MovieBob leaving The Escapist

[l0lwut]

He was pretty damn good when it came to movies and comics but with gaming I just kind of wish someone'd tape his mouth shut. The whole thing regarding how he said that Halo was inspired by Nazism that someone brought up above comes to mind, as does the entire ME3 debacle.

And especially these past few months with gamergate and #zerobiscuit, I honestly don't have much sympathy seeing him let go.

This especially, he was at least pretty knowledgeable on movies and comics. Gaming, however, he knew next to nothing about and yet seemed to want to speak up about. I read parts of his book on SMB 3 and it's not at all compelling or well-written, nor is most of it even actually about Mario.

Oh and remember when he declared PC gaming dead in 2011? The guy is clueless on gaming.

 

[Baresark]

Well, I'm surprised by that. I have had my fair share of complaints about how ridiculously left he is and how he panders to a certain crowd... but I still value what he says. We all need opinions that are opposite of what we think to keep us grounded. And if you are open minded then even if you don't end up agreeing with someone else's opinion, you still have plenty to learn from things they say. I'll miss his videos and articles. Also... what the hell are they going to fill in his Tuesday and Friday videos with? I almost have no reason to come here all the time with all the talent that has left here recently.

You should always respect the opinions of others, but there is a tipping point where its like "Dude you are constantly talking shit about gamers and saying some pretty nasty things on Twitter and I don't think they are going to do my website any favors."

I agree with you, it gets annoying when people are like that, but that does not mean they do not have anything to contribute. And I also tend to ignore the things as they become more extreme to about things. I would like to see as close to actual sexual equality in gaming that we can get, but I know not all developers and gamers are misogynists who want to exclude women just because.

 

[Volothos]

He was pretty damn good when it came to movies and comics but with gaming I just kind of wish someone'd tape his mouth shut. The whole thing regarding how he said that Halo was inspired by Nazism that someone brought up above comes to mind, as does the entire ME3 debacle.

And especially these past few months with gamergate and #zerobiscuit, I honestly don't have much sympathy seeing him let go.

This especially, he was at least pretty knowledgeable on movies and comics. Gaming, however, he knew next to nothing about and yet seemed to want to speak up about. I read parts of his book on SMB 3 and it's not at all compelling or well-written, nor is most of it even actually about Mario.

Oh and remember when he declared PC gaming dead in 2011? The guy is clueless on gaming.

Oh my fuck, I remember that. It was something about how PC Gaming would shift away from desktops to more laptop use. No. No, I say!

Captcha: Quality time.
Yes captcha, my desktop gets a lot of quality time. Take from this what you will folks!

 

[Megalodon]

To echo the sentiments of many in this thread, good riddance. Bob 'no such thing as bad tactics, only bad targets' Chipman has been a toxic liability for too long. He has proven himself to be the worst kind of bigoted ideologue (as that tweet I referred to shows), and I hope he now fades into complete obscurity like he deserves.

 

[Thorn14]

Well, I'm surprised by that. I have had my fair share of complaints about how ridiculously left he is and how he panders to a certain crowd... but I still value what he says. We all need opinions that are opposite of what we think to keep us grounded. And if you are open minded then even if you don't end up agreeing with someone else's opinion, you still have plenty to learn from things they say. I'll miss his videos and articles. Also... what the hell are they going to fill in his Tuesday and Friday videos with? I almost have no reason to come here all the time with all the talent that has left here recently.

You should always respect the opinions of others, but there is a tipping point where its like "Dude you are constantly talking shit about gamers and saying some pretty nasty things on Twitter and I don't think they are going to do my website any favors."

I agree with you, it gets annoying when people are like that, but that does not mean they do not have anything to contribute. And I also tend to ignore the things as they become more extreme to about things. I would like to see as close to actual sexual equality in gaming that we can get, but I know not all developers and gamers are misogynists who want to exclude women just because.

Of course, I'm not denying any of his possible work (not that I've watched any, not a fan of movie reviewers and I'll be honest, his Twitter rants HAVE pushed me from ever wanting to watch his stuff, which I'm sure is EXACTLY why he was let go.)

But there is a huge difference between a single angry outburst, and constantly saying shit on Twitter like Gamers are Subhuman rapists and "There are no bad tactics only bad targets."

