How could the Escapist draw for traffic to the forums?

[Zontar]

Bring on more video reviews (like maybe hire "IHateEverything" or "YourMovieSucks") which will bring people coming to see their videos a week earlier then they're posted on YouTube which will likely lead to at least some spillover of new users into the forums.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Well, Jim's gone, Bob's gone, LRR's gone. Pretty much anyone who is ideologically impure has been purged, and look at how much traffic to the site has improved. I mean, they could get rid of Marter since occasional delves into topics certain groups don't like, or Grey, one of the only comic providers.

Get rid of Marter not because he's the ideological enemy - there'll be time for that once my camps are up and running - but because he's boring as feth. Moviebob might have strayed into "Pretentious twat" territory when he worked himself up over Social Justice*TM*, or slobbered over how supposedly perfect and awesome Eva Green is, but at least his videos were genuinely entertaining and informative.

OT

My solution is to ban everyone actively involved with, or opposed to, GG/Anti-GG and also give me lots of money.

Stupid trademark symbol not appearing.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Here's an idea:

Bring back JimQuisition and The Big Picture (Marter has the movies well in hand) but also find and give the same video column space to a commentator the ideological opposite to Jim and Bob and have them do the same item each week.
Give Marter a video space for movies (if he wants it).
Remove the posting rules from Content Creator threads.

That should bring traffic numbers back up a bit

 

[Drathnoxis]

That's a good question. Sadly, I know what would...but the Escapist would either never do it or never pull it off because of bad blood.

Aww, don't be a tease, what's your idea?

 

[Kinokohatake]

I used to enjoy video reviews. It's what seperated them from a magazine. But they have actually regressed. When they should have been doing more and more reviews of movie, anime, video games, or comics, they cut back. Now only big releases get reviews, and those reviews are just text. I want to see what I am going to be playing, watching, whatever. And their breaking news is not very breaking. A movie announcement or game announcement can take hours or even days to update. I see something break on twitter and with a semi dedicated staff a short article should be able to whipped up and ready to go in no time at all. It's almost as if they don't care anymore. Hell I could write articles for the site. The best written article I have seen in the last 6 months was the Fallout 4 review and the ensuing forum posts kept me coming back. You want to drive content or audience participation, take a page from that. The reviewer was able to follow up with questions, concerns, and to mock the "true" Fallout fans that are waiting on a game that will never come out. I checked back on that probably 2 dozen times that day because it was interesting.

The comics here are good. I love Erin Dies Alone. Maybe some more of that. But faster stories are needed and please god bring back video reviews.

As for the forums, I left for a long time after Bob and Jim left and gamer gate poisoned everything it touched. Now that it's over, can the game industry discussion board be taken down? I think that would help with some of the toxicity.

 

[Zontar]

Here's an idea:

Bring back JimQuisition and The Big Picture

While Bob would probably jump at the opportunity to work on a real website again, Jim seems to be doing well for himself, so the bad blood would probably keep him away. At least now the only people he has to play the act of pro-consumer advocate for is his viewers instead of both his viewers and employers.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Here's an idea:

Bring back JimQuisition and The Big Picture

While Bob would probably jump at the opportunity to work on a real website again, Jim seems to be doing well for himself, so the bad blood would probably keep him away. At least now the only people he has to play the act of pro-consumer advocate for is his viewers instead of both his viewers and employers.

I could give a shit what character either of them play, as a pure exercise in raising traffic, getting those two back with an ideological opposite (sort of like The Odd Couple) and letting them get a bi-weekly Goldstein moment going would get the numbers up, especially if the Content Provider threads are mod-free zones.

Of course the opposite could happen and the extreme level of shit-stirring circle jerking could turn everyone off in droves. My idea is functionally to set the whole place on fire and see if a Phoenix rises from the ashes or if it at least renders a poisoned well into a smoking crater. I'm personally fine with either one.

 

[FireAza]

I think it's inevitable. I've been a member of many internet forums over the years, all of them have slowly been dying out and have become mere husks of their former selves. They're subsisting a posts made by the same handful of users and that's about it. The Escapist is one of the last active forums in my opinion.

Why is this happening? I think this is a combination of factors:
1) Forums are old-fashioned. Back in the early 2000s, forums and IRC were the only way to chat online. There's now multiple websites that focus just on social interaction and they have more features than an internet forum.

