Games Journalism 2017: Gaming news in a post-truth world

Horrible, yet impressive: http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/how-activision-uses-matchmaking-tricks-to-sell-in-game-items-w509288

“Junior player” and “marquee player”. Huh. Is that the language being used these days?

-Tom, junior player

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.1024592-An-Open-Letter-to-The-Escapist-Community

As many of you may have noticed by now, there hasn’t been much staff interaction over the last few months. It is with regret that, to our knowledge, that all paid staff have been relieved of their duties, with the apparent exception of Yahtzee, The Escapist’s streaming staff, and Encaen for a few contracted hours a month. We won’t beat around the bush, it is a serious situation. We can’t promise that The Escapist will last forever; it may have years left in it, or it may disappear tomorrow. What we can say is we will do our utmost to keep this site running in an orderly fashion, for as long as it stays online. That said, nearly everything that it does is through volunteer efforts.

With this sad news, though, comes an opportunity. The moderation team has been granted a number of powers to keep the site running. The new community-run Escapist will be looking for your input on how the site operates, and for volunteers in creating content. We may even look into adjusting the Code of Conduct, if that is possible with the tools we’ve been given. Together we can breathe some life back into this site, one article at a time.

So long.

Wow. That’s crazy.

I guess someone should mention that Neogaf is currently in the throes of an upheaval as well.

http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/neogaf-offline-amidst-sex-assault-allegations-against-owner-w509871

That’s really sad. I remember frequently visiting there frequently years ago and then they kind of lost what made them worthwhile.

I think I remember Evilore was a QT3 member at some point.

Escapist was still paying anyone but Yahtzee since like 2009?

In a phone conversation with Kotaku, Leupp said that even after the alleged shower incident, she’d continued her friendship and even had a brief physical relationship with Malka until they had a falling out at E3 2015.

Odd. Not a lot of time between the April 2015 incident and E3 2015 for “a brief physical relationship.” One wonders what the whole story is.

Patrick Klepek, writing for Waypoint, has a spoken to the owner of Neogaf and many of the sites mods.

Taking the site down was a substantial tactical error as it pushed people to find a replacement.

He should have made a statement like “It’s her word against mine, and I say it was completely consensual. I hope you give me the benefit of the doubt, but if you want to go elsewhere that’s your call. Please keep all discussion about this to the Meta forum.” and then see what happens. Since he took it down, now he’s running uphill whether he’s actually guilty or not.

It’s totally possible for a ridiculously popular property to self-destruct overnight due to scandal or a better competitor. Look at Myspace and Digg.

Short and sweet just: “I clearly misread the situation and fucked up. I wish person the best. Please contain discussion of me personally to the appropriate thread.”

Yeah. Same basic idea but I like yours better.

https://twitter.com/shinobi602/status/922613615945048070

Anyone have a subscription?

Twitter comments make it sound like it’s a BS rumor. No one can find it even behind the paywall. Probably garbage, but keep an eye out for it.

I’d love to see Capcom bought out. Capcom’s biggest problem has always been Capcom.

I’m just not sure who I’d trust with that acquisition. EA and the like don’t have the best track record with long term viability of acquired properties. If it went to a platform holder and became one console exclusive that would kind of suck. MS seems like the most likely in the latter scenario but I also feel like they are possibly the most likely to mishandle the properties over the long haul, just look at Rare.

After the way Capcom has snubbed them and their fans recently, I’d love to see it be Nintendo, just for the sheer hilarity of a company going from nothing but token support outside of one niche-outside-of-Japan IP to full exclusivity forever.

All I ask is that whoever owns them bring back Powerstone.