New guy here, found 2009 Escapist videos...and it's kind of sad.

[Borty The Bort]

I got bored and started browsing around the place, looking for something to do, and I came across things like the Escapist News Network and stuff like that... And the quality of the videoes greatly surpassed my expectations. So now I'm thinking, what actually happened that made the quality drop? I don't mean to insult the people here on The Escapist website, it's just that it seems like there's such a difference between then and now that I'm left wondering, and I need someone to give me a fair answer here. Please don't take this negatively, I am just looking answers.

 

[tippy2k2]

Money

That's more or less is it. They ran out of it and/or didn't make enough of it to sustain what they did in the past.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Contributors moved on, through their choice or not. And Youtube became an actual business rather than a platform.

 

[Zontar]

And Youtube became an actual business rather than a platform.

I think you mean tries to be a business instead of platform. You don't run a good business when you have operating costs that are the same as revenue, all while only charging 10% of the market value of your service to your revenue source (I still can't believe Google is so desperate they only charge 10% of what ads cost on other mediums for the same level of reach)

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

And Youtube became an actual business rather than a platform.

I think you mean tries to be a business instead of platform. You don't run a good business when you have operating costs that are the same as revenue, all while only charging 10% of the market value of your service to your revenue source (I still can't believe Google is so desperate they only charge 10% of what ads cost on other mediums for the same level of reach)

Oh for sure, but I meant more on the video maker side. People like Jim Sterling leaving the Escapist to basically get people to pay them to put videos on YouTube. That's what the Patreon+YouTube model is.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

It all begun when Extra Credits left due to money issues with donations and shirts and mundane crap like that, it has been a slow motion car accident ever since. Ah well, it was good while it lasted, now everything is on youtube. It is the new era, dinosaurs sadly have to go.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

GamerGate gutted a lot of places. The escapist seemed to avoid it at first, but it eventually felt the same pain as so many other places.

 

[Frankster]

GamerGate gutted a lot of places. The escapist seemed to avoid it at first, but it eventually felt the same pain as so many other places.

. Whilst the most recent big forum drama, that was far from the only one. Reading the article about turbine abandonning the lotr mmo reminded me of march madness in its heyday and how horrible people were. I can almost guarantee you no turbine fan has fond memories of this site and yeh overall, escapist has never been a friendly place despite the carebear moderation standards, which if anything encouraged passive agressivism and holding on to grudges for later threads. Also its worth pointing out the escapist didnt avoid the gamergate drama, it embraced it and this site became the trendy place for discussions on that topic due to most other forums outright banning it.

 

[Kyrian007]

Hey, as long as you're going through the video archives... don't miss "There Will be Brawl." I still rewatch that one from time to time.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Well ever since that fiasco with that video group, it became harder for them to find other groups to upload their video on here due to payment issues.

 

[TakerFoxx]

Gamergate alienating users and contributors alike, top content makers either leaving or getting fired, and running out of money. It's been a sinking ship for a while.

 

[jademunky]

Really is sad. Moviebob and Jim Sterling are two of the most entertaining guys on the Internet. Their new work is still out there and good as it ever was though.

 

[CaitSeith]

Money problems + gamergate (but mainly money problems).

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Gamergate was years after Extra Credits leaving though, I don't get how people claim it affected video quality. The people who left after it were already going downhill for years by that point. If anything, not banning talks about something is a good point of the site and a saving grace compared to other sites. No matter how you feel about that one instance, overall it is the right policy.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Really is sad. Moviebob and Jim Sterling are two of the most entertaining guys on the Internet. Their new work is still out there and good as it ever was though.

To be fair, the quality of their work didn't drive clicks and ad revenue, it was their ability to cause drama and outrage, no matter how petty or small. Jim himself in his first iteration of the Jimquisition was a raging asshole who was there basically to call everyone stupid and jerk-off for the camera. The newer version is a little calmer and more relaxed, but still not above a good old fashion gasoline enema to the smoldering embers that are internet comments.
And MovieBob slowly started regarding his fans, and the Escapist in general, with unbridled contempt. Especially in the months leading up to and including GamerGate, his videos were basically impossible to watch because of how much toxic sludge and self satisfied aggrandizement they contained.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Gamergate was years after Extra Credits leaving though, I don't get how people claim it affected video quality. The people who left after it were already going downhill for years by that point. If anything, not banning talks about something is a good point of the site and a saving grace compared to other sites. No matter how you feel about that one instance, overall it is the right policy.

While GG didn't start the fire, at least as far as content goes, the forum quality certainly declined because of them.

though since this thread is just about video quality you're right.

I really don't see gamergate as any worse for the forum than all the pedophilia debates some years prior to it to be honest, it is just one more thing. Not saying you did this but any time people single out gamergate I can't help but see it as them still bearing a grudge that the topic wasn't banned here and looking for an opportunity to blame all that they can on this one instance, even in an irrelevant topic such as this which is actually only about video quality values.

 

[TakerFoxx]

I really don't see gamergate as any worse for the forum than all the pedophilia debates some years prior to it to be honest, it is just one more thing. Not saying you did this but any time people single out gamergate I can't help but see it as them still bearing a grudge that the topic wasn't banned here and looking for an opportunity to blame all that they can on this one instance, even in an irrelevant topic such as this which is actually only about video quality values.

While we used to have the flamewar topic of the month pretty regularly (pedophilia, religion, whirlpools, ponies, what have you), GamerGate was different because it was fucking EVERYWHERE, brought out the worst in everyone, and it would. Not. Die. I personally didn't have a horse in that race and stayed out of it the best I could, and even I was pulling out my hair at how many GG threads seemed to pop up seemingly every day. I think it was the general vagueness of the whole debacle and lack of a real unifying theme, leading it to really run on buzzwords and whatever each individual person felt like being upset about that really made it the mess it was. At least all those other controversial flamewars were actually about something that was easy to define and discuss. With this, it was just seemed like a bunch of really angry people getting really angry about...stuff and spending more time talking about what they were not instead of actually defining what they were, leading to a bunch of the old guard just getting fed up and leaving or being banned. Either way, when it was finally over, more damage had been done than any of the other hot-button issues had ever done.

 

[Xeorm]

In general, the Escapist has been able to get a decent viewer base and a good number of eyeballs. Issue has always been turning that into revenue, in a way that keeps the individual content creators onboard.