What Will Become of the Escapist?

[PeePantz]

Times are not great for the Escapist right now. Obviously this is has come to light due to the whole EC -vs- Escapists battle royale. However, this thread isn't really about that battle, but more of the reactions to all the dirty laundry that has been exposed.

We are now aware that the Escapist is financially hurting a little and if the US enters another recession, things will only get worse. With being unable to pay employers and the self acknowledging cutting of features, this slide will probably only get worse before it gets better.

I personally am expecting more contributors to jump on the EC bandwagon and leave, now that the proverbial first step has been taken. Also, with more users now not re-upping their publisher club accounts, their will be less money to go out and get new (well maybe not new, but quality) talent.

The question now is, what direction do you think the Escapist will go in and how will this site be in about a years time?

 

[Pilkingtube]

Sorry I seem to have missed something here, what is EC and where are you getting details of The Escapist's financial information? As far as I have seen, The Escapist seems to be doing fine!

EDIT: Sorry guys, been a bit busy what with all the riots etc, have now read up on it.

Seems like James tried to screw over the Escapist and then spin it to make them look like the bad guys. If he really did promise the extra money to Extra Credits rather than an Indie Publishing Company all to himself, then legally threaten the Escapist with breach of contract for not paying him fast enough (after they said he'd be paid within a week) then fuck him. Fuck his egotistical bullshit for pulling that on them and then trying to make it look like the Escapist were the devil himself by spinning it in an amazingly one-sided posting.

If not then the Escapist don' goofed.

Oh, and my house is still relatively intact, and no i'm not totally bitter and angry.

 

[Ravnican]

Sorry I seem to have missed something here, what is EC and where are you getting details of The Escapist's financial information? As far as I have seen, The Escapist seems to be doing fine!

EC stands for Extra Credits and, according to another thread, The Escapist seems to be having trouble paying it's contributors.

 

[Stilkon]

Sorry I seem to have missed something here, what is EC and where are you getting details of The Escapist's financial information? As far as I have seen, The Escapist seems to be doing fine!

Extra Credits...?

The Escapist will remain. There may not be so many original series, but its game journalism and reviewing aspects will stay intact.

 

[Evill_Bob]

They may loose some of the less popular series in favor of keeping the more popular ones. No worries, we'll be watching that crazy little Australian rant for at least a while longer.

 

[Laser Priest]

They've certainly lost quite a bit of respect, but unless these demented Boycotts get too large, The Escapist should survive.

 

[Grim5i]

Yahtzee is probably the contributor with the most options so I would be surprised if he isn´t thinking about going to another publisher or hosting ZP on fullyramblomatic.com.

 

[The Virgo]

They may loose some of the less popular series in favor of keeping the more popular ones. No worries, we'll be watching that crazy little Australian rant for at least a while longer.

Agreed! Getting rid of Yahtzee would be stupid. You can't deny that he is he one of the players here and sacking him would be suicide for The Escapist.

If they do sack him or he loses job because this website bellies up, I'm not worried about Yahtzee. He will just move Zero Punctuation to another website and all his fans (including me) will follow him there. Or he could do writing for a videogame magazine (he just to do the backspace column for PC Gamer some years ago). Either way, he has a fan base and prospective employers know this.

 

[PeePantz]

They've certainly lost quite a bit of respect, but unless these demented Boycotts get too large, The Escapist should survive.

They most likely will survive, but at what capacity? Everything needs money and it appears that they are rather low on that here, with things only looking to get worse. With certain scale backs (I'm now wondering if the new office move was a scale back), things like site maintenance, security, and even reviews/articles might take a nosedive.

 

[DexterNorgam]

Hard to say, If they keep losing content, and keep tolerating all the child molesters in the forum the escapists days could be numbered.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

It seems to me that the Escapist mishandled it's finances big time. This could prove to be a costly mistake in more ways than one and could spell doom for the site. And to be perfectly honest, I won't be overly upset by that.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

Sorry I seem to have missed something here, what is EC and where are you getting details of The Escapist's financial information? As far as I have seen, The Escapist seems to be doing fine!

EDIT: Sorry guys, been a bit busy what with all the riots etc, have now read up on it.

Seems like James tried to screw over the Escapist and then spin it to make them look like the bad guys. If he really did promise the extra money to Extra Credits rather than an Indie Publishing Company all to himself, then legally threaten the Escapist with breach of contract for not paying him fast enough (after they said he'd be paid within a week) then fuck him. Fuck his egotistical bullshit for pulling that on them and then trying to make it look like the Escapist were the devil himself by spinning it in an amazingly one-sided posting.

If not then the Escapist don' goofed.

Oh, and my house is still relatively intact, and no i'm not totally bitter and angry.

I don't know where your getting this false information. James wanted to use the money for a non-profit indie publishing company. They've always believed in the creativity and hard work of developers. With this company, their reinforcing that belief.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I hate this entire situation. I know I love the content here and that I'd stay for the Forum Game community until the end but it saddens me to know many of my friends aren't... Well I'm here, for better or for worse. Updating my pubclub membership? That has become less certain.

 

[TimeLord]

The Escapist shouldn't live and die on it's videos. In theory.
It was originally a PDF magazine. If worst comes to absolute worst, could they not just go back to that and start again?

Other than that, I will re-knew my PubClub subscription. The Escapist made an error unfortunately, Alaxander even said as much [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.306109-An-open-letter-to-James-and-Alexander#12309161], but I don't hold it against them.

 

[Dr. Pepper Unlimited]

I think only time will tell where this all leads. Maybe there will be a silver lining to all of this and The Escapist and everyone else responsible for this debacle will take notice of how much they're hurting this website and work towards fixing it, or there could be no silver lining and this is the beginning of the end. I don't really know. I hope the Escapist pulls through; I rather like it here.

 

[Varitel]

We could see them dropping some of their video content, but the primary serials will likely remain intact. The forums will also likely remain intact.

Also,

Hard to say, If they keep losing content, and keep tolerating all the child molesters in the forum the escapists days could be numbered.

Since when are there child molesters on the forums?

 

[Scarim Coral]

Unless the recession improve greatly, the worse case scenario would be this site will shut down (which I do NOT want to see) which is still unlikely since surely they can still stay afloat somehow?

 

[CopperBoom]

Except for ZP I do not watch or read anything else on this site except for news sometimes so while I sympathise with people trying to make money off their creations, I know I will be fine.