The Escapist. - Remember when they had things beside Yahtzee.

[Blindrainbow]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

This came up on the moviebob thread and it got me remember The escapist one quite a popular video game website in the late 2000's and early 2010's before quickly losing a lot of it content creators. You might know them as the former home as the cows known as Jim Sterling and Moviebob.

To be honest, they were never that good. Most known still for Zero punctuation, but some also knows them for moviebob (has a thread) Jim Sterling (has a thread, but not good enough for his own), and Extra Credits (Who I am not sure has a thread but would not be shocked as they one time claimed we were running out of bandwidth in the air.)

In recent years creator have left, leaving with very little beside ben keeping people coming. It's a sad state.

Personally I never was big on zero punctuation, he was most the same thing different game each time, and it most ether fucking awful like "Gamer dogs" or pretentious and awful like Jim and extra credits. I was mostly there for Loading ready run, who I still quite like even if I don't watch them as regularly now, and I still think apocalypse lane was pretty good for what it was.

But what are your thoughts on the Escapist both in it's current state and the past?

 

[Cato]

I recall years back taking a cursory glance at their forums, being baffled by the heavy-handed, pathetic power-tripping moderation, closing the tab and never looking back.

Check out this thread. Specifically what the user corroded was permanently banned for.

 

[Y2K Baby]

Zero Punctuation is almost 100% a joke. Anyone who sees it as anything but "if it sounds bad, it's bad. If it sounds like he's reaching for things to complain about, give it a try." is a fedoralord psuedo-intellectual preteen.

That being said, despite how formulaic the humor is, I like it. Mainly due to how short the videos are. If you don't find it funny, oh well, it was only 5 minutes long.

It doesn't take a genius to see how incoherent and biased Yatzhee's tastes are from "funny fast talking man show" but he's a pretty decent guy besides that. Certainly compared to his colleagues.

 

[SoberBlitz]

I recall years back taking a cursory glance at their forums, being baffled by the heavy-handed, pathetic power-tripping moderation, closing the tab and never looking back.

Check out this thread. Specifically what the user corroded was permanently banned for.

So the Escapist forums are a NeoGAF lite. They've been having issues with spambots, having to abandon a subforum, at least for the time being.

As for its past, the Escapist was at its prime prior to 2014. Then Gamergate happened. The Escapist was one of the few sites that allowed discussion of the topic, leading to both Jim Sterling and MovieBob leaving the site or getting shitcanned respectively. Losing Jim hurt a lot more than MovieBob, which is obvious due to the number of people that followed him when he left the site.

For a while the Escapist was able to stay above water, getting new content creators on board such as GoodBadFlicks, but the money was starting to dry up, leading to them letting go a lot of the people they brought on board.

 

[Overcast]

I used to frequent the forums there for a few years.

It was fun for a while until I started to notice all the spergs, edgelords, console/pc fanboys and proto-sjw's there were. Granted, I wasn't (and still not) that much better.

There was one particular user that stuck in my memory for the longest time. He was known as "Eternalnothingness". Also known as "CommanderPonyShepard".

The dude would've been an amazing source of lolcow milk here. I'd post links to his posts, but they seem to have disappeared. But this GIF basically summarizes him and how we all felt about him at the time.

He was a brony, inflation fetishist, and just an absolute nutcase.

He would make threads about this hypothetical game he would make called "Sakura the Rabbit" and go on and on about what it was going to be about. He would make dozens of threads crying about Twilight getting wings or comparing one of the season finales to Dragonball Z and talking about how horrible that supposedly is, and he even made a few threads where he dumped out a bunch inflation pictures of Sonic characters.

There was even a point where he was messaging one of the guys who wrote one of the Sonic games about how useless Sonic's friends were for nearly HALF A YEAR.

He eventually got banned, and since then he pretty much disappeared from the net as far as I know. So hopefully he's doing better. But boy did he supply me and a whole bunch of other people with a lot of laughs.

