With Zero Punctuation puttering--will the Escapist survive?

[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.

 

[Korolev]

ZP lost its Zing a long time ago. It's still interesting to watch, and I do watch it, but I'm not going to pretend that I laugh much at it anymore. I do smile at the jokes, though. Sometimes. It's hard to maintain interest over so many years and with so strict a formula.

Is the Escapist "dying"? Well, I do remember that it had run into serious financial strife about a year or so ago. I think that's mostly died down, however. As for its future - I don't know. I brought a publisher's subscription last year, mostly out of pity, but I didn't buy one this year. Honestly, there's nothing on this site that really draws me in that much. It's mostly fine, but it lacks the... well, I don't know what it lacks, but it lacks something.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

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]

With the massive draw that ZP has been for the Escapist it's a reflex to wonder if ZP's slowly going downhill could take the site with it.

On the other hand the site has had time to develop and mature. It has been quoted in media everywhere from Cracked.com to WoW's Panderia trailer to Scientific American (which I have a subscription to--I grinned when I saw the Escapist mentioned there). It's got a large body of loyal members. Heck, I even jumped the broomstick and spent $20.00 to join the PubClub recently.

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

I don't know where this is coming from: That's just how the site works. They have a good amount of decent content, then a bunch of crap, then good stuff again. As for Yahtzee, he did get soggy a while back, but he's actually fun again (and appears to actually be playing the games he reviews. There were some there that I don't believe he did, as bad as it is to say)

 

[Korolev]

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.

Well.... in a way you are right. The colonialist racism and the racism practiced by whites tends to have a greater impact than racism practiced by other peoples, but that's due to differences in power, not in hatred. I'm half chinese, and I've been to China and I've spoken to Chinese relatives. I can tell you full well that racism against black people is extremely alive and well in China - it just doesn't get expressed that often because there aren't that many black people in China. China's racism against minorities (anyone who isn't Han) and Tibetans and the Uighers is quite legendary.

It's easy to think that somehow white people are "more racist" than other peoples. They're not. It's just that their racism tends to have more overt consequences. Go to Saudi Arabia, where Sri Lankan labourers are treated as slaves. Go to the Congo where they will cut you up if they think your nose is too narrow or too wide, depending on what group gets you. Go to Japan where descendants of Korean immigrants, despite having lived in Japan all their lives and speak only Japanese, are treated by the government as aliens and are denied rights. Japan, in fact, is legendarily racist. You might not think so due to the fact that they have blonde people in their anime and video games, but you just try to live there and the racism comes out full force.

I'm not saying that white people aren't racist. As someone who is half-chinese and lives in a white majority nation with a chinese mother, I've seen and experienced racism (not so much against me because I look more caucasian than asian, but my brother has gotten a lot of racism directed against him). I know perfectly well of the horrors of the British in India and Africa.

But white people are no "more" racist. In fact, compared to Japan and China (which I've lived in, for a time), I see less racism in Australia and England than I do in China, where if you're not Han or White or Very Rich, you are treated like absolute crap. In England, a black person can become (and has become) an MP or a member of cabinent. In America, we have a black president in a nation where the majority of people are white. In Australia, we a senator and a cabinent member who is half-chinese like me. Can you IMAGINE, even for a second, of a something similar happening in China? Or Japan? Or Korea? Or Laos? Or Vietnam? Or Saudi Arabia? Or Yemen? Or Turkey? How likely is it that, in their present forms, they'd ever accept Black people living in their nations?

Again, that's not to excuse the racism done by whites. Nothing can excuse that. But if you think that other races are even slightly less racist that Caucasian people, buddy, you're wrong. The other races are just as racist as Caucasians. It just has less of an impact than White racism. But the sentiment is no different. They're not less bigoted. It's just that their bigotry isn't backed by the same level of power.

 

[Dangit2019]

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.

What is the week the 2nd episode premiered, Alex?

 

[Overusedname]

I get what you mean, when I go back and watch old ZP episodes the newer ones feel much less entertaining in comparison, but the site won't die just because one contributor, even the most well known one, isn't as good as he used to be.

Oddly enough I find his recent stuff a lot funnier.

I don't agree with him on several of his points on game design. But he presents his opinion in a very snarky way and I appreciate that. It's one of the few review shows that makes me burst out laughing from time to time.

 

[itsmeyouidiot]

I'm glad to see Zero Punctuation's popularity faltering. Yahtzee is the reason why the Escapist is full of assholes who hate everything that I enjoy.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm as eager for Wednesdays as I've been for about four years now.

 

[Nazulu]

I don't believe there has been a decline in quality, there has been some slight changes but nothing drastic.

As for the large amount of posts, I think it's because there are many people who have moved on to other shows or have figured out it's not for them. All the popular vids were either pissing on fanboy's or controversial don't forget. People are just used to Yahtzee I believe. Well not all. You see the occasional hypocrite saying that Yahtzee whines about every thing.

Also, it could be possible that many people are watching ZP vids on other websites.