
The Escapist Lays Off Majority of Staff - jordigh
http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/352707-escapist-lays-off-majority-staff-members-mass-exodus
======
Jare
I still remember the launch of The Escapist. It was so different with its
styling and content, sort of an online version of the Edge magazine. Alas that
didn't last long.

~~~
rodgerd
It was odd to watch them do a hard turn from applying more thoughtful analysis
of games and gaming culture to hopping on the GamerGate train. I assume that
didn't pan out for them as they'd hoped.

~~~
Lazare
Oh, so that's what happened to them.

I recall seeing some really good content from them a while back, but it never
was _quite_ good enough that I'd go there explicitly to check them out. Then
without really realizing it, I stopped seeing links to their content, and sort
of forgot they'd ever existed.

Some quick googling shows why: They'd gone totally off the deep end. What a
baffling way for them to end. I wonder if it was just a (very ill-advised)
tactic to try and boost traffic, or if the owner/editors were actually true
believers?

------
Jach
There's really just been Yahtzee left for quite some time, glad they made it
more official.

~~~
xor1
Reminder that Something Awful could have had Yahtzee / Zero Punctuation and
remained somewhat relevant, but Lowtax gave him an insultingly low offer
amounting to something like $40 in forum credit per episode.

~~~
Apes
I don't think Lowtax or SomethingAwful did much after Lowtax had his brains
punched into mush by Uwe Boll.

~~~
Endy
The strength of SA isn't their public content, it's the community and the
forum. But if you do want their public content, I find that the main important
output is LPs.

------
FussyZeus
There seems to be a serious contraction going on right now with the mass media
surrounding games, and I'm alright with it. We're heavily saturated right now
with an echo chamber of websites that parrot each other endlessly about video
games, game culture, streamers and their various screwups, etc.

I think this has been a long time coming, it sucks that we're probably going
to lose some cool names in the process but overall I think it will be a good
thing.

~~~
ethbro
As far as I can tell, games "journalism" has been a cesspool of corruption and
wink-wink kickbacks since the "old" E3.

Semi-professional reporters w/ unsustainable income streams + large studio
advertising budgets + massive investments in AAA games != recipe for integrity

Steam refunds did more for game quality than most of the game journalism
industry.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Rock Paper Shotgun[1] is really good for the most part, co-founded by the
writer of The New Games Journalism[2]. Their reviews don't have explicit
ratings, which neatly sidesteps the fooforaw over giving things the "wrong"
rating. They're on GamerGate's hit list (because somebody's girlfriend
allegedly slept with one of their writers), which is another point in their
favor. They're PC-specific, though.

Any other good gaming sites out there I should check out?

[1] [https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/) [2]
[http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-
essays/the-n...](http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/assorted-essays/the-
new-games-journalism/)

~~~
Uhhrrr
I think Nathan Grayson writing about his friends is pretty well established at
this point:
[http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson](http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson)

Although he now writes for Kotaku, not RPS.

techraptor.com and nichegamer.com are pretty good.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _I think Nathan Grayson writing about his friends is pretty well established
> at this
> point:[http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson](http://www.deepfreeze.it/journo.php?j=nathan_grayson)
> _

That's...alarmingly obsessive. The article, I mean, not Grayson.

~~~
JCSato
That's kind of the failure of Deepfreeze - GG wanted to prove that their
claims about journos held water, but when they provided and standardized their
data it's so off-putting and clinical that it's hard to not dismiss as a
little creepy.

~~~
moomin
The GGers who genuinely thought it was about ethics in journalism were
completely missing the point though. I want you to imagine we were talking the
defence industry. Imagine it was public knowledge that billions of dollars
were being skimmed by defence contractors. Then imagine someone shows up and
says “Hey, this guy’s been telling people to go to gun store A and getting $20
store vouchers.” Then imagine that turned out not to be the case.

Now, here’s the point: you could spend the next year meticulously documenting
every last store voucher the guy had ever received from gun shops B to Z and
still no-one would care, because everyone knows that, even if it was true, it
wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. If you
then announced that this was part of a larger campaign for “Clarity in Defense
Spending” people would conclude that either a) you were truly clueless or b)
you had an axe to grind with this guy that was nothing to do with gun store
vouchers.

Anyway, that’s what people mean when they say “It was never about ethics in
computer game journalism.”

------
CM30
I suspect in part this had to do with them losing some of the early series
that brought people to the site and not finding any good replacements. I mean
yes, Zero Punctuation is still based there. But stuff like Extra Credits
isn't, nor is the Jimquisition or MovieBob or god knows how many other past
series.

Nowadays, popular web series like that bring in more interest than written
articles do. Alas, they didn't quite find a new golden goose after some of
their original ones left, so they ended up with Yahtzee as the only real
attraction there.

Probably also doesn't help that gaming news sites aren't the moneymaker they
used to be, with the people that visit them generally not paying for
subscriptions or clicking on ads.

~~~
Nzen
[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/galleries](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/galleries)
has some of their discontinued series (ex rhymedown spectacular, I hit it with
my axe, and unskippable).

------
SilasX
That would be an expulsion, not an exodus. "Exodus" would imply they all chose
to leave.

~~~
jandrese
They just all suddenly left* one day.

* After we stopped paying them and took away their access.

~~~
imron
Your asterisked comment is the whole point.

It wasn't the staff all choosing to leave, it was the staff being told to
leave. That'd be two very different stories, which is why 'exodus' would be
misleading.

~~~
Kiro
Pretty sure that was the point of the comment. You read it too literally.

