Yo this for real. Vice is known as the company that does shit on acid and went to north korea that one time for that shitty video but everyone forgets that the company has a history of bad PR and management issues.
tbh I see waypoint moving closer to kotaku’s model. A really strong on-staff editorial stable and EIC, but sometimes you look at that sidebar of Kotaku and just go “what even is this headline.” At least they still have their name.
EDIT: Also I cosign Heterotopias and would also recommend CapsuleCrit for some good anti-colonial games writing
I suppose I saw this coming, Waypoint, as it was, always seemed to be operating on borrowed time and I feel like Vice has been scrambling to stay profitable for a while now (Did anybody else here ever read that profile on Shane Smith? Woooof).
I guess as long as the voice remains distinct and the forums are intact, I can deal with this
I mean I’ve spent the past year or more being surprised that Waypoint wasn’t being run as a gaming/culture vertical on the main website, because it’s cross-splices are big drivers of traffic. The pseudo-separation always struck me as kind of a surprising move.
Being run as a vertical doesn’t mean the death of editorial independence! Kotaku has been a Gawker vertical since it’s founding in 2004 and has a very different voice from Deadspin, a Gawker vertical created in 2005 and it wasn’t until I posted this sentence that I realized Kotaku was older than Deadspin
I think it is weird that they aren’t keeping at least some of the branding, but who knows what’ll happen with that.
But like it’s always been that way? Even when they had their own website, waypoint still operated out of Vice HQ? Like I don’t see anything changing, other than it becoming even more apparent that this is a vice op.
really, my biggest concern is that if they fuck up the discourse.zone redirect I will never be able to find the forums again because that is the Canonical URL for the forums and I don’t care what anybody says
Looking around at different sites/sections/twitter accounts, where everything is going to land in terms of branding seems pretty unclear to me right now.
I really hope the Waypoint name isn’t going away completely, it always felt perfect to me.
confused by why waypoint is completely losing that excellent name in their branding and site representation, when noisey, motherboard, and munchies have seemed to keep theirs. Everyone got dragged in to the same “one vice” logo design and website, but at least there is some identity still showing on some of them. Why not waypoint?
Yeah Vice Games Radio (or Vice Gaming’s New Podcast) does not have anywhere near the same ring as Waypoint. Tbh I have zero idea how any of this #branding stuff works so who’s to say…
Sidenote: I don’t think I’ve ever more anticipated a podcast episode than today’s upcoming WP Radio
My two cents: I think this is quite clearly a terrible move for Waypoint, which has a VERY distinct voice and identity, but a move that obviously no one at Waypoint could stop. GOD I hope that if this broader Vice strategy fails (which it will, clearly, I mean who is the genius who came up with this???) the forums will somehow stay up or we all decide to start something new.
In terms of my personal interaction with the site, I am really happy that the forums and discord are staying as they are, that is literally the only gaming community I am connected to these days because, let’s face it, it’s the best one, and all credit goes to the Waypoint team and mods for creating it from the ground up.
On the positive side, it would be very interesting to see what sort of things other people and freelancers may write now within this new structure, maybe we’ll find some cool new voices?
It is Vice though… So a lot of the new posts under Vice/gaming are probably going to be… not ideal. Obviously I don’t come to Waypoint for News, Reviews and “check out this one weird thing this person posted on twitter haha weird right” posts, I come because I am interested in what specifically the team has to say about things because they are all intelligent people with active politics that I identify with. I think I might have visited motherboard a few times over the last year… maybe the main site, like once? Ugh.
I guess on another plus side we could see Austin write about music or Patrick about movies or Danielle about UFC etc.?
Anyway this sucks but I don’t think the vast majority of the audience is going away because of this.
It’s curious that despite the URL change, Motherboard and Noisey are keeping their branding. (Motherboard Tech by Vice, Noisey Music by Vice) but Waypoint’s page within vice.com just says “Games”.
to the people saying “it doesn’t seem like much is changing” i refer you back to this post. in combination with the rebranding of several vice sites, it feels very much like they want a bit of a tighter grip on the way things are run across their network, or at the very least the threat of it.
i could be wrong! but i also don’t know why else they would do this
I’ve been rewriting paragraphs for a while now but basically:
This change feels incredibly backwards for so many reasons.
Best wishes for the staff as they adjust to the changes.
I’m really happy this community is staying the same because honestly as much as I read, watch, and listen to Waypoint (uh, Vice games) stuff, my favorite thing to come from Waypoint was this community.
I just saw Diana Tourjée post about that on twitter, that’s super unfortunate as well. Broadly also seemed to have it’s own strong voice like Waypoint.
damn this kinda blows. I hope the name waypoint lives on in at least the podcast name or something but I’m not gonna hold my breath on that one.
I wish for the best for the crew and the site’s voice staying the same but I’m not gonna lie and say this isn’t kind of a puzzling decision by vice corporate.
It’s such a bad rebrand! “Come to vice identity, the part of the site where it isn’t about men or the straights! You know, identity politics! And then drink bleach!”
