The Escapist: A Two-Year Retrospective

August 22nd marked my two-year anniversary as a News Reporter for The Escapist Magazine. Hitting the two-year mark at the end of my high school and adolescence has made me look back on my time there. I’ve also been asked a few times about the back story behind my joining of the team, and figured I could lay it all out in one memoir post.

The story of my time and many others at the Escapist begins back at Gamers With Jobs, a mature gaming forum with the funniest, most intelligent group of writers I’ve met online. The contributors to GWJ have gotten published in many of the major industry publications, including The Escapist.

I originally found the site via Slashdot, the web home of geeks everywhere, some three years ago. I came from Slashdot, but I stayed for the podcast, the now defunct Gamers With Jobs Radio, hosted by ex-TechTV producer Russ Pitts and GWJ Founder Shawn Andrich. After being a decently active poster, the site’s founders, Shawn Andrich and Sean Seands, announced the launch of the Press Pass, GWJ’s own game news site, and they were looking for writers. Having a lot of spare time during the summer of 2006, I applied.

The Press Pass was short lived, and a volunteer position, but the few weeks it lasted were educational and laid the groundwork for what would become one of the most valuable professional relationships I would build.

The radio show would close in early 2006 just as the Press Pass was about to start. Russ Pitts was offered a position as Acquisitions Editor at The Escapist, a year-old online gaming magazine that was unique for featuring some, and I say this lovingly, high-brow industry commentary. The Escapist is respected for discussing issues such as the the “games as art”, sex in gaming, and why Nintendo named that darned thing the “Wii”.

Two or three months later, Shawn was asked to join him to take the Press Pass concept and build it under the Escapist’s label as the Escapist News Room. To accomplish this, he needed accomplices, and allowed me to tag along.

My first story debuted on August 22. At that point, I wasn’t paid for the work, yet stuck with it because it was fun, somewhat high-profile work for a respected publication. For that first day, I probably had thirty readers, twenty of which were the Escapist staff and GWJ visitors.

Shawn’s promise that pay would be forthcoming was fulfilled in October, when he PayPal’d some $250 for my past couple months of work. He would stay for about six months until he left to do whatever it is he does. Some computer consulting work, hell if I know. I keep in occasional contact with Shawn for advice on various reporting topics and partially out of respect for the guy who got me the greatest job a teenager could have.

For basically the next year and a half, I worked under two bosses: Russ Pitts, who had general oversight over the Escapist, and Joe Blancato, who worked with the growing Daily Content and editorials. I’ve enjoyed working with both, as they’ve served as hilarious bosses who’ve taught me plenty about the industry and writing. Sadly, they both left the Escapist in July. Russ is now working in a higher position within the Themis Group, the parent company of the Escapist, doing video work, while Joe is the Editor-in-Chief at GiantRealm, a movie/music/gaming/gadget portal.

Under Russ/Joe regime, the Escapist changed layouts, emphasized editorials, and expanded content to include reviews, interviews and eventually videos. The biggest controversy came when The Escapist deemphasized the weekly content by ending the weekly magazine’s PDF release after 100 issues. The incredible artistic style on a web/digital format was unique to the site and its loss was missed. However, ever since the change, the staff has handled the transition incredibly well by supporting the homepage with improved daily editorials that live up to the standards of the feature stories still offered every Tuesday.

Then there’s Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, the man who now personifies the Escapist to the public and easily quadrupled, if not more, the Escapist’s audience. His Zero Punctuation series was a brilliant acquisition by our editor-in-chief Julianne and Russ. Most importantly, Yahtzee’s popularity has risen the site’s overall appeal and notoriety, giving the rest of the content a wider audience that we have been very successful in retaining.

Clearly The Escapist has evolved significantly in the past 2.5 years. The news team has gone from its low point of myself posting two stories a day to a team of nearly ten individuals worldwide writing often times 15 or more per day. Our direction is now beyond games and really addresses any topics the digerati of the new millennium are interested in, like movies and technology. In my time there, I’ve met numerous people, all of whom I’ve enjoyed interviewing or working with, and it has helped fund numerous adventures from my high school days.

Here’s to two more year’s at The Escapist. If it had to be summed up in three words, I’d quote our Webby award speech: “We have issues.”