Anyway, there were a couple of points where the site turned to absolute shit, whenever one of the content creators left or got fired. (For example, when the Extra Credits guys got fired over money issues) during the whole ME3 debacle, ect. It got to the point where it just wasn't fun to be on there anymore and I just left.

As for Yahtzee, I really enjoyed his content but later just stopped watching for a few years. I decided to watch some of his newer content and was surprised to find I still enjoy it. The worst thing I can say about it is that it really hasn't changed that much since he first started, but it hasn't gotten worse either, so at least there's that.

It seems kinda ironic really, he was the guy who boosted The Escapist in popularity and paved the way for other content creators, and now he seems to be the only one left. At least, the only one worth watching.

 

[Foltest]

ahhh the escapist. How the mightey has fallen. It hasn't sadden me as much as when GT shut down, but it is a sad ending. I think part of what is killing it, was the heavyhanded mods on the forum.

 

[_blank_]

Hey, I use to frequent there... years ago... before I knew better. Waaaay back in the day before they started with... whatever their flagship comic was- Bitchy Female Games Journo with Disassoiative Complex issues: The Comic - they were looking for people to do webcomics for them and I applied. Never got a response back, but in all reality probably all the better.

Even back then, the forums were inundated with tryhard gaming intellectuals - the type which would write 2,000 word posts to extrapolate a deeper meaning, I dunno, Goombas from Super Mario. It was ultimately a pain to wade through.

Gamergate totally decimated that place in the end. Extra Credits jumped ship after some sort of fundraising scheme went sour, Megafats Jimbo chucked his fat ass as soon as two or three Gamergate am baaaad videos fell flat, and Chips Ahoy hung on like an overfed tick until he was finally yanked clean and he had to suck on Stuttering Criag's balls over at Screwattack for a contract gig. Also fun fact: right at the flashpoint of GG- the Escapist was about to roll out a new series of articles written by Silverstring Media - aka - FemFreq's propaganda machine. The forums went into total anarchy, people literally demanding mods to ban them on the spot.

Good times. Glad I never got to close to anyone there, buncha yutzes.

 

[Lackadaisy]

I liked Shamus Young's stuff, but that was before he started posting almost exclusively on his personal blog.

 

[BubbleButt]

Critical Miss is a fucking mess of a comic and not good. I hear Grey spergs out if you doctor his comics into actual jokes.

 

[Foltest]

Critical Miss is a fucking mess of a comic and not good. I hear Grey spergs out if you doctor his comics into actual jokes.

it is true and it is great how much he sperged out. He is not fond either of people making rule 34 of the main character.

 

[BubbleButt]

I can get on that.

 

[Absolutego]

I liked Shamus Young's stuff, but that was before he started posting almost exclusively on his personal blog.

Him posting on the Twenty Sided blog predates him writing for the Escapist. In fact, his writing on the blog is what got him his job as a columnist there. He posts exclusively on the blog now because the Escapist let him go during one of the more recent layoffs.

Did you ever watch Spoiler Warning? There was some utterly retarded drama between him and two other hosts (one is the guy behind Errant Signal) that resulted in them booting Shamus off the show.

 

[Lackadaisy]

Him posting on the Twenty Sided blog predates him writing for the Escapist. In fact, his writing on the blog is what got him his job as a columnist there. He posts exclusively on the blog now because the Escapist let him go during one of the more recent layoffs.

Did you ever watch Spoiler Warning? There was some utterly exceptional drama between him and two other hosts (one is the guy behind Errant Signal) that resulted in them booting Shamus off the show.

Oh, yes. Spoiler Warning was my jam for quite a few years until that Errant Signal guy joined up. He always seemed like a third wheel, honestly. It's a shame Josh ended up being a twat, but the drama only made me like Shamus even more.

 

[Blindrainbow]

Him posting on the Twenty Sided blog predates him writing for the Escapist. In fact, his writing on the blog is what got him his job as a columnist there. He posts exclusively on the blog now because the Escapist let him go during one of the more recent layoffs.

