Letter from the New Editor-in-Chief

Nick Calandra

Published: Jul 29, 2019 12:15 pm

Hey folks,

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I’m Nick Calandra and I’m excited to introduce myself as the new Editor-in-Chief of Escapist Magazine.

I previously started a few gaming outlets of my own, most notably Only Single Player (onlysp.com) and Gameumentary, which were both purchased by Escapist Magazine’s parent company, Enthusiast Gaming.

As you could probably guess from the titles, OnlySP is a site dedicated specifically to covering single player games while Gameumentary produces documentaries about video games. You’ve seen some of Gameumentary’s work posted on Escapist already, most notably the documentary on Shirley Curry: The Gaming Grandma.

I was first introduced to computers by my father when I was about three years old, and I’ve been playing them ever since. Video games were my escape as a very introverted teenager.

I started writing about games when I was still in high school, and that passion led me to get a degree in multimedia journalism. Since launching Gameumentary two years ago I’ve been traveling around the world filming documentaries on games including the Darksiders series, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and Divinity: Original Sin. I’ve met people from all walks of life and seen amazing parts of the world I never thought I’d visit. Through my coverage of video games, I found my calling and a career path that I absolutely love.

But enough about me — what’s been going on with Escapist lately?

Updated Escapist

Becoming the new Editor-in-Chief of Escapist is an honor and something I will take on with the utmost responsibility. We have a very capable team, and over the past couple months we’ve been working on restructuring our content a bit with some great results.

Samantha Nelson is continuing her role as Managing Editor and writing up a wealth of great feature stories for you to read. Omar Ahmed from Gameumentary is joining Escapist as our Lead Media Producer to work on our premier documentary content, Patrick Lee is our Editorial Assistant covering news and writing up feature stories, and John Friscia is keeping all our writing clear and accurate as Copy Editor.

Make sure you’re not missing Adam Adler’s Escape to the Law column, Riley Constantine’s Pop Heart column, The New Mythology series from various writers, and Samantha’s tabletop-focused column, Escapist Unplugged. We’ll be introducing new columns down the line as well.

You may have noticed we’ve been releasing a lot more original content lately, and that will continue in August as we have quite a few exclusive interviews lined up through out the month.

We have also refreshed our site design to give you a better experience, and we’re continuing to work on technical improvements. There are still some kinks to work out with the updated look and some additions we’d like to make, chief among them a Dark Mode. We’re looking to update the software on the forums as well and will be communicating with our dedicated community as we work. As of right now, however, we have no further plans to share on that front.

Moving Forward

I know you all will have a lot of questions about the future of Escapist, but for the most part, I’m going to let our content do the talking for us. You can make your judgments based on the merit of our work.

I know the history of The Escapist and I have no plans to retread it. We’re charting a new course here, one that’s focused on positivity, maturity, and inclusivity, while offering a place of escapism for those of us that want to read and talk about gaming, entertainment, and the culture that surrounds us all.

The Escapist strives to become the storytellers of the industry. We will write and create media content about the people behind the entertainment we consume, whether it be video games, media, or even tabletop. We will report on stories that are important. We will explore different cultures, perspectives, and ideas. And we’re going to have fun doing it.

We’ll be starting off this relaunch with a 12-hour Extra Life stream on Aug. 17 to raise money for charity. In that stream, we’ll be revealing the trailers for Gameumentary’s upcoming documentaries covering the Zero Punctuation creator, Yahtzee Crowshaw, and the Insurgency series from New World Interactive.

Everyone is welcome at the Escapist, but we will not tolerate any personal attacks on our editors or other community members. The same goes for hate speech, racism, bigotry, threats of violence, or targeted harassment. We will foster a positive community where users can have open discussions without the fear of being attacked by bad actors. We’re not the old Escapist and our code of conduct reflects that. I hope you’ll support the moderators in their work.

We will work with the community to continue to reestablish ourselves as an outlet that you’re proud to visit. An outlet that focuses on positivity while also tackling important subjects. An outlet that introduces our readers and viewers to new perspectives, new ideas, and interesting stories.

If you have questions, I’ll be happy to answer them via email at nick.calandra at escapistmagazine dot com. You can also follow me on Twitter for the occasional tweet about the Detroit Red Wings or projects we’re working on for Escapist / Gameumentary. Thanks for your support. We’re excited about what the future of Escapist holds and we hope you are too.