An Appeal to The Escapist for a More Broad Scope

[TheMatsjo]

I'll come right out and say this; I love the Escapist, I visit the site pretty much daily and find it to be an exemplary source of learning, entertainment and.. well, escape bolstered by an incredibly positive and mature community. I've been lurking a long time before making an account here and now that I have, the fora have obviously opened up for me, enabling all sorts of interesting discussions and questions. And it is on the topic of the fora that I have an appeal to make to the Escapist.

Since when are visual media the holy grail of escapism? Why does this site almost exclusively dwell on video games, its associated culture and a smattering of film? Escapism pertains to all activities performed to get away from (escape) daily life and its grind and frustrations; why does this site equate that with only a handful of activities?

The fora directly reflect this lack of scope by calling pretty much anything that isn't game-related off-topic (I'm even posting here NOW!) and somehow not belonging on this site while even the very act of engaging in discussion on ANY topic is a diversion from every day life and thus a form of escapism when you think about it.

Why don't we have forums for books, music, philosophy, sports, arts etc? And if you're thinking "well that would be a lot of work moderating more threads" I'd say "Good!" that means there're more people active on the site!

The Escapist in general and shows like Extra Credits and The Big Picture in particular are examples that gaming and game-associated culture is growing up; treating its adherents like responsible adults and not necessarily kids with a shiny toy, which I think is great. Could it not be time to break out of these niche constraints? Escapism is practised in many ways, I hope I can see the Escapist become a testament to that. With some luck this stuff is under way already and I needn't have said anything, so I'll just hope on that, otherwise, what say you?

Cheers,
Matsjo

 

[Queen Michael]

Please don't triple post. It's not really polite.

And I like the fact that there aren't that many forums, it means that we don't have to go to the specific book-forum in order to discuss books. Like the way there are malls that have all kinds of stores. (Okay, so I never shop at malls myself, but you get my point.)

 

[BonsaiK]

Escapism pertains to all activities performed to get away from (escape) daily life and its grind and frustrations; why does this site equate that with only a handful of activities?

Well, in fact it's only equating "Escapism" with one activity which is computer games. Other things like discussion of movies, music, etc is incidental. It's a computer gaming website. That's why the name was chosen. Simple really. In other words, the name doesn't define the discussion, the discussion defines the name.

 

[Mr Thin]

The Escapist is a video game website.

Therefore, the majority of its content and subsequent discussion revolves around video games.

If you want to discuss the finer points of philosophy, for example, you should probably go to a website that was made for such activity.

 

[bdcjacko]

I would like to scope out some broads.

No but seriously this site does seem to only talk about video games and anime. But there are plenty of other nerd endeavor to explore.

 

[Flishiz]

Focus is good. Ask any Wall Street trader why spinoffs are celebrated and you'll get the same answer: the more niche a product, service, or forum is, then the more enjoyable it will be. If one was to continually expand the Escapist (even with powers of good), the interests of the members would be far too eclectic to keep the feel from reaching personally to anyone, which is one of the great calls of the Escapist.

 

[Tyynn_Kaann]

Escapism pertains to all activities performed to get away from (escape) daily life and its grind and frustrations; why does this site equate that with only a handful of activities?

I love the escapist too, but I noticed the same thing when I was still lurking. And yes, all of you can say "It's a video game site, so you shouldn't expect it to be anything else."

I love stories. Let me tell you a story.

It is the 1930s. The world is still only barely recovering from the Great War. Every country has sunk into an economic depression. Thousands of fields, once gold with wheat and green with life are brown and sandy. Pictures show shallow, pale faces and dead eyes. In Germany fields of red and blue are replaced with cold steel and in Russia the glistening tundra and brisk alpines are dyed red with the blood of the proletariat and the nobles alike.

"The world was gray, the mountains old."

Authors and artists leading up to this point are obsessed with modernity. They write gritty tales of the everyday man being ground into colorless paste by the great machines of society and portray the cruel and unfeeling world around them in tones of beige and mud. Hemingway pens tales of dull routines and desperation. In trying to express their frustration with the world, they create a cloud of ash that settles over the dying population and obscures the sun.

"The darkness dwells..."

A young professor, the scars of war still fresh in his mind, watches a generation of soulless young men and women grow up in misery and despair and reflects that those that pass through his class are the fortunate ones; the wealthy and the intelligent. He feels the doldrums of his life closing around him. One hot, stuffy summer day he is locked away in an office grading papers. Paper after paper passes under his pen, and just as he is about to fall asleep he stumbles across something curious; one young man has stapled a blank sheet of paper to the back of his essay.

The professor tears the paper off, meaning to throw it away, but doesn't. Instead, he lays the sheet on his desk and looks at it. He raises his pen and writes a single line.

