You all miss the Escapist's glory days, what are your ideas for how could they come back?

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

It just needs more content. Check out the weekly schedule, its 2/3rds empty! No content, no traffic, no people signing up to call me pessimistic on the forums. Its a vicious circle!

That's something small they could change while I'm at it. Get rid of the empty boxes and just have the pics of the content. Otherwise it just makes the site look empty.

Remember, the glass isn't half full or empty, its twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[09philj]

Put that "most recent" forum bar back on the main page where it belongs.

Although a stop-gap measure, you can use this to tie you over until they reinstate it properly, if you absolutely need it.
Mind you, this relies fully on the escapists own back-end, so if they decide to remove the back end for the feature, well, it's gone.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/22151-re-add-popular-forum-posts-widget

This does, however, require that you use a browser that supports plugins that can run "UserScripts"
Chrome - Tampermonkey [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en]
Firefox - Greasemonkey [https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/]
Opera - Tampermonkey [https://addons.opera.com/extensions/details/tampermonkey-beta/]
Opera - Violentmonkey [https://addons.opera.com/extensions/details/violent-monkey/]

Mind you, I only tested it on Chrome and Firefox.

Thanks muchly.

 

[Caedite Eos]

Can't you miss something and not have an idea on how to change things? Market dynamics have changed. That doesn't require people to like it, also doesn't necessitate that there is an answer.

Forums were always a stopgap, always subject to suddenly going away. It's really not a shock that people prefer something like Reddit, which can essentially simulate any number of forums, while also offering a lot more. Niche forums will continue in the way that Irc and Usenet continue, but you'll have to bring something real to the table to survive in that world; be a SomethingAwful or Penny Arcade Forums.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

There Will Be Brawl type content is something I've been dreaming of seeing here again for years.

I don't know how to help the site turn more profit. The Premium account as it exists sure isn't the way.

 

[Wareve]

That's something small they could change while I'm at it. Get rid of the empty boxes and just have the pics of the content. Otherwise it just makes the site look empty.

This is a good point that you'd think anyone in marketing would be able to point out instantly. No one likes empty shelf space. It makes them feel bad, like they're in a famine. Just shrinking the bar till they get more content would help it at least look less anemic.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

Put that "most recent" forum bar back on the main page where it belongs.

Although a stop-gap measure, you can use this to tie you over until they reinstate it properly, if you absolutely need it.
Mind you, this relies fully on the escapists own back-end, so if they decide to remove the back end for the feature, well, it's gone.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/22151-re-add-popular-forum-posts-widget

This does, however, require that you use a browser that supports plugins that can run "UserScripts"
Chrome - Tampermonkey [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tampermonkey/dhdgffkkebhmkfjojejmpbldmpobfkfo?hl=en]
Firefox - Greasemonkey [https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/]
Opera - Tampermonkey [https://addons.opera.com/extensions/details/tampermonkey-beta/]
Opera - Violentmonkey [https://addons.opera.com/extensions/details/violent-monkey/]

Mind you, I only tested it on Chrome and Firefox.

I appreciate this. Thank you.
I appr

 

[Kyrian007]

There Will Be Brawl type content is something I've been dreaming of seeing here again for years.

3 of the people who created Fallout: Nuka Break and part-owned Wayside Creations and another part-owner have left Wayside. If defy really wanted to boost The Escapist they could reach out to these content creators. As it is any new Fallout: Nuka Break is going to be a pale imitation... Getting the people most responsible for its success isn't a terrible idea.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

There Will Be Brawl type content is something I've been dreaming of seeing here again for years.

3 of the people who created Fallout: Nuka Break and part-owned Wayside Creations and another part-owner have left Wayside. If defy really wanted to boost The Escapist they could reach out to these content creators. As it is any new Fallout: Nuka Break is going to be a pale imitation... Getting the people most responsible for its success isn't a terrible idea.

