Waypoint and the Waypoint Forums - NeoGAF's Autistic Inbred Cousin and Shitty Game Site

[X Prime]

Currently, a large number of these journalists don't actually do their real jobs, instead acting like they've been hired to educate to unwoke masses and virtue signal to their fellow idpol adherents.

This is incredibly late, but I want to point out that this is a feature, not a bug.

Journalism school, to my understanding, actually pushes the concept of molding a story to a narrative.

 

[Munchingonfish]

Out of curiosity, does anyone have a screenshot of how much patron money Critical Distance gets monthly?

 

[Oh Long Johnson]

Out of curiosity, does anyone have a screenshot of how much patron money Critical Distance gets monthly?

That's really a shame.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

View attachment 735429

That's really a shame.

And you gotta wonder how much of that is just them shuffling money around to look like there are donations coming in, to prime the pump, as it were.

 

[GC_Positive]

And you gotta wonder how much of that is just them shuffling money around to look like there are donations coming in, to prime the pump, as it were.

When patreon changed their fees, a huge amount of the crying and pearl clutching was coming from the people who have patreon pay rings and live off of social justice welfare.

 

[FireGod365]

Let's talk about another gaming website: how do you guys feel about Rock Paper Shotgun?

 

[Oh Shit I'm Sorry]

Let's talk about another gaming website: how do you guys feel about Rock Paper Shotgun?

Can only get better now that John Walker is fucking off. Probably still not better enough to be worth anything though.

 

[SiccDicc]

Let's talk about another gaming website: how do you guys feel about Rock Paper Shotgun?

I feel like taking a shotgun to the face whenever I read an article from there, why?

 

[usoland]

RIP?

 

[Stock Photo James]

RIP?

Nah it's just a rebranding, therefore at least some of it will remain, and Murphy's law states they'll keep all the most insufferable mouthbreathers.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

I'm trying to think of the last semi-useful article I read in any "gaming journal". I can't think of one. The closest I can come is Shamus Young, who (I think) writes for the escapist, but I read his blog, not the escapist.

But whenever I'm looking for, you know, actual information about vidja I go to forums, reviews, stuff like that, not any gaming site, because they're complete and utter shit.

I think those sites are for wives and girlfriends of guys who play video games, honestly. It makes so much more sense if you think of it that way, as they seem to fucking hate video games.

 

[zap2theextreme]

There's interesting games journalism out there, just not at waypoint. Nobody wants to read articles about how the gamecube is genderfluid or "What Dark Souls taught me about my mom". There was a crop of great articles recently about the failures of Bioware/EA and employee mistreatment by Rockstar, Epic games, and Riot. More stuff about the inner workings of the industry and less articles about what it means to jump as Mario in Trump's America.

 

[Judge Dredd]

There's interesting games journalism out there, just not at waypoint. Nobody wants to read articles about how the gamecube is genderfluid or "What Dark Souls taught me about my mom". There was a crop of great articles recently about the failures of Bioware/EA and employee mistreatment by Rockstar, Epic games, and Riot. More stuff about the inner workings of the industry and less articles about what it means to jump as Mario in Trump's America.

I've not seen them. The closest I've seen is YouTubers making some decent videos.

A bit off topic, but the whole "employee mistreatment unionize now!" stories are suspicious to me. Even in the Super Bunnyhop documentary, all the devs are nobodies wearing the same shirt and making shitty art installations.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Nah it's just a rebranding, therefore at least some of it will remain, and Murphy's law states they'll keep all the most insufferable mouthbreathers.

It's a rebranding, but probably also a consolidation of resources as VICE is having layoffs on all verticals and is trying to condense to stay/get profitable. They also have collapsed "Broadly" (Thier women/gender vertical) and "Tonic" (Thier "health" section, but it's just as awful as you think it was) into "Vice" proper.

I'm hopeful this will be the end of Austin Walker, as he was a relatively fresh Editor in Chief given a blank slate in 2016 but has done next to nothing with the opportunity nearly three full years later and the business/finance types over at VICE likely realize that (hence the rebrand). With the collapse of three websites into VICE, it means there are three separate "Editor in Chief" people when they only really need one (or possibly 0). If Walker goes, Kelpek can't be far behind but hopefully they fuck off somewhere else instead of shambling back over to Giantbomb, which already has AIDS in the form of Ben Pack and Abby Russel. A video with Ben Pack + Patrick Klepek might be the most single unwatchable thing related to video games ever created.

Even if Walker isn't in the crosshairs, Waypoint is probably going to be under more scrutiny and none of it will be good. https://www.vice.com/en_us/topic/games-news - For example, they're a video game news site, but they only write a news article like once a week. It looks like reviews follow a similar schedule of "not that many and who cares" which should really be the bread and butter of a site like this. Even if you lean into the "SJW" angle, they only have 4 or 5 "opinion" articles, so not much there either. There's frankly an embarrassing lack of content, which should be really easy to generate.

There is also, on site that I could find, exactly 0 pieces of video content which is unbelievably embarrassing as video content is huge for Video Game Websites (namely, Twitch, Youtube, and Giantbomb). Imagine hiring someone from Giantbomb and having them produce little to no video content, how baffled you must be. Waypoint does have a youtube channel that you have to actively search for but it's mostly garbage with no more than 4,000 views over several months, which is horrendous.

They also look to be constantly late to the party. They've got a recent podcast dedicated to "Into the Spiderverse", despite the fact that movie is nearly half a year old at this point. They have a recent Sekiro "spoilercast" (and people on it who haven't finished the game yet) despite that game being nearly two months old and not that long.