"In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit."

Suddenly the world opens up to Professor Tolkien. It isn't this world, but one very much like ours. In this world a cloud of darkness threatens to sweep over the land and consume everything, and the foul machinery of a twisted race promises to destroy the peace. Everything seems doomed, but in a far away land there is a glimmer of hope.

"A light from the shadows will spring."

The darkness swoops across Europe. Millions die, Millions suffer. The fog of war settles in, but is eventually beaten back. The world returns from horror to sorrow, but this time something is different. Despite the brooding nuclear war, despite the terrible aftermath of the most horrific events in history, there is a glimmer of hope.

"Frodo lives!"

It's scribbled on the walls of subways, painted onto the sides of tenement. Not all follow it's call, but everyone hears its promise: There is more to this existence then the iron and the industry, the blood and the illness, the hate and the sadness. The minds of human beings are infinite in scope and grandeur. A new movement is born, and while some say that it will fade into the past the naysayers are never able to stymie its rallying cry:

"There is always a way to ESCAPE."

When this magazine chose its name this was the legacy it was born to. It's a noble legacy and I cannot think of a better group of people to bear it. The ideas that are born here are great ones and will likely shape our society in ways that we won't fully understand.

Yet it always saddens me a little to see video games put on a pedestal as the future of art and communication when the giants whose shoulder they stood on are still not given their proper place. Educators and professors interested in important literary themes ignore the power of fantasy novels in favor of the super-modernist books of today, which are tinged with ignorance, bias and superfluous grit. The amazing storytellers and writers of table-top role-playing games are viewed as antisocial and irrelevant, even though there is still plenty of room for growth and exploration in the community. And I dare you to find the average person on the street that is more knowledgeable in history and tactics than your typical tabletop strategist.

Summary for those not willing to read my self-important essay-rant up there, The Escapist has plenty of room for growth, and if it wants to grow it might not hurt to look back at the foundations of the Escapism movement and incorporate them into its current discussions more often.

Oh, also for those who like books and role-playing games, I highly suggest the Alexandrian, found at http://thealexandrian.net/ for good discussions of both.

Thanks, Matsjo.

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

I have removed my words from this site.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I think the Escapist does have quite a good diversity in its thread topics, and although the off topic discussion board can get a little hectic at peak times (Weekend nights) For the capacity of posters in Off-topic it is perfectly adequate, handling all the literature, film, etc. threads easily, and you never really need to go past the third page to see new threads and discussions.There is a religion/politics forum if you want at bit more in depth discussion about that type of thing.

If we were to make a forum for literature and film etc. I think it would fragment the forums a lot more, and you would end up with dead forums no one really goes to. In my last few posts I have talked about my favourite Lord of the Rings Character, My thoughts on MMO gold farming in third world countries, David Bowie's gender, combining magic and sci fi in movies, what makes a movie or book plot engaging, geeky names for pets, and a host of other silly things, some video game related, some not.

Short story is, I found all these topics in the off-topic discussion, if we had a seperate forum for each topic, I doubt it would get more people posting in the escapist, (How did you find the escapist? I'll bet for about 80% of us it begins with a Z and ends in a ero punctuation.) we would just end up with less active forums, and less people posting on each thread. Everyone would be segregated from each other.

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

I have removed my words from this site.

 

[Gigano]

snip

It's primarily a gaming site, the editorial line is focused on gaming (with movies and anime being decidedly secondary subjects).

Infinite subforums dedicated to all kinds of other mediums would serve little purpose which the off-topic forum board and the copious user groups [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/] - where all kinds of specialized interests can be discussed (or a group created if one doesn't exist yet) - can't.

I thought so, thanks. Particularly since it accurately represents the disproportionate interest displayed by most of the membership in media other than books.

We're sorry for being plebs in terms of media consumption.

 

[drbarno]

As quite a fews people have said before me, the escapist is a video gaming website that focuses on the video gaming culture. The only reason that Escape to the movies fits in here is that the majority of people love films as well.

And I've heard people complain whenever the escapist do a news piece about anonymous that has nothing to do with gaming.

 

[Zombie_Fish]

The Escapist actually did try branching into other media before. There was even at one point a Non-Games Editor for the site, but she left for reasons I don't know about. Equally there have been articles and interviews about role-playing in the past as well as at least two columns and one video series dedicated to RPs.

It's not as if the site hasn't tried to broaden its scope, it's just that videogaming is its primary area of interest whilst those points are/ were a lot more experimental to see if they could get out there.

Also, more forums probably wouldn't mean more threads to moderate, it would just mean that the same number of threads would be spread across different areas and there would be three weeks of moving threads like there is no tomorrow.