Okay, what happened to the escapist forums while I was away.

[MrCatchTwenty2]

This may be just me:
I've been on this site for a couple of years now, and it has always been my go-to "internet forum". I liked the discussions being had and I thought I could find a community here. Then Gamer-Gate happened.

Like a lot of sites, the forums here were ablaze with debate(read: arguing) on the subject. While I personally didn't identify with either side, I at least enjoyed the fact that the gaming community were all talking about the same thing. But towards the tail end(or what I thought was the tail end) of the backlash, I had to take a break from the forums due my having to return home from school and no longer having internet. I finally was able to dive back in yesterday and all I have to say is:

What the hell happened?
The forums are by no means ruined but it seemed like every post I clicked on yesterday quickly descended into accusations of sexism, being a SJW, and dismissal of other peoples opinion. It is far more common on some threads to find snarky ways of saying "your opinon/concern is invalid" then it is to find actually acknowledgement and discussion of those opinions. Lots of times they show up out of nowhere, as if some people here actively won't allow a discussion without it.
I know that this kind of thing is pretty common place on the internet but I can't say I remember the escapist forums having this undertone of hatred and resentment toward each other. It's has such a toxic feeling to it.

Was this the aftermath of the arguing that I left during?
Does anyone else get this feeling?
What is the cause of this attitude?

Again, this may be just me.

[NOTE: For the sake of discussion, please take the mindset that no particular "faction"(GG'ers, SJW's, etc) is inherently right or wrong in their opinions.]

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

If you search the keywords of your thread title, you'll find a dozen discussions all about this. If you want the most up-to-date thread, try http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.881826-The-Escapist-Community-is-a-tad-too-toxic

Welcome back to the Escapist, you'll see a thread just like yours every week or so in perpetuity, because there's nothing people like more than talking about why the thing they love is shit now. Or you can try and keep those arguments to R&P and GID and talk about relevant things in relevant threads.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I know that this kind of thing is pretty common place on the internet but I can't say I remember the escapist forums having this undertone of hatred and resentment toward each other. It's has such a toxic feeling to it.

You've answered your own question here. These things have become a hot topic on the internet, so they are a hot topic on the Escapist. As for GG, the GiD forum is for that.

Welcome back to the Escapist, contrary to how it looks on the surface, there is still quite a bit of good discussion to be had here.

 

[Zhukov]

Was this the aftermath of the arguing that I left during?

Pretty much.

Does anyone else get this feeling?

Yes.

It's been brought up by others on a regular basis.

What is the cause of this attitude?

Entrenchment of views coupled with less activity and fewer people posting.

So now we have a relatively small collection of people who are passingly familiar with one another's views, at least enough to know which broad "camp" they fall into, repeatedly clashing over a collection of similar topics that dominate most of the activity.

Oh, and of course each side blames the other for the general hostile atmosphere.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I feel you. I still come here every day because I'm a member, but yeah, the site has changed. People came in with pitchforks, torches, and just general hate and burned so much to the ground. It really does seem that all most people what to do here now is complain or argue with each other. You check the 'Gaming' or 'Off-Topic' discussions, and their front pages barely change, and most topics are lucky to hit two pages. Check the 'Gaming Industry' one and that is ablaze with people saying this company did this, that journalist did that, and just general unpleasantness.
I mean, just the other day Liana did an article about how she'd like to have Dragon Age girls with curves. Last I checked, that article had over sixty-six comments, which is way more than anything else she's ever written here, and most of the comments were bashing her.

It's like people just want to complain and want to get writers or contributors fired, or quit, from this site, and then everyone is left standing around wondering why there's barely anything new or fun on the site anymore.

 

[Something Amyss]

This may be just me:

Not really.

However, people will be quick to blame this on GamerGate. It's not GamerGate. There was an upswell in anti-progressive stuff on these forums for years before GamerGate. At worst, GG was the final straw, but it was happening for a while. This part may seem more dramatic only because you've been gone. Things seem more severe when they're not gradually creeping up on you.

If you want to improve the forum, post actively. And maybe don't make topics that invoke GamerGate or toxicity. These have been done almost to literal death. A better thing would be to lead by example and make topics about things you want to talk about, or that you like.

Welcome back to the Escapist, contrary to how it looks on the surface, there is still quite a bit of good discussion to be had here.

More if you make it so.

To quote Tom Lehrer, life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

 

[The White Hunter]

Social justice in video games is the new Mass Effect 3 ending.

 

[Fox12]

If Quinnspiracy was Armageddon, then what you're witnessing is the desolate post-apocalyptic aftermath.

