The Escapist is an online magazine, which according to their visitor’s page“is dedicated to providing readers with the highest quality journalism covering interactive media, games, and the culture behind them.”
Five days a week it froths, covering internet-related news with opinion columns, video editorials, and irreverent reviews & humor.
Examining their layout, their offerings to the ten-second-website-viewer are: news in their industry (at the time of writing, condemnation for the SOPA act, with some coverage of the major developments in Video games), columns and videos from their employees, and advertisements for their sponsors. With bonus content available for personal information or credit card subscriptions, the joy of commercialism is in the layout, indeed!
Their perspective is Empiric while also subversive. A sum of parts, individual authors present conformative pieces with others present in apocalyptic style. The editorials tend to take a taciturn tone, such as The Tao of Leveling, a pseudodeep attempt to tie spiritual principles to life pursuits (don’t forget how faithfully reading the Escapist can only help you level up!) The language-tied-to-gaming in the article is vague-as-theology, with no prescribed objective. However, an understanding of the medium presented (specific: the Role-Playing-Game) must be acquired to understand it in full.
Contrasting, anything Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw does. His take on Role-Playing-Games is more a flaying of them. Someone who sits in the video-game corner of the site and dissects anything served to him, his appeal for content in the face of postmodern game design is phrased
“Surely every game is a "simulation" of something, whether it be flying a World War 2 fighter plane or finely slicing the buttocks of minotaurs.”
Take that, Nihilism!
With regards to the Kingdom, The Escapist is a magazine. It exists to create and distribute content with a profit motive. As a community, it may attract individuals beyond the pale of the consumerist fold. It can serve as a sanctuary or an effigy-burning ground. It’s not the best example. I find satire in the system a sign of the roots of Apocalypse. Something could grow.
1: Churches often demonize publications for not fostering “the Kingdom”. What role can the media-distribution system play in the Christian narrative? What roles does it play already?
2: What is the Apocalyptic aspect to Escapism? Where can we find, ironically, a non-escapist aspect to it?
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