2) Competition from social networks. Like I said above, there's now many social networks in existence and people go where their friends go. Which means FaceBook in other words, pulling traffic away from forums. These social networks are also broader than forums, which tend to cater to a central interest.

3) The user base has aged and moved on. I think it's fair to say the most forums had their heyday when the majority of the users were still teenagers with lots of free time. Cut to a few years later, and they're now adults. Many of them have started families or just moved on from whatever theme\hobby the central focus of the forum was.

It's sad, but I don't think there's anything that can be done to save internet forums. Short of blowing up FaceBook headquarters anyway.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

I was told the article "reverted", though I'm not sure what that means. The author must have tried fixing it at least once, but I think they were away at an event afterwards and nobody else updated it. Let thy voice be heard in the Tech Team chat.

Caramel had already let it be known of the issue almost two weeks ago. Nothing's happened

Stuff like that makes it hard to feel like you actually matter in terms of voicing your concerns

 

[Barbas]

Caramel had already let it be known of the issue almost two weeks ago. Nothing's happened

Stuff like that makes it hard to feel like you actually matter in terms of voicing your concerns

They're working to meet an unrelated deadline this week, so that article (done by someone else) isn't on the current list of priorities. A lot of the recent work has been off-Escapist stuff, related to Defy's sister sites (did you know Teen.com had active forums???), most of which are nearly aesthetically identical to this one beneath the skin. Which is convenient for when you have to poke around for problems under the hood.

 

[Something Amyss]

That's not what I understand the term to mean, I always thought of it more along the lines of having an intentionally misleading title and deliberately bad journalism.

I thought I was clear from the context. Perhaps not.

Click-bait is supposed to be what you said.

When people use click-bait, they apply it to [things I don't like] instead.

I'm sure you can think of other examples of words where the definition is one thing, but the actual use (which would be the effective meaning) is another entirely. A few come to mind immediately.

Hell, since this example happens to be the next thing in my list of responses, I'll use it:

When I hear SJW my thoughts always wander to the Tumblr and Twitter types of Social Justice slacktavists who do nothing to help, but have no problem doxxing and harassing people.

Kind of relevant, really. "SJW" ostensibly has a meaning, but Kyuubi has applied one which meets neither it nor the common "snarl word" usage. This would put the number of meanings at at least three which don't meet the strict definition of the term.

[
Get rid of Marter not because he's the ideological enemy - there'll be time for that once my camps are up and running - but because he's boring as feth.

I'll be honest--I don't really watch many of Marter's reviews. Or Bob's, to be honest as well. I don't really even have a feel for Marter's style. The only thing I know about him is that he seems likable enough as a poster. But movies aren't a big thing for me, so I tend to find myself not caring. He was an example I know of because I watched some people go from praising him to being very angry because he did a review where he called a movie racist.

Anyway, in the spirit of the more light-hearted answer, I suggested privately that moderation be given out in haiku. Here are a couple of samples hastily copy-pastad.

Please do not insult//or otherwise provoke the//Escapist's users
Derailment of threads//like great locomotive crash//shall be discouraged

I can't speak for anyone else, but such care in the moderation process would certainly draw me to the forum.

 

[Loonyyy]

Anyway, in the spirit of the more light-hearted answer, I suggested privately that moderation be given out in haiku. Here are a couple of samples hastily copy-pastad.

Please do not insult//or otherwise provoke the//Escapist's users
Derailment of threads//like great locomotive crash//shall be discouraged

I can't speak for anyone else, but such care in the moderation process would certainly draw me to the forum.

Oh god, can we do this?

Barbas?

Sky? Any mods in this thread? Make this happen and I'll click the site so many times I'll crash the servers with my traffic. Most of it will be rule bending or breaking for more haikus, but still.

 

[Barbas]

(Snip).

You mean like for locked threads?

Yeah, OK.

 

[FalloutJack]

That's a good question. Sadly, I know what would...but the Escapist would either never do it or never pull it off because of bad blood.

Aww, don't be a tease, what's your idea?

The Escapist has had a number of bad break-ups with content-providers that have caused a schism in the forum community, most-notably the Extra Credits debacle in which suddenly a number of providers came out of the woodwork to point out that the Escapist was late with their paychecks or never received payment. That was a huge mess in of itself and the site must have suffered right there on the spot in terms of credibility and forum-goers. The situation with others could only add to that kind of sentiment, including more recent times with Jim Sterling.

