Vice.com/Gaming Becomes Waypoint, Employs Danielle Riendeau and Rob Zacny

[miffy495]

So YOU'RE the one who keeps buying them URLs...

[James]

Haha, no, I only got that one domain, which Austin hasn't yet managed to actually read out properly on the podcast, but whatever. I'm not responsible for bazinga.zone, or new.donk.city. I wish I'd had the inspiration to get the latter.

 

I did set up a handful of other redirects on that one domain, though. For example, http://austinwalkergames.games/myspace.

[dibs]

video jaaaaaames

[James]

Recognition! I'll have to check out the archive of the stream he mentioned. 

[clyde]

There doesn't seem to be an Waypoint forum, so I guess this is the place to talk about it here?

I enjoyed episode 39 about We Are Chicago. I haven't played the game, but the discussion brings up a lot of interesting subjects for me. I was especially intrigued by Austin's frustration with the role of the mother as a moral authority. Again, I haven't played the game, but I think that the way a piece of media can put a spotlight on a character's monologue is an interesting subject when the character portrays an unrealistic (even damaging) view that is still true to that character. Are they a voice for the enlightened author? Or are they an honest depiction of that character's sensibility. It's an interesting debate that I'd like to see happen.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I have a stub of a response there which is that I think it's hard to claim they're not a voice for an enlightened author when they're the singular moral authority. Showing individual characters' moral views to contrast and compare them is a fine goal if you have more than one to make it abundantly clear that there's non canonical worldview you're putting forward. But if you just show one angle, it gets taken as the angle.

[clyde]

14 hours ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

I have a stub of a response there which is that I think it's hard to claim they're not a voice for an enlightened author when they're the singular moral authority. Showing individual characters' moral views to contrast and compare them is a fine goal if you have more than one to make it abundantly clear that there's non canonical worldview you're putting forward. But if you just show one angle, it gets taken as the angle.

 

Thanks for the stub. This is a good point. 

This has really gotten me thinking about how ideas of morality are presented by characters. Now I'm remembering how much I enjoyed the moralizing characters of Dragon Age:Origins. I like the idea of having numerous well-realized characters with passionate views based on their own fictional experiences that they express vocally and with actions.

[YoThatLimp]

As someone from the southside of Chicago, I'd be curious on checking the game out - even if it's a kind of flawed morality tale. 

[clyde]

I find it challenging to balance between my desires to have depictions of these subjects in fiction so that folks can have personal responses, and my concerns that the fictional representations will affirm oppressive norms.

 

Based on Patrick and Austin's description of the game and the role of the mother, I think there maybe more value in depicting a flawed ideology in the matriarchal authority (especially if we are supposed to share the perspective of the protagonist) rather than use her representation as a microphone for academic solutions to social problems.

 

I'd be really interested to see how it was received if the academic perspective was presented in the game by another character who the protagonist sees as irrelevant.

[Badfinger]

My interpretation of their annoyance was that you experience this whole series of vignettes and scenes, and then the mother stands up at the end and moralizes like a 60 year old whose kids are out of the house, with basically no connection to anything else depicted. It was not that she was used as a mouthpiece, but literally the words she said.

[clyde]

5 hours ago, Badfinger said:

My interpretation of their annoyance was that you experience this whole series of vignettes and scenes, and then the mother stands up at the end and moralizes like a 60 year old whose kids are out of the house, with basically no connection to anything else depicted. It was not that she was used as a mouthpiece, but literally the words she said.

 

What I'm suggesting is that if she moralized in the way Austin was suggesting would be better, then the game-makers may be in danger of using her as a mouthpiece.

The moral perspective that she expresses (as it was explained on the podcast) doesn't seem unlikely to me for that character. Again, I haven't played the game.

[Jake]

https://mobile.twitter.com/austin_walker/status/838584743520317441

[Dewar]

For those people who might be twitter blocked at work, Rob Zacny is joining Waypoint as a senior editor starting today.

[Dewar]

I've seem some folks from around here already, but I thought I'd mention that Waypoint has forums now!

 

https://forum.waypoint.vice.com/

[clyde]

The moderation on their forum seems constraining.