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I suspect that the truth is rather carefully being parsed there. Does it have anything to do with Gamergate? No not really. Does it have anything to do with Bob going on yet another Twitter rant yesterday calling gamers "Sub Human Shits" and implying they are for the most part rapists? After being repeatedly warned that the things he says and does on Twitter have strong negative impacts on the site, the community and the reader base? I'm going to go with yes on that one. The fact that Archon responded to his "Sub Human" Tweet last night and voiced his own opinion on the matter seems pretty telling. I mean at the end of the day no matter how you slice it "Gamers" all Gamers, Even the Gamergaters, are the audience around here. They are the consumer. They are the people that this site gets paid to attract and put ads in front of. They are the marketing target demographic. The staff and advertisers really prefer that when said audience arrives they are not carrying torches and pitchforks.

Oh dear. I didn't know that stuff about Twitter. I don't have an account and I stay away from the site. I just know Bob through this website, and while he's come across a little harsh at times, I've never seen him say anything that I disagree with here. But if he's been saying stuff like that on Twitter then yes, I suppose I can understand why he was let go. That is highly unprofessional. You are allowed to have an opinion, but when your opinion turns into attacking other people, even if some of it might be true, and these are the people that you make your money appealing to, then you're going to have a problem.

 

[faefrost]

I suspect that the truth is rather carefully being parsed there. Does it have anything to do with Gamergate? No not really. Does it have anything to do with Bob going on yet another Twitter rant yesterday calling gamers "Sub Human Shits" and implying they are for the most part rapists? After being repeatedly warned that the things he says and does on Twitter have strong negative impacts on the site, the community and the reader base? I'm going to go with yes on that one. The fact that Archon responded to his "Sub Human" Tweet last night and voiced his own opinion on the matter seems pretty telling. I mean at the end of the day no matter how you slice it "Gamers" all Gamers, Even the Gamergaters, are the audience around here. They are the consumer. They are the people that this site gets paid to attract and put ads in front of. They are the marketing target demographic. The staff and advertisers really prefer that when said audience arrives they are not carrying torches and pitchforks.

Oh dear. I didn't know that stuff about Twitter. I don't have an account and I stay away from the site. I just know Bob through this website, and while he's come across a little harsh at times, I've never seen him say anything that I disagree with here. But if he's been saying stuff like that on Twitter then yes, I suppose I can understand why he was let go. That is highly unprofessional. You are allowed to have an opinion, but when your opinion turns into attacking other people, even if some of it might be true, and these are the people that you make your money appealing to, then you're going to have a problem.

Let's just say that Bob's Twitter commentary over the past few months has been getting strikingly toxic. Basically calling gamers ISIS Terrorists, an assortment of obscene childish insults, it's really quite a list. Early on in Gamergate Tito had to remove Bob from the Escapists Twitter feed and publish clear standards for contributor behavior. Bob has had to walk back comments and apologize after being confronted by the Escapist a few times that I recall. I'm sure after the boards lit up last night with a whole rash of people upset at the latest MovieBob shitflinging and everybody's inboxes once again filled it with Twitter links that the management finally decided it was enough. and I can't fault their decision. Ask yourself how many times could you obscenely insult your employers customers or refer to them as ISIS, Nazi's, Sub Human, Rapists, etc before your employer would reach the conclusion that keeping you around was probably not their best marketing decision ever?

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

SNIP.

If I recall correctly, Bob's criticism of Halo was the protagonist's greatest achievements were him being genetically modified to follow orders to a T. His overall criticism of the game was having conformity and facelessness as ideals. The Nazi comment came from a separate video where a soldier was undergoing a Spartan program. It caught his attention because the proof this perfecting program worked was their eyes turning blue.

As for the MM videos, I couldn't disagree more with him. No idea where the accusations of racism came from, but it's not defendable regardless because a culture can in fact have racist or sexism ingrained into it. Hell, that's what he says about the USA.

OT: Not sure who did what. Did Bob leave of his own accord or was he fired? Either way, I think the worry is really justified this time. 2 of the 3 most marketable individuals of late on the site just left. Better pick up the slack.

 

[Orange_Lazarus]

Gonna be honest. I used to really like Moviebob until I discovered his twitter account long before Gamergate. It's not that he had opinions I disagreed with (often I agreed with him) it's just that he came across as a holier than thou douchebag the entire time, which is a side of him I never saw on Youtube.

I wish him luck and just hope he learns a little humility.

 

[Baresark]

Well, I'm surprised by that. I have had my fair share of complaints about how ridiculously left he is and how he panders to a certain crowd... but I still value what he says. We all need opinions that are opposite of what we think to keep us grounded. And if you are open minded then even if you don't end up agreeing with someone else's opinion, you still have plenty to learn from things they say. I'll miss his videos and articles. Also... what the hell are they going to fill in his Tuesday and Friday videos with? I almost have no reason to come here all the time with all the talent that has left here recently.

You should always respect the opinions of others, but there is a tipping point where its like "Dude you are constantly talking shit about gamers and saying some pretty nasty things on Twitter and I don't think they are going to do my website any favors."