TL; DR - If VICE has any intention to throw out "Waypoint" to start fresh and try and find success, this is the time to do it. Austin Walker and company have had three years and produced nothing of value and it's very apparent. The "Editor in Chief" slot just got a lot more crowed with VICE collapsing inwards meaning there's very likely going to be cuts there as they are high-paying, redundant jobs now.

 

[Corbin Dallas Multipass]

It's a rebranding, but probably also a consolidation of resources as VICE is having layoffs on all verticals and is trying to condense to stay/get profitable. They also have collapsed "Broadly" (Thier women/gender vertical) and "Tonic" (Thier "health" section, but it's just as awful as you think it was) into "Vice" proper.

I'm hopeful this will be the end of Austin Walker, as he was a relatively fresh Editor in Chief given a blank slate in 2016 but has done next to nothing with the opportunity nearly three full years later and the business/finance types over at VICE likely realize that (hence the rebrand). With the collapse of three websites into VICE, it means there are three separate "Editor in Chief" people when they only really need one (or possibly 0). If Walker goes, Kelpek can't be far behind but hopefully they fuck off somewhere else instead of shambling back over to Giantbomb, which already has AIDS in the form of Ben Pack and Abby Russel. A video with Ben Pack + Patrick Klepek might be the most single unwatchable thing related to video games ever created.

Even if Walker isn't in the crosshairs, Waypoint is probably going to be under more scrutiny and none of it will be good. https://www.vice.com/en_us/topic/games-news - For example, they're a video game news site, but they only write a news article like once a week. It looks like reviews follow a similar schedule of "not that many and who cares" which should really be the bread and butter of a site like this. Even if you lean into the "SJW" angle, they only have 4 or 5 "opinion" articles, so not much there either. There's frankly an embarrassing lack of content, which should be really easy to generate.

There is also, on site that I could find, exactly 0 pieces of video content which is unbelievably embarrassing as video content is huge for Video Game Websites (namely, Twitch, Youtube, and Giantbomb). Imagine hiring someone from Giantbomb and having them produce little to no video content, how baffled you must be. Waypoint does have a youtube channel that you have to actively search for but it's mostly garbage with no more than 4,000 views over several months, which is horrendous.

They also look to be constantly late to the party. They've got a recent podcast dedicated to "Into the Spiderverse", despite the fact that movie is nearly half a year old at this point. They have a recent Sekiro "spoilercast" (and people on it who haven't finished the game yet) despite that game being nearly two months old and not that long.

TL; DR - If VICE has any intention to throw out "Waypoint" to start fresh and try and find success, this is the time to do it. Austin Walker and company have had three years and produced nothing of value and it's very apparent. The "Editor in Chief" slot just got a lot more crowed with VICE collapsing inwards meaning there's very likely going to be cuts there as they are high-paying, redundant jobs now.

Vice is propped up by sorosbux, it's a propaganda factory. They aren't supposed to make money, they're supposed to spread propaganda inexpensively.

They don't need to get any clicks most of the time. What they are there for is when some political thing happens, they can all be mobilized to give the impression that there's wide consensus on an issue.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Vice is propped up by sorosbux, it's a propaganda factory. They aren't supposed to make money, they're supposed to spread propaganda inexpensively.

They don't need to get any clicks most of the time. What they are there for is when some political thing happens, they can all be mobilized to give the impression that there's wide consensus on an issue.

I don't think you're lying, but them collapsing all of these extraneous websites into a single website is going to have the literal opposite effect compared to what you're describing. By collapsing all of the websites into "VICE", they're going to have one website with a bunch of artciles about a topic; instead of a bunch of different looking/sounding websites. If that was their focus here, they would be making more websites instead of less.

I imagine that the soros dollars are mainly focused on the political parts of VICE and not the video game or personal health sections. Additionally, despite the soros funding, they still laid off a huge amount of their workforce late last year as well. These moves all indicate that VICE needs to trim fat and these moves look like they're doing so. I wouldn't be shocked if they just cut out a bunch of non-political verticals (like Video Games) and doubled down on the political shit.

 

[FH 721]

Since FireGod365 threw RPS, I'll also throw in Videogamer.com and Paste Magazine. How do you guys feel about those? I think the only worthwhile guy in Videogamer was Simon Miller, who unfortunately is now on WhatCulture (which I absolutely detest). I'm not that familiar with Paste but I'm aware they're also quite shitty.

 

[Commander X]

Whether or not Waypoint is technically gone, (ha ha!) who was it for in the first place? Kotaku, Polygon, and every online outlet offered the same type of analysis and content. Waypoint was the group home for people too insane to work for Kotaku.

All these sites run on Grievance against the Nerds and are going to fail eventually (you mean people into a hobby don't like reading about how they suck? amazing), but Waypoint getting introduced so late in the game was rather weird.

 

[CrunkLord420]

Paste Magazine is where Austin Walker grew out of, it's the same shit as Waypoint.

I don't see why anyone would be interested in visiting a game news site in current year. The best you'll get is finding specific people who focus on the things you're interested in. You'll probably find that on YouTube these days. It really depends what you're looking for (ie. news/reviews/analysis/comedy).

 

[Sissy Galvez]

It was obvious af waypoint was going to collapse into Vice, I’m just surprised it didn’t happen when they announced all the other layoffs. Look for more departures in the coming weeks, hopefully autistic walker and Patrick “boobies scare me” klepek.

Good riddance to bad takes and dumpster fires.