If they had the money to pull them in, it'd be a real coup for the site.
[sub][sub]Funny you mentioned it, I just watched their stuff today.[/sub][/sub]

 

[Marik2]

Just let people advertise their stuff here and let members upload their videos and if the site sees someone that's actually worth something, then they can hire them for a year or 2 until they branch off and set a patreon.

And continue that cycle.

 

[Dragonbums]

They need to bring back exclusive personalities that gave people a reason to visit this site and eventually sign up for it to comment on said material.

There is no reason why this site should die off.

The first thing is that they really need to contract/hire more people to write for the Escapist. The past year or so it's been really lacking in keeping up with current gaming news to the point that I might as well go to Destructoid to look at the current going ons and talk about it here. That's not a good thing for a user to do, and it certainly doesn't spell a new account for a lurker.

Second thing is to adapt. Escapist no longer has any relevancy when it comes to video series anymore. However there are people who will loyally follow popular bloggers and writers for their opinions.
Jim was extremely good at this. People often valued his written and video opinions. You need to find a way to get someone like him back on board at the Escapist.
I honestly think the Escapists move to just let people like Moviebob and Jimquisition go without even a 'you post here first than on your other sites later' kind of deal seriously hurt them in the long run. Regardless of the crowing from users who hated them and claimed that they had no real impact on this site.

There is nothing wrong with talking about controversial subjects. But shit like Gamergate and the Star Citizen fiasco hurt this site a lot too. Granted with Star Citizen it was pretty valid and it was simply the rabid Citizen fans that took the turd too far on here with their garbage accounts- GG did absolutely nothing good for this site. Especially with how it initially started as a gross sex life gossip column and slut shaming thread. A lot of users got at each others throats, a lot of users found themselves banned, and users on both sides have left forever because some genuinely toxic people started polluting the community and taking their arguments to a personal level before getting banned themselves or fucking off after salting the Earth.

Really though I honestly think we are doing 'so bad' is because we are infamous(supposedly) for our 'biased' and 'dictatorship' like moderation.
Every time we had a surge of throw away accounts here to scream about controversies they always cry about how unfair moderation is because they can't get away with calling someone an alt-right bumpkin or a ******.
Unlike other sites like Neogaf, Destructoid, IGN, etc where they have pretty lax moderation and you only get modded if you hit bottom of the barrel crap like blatant racism, sexism, or queerphobia.
Personally I never want that aspect to change. I love the moderation here, and while it does lead to it's own issues with passive agressiveness it always assures that the discussions are at least worthy of reading through as opposed to scrolling past droves of shitty slapfights.

 

[Dragonbums]

On that note, what do you guys think about the importance of Content vs. Community?

Like, if you were to go to The Escapist's owners and pitch to them, would you say they should first focus on creating Content so people will come in the first place, or that they should focus first on updating the profiles/forums/accounts in order to facilitate the growth and sustaining of the community?

That's really difficult to answer. I think it should be a focus on both but one gets more priority than the other. I definitely think in my opinion that community organization should be dealt with first. But at the same time the content is really lacking.

I don't want Escapist to be like Kotaku, or IGN. They put out a lot of content, some of it really interesting- but ultimately the community is hot trash and I don't spend a minute looking at the content for opinions. Alternatively I don't want it to be like Destructoid where while the site has good content and a lot of community it's all confined to the comments section of a game review. As such you can have like 50 comments that are completely irrelevant to the article and clog up space because a well known user wanted to shoot the shit, but they have no other place to go for that. (To be fair they had a forum but quite frankly having two Destructoid accounts for commenting on articles and commenting on forums is hot garbage and I want that system to die in a fire.)

Ironically enough I see Polygon as an ideal environment for the Escapist but on a much larger scale.

Their layout is a lot cleaner and they produce a lot of content so people can talk about it. This also transfers to people talking about it on the forums. Or they can do it like they do on the Elder Scrolls Online forums where they post an article and it redirects you to the forums to see what users think about it. Which can lead to people going in and looking at other posts in other sections of the forums.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the whole site just needs a general overhaul.