I agree with you, it gets annoying when people are like that, but that does not mean they do not have anything to contribute. And I also tend to ignore the things as they become more extreme to about things. I would like to see as close to actual sexual equality in gaming that we can get, but I know not all developers and gamers are misogynists who want to exclude women just because.

Of course, I'm not denying any of his possible work (not that I've watched any, not a fan of movie reviewers and I'll be honest, his Twitter rants HAVE pushed me from ever wanting to watch his stuff, which I'm sure is EXACTLY why he was let go.)

But there is a huge difference between a single angry outburst, and constantly saying shit on Twitter like Gamers are Subhuman rapists and "There are no bad tactics only bad targets."

I agree, there is no place for that. So I ignore that stuff. I'm not saying what he did was right or that I agreed.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

OT: Not sure who did what. Did Bob leave of his own accord or was he fired? Either way, I think the worry is really justified this time. 2 of the 3 most marketable individuals of late on the site just left. Better pick up the slack.

http://moviebob.blogspot.com/2015/02/all-good-things.html?spref=tw

Well, his blog post definitely seems to imply a firing.

I'm sad that Bob is losing part of his livelihood and a job he likely enjoyed quite a bit. I hope he's able to find somewhere to settle, whether it's in Patreon donations, Youtube, or another site to host him.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of his statements on Twitter just kept getting more and more polarized/politicized/antagonistic towards lots of people. I'm not sure if it's why he was fired, and he's not admitting so himself if it is. But it seems like a plausible conclusion.

The lesson, kids, is don't do Twitter. Ever.

 

[Silvanus]

This makes me sad. I enjoyed his videos.

To those going on about his political opinions, have some empathy.

 

[Orange_Lazarus]

To those going on about his political opinions, have some empathy.

Having opinions is fine but he could be really nasty about his. A lot of the things he said could have been stated without being as inflammatory.

 

[Objectable]

Holy shit
That's what, two blogs and two shows gone?

 

[Thorn14]

This makes me sad. I enjoyed his videos.

To those going on about his political opinions, have some empathy.

Its hard to show some empathy when he calls people like me Sub-human and a Rapist.

 

[Pyrian]

Time to rename "The Escapist" to "Zero Punctuation [font color=gray](and stuff)[/font]"!

 

[CrystalShadow]

So... Are we basically having a repeat of what happened when the Escapist got into an argument with the Extra Creditz guys? Because round about that time we lost the vast majority of the site's video content, and in my opinion things never really recovered.

And over the last few months we've pretty much lost just about everything that replaced it (at least, the stuff that I find interesting...)

Not to mention my personal preferences aside, much of the remaining content can be found on other parts of the internet as well, so it hardly seems like much of a draw anymore.

At least there was one good thing recently... 8 bit philosophy shows some promise that there will be something...

I'll wait and see, I suppose. I've been disappointed for so long it barely even matters anymore...

 

[Fox12]

Time to rename "The Escapist" to "Zero Punctuation [font color=gray](and stuff)[/font]"!

I want to see the video where Yahtzee gets carried around by the editors, wearing a crown. He can basically do whatever he wants now. Until the site shuts down, at least.

Here's hoping for a better tomorrow. I couldn't care less about Movie Bob (I was actually waiting for this to happen) but I do feel bad for the other staff members. I hope this site pulls through, for their sake if nothing else.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Unfortunately, I think a lot of his statements on Twitter just kept getting more and more polarized/politicized/antagonistic towards lots of people. I'm not sure if it's why he was fired, and he's not admitting so himself if it is. But it seems like a plausible conclusion.

The lesson, kids, is don't do Twitter. Ever.

Yes... I think, every time I hear about something bad going on, it's always twitter.

It kind of makes me reluctant to go near it. I never did understand the concept behind it in the first place...

The descriptions for many of my youtube videos mention 'getting a twitter' sooner or later...

But every time I think about it, I think, do I really want to be involved with this service that seems rife with either getting massive attention drawn to some stupid off-hand remark you make, or alternatively (and just as likely, especially for someone like me), getting bombarded with tons and tons of random abuse.

More so than any other part of the internet, twitter seems like the place where you have to be super-cautious about what you say, and have an incredibly thick skin to survive...

Ugh. Quite scary if I think about it too much...

 

[The Bucket]

Time to rename "The Escapist" to "Zero Punctuation [font color=gray](and stuff)[/font]"!

Its been ZP and stuff since its conception pretty much, from a viewership standpoint I suspect. Now its Zero Punctuation (thats it)

(I do like Gavs stuff as well, but I never listen to it on the Escapist)