Did you ever watch Spoiler Warning? There was some utterly exceptional drama between him and two other hosts (one is the guy behind Errant Signal) that resulted in them booting Shamus off the show.

Eh, frankly he was the only good thing on it the guy who dose errant signal sucks as dose errant signal and the other guy was just, meh.

 

[Hyrip123876]

So the Escapist got some investment and recently kickstarted the forums with a revamped site and everything. I mainly lurked and stopped browsing there altogether a good, hmm 4-5 years ago? Take away the lolcows employed by the site and the forum tryhards, it's hard to justify getting worked up when you're hamstrung from even expressing yourself by the byzantine forum rules.
I rarely post, especially back then, but if I did I don't want it tone policed by mods or misconstrued in the most cynical ways by others for the sole purpose of baiting me into being 'rude' in my reply.
You ever attend a school reunion and find out the people in your class that mentally haven't budged an inch since they were 17? That's the vibe I'm getting, recognising familiar usernames right now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200522180256/https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/threads/wuhan-bans-eating-wild-animals.310/

https://web.archive.org/web/20200522180233/https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/threads/ahmaud-arbery-is-this-a-strike-against-citizens-arrest-gun-control-the-legal-system-or-all.222/page-6

That Wuhan thread it particularly pointed to me because I remember that exact same user invoking Native American heritage when they could half a decade ago, usually as a way to frame barely concealed disgust for white people and the rest of the USA as somehow justified.
Why do such forums attract the most impassioned, toxic personalities on the internet? And why do these websites not turf them out at some stage? They're clearly not good for business, in fact a quick peruse of the new sites and recognising some of the more neurotic icons having the same avatars as they had 6 years ago, is really discouraging for the Escapist's long-term prospects

 

[frozenrunner]

Anyone remember way back when The Escapist was some "high-brow," fart-sniffing "games as art" pdf "magazine?" This was long before it got a proper website. I never read it, but a friend recommended it to me and I just couldn't stomach it.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

So the Escapist got some investment and recently kickstarted the forums with a revamped site and everything. I mainly lurked and stopped browsing there altogether a good, hmm 4-5 years ago? Take away the lolcows employed by the site and the forum tryhards, it's hard to justify getting worked up when you're hamstrung from even expressing yourself by the byzantine forum rules.
I rarely post, especially back then, but if I did I don't want it tone policed by mods or misconstrued in the most cynical ways by others for the sole purpose of baiting me into being 'rude' in my reply.
You ever attend a school reunion and find out the people in your class that mentally haven't budged an inch since they were 17? That's the vibe I'm getting, recognising familiar usernames right now.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200522180256/https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/threads/wuhan-bans-eating-wild-animals.310/

https://web.archive.org/web/20200522180233/https://forums.escapistmagazine.com/threads/ahmaud-arbery-is-this-a-strike-against-citizens-arrest-gun-control-the-legal-system-or-all.222/page-6

That Wuhan thread it particularly pointed to me because I remember that exact same user invoking Native American heritage when they could half a decade ago, usually as a way to frame barely concealed disgust for white people and the rest of the USA as somehow justified.
Why do such forums attract the most impassioned, toxic personalities on the internet? And why do these websites not turf them out at some stage? They're clearly not good for business, in fact a quick peruse of the new sites and recognising some of the more neurotic icons having the same avatars as they had 6 years ago, is really discouraging for the Escapist's long-term prospects

I'm pretty sure you can make a lolcow threads on most of the old users there, especially the ones that use the same username in other forums/social apps. I think I remember some tranny there who constantly talks about being a homeless for several years and then becoming a self-made millionaire (that wastes most of his time in a Z-grade forum, as most millionaires do).

 

[the clap]

Their new code of conduct:

http://archive.md/Um49z

ZERO TOLERANCE OFFENCES
1. Gamergate

 

[Foltest]

I think at this point, 95% of people who were pro gamergate have moved on. Only the people who are anti can't move on.