Waypoint folded back into Vice Games, immediately loses unique editorial voice (Staff is still the same)

[Deleted member 45414]

I just started listening to their podcast a couple of months ago, so this is shakeup is a huge bummer, I've noticed and read a few of their articles which have been great and I really like the fact that they are so inclusive and considerate of others in their entire approach.

All these negative comments in here is some disheartening shit. If we lose what made waypoint special, gaming will be worse off for it.

Find something better to spend your time on than gloating over their perceived "downfall", just because they might have bruised your gamer egos once upon a time.

 

[Nerokis]

It's one review, but yes, it was pretty nutty

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Oh, fuck off with this take.

There's nothing "nutty" about how Danielle experienced RE2. In this thread, people are taking issues with two rather different strands of media criticism: one that is more formal and academic, like the bit of post-colonial studies stuff that popped up in the MHW review, and now this other one where someone isn't so much applying a particular critical framework as they are channeling a highly personalized experience.

People struggling with that former one is frustrating. People somehow finding it impossible to maneuver around that latter one is something else. It's like people are so used to reading the same bland ass takes that they've become incapable of processing when where someone is in their lives, whether that's being an EMT or having depression or being mad at the world or whatever combination of things, becomes their predominant lens for a piece of media.

Yes, RE2 is a goofy game about zombies. But the more interesting takes have always been deeply felt, deeply subjective, and often times reflect some personalized struggle with a game's limitations. When you dismiss something like Danielle's piece as nutty, you're implicitly setting up these ridiculously rigid and narrow parameters for 1) what is a valid experience and 2) what aspects of an experience are valid to emphasize, and doing so in a rather fucked up, unconstructive, and counterproductive way.

 

[Deleted member 2652]

edit: didn't realize how many pages back i was.

 

[Craymond]

"An industry that skews right"

How?

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Are you kidding?

 

[Cooking]

I got published on Waypoint a year ago and I'm still kind of shocked that they or anyone were willing to hear my perspective. I don't think there was another big site that would have given a shot to somebody looking to write a piece on the intersection of college athletics, labor, and small-town culture, but I'm grateful that their editorial voice got to live as long as it did and that it allowed for kind of off the wall stuff to have a place in the discourse. I know not every piece was perfect but I respect so much the risks that the editorial staff took over the years. I know it's not dead per se, but it's never going to be what it was back in 2017 and 18 and I'll miss that feeling of risk-taking and freedom that I don't get from many other places.

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Ahh I remember reading this and thought it was quite good! and I agree that this is something that I can't see being run in (m)any other gaming focused sites.

 

[Narpas Sword0]

There is an interesting aspect to these topics where you get the sense the person took an article as having a shouting tone. The volume of their inner monologue when reading peaks and distorts.

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Yup

 

[the_wart]

Much of what you see as "takes" are people positing their feelings about a thing as a near-objective critical analysis of it, and I can see how the RE2 thing in particular could be labeled as critical analysis when it's not that at all. To consider something "critical", I believe that you need to fully examine to how, why, and when of a work and then consolidate that with your feelings.

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Unfortunately, from what I've seen, that's as close as they get to a "proper" critical analysis. I suspect there's just not that enough audience interest to justify the time one would take.

 

[MarcelRguez]

What gives you the impression that audioboxer just wants an RE2 PR piece? Bringing up the fact that she is an EMT or whatever and actually, has helped an assault victim, in a video game op-Ed does seem self aggrandizing and no, Having that opinion doesn't mean I want to read mindless PR either

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Him believing the entire article is a 'bad take' is fine, no issues there. When you're talking about a field as homogeneous as the video game press, however, it's clear more opinion pieces like these are needed, not less. It doesn't matter if he don't see the point of the piece, or if he think it misses the mark: the existence of what would be considered "outsider voices" in the field is worth celebrating, even if it's just the tiniest first of steps. I'm immediately suspicious of people who try to downplay the contributions of these authors just because they can't relate to their perspective, or of people who think marginal opinions are being put up on a pedestal.

About the bolded, this comes of as incredibly insecure.

 

[Cooking]

Him believing the entire article is a 'bad take' is fine, no issues there. When you're talking about a field as homogeneous as the video game press, however, it's clear more opinion pieces like these are needed, not less. It doesn't matter if he don't see the point of the piece, or if he think it misses the mark: the existence of what would be considered "outsider voices" in the field is worth celebrating, even if it's just the tiniest first of steps. I'm immediately suspicious of people who try to downplay the contributions of these authors just because they can't relate to their perspective, or of people who think marginal opinions are being put up on a pedestal.

About the bolded, this comes of as incredibly insecure.

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What does a personal judgment about my personality have to do with anything.....? What a weird thing to say about an anonymous poster online

 

[GillianSeed79]

Listening to today's podcast has me less worried. It's all the same people, just merged back into Vice. Sure, it sounds like they may be less independent now maybe, but their unique voice will still shine through at least on the podcast.

 

[MarcelRguez]

What does a personal judgment about my personality have to do with anything.....?

