The Escapist and Extra Credits are separating, and in the least amicable way possible.

I feel like two parents I love very much are getting a divorce, and damn is it ugly. My first reaction was shock, which led to anger, which led to the common geek shout of “BOYCOTT”, which led to the sudden regret of being without a favorite source of entertainment. In fact, how could I possibly boycott one of the premiere publications of games writing? These are people that genuinely care about the industry. More than that, I feel like I’d somehow be betraying good people.

It was a brief encounter, but I was able to momentarily speak with Susan Arendt at PAX East. I’ve spoken with Themis Media representatives at GameX. I’ve had occasional correspondence with Russ Pitts via e-mail and even at GamersWithJobs. In fact, if it wasn’t for The Escapist publishing Sean “Elysium” Sands’ work, I never would have discovered GamersWithJobs in the first place. I still remember my delight when I saw Shamus Young start a column and comic on their site.

For the first time, The Escapist provided a website that was more than just a bunch of faceless and nameless news posts. This was the first gaming site that gave me faces and personalities to connect with, and God dammit I did. Extra Credits became one of the highlights of my week, and certainly my favorite series that they’ve ever published.

Yet there are always two sides to every story, and I’m not exactly sure what to think at this point. Everything broke today, August 9th 2011, when James Portnow (writer for Extra Credits) posted on twitter that they were ending the show. Their twitter feed has been explosive this evening with discussion on the matter. At first, it sounds as if The Escapist is being unfair. Then comes Alexander Macris of The Escapist telling a different biased tale, and suddenly James sounds like the bad guy.

In the end, the only thing I can conclude is that James Portnow needed to address this situation in a much less dramatic and more professional manner. In truth, this situation stinks of teenage drama, and breaking the information in bite-sized, biased chunks on Twitter is a nasty way of going about it. The best way would have been to simply state the relationship is ending, and give both sides a chance to air out their feelings on the matter (in as professional a manner as possible). Instead, we have a literal shit storm, and there will be so much anger and poo flinging that there’s no way this can end well.

Is there truly a villain in this situation? Was it all a matter of miscommunication? I don’t know. All I know is I’ve honestly had more personal connections with members of The Escapist than with the members of Extra Credits. I’m honestly tempted to lean towards those guys instead. Yet I’d rather be unbiased.

As such, I blame both sides for this downfall. Reading the side from James and Extra Credits followed by that of Alexander and The Escapist, I can’t help but feel two kids are arguing over who had what fire truck first. It is petty and it is a no-win situation. If this goes to trial, then James and Extra Credits will be wasting time and money in court instead of providing everyone with excellent content, be it in industry commentary or in published indie video games. Meanwhile, The Escapist will have some trouble publishing more interesting content because they won’t be able to afford it, which sounds like one of the issues that got everyone into this mess in the first place.

Even if someone wins in court, it is us, the audience, the ones who established these relationships and helped create these successes, that will lose out. Something will be lost, and more than has already been lost.

Is this how we really want the best commentary on the games industry to go down? In a mess of petty drama?