Reasons for these things happening, I may not know the full story of. That they DID happen still had an effect, regardless of the reason. People lost what they loved, and tuned out. In order to undo some of that, maybe even alot of that, the Escapist would have to make amends. Yahtzee is popular enough to carry them, and people won't tune him out, but if the Escapist wants MORE, they're going to have to DO more, and some of it will be unpleasant because of what happened in the past. Though it may pain them to admit it, those were the good old days.

This, I believe, is more important for them to address personally than what people think of the whole Gamergate thing, which I don't even pay any attention to. Everyone in the industry was hit with that and it's just a nasty mess which the site can do little about, overall. All they can change is what happened in their neck of the woods, and the issue with providers is one of the big ones.

Captcha: Double crossed

Ouch.

 

[Dragonlayer]

Get rid of Marter not because he's the ideological enemy - there'll be time for that once my camps are up and running - but because he's boring as feth.

I'll be honest--I don't really watch many of Marter's reviews. Or Bob's, to be honest as well. I don't really even have a feel for Marter's style. The only thing I know about him is that he seems likable enough as a poster. But movies aren't a big thing for me, so I tend to find myself not caring. He was an example I know of because I watched some people go from praising him to being very angry because he did a review where he called a movie racist.

Anyway, in the spirit of the more light-hearted answer, I suggested privately that moderation be given out in haiku. Here are a couple of samples hastily copy-pastad.

Please do not insult//or otherwise provoke the//Escapist's users
Derailment of threads//like great locomotive crash//shall be discouraged

I can't speak for anyone else, but such care in the moderation process would certainly draw me to the forum.

Marter is....informative, in that he drily rattles off point after point about the film's construction, plot and cast, but with zero ability to be interesting. If I were a more suspicious person, I'd say someone on the staff decided to have a joke at the expense of all the "TAKE POLITICS OUT OF EVERYTHING!!!!" types - "They want a dull objective, unbiased review eh? Well suck on this then!" Bob was much better, even as a dirty liberal beatnik person who occasionally interjected disagreeable positions into his work.

Ha, nice! I'd approve of that, though I'm still holding onto my political purge idea. "Night of the Pissed Mods"....

 

[Padwolf]

(Snip).

[HEADING=3]A wild Padfoot appeared![/HEADING]

Where've you been?

Oh, you know, here, there, everywhere, lurking, waiting for my time to strike.... I got a full time job, so my interaction with internet and laptop has gone right down, BUT! I will be around here a lot more often now I've missed this place and all of yous!

 

[Politrukk]

Interest in this forum has dwindled due to the attitude of the users at times it seems.

You can't just win that back, that's not what a forum is.

 

[silver wolf009]

Hm? No, there's no relevance to the video I posted, it was completely unrelated. Just happened to be in my clipboard is all.

As for what can be done, honestly not a lot. Ask yourselves when the last time you really got into a discussion here, that wasn't interesting in the "This is agonizing to do because of how taxing it is" way. It just seems like no one has anything worth hearing to say anymore.

As childish as this may sound, where's the fun gone?

 

[silver wolf009]

I used to enjoy video reviews. It's what seperated them from a magazine. But they have actually regressed. When they should have been doing more and more reviews of movie, anime, video games, or comics, they cut back. Now only big releases get reviews, and those reviews are just text. I want to see what I am going to be playing, watching, whatever. And their breaking news is not very breaking. A movie announcement or game announcement can take hours or even days to update. I see something break on twitter and with a semi dedicated staff a short article should be able to whipped up and ready to go in no time at all. It's almost as if they don't care anymore. Hell I could write articles for the site. The best written article I have seen in the last 6 months was the Fallout 4 review and the ensuing forum posts kept me coming back. You want to drive content or audience participation, take a page from that. The reviewer was able to follow up with questions, concerns, and to mock the "true" Fallout fans that are waiting on a game that will never come out. I checked back on that probably 2 dozen times that day because it was interesting.

The comics here are good. I love Erin Dies Alone. Maybe some more of that. But faster stories are needed and please god bring back video reviews.

As for the forums, I left for a long time after Bob and Jim left and gamer gate poisoned everything it touched. Now that it's over, can the game industry discussion board be taken down? I think that would help with some of the toxicity.

Come to think of it, what WAS the last video review they put up? By me recollection it was... Evolve? I hope I'm wrong, because if we've gone a year and a little bit without an actual video game review, that's just flat out disappointing.