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No judgement here, I don't know you at all. Just saying how this comes across. You could elaborate a bit, so I have something to actually comment on.

 

[Deleted member 888]

Him believing the entire article is a 'bad take' is fine, no issues there. When you're talking about a field as homogeneous as the video game press, however, it's clear more opinion pieces like these are needed, not less. It doesn't matter if he don't see the point of the piece, or if he think it misses the mark: the existence of what would be considered "outsider voices" in the field is worth celebrating, even if it's just the tiniest first of steps. I'm immediately suspicious of people who try to downplay the contributions of these authors just because they can't relate to their perspective, or of people who think marginal opinions are being put up on a pedestal.

About the bolded, this comes of as incredibly insecure.

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And that is your problem and others given some of those replies to me, that you think an ordinary person reading that RE2 review/impressions and thinking some of the things I thought has some sort of nefarious motive or "hidden agenda". It really doesn't, and I can assure you others will think it's a pretty far out there piece on such a game as RE2.

 

[Hailinel]

People who might need a reminder that the history of policing is very racially imbalanced as is the carceral system it feeds into? I don't really understand the argument you're making forth, since you make it sound like designing a game and having the playable characters be cops isn't a political choice that deserves analysis or that the normalization of positive attitudes towards police doesn't have real social consequences well outside of games

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At the same time, the context of the game should be considered when preparing to make commentary to that effect. Raccoon City is in the midst of a zombie apocalypse and the vast majority of its population is already destroyed by the time the game opens. There are only three police officers in the game that are still alive when the game opens: Leon, Marvin (Leon's superior), and Police Chief Irons. Of the two NPCs, Marvin is black and is generally an upstanding person, while Irons is white, was morally bankrupt before the outbreak, and became completely unhinged in the aftermath.

There's certainly commentary to be made there, but Irons is completely unmentioned, while Marvin is only mentioned in the context of being unable to heal him with the game's herbs. So I would definitely say that, specifically in regards to that particular article's discussion of race and the police, a ball was dropped. But I wouldn't rake Waypoint over the coals for it.

 

[Deleted member 888]

At the same time, the context of the game should be considered when preparing to make commentary to that effect. Raccoon City is in the midst of a zombie apocalypse and the vast majority of its population is already destroyed by the time the game opens. There are only three police officers in the game that are still alive when the game opens: Leon, Marvin (Leon's superior), and Police Chief Irons. Of the two NPCs, Marvin is black and is generally an upstanding person, while Irons is white, was morally bankrupt before the outbreak, and became completely unhinged in the aftermath.

There's certainly commentary to be made there, but Irons is completely unmentioned, while Marvin is only mentioned in the context of being unable to heal him with the game's herbs. So I would definitely say that, specifically in regards to that particular article's discussion of race and the police, a ball was dropped. But I wouldn't rake Waypoint over the coals for it.

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And that is quite obviously because as unrealistic as RE can be, it subscribes fairly strictly to the lore behind zombies that if one bites you, you turn. In scripted scenes (cutscenes) that tends to be the case. Or at the very least, monsters this powerful/dangerous are more likely to one hit kill you, so that is depicted by the game's lore. Some of the later RE games went balls to the walls and all the shit with Wesker, but RE2 was at the beginning of the series before Capcom lost their minds.

It's almost exclusively the player who gets magic powers of self-healing, which is introducing the element of survival gameplay. Capcom wanted this to be a game played by many, as much as its 15/18 rated, and a super realistic zombie simulator where the player dies in one bite was not the aim. But yes, the lore dictates that is generally the case for everyone else in the world. So no rubbing herbs on Marvin or stitching up a gaping zombie bite for him to recover. He's gonna turn.

You keep calling it a review when the article is titled I Wish 'Resident Evil 2' Let Me Be a More Compassionate Hero. Either you don't understand the different between an opinion article and a review, which renders the entire conversation moot, or you are doing this on purpose in order to misrepresent the piece. Which one is it?

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Waypoint removed review scores, so their opinion pieces basically became them, considering that dropped basically shortly after the review embargo ended and when other outlets were dropping "traditional" reviews.

 

[MarcelRguez]

And that is your problem and others given some of those replies to me, that you think an ordinary person reading that RE2 review/impressions and thinking some of the things I thought has some sort of nefarious motive or "hidden agenda". It really doesn't, and I can assure you others will think it's a pretty far out there piece on such a game as RE2.

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You keep calling it a review when the article is titled I Wish 'Resident Evil 2' Let Me Be a More Compassionate Hero. Either you don't understand the different between an opinion article and a review, which renders the entire conversation moot, or you are doing this on purpose in order to misrepresent the piece. Which one is it?

Waypoint removed review scores, so their opinion pieces basically became them, considering that dropped basically shortly after the review embargo ended and when other outlets were dropping "traditional" reviews.