-Can't post to a topic that hasn't been posted in for three weeks.

-Thread locked because there is already a thread for it.

-Speculation on hires " speculative threads made about potential hires often strip real human beings of their agency. "

-This game was made by members of 4chan and has problematic content.

 

Like. I mean, they can do what they want as it is their spot on the internet, but their interference in discussion seems vexatious and odd to me.

[Twig]

I actually agree, for the most part. It'd make more sense if the community was as big as, say, GAF, but it's still fairly small. The three week thing especially made me gawk when I saw it.

 

C'est la vie.

[chummer]

As a wannabe necromancer, I don't like that I can't resurrect dead threads, but I'm fine with everything else. Making threads about specific people feels weird to me and I say this as someone who participated in the Dan from GB thread here (the name hasn't aged well).

 

I also really love the software they're using to run their boards.

[Twig]

Navigating the various sub forums is a pain in the ass on those forums. I gave up trying and now suffer all the dumb jokes n dokes threads that I can't figure out how to filter out of the front page feed.

 

Which I guess is my way of saying I hate the layout.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I just mute all the tags I don't care about. I forget where you can do it, but it's somewhere in your profile or account settings. With stuff muted, just seeing the full stream of topics is pretty manageable for me. 

 

The moderation just makes sense to me as easier to do from the start, rather than trying to build it up as the forum grows. It's also better to be proactive than to have shitty discussions blowing up because you thought maybe something would work out alright.

 

They seem to have a ban on just dropping in a link to a video or article and asking 'what do you think?' because it was just an avenue to dump in controversial (problematic) arguments where the original poster could just bounce. I can see why the rule would seem weird, but I'd rather have it than the alternative. Same about not making threads to speculate on real people's lives.

[Twig]

Oh hey thanks for pointing out the filter. I looked again, and this time I found it.

 

Go to the category in question and in the upper right there's a circle. Click that and mute the category!

 

I'll just say that I disagree very much with the rest of your post (except the speculative hire thread, because that does rub me weird) because, thus far, it just seems to block out interesting (and more importantly for me, helpful) discussion. It makes the forums a place where everyone's just going to agree on everything. There's a limit to what is acceptable, and it's not a hard line, as no two people would agree on a hard line. But they're taking a hard line stance anyway. And that's fine if that's what they want. Arguably, it's better to be super safe than sorry. But it also just means I now know the place as somewhere I won't have serious conversation. Others clearly are, and that's fine. I'll stick to stupid games topics I guess.

 

Also I'm aware that a large (probably the largest) point in hard-line stance's favor is making A Safe Space. And I can't disagree with that at all.

[Dewar]

As an occasional participant on the fan discord, I can say that there are definitely people who see Waypoint as a target and are posting some crappy stuff there, and I'd imagine that happens even more on the forums, so I'm in favor of stiffer moderation. That being said, I was a member of a splinter forum from the Penny Arcade forums that left because of changes in moderation rules, so I personally enjoy forums that are a bit less stringent on the technicial requirements of thread posting. In the end, I've been mostly a viewer and not too much a participant over there because I'm nervous I'm going to post badly.

[clyde]

I've kinda just decided that I won't let my fear of rejection keep me from posting things I want to. 

[Twig]

You can be strict about assholes without closing threads that have a remote chance of ending up bad!

 

Some threads remain open despite that potential for problems, too, so it's not even consistent.

[juv3nal]

10 minutes ago, Twig said:

You can be strict about assholes without closing threads that have a remote chance of ending up bad!

 

At a certain point it just becomes a question of how many eyeballs the mod team has available to keep an eye on how many potentially contentious threads. IMO it's a valid choice to close a thread before something bad gets posted if the mod team feels the topic is more likely than others to result in bad behavior.

 

As for inconsistency, maybe their idea of where that "potential for badness" threshold is changes over time or depending who's on duty. It's hard to imagine a mod policy that doesn't occasionally come down to individuals making judgement calls that even the other mods won't necessarily agree with 100% of the time, moreso with a site that's still relatively new-ish and figuring stuff out.

[Twig]

Any choice they make is valid. Just makes the forums less interesting to me when discussion is stifled.