zp and watch it every week but every second week is another generic shooter. its like yahtzee intentionally picks garbage just so he can punish himself. also i do understand thats why most ppl watch zp

 

[TheMagicLemur]

Like many if not most Escapists I first came to this site because someone I knew had drawn my attention to Zero Punctuation. After watching ZP here for years (lurking) I started paying attention to the rest of the site and joined up late last July.

But here's the thing: Yahtzee's stuff is still entertaining but it hasn't had the zing it did years ago. Fair enough. Yahtzee's run has been more creative and funnier and it has gone on much longer than most TV series.

Now they're having write ins: [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121401-Help-Choose-Which-Indie-Speed-Run-Games-We-Send-to-Yahtzee?utm_source=latest&utm_medium=index_carousel&utm_campaign=all]. That's never a good sign. Hopefully it's just a New Year thing but I've seen this sort of "audience participation" invitation pop up usually when a show has Jumped the Shark. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JumpingTheShark]

What do you think about ZP's slow decline and the Escapist's development/survival?

So in other words, you don't like Zero Punctuation anymore. *shrug* I think the majority of us feel it's still quite good. Not to mention that The Escapist has lots of other videos and columns available. ZP is not the only think keeping The Escapist viable, even if you personally might not think so.

 

[EeviStev]

@Copper Zen (original poster)

Write-ins? Plural? Even if I concede this Indie Speed-Run is a write-in, where are all the others that support your claim that ZP and therefore the Escapist is in decline? I was under the impression the Indie Speed Run is (or will be) a regular thing, and this year they're getting Yahtzee to pick a winner because both the speed run and the Yahtzee are Escapist things and Yahtzee is a popular game critic/commentator. I'm pretty sure he's still at as hard work on ZP as he's ever been.

I think you're reading too much into this.

 

[TheMagicLemur]

Hell, I'd like to see him vanish just to see his cult go into a rage. The tears will be more nutritious than even Brony and Juggalo tears.

Yea, all I'm left with as far as Ben Crowshow [sic] is concerned is his old FullyRamblomatic written material and his freeware games. Between his misogynistic Sims 3 rant, his racism, and his coiningings [sic] of the terms "PC Gaming Master Race" and "spunkgargleweewee"(Ben, this isn' the 2nd grade...) he lost any and all respect I ever have for him or his opinion on...well, anything.

Uh huh. Yahtzee is not "racist" against white people for pointing out that white people have historically not been kind to anyone with more pigmentation, and therefore games in which high-tech super-powered white people are slaughtering hordes of jabbering brown people armed with rocks and sticks have kind of an uncomfortable subtext.

As for the other stuff, it's pretty obvious that he's joking. That misogynist rant was several meters over the top; he considers the "PC-versus-consoles" stuff to be dumb and is making fun of people who act as though PC is inherently superior in all cases, and as far as "spunkgargleweewee", he's being intentionally juvenile for humorous effect. If you don't find it funny, that's fine, but you seem to be taking what he says far more seriously than he does.

 

[chiggerwood]

Huh? Oh goody yet another one of the "Yahtzee's getting old/stale/boring/insert your own adjective here" threads. Admittedly it's been some time since the last one, and yea he did hit a slight slump not too long ago, but then again he was reviewing a bunch homogenized and/or mediocre bullshit, and it's kinda hard to feel anything but antipathy for that particular sludge, but I think he's still in good form, his latest video proved that. Really the only reason I can think of as to why he's not as exciting to me as he was when I first started watching his is due to the fact that I've been watching him for about 4 years, oh and before I forget the escapist isn't going anywhere either. didn't we have this conversation like 7 or 8 months ago? I swear it's starting to become a bi-annual event?

 

[Idlemessiah]

Although ZP isn't the hot crack it used to be, The Escapist still has MovieBob, Jim Sterling and the LRR crew, on top of all the news media and straight reviews that the staff do. Oh and Critical Miss and No right answer too. So the site still has plenty of content.

The only thing I think that it really needs is more fiction series. For any people who are fairly new to this site, I'd recommend going into the archives and looking up There Will Be Brawl, Doomsday Arcade and Doraleous and Associates.

 

[Phlakes]

You know how long people have been saying ZP is in decline?

Go ahead, take a guess.

Hint: the show's been around since 2007.

 

[Alexander Bradley]

Besides Yahtzee's personality being almost stereotypically British (sarcastic, snarky, and xenophobic at times), there's only so much enjoyment you can take over a gimmick like that before you get tired of it. Try watching all the Austin Powers movies back to back for a week straight and see if they're funny by the end of the week, you'll get the same results. It's mediocre humor (and it IS mediocre humor) being cranked out very fast to make the "really witty lines" stick even harder while you're struggling to remember what he said besides the good jokes. It's a good tactic, I'll give him that, but that shit eventually wears out and all that's left is middle school humor, stick figures, and a funny accent.

MovieBob, Jimquisition, LoadingReadyRun, and No Right Answers will still keep things going. Between all of them (or even standing alone in my opinion) they all have incredible content, are consistently funny, and don't have a superiority complex about them. Also, whilst mentioning No Right Answers, bring your podcast back, dammit! I miss having things to listen to while I'm playing games and writing music!

 

[TheMagicLemur]

Historically, people of all colors have been dicks to people of all colors.

As for modern military shooters, you are giving WAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more thought to those games than the developers did.

Yes, but not quite on the massive bloody scale that white Europeans (And American descendants of said Europeans) have. Yes, I'm aware that Africans practiced slavery before white people got involved, and that they sold their captured rivals to whites, but let's face it; white people in the past few centuries created institutionalized racism on a scale fairly unprecedented by others.

As far as the undercurrent of racism in games, I'm not just talking about military shooters (although they reflect an uncomfortable reality whether you choose to see it or not). A lot of games have this undertone. Some are more overt than others (Call of Juarez: The Cartel, for example), but it's there. Many American-produced games especially have a sense of xenophobia in them right now, because after 9/11 (which I'm NOT defending, by the way) Americans were violently awoken to the fact that much of the world hates us and sees us as fat, overbearing imperialists. And that scared us. We became quite a bit more fearful of foreigners, and I think that bleeds through into a lot of games, but military shooters by their very nature show this more overtly than most.

 

[thiosk]

While not as hilariously novel as it was four years ago, it has become a hallmark of critical games journalism. Love him or hate him, you watch him enough to know the difference. And you will, for years to come.

 

[144_v1legacy]

I agree with those who wonder why one would ask this. In these situations, I usually make hypotheses about the sort of character someone with such an opinion as this (thinking ZP is puttering) would be, but I simply can't come up with one. Maybe one thing. The only thing I can think of is that perhaps one with this sort of opinion would be the kind of person who, when he/she hears a comedic analogy or some other technique of making a point, attempts to rationalize the hyperbole, dissecting the line and ruining the punch by doing so. I'll call this the Barbara Walters approach to being an audience member. In such a way, you can't find enjoyment in the method of presentation offered in ZP. But this is a loose hypothesis at best.

 

[Goofguy]

I've stopped watching it, but that's mostly because after 100 episodes I'm not as eager to watch more as I was after the first time I saw it.

This about sums it up perfectly. Whereas I used to watch ZP religiously, now I only do so to get Yahtzee's comical take on the current game I'm playing. I'd say the quality is still there but my interest isn't.