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Nah, my guy:

 

[Books]

Saying "they have missteps like this one example so that's why nobody cares" is disingenuous of all the other stuff they produce, not to mention the strong and tight knit community they have on their forums, Twitch and Discord. Yeah, they don't resonate with the audience at large. Nobody ever expected them to. There's plenty of youtubers for the audience at large. Yet Waypoint's voice and takes are very much worth your time if you care about videogames in any level deeper than a hobby to kill time, and they have a LARGE catalog of opinions, essays and topics that aren't just "controversy for controversy's sake" like some ERA users like to parrot, nor "strange posturing about stuff" like you are saying, not to mention a wider coverage of games than the flavor of the month AAA most gaming outlets have. In fact, most of the criticism and reactions towards Waypoint on ERA led me to believe people don't know their range of articles at all.

Look at Waypoint specials on Youtube.
Look at them speaking out against THQN, continually, Rousey in MK11.
At features about comm
At they asking companies about crunch at E3, or highlighting co-op models.
The Postscript columns. I specially like the exchange about slavery in Shadow of War.
Features about competitive communities for odd games.
The many, many podcasts about games, movies and books.
Their critiques on how political games handle politics and morality. Here too.
Their podcasts about games from years past, Waypoint 101, that incentive the community to revisit the games with them.
Their highlights of free games with something unique and worth checking out.
Articles about people using games as means to express feelings, new ways to roleplay and post-modern auteurship.
Doom mods. Of all kinds.
Insights on low end PC gaming.
Application of critique theory comparing the no cut vision of God of War with the editing of the This is America clip.
A lenghty talk with Far Cry 5 devs about religion and culture.
Essays on bad games.
Obscure strategy game reviews.
The emotional value of obscure indie games.
Interview on Prey's narrative and inclusion of queerness.
A love letter to Brutal Legend.
A love letter to Warcraft 3.
To Burnout Paradise.
and the list goes on

They slipped sometimes? Absolutely. There is no model to follow to do what they are trying to do. They also have open discussions about it in their forums. You think that here and there something comes out weird or forced? That's fine, there's literally everything else, and you are not supposed to agree, you are supposed to give this different point of view a chance.

But they don't publish 11 pieces on Fortnite every week, don't have Trophy guides, gameplay previews for Borderlands 3 or most of the saturated crap you can find in literally any other outlet, so they must be bad, I guess.

Sony let all your credit card info on easy to hack text files once and most people moved on and now are paying to use their online service. But Waypoint published something I don't agree with therefore everything they do is weird and has no place.
Gaming is fucking weird, I swear.
(And this is not directed at you, specifically)

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This will give me something to read later. Thanks.

As an aside, while there CAN be discussion of social commentary in the zombie genre (most specifically Romero's movies), the only thing Capcom's Resident Evil games have in common with the Romero's movies are the physical zombies themselves, so fitting in the ideas of police brutality and corrumption is a long stretch with no jump off point. It's a square peg thesis being jammed into a round hole.

 

[deepFlaw]

Waypoint removed review scores, so their opinion pieces basically became them, considering that dropped basically shortly after the review embargo ended and when other outlets were dropping "traditional" reviews.

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This is completely incorrect. They never once wrote reviews with a score. That's because before Monster Hunter, they actually didn't write reviews at all. That was the first bit of writing explicitly labeled a review, and like every one since it's been unscored.

You can see all their reviews here, though they're all mixed in with the other sites' reviews for other things currently as they need to update their tags. But it should be pretty damn clear that their reviews are literally labeled with "Review".

This is just an opinion piece.

 

[Deleted member 888]

This is completely incorrect. They never once wrote reviews with a score. That's because before Monster Hunter, they actually didn't write reviews at all. That was the first bit of writing explicitly labeled a review, and like every one since it's been unscored.

You can see all their reviews here, though they're all mixed in with the other sites currently as they need to update their tags. But it should be pretty damn clear that their reviews are literally labeled with "Review".

This is just an opinion piece.

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Apologies, I googled and its polygon who had scores then removed them.

I'll refer to it as an opinion piece then opposed to a traditional review.

 

[Sou Da]

Waypoint removed review scores, so their opinion pieces basically became them, considering that dropped basically shortly after the review embargo ended and when other outlets were dropping "traditional" reviews.

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Bullshit, they label their reviews incredibly clearly.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neankz/builders-take-a-back-seat-to-conquerors-in-imperator-rome

 

[Deleted member 5621]

To be honest, Waypoint was never for me. When I clocked out, their coverage just seemed to American politics centric. As a Brit, I don't really care too much about Trump apart from the abstract sense that he's a dick and a lot of the "culture war" stuff just gets a massive eye-roll from over here, but their podcast always seemed like it was focused on fighting the good fight in America, as well as videogame stuff. Good on them, but not for me. It's still a shame that'll be lost for those actually in America who appreciated it though.

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Meanwhile: https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/597z7d/we-need-to-get-ready-for-gamergate-politicans

But do they actually engage the topic in a meaningful way? It's like a few sentences and then it goes on to repetitive quest design which is just a jarring contrast. Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, there actually aren't any indigenous people that are being colonized in Monster Hunter, are there? So it's not even like the arguably most problematic aspect of colonialism is even glorified in the game. It seems more like a point that's brought up for the sake of it without much else to say

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That's not how critique works. Also, every aspect of colonialism is problematic. And you should probably read the piece if you are not sure how they tackle it?

