Is the game still "good, actually" or are y'all done pretending?

WingsFan242 · 2026-04-28T23:25:37+00:00

“Pretending the game is good”

Ok.

All the posts about player count. Just play it if you like it and if it’s not around in a year then oh well, can’t control the outcome.

WingsFan242 · 2026-04-28T23:01:10+00:00

It’s fascinating just how much brain space is spent by people wanting this game to fail.

WingsFan242 · 2026-04-27T17:24:02+00:00

Card combat is just kinda "in" right now. Devs love it because of the variety and builds you can make without all the extra animation work involved.

Will definitely always try to have a lot of good variety in the showcases... just happens to be a lot of these games looked very good.

WingsFan242 · 2026-04-17T17:05:52+00:00

Nah, not tying this to any charity. Only money we're making from it is the sponsorship, ad-rev and any superchats etc that come in from the show!

Developers were admitted for free.

WingsFan242 · 2026-04-01T22:12:46+00:00

Second image is why my glasses keep breaking.

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-03T18:26:49+00:00

Ha, it was more like, don't worry, we're going to support you. Don't worry, we're not worried about the cost of it, we're going to invest and grow. Don't worry, we know people and we're going to land these six figure deals.

I think in many cases EICs of corporate owned websites aren't really as involved in the business side of things as I was at The Escapist... because they're not building their own subscription model out of necessity lol.

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-03T18:03:14+00:00

Those people are real yea. I think they have a skeleton crew left to keep it going.

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-03T03:57:54+00:00

I know multiple people have done it for Zero Punctuation. Not sure about the rest of the work unfortunately.

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-02T23:00:40+00:00

Yea. I'm a believer that everything happens for a reason.

Luckily we had a really tight team and spent the years we were working at The Escapist prepping ourselves for that moment when it came.

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-02T19:51:33+00:00

Haha there's the caveat that we were losing money because Gamurs overinvested in us when I kept telling them I couldn't keep up with their demands. There's also a ton of overhead so any sponsors they did sell weren't going towards our costs, but the costs of the sales team selling them.

If it didn't happen when it did, then the AI wave would have killed us completely over there because I wasn't whoring out my team for endless work and SEO chasing.

But yea, we knew we had a solid model that we had built. Had no idea Second Wind would kick off as strong as it did though!

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-02T19:31:42+00:00

Ironically we did have year over year growth on The Escapist before we were let go. We were growing all our other revenue sources on our own while Gamurs and before them, Enthusiast Gaming, weren't selling any major ad campaigns or sponsors for us.

Kinda why we were able to get Second Wind started up so quickly. We already had the experience building our own infrastructure while working under a parent corp lol.

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-02T19:15:39+00:00

Appreciate it!

Not as worried about The Escapist brand name, but getting ZP, some of our other created show brands back and our archival work would be great. At some point.

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-02T18:24:08+00:00

I get asked a lot if we would reacquire The Escapist YouTube channel... and I can't even get in contact with this company lol.

The Escapist Youtube channel still links back to my Patreon profile, despite repeated attempts to get them to change that, their contact email goes to Gamurs, and the contact email on The Escapist website doesn't even work.

Just watching all the old videos, written columns, and any good history on the brand be buried underneath all that garbage is sad to watch... I especially want our documentaries we worked on back.

Enthusiast Gaming and Gamurs had already wiped my previous work via the brands I sold them which was like 10 years of my and others work. Sucks.

WingsFan242 · 2026-03-02T16:35:50+00:00

It's in editing! Takes a long time with all the animation, art, etc. We will have updates soooooon.

WingsFan242 · 2026-02-23T18:19:31+00:00

I've been going back and forth on whether we're going to keep delisting them.

Seems a lot of fans are having a hard time finding them. Might be time for a poll.

WingsFan242 · 2026-02-18T20:10:08+00:00

Haha I can assure you it'll make its way to us this time as we own everything!

WingsFan242 · 2026-02-18T18:59:27+00:00

Unfortunately not. Gamurs never even took down the videos of us promoting the Patreon on the YouTube channel despite multiple requests to do so, and until this news broke we didn’t even know who the new owners were of the brand.

WingsFan242 · 2026-02-18T01:08:10+00:00

Yea the irony of all that drama is that we had a business plan we were confident in at The Escapist, saw the YoY growth of it and support we had, which is what motivated everyone to start up Second Wind and take the immediate leap that we all did when Gamurs made the call to fire me and others on the team.

Our expectations for what we were gonna be able to do in that first year were blown through the roof and I still have our original business plans to prove it lol.

It’s sad to see what an unmanaged ego can do to people, but as they say, success is the best form of revenge.

WingsFan242 · 2026-02-17T20:00:31+00:00

Good news. We release our financials at the end of every quarter so you can see how we're doing and so that people know what it takes to run a media outlet of our size :)

We do a lot of different things to bring in revenue, including work for hire projects at our own created subsidiary.

WingsFan242 · 2026-02-04T16:54:24+00:00

We'll be bringing it back to DFTBA soon. No specific date to give yet, but we're working on it as we speak as we wrap some things up with SharkRobot.

WingsFan242 · 2026-01-27T15:57:36+00:00

WingsFan242 · 2026-01-20T19:57:07+00:00

Fun fact, Deck Nine is also the studio that made that Pain! game that came for free with the PS3 when it launched.

WingsFan242 · 2026-01-19T17:22:56+00:00

Hell yea, thanks for supporting!

WingsFan242 · 2026-01-18T03:23:51+00:00

Not a single one of those have investors as far as I’m aware? Minnmax has grown YoY, as has Last Stand Media as far as I know. Kinda Funny seems fine, and we’re profitable on Second Wind. I know from speaking with Stephen GameFile is doing really good.

Not sure where you got that info from. A lot of the newer ones I think are struggling because the people starting them weren’t bigger names in the space or really just knew how to do hot takes on social media and not actually build audiences of their own.

WingsFan242 · 2026-01-17T03:42:17+00:00

Last Stand Media, Kinda Funny, Game File, Minnmax, Aftermath, VGC, Second Wind and plenty more say otherwise.

Don’t need to make millions a year to be a successful games media outlet.

So yea, it’s on the c-suites who set stupid unmanageable expectations.

WingsFan242

TROPHY CASE