The Escapist implodes as entire video team resigns after parent company Gamurs Group fired editor-in-chief Nick Calandra

I'm with Dan and Zara... no effing clue who these dudes are. I'm 42 for chronological scale lol.
 
Dan_D said:
It's true that what film critics and moviegoers want are worlds apart. Though I don't think modern critics are looking towards "film" the way Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin did back in the day. I think modern critics are looking at the identity politics checklist albeit for the same sort of pretentious reasoning. They feel like movies should say something and the identity politics are simply the hot thing in their view and its what movies should be about. (That's my take on it anyway.)

This is actually an issue for any reviewer. You end up with friends at these companies or at least, good working relationships. Once you have human faces to these companies its harder to call something crap because it can affect jobs and people you actually know. Few reviewers seem to have the integrity to push forward and tell it like it is in light of this.

Yeah, I can see this. Anytime you go against the grain on something that's super popular you know you'll get flak. It's less of an issue reviewing hardware than some other products, but I know that I have some contrary opinions on firearms or firearm accessories in particular and people are sometimes taken back by that and you end up feeling like you have to justify your thinking to other people.

Precisely. I don't bother with movie or game reviews anymore. They simply have no value to me. The only thing I do is look for gameplay video and I judge that to decide if something is worth the risk or not.
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There’s also echo chamber income to consider with critics. If you see the bulk of the chatter is shitting all over something you can get more traffic and add revenue from reinforcing narrative that then you can from standing against it.
 
OFaceSIG said:
I'm with Dan and Zara... no effing clue who these dudes are. I'm 42 for chronological scale lol.
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I'm around the same age. I've seen a few of the zero punctuation videos years ago when they became popular, but they weren't for me. I think they were catering to a younger audience, edgey teens or something.
 
Overall this is a good thing. Its obvious that the suits who acquired The Escapist wanted a constant SEO-friendly drip of "content mill" content, and I have to give the more prominent Escapist authors and media creators credit for pushing back on this to the point of quitting together in solidarity with the EIC being let go over this issue. Its obvious that Yahtzee is probably the most "famous" of the current (some of their bigger names in the past went on to other things independently for better or worse, like Jim Sterling or MovieBob)Escapist staff , with the longest and perhaps most impactful (ie the PC Gaming Master Race meme, as listed above, is of his creation and of course has taken off on a life of its own including inspiring a peripheral company which is now known as Glorious Gaming; pretty decent hardware too, definitely a step up from most gaming-focused peripheral companies), but there were a handful of others who wrote articles or reviews that showed a degree of effort beyond clickbait. Darren Mooney was one of their major movie/comic/pop-culture reviewers and editorial writers and even if I didn't agree with their assesment at all times, they clearly put a modicum of effort into their articles.

This is just more evidence of how corporate monetization goals ruins pretty much everything. I did not have a problem with Escapist offering an optional subscription with bonuses if the content was interesting enough to justify it in the first place, but another tiny article broken up by frequent ads and low thresholds for actual content site offers nothing worthwhile. The Escapist may end up dying or it will transform into the vacuous content mill its new owners wish it to be, but I'm guessing the former employees who resigned in protest will likely land on their feet, possibly with a boost to their career if they use it smartly.
 
RanceJustice said:
Overall this is a good thing. Its obvious that the suits who acquired The Escapist wanted a constant SEO-friendly drip of "content mill" content, and I have to give the more prominent Escapist authors and media creators credit for pushing back on this to the point of quitting together in solidarity with the EIC being let go over this issue. Its obvious that Yahtzee is probably the most "famous" of the current (some of their bigger names in the past went on to other things independently for better or worse, like Jim Sterling or MovieBob)Escapist staff , with the longest and perhaps most impactful (ie the PC Gaming Master Race meme, as listed above, is of his creation and of course has taken off on a life of its own including inspiring a peripheral company which is now known as Glorious Gaming; pretty decent hardware too, definitely a step up from most gaming-focused peripheral companies), but there were a handful of others who wrote articles or reviews that showed a degree of effort beyond clickbait. Darren Mooney was one of their major movie/comic/pop-culture reviewers and editorial writers and even if I didn't agree with their assesment at all times, they clearly put a modicum of effort into their articles.

This is just more evidence of how corporate monetization goals ruins pretty much everything. I did not have a problem with Escapist offering an optional subscription with bonuses if the content was interesting enough to justify it in the first place, but another tiny article broken up by frequent ads and low thresholds for actual content site offers nothing worthwhile. The Escapist may end up dying or it will transform into the vacuous content mill its new owners wish it to be, but I'm guessing the former employees who resigned in protest will likely land on their feet, possibly with a boost to their career if they use it smartly.
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OK, I have heard of Jim Sterling.
 
There's a lot folks on here being lying liars. Zeo Punctuation (the only reason i ever went to the Escapist site) was consistently not only hilarious, but honestly great short reviews of new games. They'd quickly and harshly ID any game's shortcomings, and as a general rule, if they liked a game I'd enjoy it.

Bummer that they couldn't keep the site afloat.
 
Modred189 said:
There's a lot folks on here being lying liars.
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Not at all. I literally don't remember Zero Punctuation though once Jim Sterling was brought up, I did remember the Escapist. It was hardly something I watched regularly. I'm a big fan of gaming, but surprisingly very few games actually interest me. There are one to three titles at most that I'm interested in per year on average. Sometimes there aren't even that many that interest me. I mostly replay my favorites, engage in my other hobbies or play content additions and expansions for my favorite games.
 
Looking at this company's stats on YT and their website, there's no way The Escapist was viable. The only thing anyone was watching was ZP, that video team was The Escapist's inadequate life support.

Back of the napkin here, but I think the video team (specifically ZP) is a viable business without any of the other parts of The Escapist dragging it down. I don't know how much of their Patreon was attracted for some of their other content but I suspect it was extremely little. Their website is laced with AI regurgitated article scrapings by the thousands. If not tens of thousands. The views on their videos would indicate that Croshaw's content was carrying the business.

Tinfoil hat time, but I think this implosion was expected, sure the video business unit was bringing it eyes, but it cost money. The SEO AI content churn costs almost nothing and still brings in eyeballs, not many eyeballs, but it costs almost nothing to operate. When all the parent company cares about is the bottom line that almost free AI scraping vomit looks great, It gets 1% of the eyes, but it costs 1% of 1% as much to run.

I could be on crack here, but I don't think the parent company is losing even a second of sleep over any of this. The quality of the content means nothing to them, they just got rid of most of their payroll at The Escapist without having to pay severance.
 
I'm with others who don't know who this was. I mean I may have seen it at some point, but I've seen a lot since the 90s. Some things can't ever be forgotten though like horse gag, lol.
 
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I only ever watched a few of the Zero Punctuation videos. They are entertaining for what they were, and the few I watched were spot on with shortcomings many games have.
 
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