Even as someone sympathetic to a lot of their views, that Red Strings Club article alienated me from really caring about most of the other writing on that site

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Which is completely fair for you to do, but it is worth noting they owned up and the writer in question had a talk with the Red Strings devs in a follow up article. It is worth noting that they do respond to criticism and that (as most, if not all) other missteps weren't one and done like so many parrot.

It's a remake of an old school (speedrunner friendly) horror game with a simple plot. It's not that deep.

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Jesus.... Wtf...

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:eyeroll:

This is how you guys sound like:
"Why are you taking games seriously"
Should RE only be talked about in regards how good/bad the gunplay and graphics are instead?

The takes are really silly. For a start, it's a puzzle-lite action horror game where story is almost non-existent. Or at least, it's rooted in 90's video game storytelling which was very simple. Need we look back at the cutscenes and scripts of RE1/RE2? It's almost B-tier horror on purpose.

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Because no b-tier horror ever had anything meaningful to say.

Then there are the comments which amount to little more than "I wish I was playing Life is Strange/some Tell-Tale choose your own adventure". Okay? I'm not sure how that is relevant to playing an action horror game with an almost linear plot. Do you read Game of Thrones then wish it was actually Harry Potter?

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Literally play more games and pay more attention to them.

Sorry I'm not always impressed by "because something is done differently, it must be put up on a pedestal". Sometimes "unique takes" can still be subjectively bad takes.

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Funny you say that, because nobody is putting it on a pedestal. On the other hand, plenty of people use a similar stance to say all their takes are bad and have no place as a gaming outlet. Yes, it can be bad. Yet it has some value in trying to look at a game besides the usual feature checklist and subjective "how much fun I had" reviews that come out in THOUSANDS. Hopefully it inspires someone to do a better take instead of adding to the echo chamber.

Maybe Capcom will make RE8 a full on walking simulator with branching dialogue trees, but a remake of RE2 was never going to be hugely different than RE2

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Because no remake ever was hugely different from the original game. Oh, wait.

Sorry I don't feel there is a place for these "Fuck the police! Police stations aren't safe! Racist status quo!" sensationalist takes when talking about games set in a zombie apocalypse, especially one where the first alive cop you run into is black. Who is she appealing to here?

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Sorry but

Early on, protagonists Claire and Leon hear a radio message instructing all citizens to head for the station.
That notion is wild, the police station as fortress/safe haven is laughably naive (particularly for people of color). It certainly was in the 90s as well, and really, when has policing in America ever actually been about keeping neighborhoods safe as opposed to keeping a racist status quo up and running?

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How is thinking that a lot of people wouldn't feel safe at a police station even close to what your straw-man reduction of the statement implies? Who is being sensationalist here?

Why on earth shouldn't there be a "place for this"? The point is to examine the kinds of assumptions that audiences and developers take for granted, and consider alternatives to those assumptions. RE2 is just the jumping-off point for that discussion. If you want a standard review telling you whether the game is good or bad, you can go to any other website.

"It's just a videogame" is a weird objection coming from someone spending their time posting on a videogame discussion forum. Heaven forefend one think critically about their hobbies.

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Right? I don't know why I expected better from ERA.

There is an interesting aspect to these topics where you get the sense the person took an article as having a shouting tone. The volume of their inner monologue when reading peaks and distorts.

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video games are art

unless a writer is viewing and critiquing a game in a way I don't like

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Why are y'all calling that Resident Evil 2 piece a "review", as if it's supposed to be a buyer's guide? It's an opinion piece aimed at explaining her very specific approach to the game as a real-life medic and first-time-player, explaining her highly specific feelings towards the game. She is explaining how her inherent need to help others and her experience in working the medical field is influencing her enjoyment of the game.Why...just, why could this possibly be a bad thing?

Resident Evil 2 got verypositive coverage from Waypoint, Patrick loved the game to bits if I remember right. He spoke at length about the game from the perspective of someone who knows a lot about horror and was more gameplay-focused. But that shouldn't even matter! Again: This is anti-intellectualism at it's purest. It's not that her perspective is completely unreasonable or that she is lying in her piece - it's the simply audacity of contextualising a video game in a larger, societal context and approaching it as a piece of art that every person engages with differently. The mere act of attributing feelings other than "The Shooting feels good" is deemed ridiculous and wrong.

You want video games to be taken seriously? Then let people take video games seriously and engage with them critically, for fuck's sake.

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Thank you.

I got published on Waypoint a year ago and I'm still kind of shocked that they or anyone were willing to hear my perspective. I don't think there was another big site that would have given a shot to somebody looking to write a piece on the intersection of college athletics, labor, and small-town culture, but I'm grateful that their editorial voice got to live as long as it did and that it allowed for kind of off the wall stuff to have a place in the discourse. I know not every piece was perfect but I respect so much the risks that the editorial staff took over the years. I know it's not dead per se, but it's never going to be what it was back in 2017 and 18 and I'll miss that feeling of risk-taking and freedom that I don't get from many other places.