Spoiler

See: The Escapist

Given the mass exodus/banishment of content creators, coupled with the fallout of Gamer Gate, the site is a little sparse at the moment. People are very entrenched in their views.

Whether or not it stays that way is up to you.

 

[Mikeybb]

Welcome back.

There's a few here saying how we're not going to be able to see improvement in a place if all we look for is the bad.
They're correct.

On a personal level, I'm still not sure I see the place as 'toxic' and in honesty I've never really liked the term applied to people as individuals or as groups.
That said, I can distill the implied meaning from the phrase and understand why some would choose to use it.
I can appreciate the yearning for a time when the forum was different.
Merrily caustic with a friendly, well intentioned burn of sarcasm and wit that would be understood for what it was rather than acidic biliousness bubbling away under the surface of argumentative postings.

Gravitate towards the content you want to see.
Support it by comment and discussion.

I'm humming the chorus to this as I type.
https://youtu.be/f3jdbFOidds?t=57

Oh god.
That was so, so cheesy.
I'm sorry.

 

[briankoontz]

The short of it is that gaming conservatives have backlashed against the growing power of progressivism in games. So the uppity slaves had to be put in their place, lest they revolt and take over the plantation. Wait, what are we talking about?

The growing indie scene was concerning. The CoD broforce reminds us that "Braid is fucking gay". The Gameplay Mafia denounced indies as being "boring" and not "real games". But despite this deep, articulate criticism, this effective "destruction" of "little games no one cares about anyway", the indie scene has continued to grow.

When feminist critique within games crept into the mainstream, enough was enough. It was time to draw a line and get things in order. So target Zoe Quinn was "taken down", Anita Sarkeesian became the "new Jack Thompson", and conservatives rallied behind "Gamers are dead" and made sure that enough punches to the head could remind the world that indeed, they were not.

Various people on the internet working in games, mostly progressives to some degree or another, were fired as site owners calculated that this would have a calming influence on the conservatives. This was done under the cover of "gaming ethics".

The political cleansing of "immoral progressives" claimed many short-term victims, although it's long-term effects cannot be accurately predicted. As new gamers come into the medium and look at what's been done, it's not much of a calling card to make the pitch "Come join the conservative broforce and burn effigies of Sarkeesian!" so "Ethics in games journalism" continues to be the public relations euphemism for modern conservative gamers.

 

[Zontar]

The political cleansing of "immoral progressives" claimed many short-term victims, although it's long-term effects cannot be accurately predicted. As new gamers come into the medium and look at what's been done, it's not much of a calling card to make the pitch "Come join the conservative broforce and burn effigies of Sarkeesian!" so "Ethics in games journalism" continues to be the public relations euphemism for modern conservative gamers.

You know, you'd think the consistent demonstration that conservatives like myself are the minority within GamerGate would have clued people in that conservatives are, in fact, a minority within GamerGate.

OT: What happened is some people left and others got banned. Some content creators left and much better ones took their place.

 

[Cycloptomese]

I've recently started posting. I thought maybe it might help the problem and inspire other lurkers to come out of their holes. It turns out that I don't really have anything interest or insightful to add to most things. I think the problem is that I don't really have a firm stance on anything.

 

[direkiller]

The political cleansing of "immoral progressives" claimed many short-term victims, although it's long-term effects cannot be accurately predicted. As new gamers come into the medium and look at what's been done, it's not much of a calling card to make the pitch "Come join the conservative broforce and burn effigies of Sarkeesian!" so "Ethics in games journalism" continues to be the public relations euphemism for modern conservative gamers.

You know, you'd think the consistent demonstration that conservatives like myself are the minority within GamerGate would have clued people in that conservatives are, in fact, a minority within GamerGate.

OT: What happened is some people left and others got banned. Some content creators left and much better ones took their place.

It's starting to get better, but I wouldn't exactly call the 5 months of re-runs from YouTube shows better content.

 

[The Jovian]

You know, you'd think the consistent demonstration that conservatives like myself are the minority within GamerGate would have clued people in that conservatives are, in fact, a minority within GamerGate.

What demonstration? The only evidence I've ever seen that "proves" that GamerGate isn't predominantly conservative was in one of Sargon of Akkad's videos, the evidence in question being a screenshot of a political graph with a cluster of dots mostly placed in the Left-wing/Libertarian corner, completely devoid of any context or statistics that can verify that this is indeed representative of GamerGate. I'm just saying it's really easy for people to get the wrong impression of you, when you do so little correct their misconceptions and then have the balls to claim that its been more than enough.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I found it instructive to research how many people have been banned here over the last year, and how long they were here. This site has basically banned something like 10%-15% of its active population in a year. All of this when they have less original content that can't be found elsewhere like Youtube, and when the remaining hub of activity is a GG sub forum.

