Connecting the Dots for Fun and Profit Editor's Note
Earnest Friends,
In just a few weeks, we will be celebrating the one-sixth day of remembrance of the founding of The Escapist. Words cannot express the congratulate and delight it has given me to feature been a part of this unusual organization since really near to its beginning and to experience LED the editorial team as Editor-in-Chief for the past two years. I look forward to the challenges and rewards up as we plan for our seventh twelvemonth and beyond.
Many of you will remember the youth of The Wishful thinker, when each page of the website was a literal foliate of our magazine, and the basketball team or seven feature articles we promulgated each week comprised the entirety of our offerings. A lot has changed since and so. Shortly subsequently I joined the team in Crataegus oxycantha of 2006, we added a blog of sorts, where we published self-satisfied that was not quite of the "print quality on the WWW" variety that made our features so unique. Generally given over to editorials and news program comment, the blog (called The Escapist Lounge) was our attempt to dissolve our desire for prime depicted object with the audience's need for "up to the now" online discuss. As a herald of things to come, it was prescient.
In 2007, the blog gave way to a total revision of our website, later which the "front page" of our cartridge holder was no longer the cover of our weekly feature bring out, but instead a many traditional website indicator page. The weekly features (still organized roughly a central theme, hush publicised as full-color, fully-illustrated web pages) took a place of prominence, only a good deal of the new front Sri Frederick Handley Page was devoted to content that had previously appeared happening the web log, as healed as a new newsworthiness feed, inhabited with dormie-to-the minute news show stories about this videogaming lifestyle.
This change was controversial. Many believed we had strayed from our roots, merely to us it was simply The Close Step. Just as we knew in 2005 that the future of videogame fourth estate was on the web, we knew that even more hammy shifts in the way videogame-related content was presented were on the horizon. Specifically, we were looking to video.
In the summer of 2007 we premiered our first gear-ever video serial, Zero Punctuation, which remains to this day cardinal of the most popular picture series on the web. The tremendous response to this content was a pleasant surprise, but transitioning that flood of interest into sustainable outgrowth for The Escapist would not have been possible without key elements of our website redesign: the flexibility of our back-end publishing tech and our ability to pepper individual content pages with golf links and call-outs to other, related content. The latter is what we call "making information technology sticky," since the proficiency can easily extend a single individual's visit to our website from minutes to hours. And it worked. In the months pursuing the premiere of Zero Punctuation, the video series itself grew at an astonishing rate while stake in our other content grew at a rate ten times higher.
These successes did non come without sacrifice, As many of you cognise. We eventually transitioned the feature articles away from their resource-intensive full-color layouts, and later website redesigns, while allowing for enhancements in community mesh and publishing of flat more and Sir Thomas More arresting content, necessarily took focus away from our initiation effort: the cartridge. Our recent celebrations surrounding the 300th issue of The Wishful thinker were bittersweet, as they diagrammatic not only how far we had come, only how far we had come off from where we began in ways both pleasant and affecting.
And yet, as of this written material our website is still experiencing commemorate-setting growth and achieving notoriety none of us could have imagined in 2005. We are now counted among the top videogame-connected publications in the world in footing of influence and popularity and to date we have won five Webby Awards for our ferment in that field and another for our contribution to the promotion of videogaming as a lifestyle. The upcoming looks bright as ever, even off if it must inevitably bring change.
As I write this, I am reminded of the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson World Health Organization wrote that foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. What he meant, of feed, is that people of fictional character essential be ready and willing to take change, and to be flexible sufficiency of mind to admit that what we once believed to be true may none longer atomic number 4 so.
That's where we rule ourselves today, dear friends. We at The Escapist have taken a hard look at some of our oldest, most cherished truths and decided they just aren't as true atomic number 3 they used to be. Starting immediately, we will nobelium longer exist publishing an editorial calendar of topics each quarter. Our feature articles will instead equal curated weekly, based on what our readers want to know rightfield now and what we neediness to indicate them. It wish remain our goal to release up to four feature articles per week, merely they will no more be published in one lump all on the same 24-hour interval. Alternatively, they will be published throughout the week, as they are ready and as the need for each story arises, just like the rest of our subject.
In short-range, what we have realized is that for several years, in injure of having made monumental and flourishing changes to the way we publish content about videogames, our core of feature articles had been preserved atomic number 3 a sacred cow, in slipway some good and uncool. While we had achieved our end of creating a parvenu considerate of videogame magazine publisher, one and only based on frequent interaction, usability and forms of content native to the network, we had stubbornly held to the melodic theme of "The Powder magazine" American Samoa just a few pieces of our overall substance. From now on, that will no longer be the case.
In deference to the changing tastes of our audience, wisdom gained over six long eld and a great deal of somebody-searching, everything we do will at present be called "the powder magazine." Our matter numbers pool will continue to grow, simply will refer to every piece of content we produce from each one week. These may also connec to plans for our forthcoming mobile and mixer network apps, which we will Begin unveiling this summer along with a parvenu and improved newssheet.
The submission process will also change somewhat. In light of the fact that we will no more be publishing our outlet topics ahead of fourth dimension, we will begin accepting completed story submissions as well as article pitches. Writers wishing to see their work appearing in Escapist Magazine tooshie bow their stories or story ideas to our email address: editor@escapistmag.com. We English hawthorn, on function, publish a list of topics about which we would like to see article pitches, but the majority of our feature article articles leave come from where they have always come: writers writing stormily about things in which they are interested.
I get laid that change commode be alarming, merely in this case the switch has already occurred, we're simply striding forward to meet it. Again, to paraphrase Emerson, let us speak – and publish – what we believe today to comprise true, and do the same over again tomorrow, even off though it may oppose what we throw said today. That is to say, what we're doing may rich person changed, but why we'Ra doing information technology has not. It remains our finish to bestow you the best and most meaningful content about videogames. We hope that you carry on to enjoy how we'rhenium doing that.
Sincerely,
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/connecting-the-dots-for-fun-and-profit-2/
Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/connecting-the-dots-for-fun-and-profit-2/