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And your article fucking rocks, congrats.

 

[deepFlaw]

Apologies, I googled and its polygon who had scores then removed them.

I'll refer to it as an opinion piece then opposed to a traditional review.

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...for what it's worth, you'd be wrong there too. They still label their reviews as "review" as well.

 

[Nerokis]

And that is your problem and others given some of those replies to me, that you think an ordinary person reading that RE2 review/impressions and thinking some of the things I thought has some sort of nefarious motive or "hidden agenda". It really doesn't, and I can assure you others will think it's a pretty far out there piece on such a game as RE2.

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Danielle's piece was "nutty."

You're an "ordinary person."

"Others will think it's a pretty far out there piece."

God, dude. Your criticism is so corrupted by the misguided the idea that the the most easily generalizable perspective should be protected as the default, such that the validity or worthwhileness of every other perspective must be measured against it.

"I assure you the average gamer will find it jarring to read this!" isn't nearly as interesting a point as you seem to think it is.

 

[Deleted member 888]

:eyeroll:

This is how you guys sound like:
"Why are you taking games seriously"
Should RE only be talked about in regards how good/bad the gunplay and graphics are instead?


Because no b-tier horror ever had anything meaningful to say.


Literally play more games and pay more attention to them.


Funny you say that, because nobody is putting it on a pedestal. On the other hand, plenty of people use a similar stance to say all their takes are bad and have no place as a gaming outlet. Yes, it can be bad. Yet it has some value in trying to look at a game besides the usual feature checklist and subjective "how much fun I had" reviews that come out in THOUSANDS. Hopefully it inspires someone to do a better take instead of adding to the echo chamber.


Because no remake ever was hugely different from the original game. Oh, wait.

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Uh, there aren't two binary settings of "Game literally stays the same" and "Game radically changes". From the inception of RE2 it was a remake. Not a re-envisioning.

It wasn't fundamentally going to change into being a walking simulator or a game where characters in the original could be saved by the herbs and sprays you use as a player. Or one which now had a LiS like branching narrative.

That's understanding the expectations of the project announced, which is why some of the remarks raised against a remake of a classic horror game seem totally out of place.

Danielle's piece was "nutty."

You're an "ordinary person."

"Others will think it's a pretty far out there piece."

God, dude. Your criticism is so corrupted by the misguided the idea that the the most easily generalizable perspective should be protected as the default, such that the validity or worthwhileness of every other perspective must be measured against it.

"I assure you the average gamer will find it jarring to read this!" isn't nearly as interesting a point as you seem to think it is.

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Nutty is like the most vanilla word possible to describe something I thought had some far out there points.

I really don't know how my response to that RE2 piece has some of you soo worked up? I don't even think the author would care this much seeing as they probably know it's not the kind of opinion piece most RE2 fans will expect to read.

But if some of you think it's the height of intellectual critique of RE2, that's fine, that's your opinion after reading it. Mines is being left scratching my head at some of the points and what the author's expectation or projected wishes for what they could be playing are/were.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

Uh, there aren't two binary settings of "Game literally stays the same" and "Game radically changes". From the inception of RE2 it was a remake. Not a re-envisioning.

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Probably a good thing the articles on RE2 also don't have to be binary "I wish this is something else" and "I will only talk about what everybody can see it's in the game" either. Because you keep painting Danielle's piece as the former when it absolutely isn't.

 

[megalowho]

I was intrigued by the announcement, Waypoint has consistently produced good work on their terms and could use a jolt so more could discover their content, but after checking out Vice Games the staff has their work cut out for them to make their voice cut through. The podcast, YT channel and forums will probably be the best outlet for that. Here's hoping it all works out.

 

[MarcelRguez]

That's understanding the expectations of the project announced

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Once again, since you have just realized the article isn't a review but haven't realized what it actually is yet:

She was using the hot new game she was playing as a springboard to talk about a kind of game she would like to see more of.

 

[SaltyGeneralTso]

The RE2 article was a perfect example of what waypoint is/was, an excercise in allowing over qualified academics to work writing flowery, vapid editorial loosely related to whatever videogame was hot that given week. "I wish RE2 let me play as a medic instead of a soldier" is not an interesting critique or perspective, it is a random thought while playing a game stretched out into multiple paragraphs, it doesn't hold any value and it's not entertaining to read.

Waypoint's idea for interesting and original games coverage from multiple perspectives is great, I just don't think they ever got close to achieving it.

 

[Nerokis]

Nutty is like the most vanilla word possible to describe something I thought had some far out there points.

I really don't know how my response to that RE2 piece has some of you soo worked up? I don't even think the author would care this much seeing as they probably know it's not the kind of opinion piece most RE2 fans will expect to read.

But if some of you think it's the height of intellectual critique of RE2, that's fine, that's your opinion after reading it. Mines is being left scratching my head at some of the points and what the author's expectation or projected wishes for what they could be playing are.

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Haha.