Just to keep a stable population, think about it, you'd have to have more than a hundred active new users showing up to replace the banned ones, and forums in general aren't doing that well anymore. Since this place needs the numbers because it's the smoldering aftermath of GG, makes it a harder sell, and I'd guess especially hard to someone looking to host their content.

Where did you get your numbers? I'm honestly really curious about this.

OT: My theory of the decline of the site is that it's all Youtube's fault. In July 2011 the Escapist uploaded Zero Punctuation to Youtube, this means that ZP fans no longer actually needed to come to the site to watch and thus were unable to be drawn into the forums. This coincides with the peak of forum activity, which has been declining ever since.

Snip.

Spoiler: The Numbers

Pre Gamergate

March 2009
Gaming discussion
370 new threads
15457 new posts

Off Topic
496 new threads
22966 new posts


March 2010
Gaming Discussion
471 new threads
16865 new posts

Off Topic
468 new threads
19247 new posts

July 2011
Gaming Discussion
549 new threads
18154 new posts

Off Topic
465 new threads
27292 new posts

May 2012
Gaming Discussion
254 new threads
8359 new posts

Off Topic
213 new threads
11075 new posts

Jun 2013
Gaming Discussion
181 new threads
6954 new posts

Off Topic
73 new threads
3618 new posts

March 2014
Gaming Discussion
98 new threads
2863 new posts

Off Topic
51 new threads
1850 new posts

July 2014
Gaming Discussion
21 new threads
4648 new posts

Off Topic
13 new threads
2170 new posts


Post Gamergate
There was only 1 set of archives a week apart after August 2014

March 2015
Gaming discussion
62 new threads
1953 new posts

Off Topic
67 new threads
2213 new posts

So as you can see, the forum traffic took a enormous hit in 2012 and has been dropping ever since. It seems Gamergate has not really had too much of an impact on The forum activity considering how low it was before Gamergate even began.
If we compare the high point of July 2011 to the low point of March 2015 we see:

Gaming Discussion
Topic creation is down 89%
New posts are down 89%

Off Topic
Topic creation is down 85%
New posts are down 92%

Also if we compare comments for a recent Zero Punctuation on Youtube and the Escapist we get more confirmation on where the ZP viewing crowd has moved.

Zero Punctuation: Nom Nom Galaxy & Freedom Planet
The Escapist: 61 comments
Youtube: 1589 comments

And finally we can compare the amount of new users to the site now and in 2011:

Snip.
I just checked the first page of each thread on the first page of Off-Topic and tallied everybody who had a join date from 2014-2015:

Total Posts: 539
Posts from users with join dates 2014-2015: 58
Individual users with join dates 2014-2015: 35
Percentage of posts from users with join dates 2014-2015: 10%

For comparison I did the same thing with the first page of Off-Topic from August 16, 2011 [http://web.archive.org/web/20110816093450/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/index/18-Off-topic-Discussion]:

Total Posts: 602
Posts from users with join dates 2010-2011: 356
Percentage of posts from users with join dates 2010-2011: 59%

Essentially, ever since the Escapist made their main draw to the site non-exclusive the forums have been bleeding activity, and without fresh users the forums have become stagnant. This stagnancy breeds all sorts of nasty things, like bitterness, extremism, and contempt. Also, Gamergate sure as heck hasn't done anything to make the Escapist less hostile.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Social justice in video games is the new Mass Effect 3 ending.

They are quite similar, but LGBT has more colors. Progress!

 

[BytByte]

We all fell into a puddle with our new slacks on and mom got so mad at us we couldn't go out and play so now we're couped up inside and our PS2 controllers just broke and everything's stupid >:I

 

[Asita]

As I see it, it's like Occupy. We have a bunch of angry people who are at a loss for how to properly vent the anger when it's so closely associated with something they see every time they come onto the site.

What happened?

Plus, some people on the internet got upset about video games.

Well that's certainly interesting.

Spoiler: I'm not sure what to make out of it.

 

[Euryalus]

Social justice in video games is the new Mass Effect 3 ending.

I don't know man, Mass Effect 3 had a sort of cathartic righteous anger to it.

The Social Justice Paladins had a more slowing burning corrosive to your soul "fuck this I'm too busy too waste anymore time here see you in 4 months" feel to it.

But hey, on the bright side, the brovengers suicided themselves over it xD