No, person who has posted in this thread about as many times as anyone, no one is "soo worked up" that you dared disagree that Danielle's piece was the height of intellectual critique.

The problem isn't that you agree with this point she made or disagree with that point she made; the problem is with the framework you're maneuvering around all this with in the first place. It's dismissive of personalized experiences, gatekeep-y, ridiculously allergic to perspectives that diverge from whatever perspective you've enshrined as "ordinary," and you so happen to have communicated it in a shitty way.

It doesn't help that a lot of the backlash Waypoint has received has been problematic across numerous levels, not the least of which is this implicit assumption that games criticism should be bland as fuck and should cater to the sensibilities of ignorant dumbasses. You just happened to make a point to defend that point of view with fervor in this thread, thus why you're getting all these responses.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

The RE2 article was a perfect example of what waypoint is/was, an excercise in allowing over qualified academics to work writing flowery,

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If you go out of your way to ignore like half of their output, but ok.

 

[Deleted member 888]

Once again, since you have just realized the article isn't a review but haven't realized what it actually is yet:

She was using the hot new game she was playing as a springboard to talk about a kind of game she would like to see more of.

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Okay, I get that, someone was playing something and decided whilst playing it it's not actually the type of game they want to play/see less of.

I don't think it's controversial though to suggest that if anyone, Waypoint or not, uses a game as a platform to say they want to play something else whilst levying "unrealistic" suggestions toward said game it's going to draw confusion/disagreement.

We see plenty of opinions written on how a game could be improved/what should change and yeah, maybe sometimes even what could work good in a spin-off. Someone at some point maybe did suggest RE should do lightgun games to jump on the Time Crisis bandwagon. As I said earlier, a few of those light gun games were actually quite good. Many not so much.

But this was a remake of an original game, it was never going to have much scope to radically change, and even looking at the wide RE Universe, being a healer or doing some sort of non-lethal cleansing of a Zombie apocalypse is just not something you're going to see.

You cannot use a game as a springboard to talk about something you want, then expect people just to ignore the game you are using for your springboard to say "Yeah, those types of games you want would be cool".

Haha.

No, person who has posted in this thread about as many times as anyone, no one is "soo worked up" that you dared disagree that Danielle's piece was the height of intellectual critique.

The problem isn't that you agree with this point she made or disagree with that point she made; the problem is with the framework you're maneuvering around all this with in the first place. It's dismissive of personalized experiences, gatekeep-y, ridiculously allergic to perspectives that diverge from whatever perspective you've enshrined as "ordinary," and you so happen to have communicated it in a shitty way.

It doesn't help that a lot of the backlash Waypoint has received has been problematic across numerous levels, not the least of which is this implicit assumption that games criticism should be bland as fuck and should cater to the sensibilities of ignorant dumbasses. You just happened to make a point to defend that point of view with fervor in this thread, thus why you're getting all these responses.

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I tend to reply to people who quote me, besides those that start with "fuck off", so of course I'll respond to most.

I shared my own thoughts, I don't speak for anyone else or whatever field research you've done on problematic Waypoint backlash. In fact, all of this primarily came from me seeing another poster say they thought the RE2 piece wasn't the best of Waypoint's work and snowballed from there. Maybe some of you should go and quote other posters who didn't see eye to eye with that piece instead of just quoting me.

 

[Cordy]

I had no idea Waypoint was this divisive before this thread.

 

[LudicrousSpeed]

Waypoint removed review scores, so their opinion pieces basically became them, considering that dropped basically shortly after the review embargo ended and when other outlets were dropping "traditional" reviews.

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This is wrong.

Patrick Klepek posted something shortly after the embargo ended and in that typical review window. This piece went up a week after the release date.

 

[MarcelRguez]

Okay, I get that, someone was playing something and decided whilst playing it it's not actually the type of game they want to play/see less of.

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Honestly, how am I supposed to think you're acting in good faith here?

 

[Kinthey]

That's not how critique works. Also, every aspect of colonialism is problematic. And you should probably read the piece if you are not sure how they tackle it?

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Oh I've read the piece and still don't think that it had something all that meaningful to say. It also brings up the Trumps but that feels quite contrived. That it then uses a serious topic like that to jump into critiquing the repetitive mission design just makes it absurd to me. The piece having a critical take that includes a serious topic shouldn't automatically protect the piece from any form of critic

 

[Deleted member 888]

Honestly, how am I supposed to think you're acting in good faith here?

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By yourself and others not literally thinking everyone else on the internet is out to get you all the time. It is possible to not see eye to eye with a specific piece on a website with it not meaning any more than that.

What is not posting in good faith here exactly? Refusing to speak if you didn't agree with an opinion piece? Jesus man, just leave it. The RE2 piece was brought up before I even remembered it and linked someone else to it.

The bigger concern here is what Vice does next, given that these mergers can sometimes end badly. 1UP were killed when they were downsized/reshuffled. The big companies tend to destroy individuality.

 

[Fireblend]

The work Waypoint does is unrivaled, unique, and really, really needed. Few pieces of writing about games stay with me for as long as some of those published on Waypoint do. I wish the team the best in this new stage; they seem to be hopeful so I'll be as well, and I'll follow them regardless of the platform they choose, I just hope they can keep doing what they've been doing and getting paid decently for it for a very, very long time.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

Oh I've read the piece and still don't think that it had something all that meaningful to say. It also brings up the Trumps but that feels quite contrived. That it then uses a serious topic like that to jump into critiquing the repetitive mission design just makes it absurd to me. The piece having a critical take that includes a serious topic shouldn't automatically protect the piece from any form of critic

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Fair enough.

You cannot use a game as a springboard to talk about something you want, then expect people just to ignore the game you are using for your springboard to say "Yeah, those types of games you want would be cool".

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How dense can you be?

 

[Patrick Klepek]

One, thanks for all the kind comments, and even some of the criticisms. It's appreciated. "Waypoint" as an idea isn't going anywhere.

But I also want to address this, after jumping around this thread a bit:

I only know of Waypoint from the image of the guy covering his eyes during some partial Yakuza nudity, was hard to take them seriously after that.

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Let's reveal this for what it is: a weaponized alt-right/GamerGate meme. Its origins are me cracking a joke at the game throwing some half-naked women at me, nothing more. What it's been used for, and what its passive mention here makes clear, is a blatant, bad faith attempt to undermine my credibility. Maybe it's possible you don't know that, and I'll try to grant the benefit of the doubt. But based on past history, this usually only comes up from specific people, for specific reasons.

 

[Salarians]

I had no idea Waypoint was this divisive before this thread.

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I don't think it really is, aside from the "anti-sjw" types

 

[MarcelRguez]

It is possible to not see eye to eye with a specific piece on a website with it not meaning any more than that.

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Absolutely, but only between people who are speaking on common ground to begin with. Sentences of yours such as "You cannot use a game as a springboard to talk about something you want" are just baffling to me on a fundamental level, and comments like "levying "unrealistic" suggestions toward said game" tell me you still haven't engaged with what is being actually said in the article.

To put it short, you aren't seeing eye to eye with people because you still haven't read the article.

Jesus man, just leave it.

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No.

 

[chrominance]

Okay, I get that, someone was playing something and decided whilst playing it it's not actually the type of game they want to play/see less of.

I don't think it's controversial though to suggest that if anyone, Waypoint or not, uses a game as a platform to say they want to play something else whilst levying "unrealistic" suggestions toward said game it's going to draw confusion/disagreement.

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I don't think that's totally fair, because I actually don't think Danielle is saying "I don't like Resident Evil 2" in the piece. It may turn out that she doesn't like it after all, but that feels like a very secondary aspect of the piece if so. And there are places in the article where she says she gets sucked into the game's world (she starts totally buying into the survival game tropes of "loot everything," she says Claire is the type of bad-ass female character she loves playing).

I think her commentary is basically this: these sorts of zombie survival horror games are always about a lone survivor trying to make it in a hostile world, and willing to go to pretty much any length to do so. You can see this template all over: Days Gone is a recent example, with its main characters eschewing community in favour of self-reliance, but you can find it in a lot of zombie fiction. "Me/us versus the world" is a common perspective.

Danielle is imagining a game that doesn't start with that fundamental viewpoint, but instead has one that approaches that of a first responder: what if instead of assuming everything and everyone in the world is hostile by default, someone in a zombie apocalypse scenario focused on trying to find and save survivors, to make sure people have a secure and safe place to shelter, to act as a protector of a community or a society rather than merely of the individual? And she's right, games don't traditionally focus on that. The systems of survival horror have not evolved to take that into account. Whether the mechanics drive the worldview or vice versa isn't really discussed, but I think the point is to imagine a Resident Evil 2 that changes its basic assumptions about Leon and Claire's approach to the zombie apocalypse.

None of that implies to me the intent to review, and it doesn't seem to focus on convincing you that you should or should not play the game. Instead, it's a personal essay. I seriously don't get why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp.

 

[Deleted member 888]

Absolutely, but only between people who are speaking on common ground to begin with. Sentences of yours such as "You cannot use a game as a springboard to talk about something you want" are just baffling to me on a fundamental level, and comments like "levying "unrealistic" suggestions toward said game" tell me you still haven't engaged with what is being actually said in the article.

To put it short, you aren't seeing eye to eye with people because you still haven't read the article.


No.

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That is not my full point, at least quote me correctly

You cannot use a game as a springboard to talk about something you want, then expect people just to ignore the game you are using for your springboard to say "Yeah, those types of games you want would be cool".

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The point I tried to make there is the game you choose to use as a springboard is going to potentially impact how people react to what you go on to say. Like if I was playing Gran Turismo and I went on to say I'd really rather be playing Carmageddon (GT needs some destruction/running over NPCs), some people are going to question me using a realistic driving simulator, rather than maybe.... Burnout? Or something a bit more aligned with Carmageddon. Someone plays Burnout and writes a piece on how a modern day (good) Carmageddon sequel would be awesome and more people probably... get it?

You don't really expect to get halfway through an opinion piece on Kirby and have someone say "Wolfenstein 2 has some great gunplay that Kirby could use more of". Obviously, the point on Waypoint isn't that far-gone, but I think I've fairly reasonably highlighted why a remake of an existing game has incredibly blinkered direction from the get go. It's not a reinvisioning, it's a remake, so I just don't personally think it's the best title to have used for examples of more placid/healer friendly zombie games.

When I say leave it, I mean I am struggling to see how my thoughts are that wild or anything so instead of continuing to divert the topic away from news on how Waypoint will work under Vice I'm getting to a point where I'll probably stop responding to people quoting me.

 

[Nerokis]

Let's reveal this for what it is: a weaponized alt-right/GamerGate meme. Its origins are me cracking a joke at the game throwing some half-naked women at me, nothing more. What it's been used for, and what its passive mention here makes clear, is a blatant, bad faith attempt to undermine my credibility. Maybe it's possible you don't know that, and I'll try to grant the benefit of the doubt. But based on past history, this usually only comes up from specific people, for specific reasons.

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I figured that was the case.

I don't think it really is, aside from the "anti-sjw" types

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Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who aren't actively "anti-SJW" and yet find it easy to dismiss the sort of critical posture Waypoint tends to take toward games. You know, similar to the people who agree GG was/is terrible but damn they can't help but find Anita Sarkeesian kinda annoying and also what's up with Resetera saying Persona 5 is homophobic etc. etc. etc.

 

[Deleted member 5621]

A better question is: how people feel about Danielle's piece on Into the Breach, if the RE2 one is so problematic?

 

[warp_]

Let's reveal this for what it is: a weaponized alt-right/GamerGate meme. Its origins are me cracking a joke at the game throwing some half-naked women at me, nothing more. What it's been used for, and what its passive mention here makes clear, is a blatant, bad faith attempt to undermine my credibility. Maybe it's possible you don't know that, and I'll try to grant the benefit of the doubt. But based on past history, this usually only comes up from specific people, for specific reasons.

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Your own postings do enough to undermine your credibility, memes aren't needed to assist.
[mod edit: off-topic content removed]
Feel free to brush these under the rug with some edgelord "just a joke" excuse. It's pretty obvious they show the kind of person you really are.

 

[Books]

A better question is: how people feel about Danielle's piece on Into the Breach, if the RE2 one is so problematic?

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Just read it. I'm neither here nor there on that blog post.

 

[Muffuletta]

One, thanks for all the kind comments, and even some of the criticisms. It's appreciated. "Waypoint" as an idea isn't going anywhere.

But I also want to address this, after jumping around this thread a bit:



Let's reveal this for what it is: a weaponized alt-right/GamerGate meme. Its origins are me cracking a joke at the game throwing some half-naked women at me, nothing more. What it's been used for, and what its passive mention here makes clear, is a blatant, bad faith attempt to undermine my credibility. Maybe it's possible you don't know that, and I'll try to grant the benefit of the doubt. But based on past history, this usually only comes up from specific people, for specific reasons.

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Is this also a weaponized GamerGate meme?

mod edit: image removed

 

[MarcelRguez]

The point I tried to make there is the game you choose to use as a springboard is going to potentially impact how people react to what you go on to say. Like if I was playing Gran Turismo and I went on to say I'd really rather be playing Carmageddon (GT needs some destruction/running over NPCs), some people are going to question me using a realistic driving simulator, rather than maybe.... Burnout? Or something a bit more aligned with Carmageddon. Someone plays Burnout and writes a piece on how a modern day (good) Carmageddon sequel would be awesome and more people probably... get it?

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The piece exists because the alternative she's looking for doesn't really exist, so the comparisons thrown around in this paragraph don't make much sense.

You don't really expect to get halfway through an opinion piece on Kirby and have someone say "Wolfenstein 2 has some great gunplay that Kirby could use more of". Obviously, the point on Waypoint isn't that far-gone, but I think I've fairly reasonably highlighted why a remake of an existing game has incredibly blinkered direction from the get go. It's not a reinvisioning, it's a remake, so I just don't personally think it's the best title to have used for examples of more placid/healer friendly zombie games.

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And yet you still decided to use it as a comparison regardless. Nice rhetoric.

That aside, RE2 is not an "example", it's why the piece exists in the first place. If she were writing about a different game, her thoughts would be different. These two elements are intrinsically linked, you can't separate one from the other. If she hadn't played RE2, these thought wouldn't have materialized in the form they have. Cause-effect, get it?

When I say leave it, I mean I am struggling to see how my thoughts are that wild or anything so instead of continuing to divert the topic away from news on how Waypoint will work under Vice I'm getting to a point where I'll probably stop responding to people quoting me.

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They aren't wild or controversial, you just keep going on irrelevant tangents about the function the piece serves or its framing instead of engaging with what's being said in it.

 

[TheMrPliskin]

Patrick summoning all the burner accounts.

 

[Consequence]

Those are DEFINITELY not the same person. Nope.