Waypoint Radio

​The concept of game cloning is about as old as games themselves, but there's new, tricky territory to cover here in 2018. Inspired by a few tweets and a GI.biz article profiling Voodoo—the mobile publisher behind Hole.io, a game that sure takes "inspiration" from indie darling Donut County—we discussed the situation this week on Waypoint Radio. Join Patrick, Natalie, Rob, and Danielle as they loo...

The Waypoint gang has to work through their complicated feelings about the Slate Political Gabfest and, in particular, the worldview they bring to their work as expressed by their recent episodes on the passing of George H.W. Bush and the assault allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Is there a point where centrist punditry literally becomes one with parodies about it? Is...

December is a big month for a lot of reasons. It’s only a few weeks until we get a few days off, and reset for the new year. The Chicago Bears are playing meaningful football for the first time in nearly a decade. And we’re also feverishly trying to play as many video games as possible, so we can figure out what our game of the year lists are. The problem? A bunch of last-minute games we didn't ex...

On Monday we made our predictions: At this year's Game Awards, we'd finally see the new Avengers game, we'd get a 15-30 second trailer for a new Dragon Age game with Solas voice over, and we'd probably be more bored than entertained by the proceedings. Were we right? Well... Not exactly, yup, and, shockingly, not at all, in that order. Austin, Natalie, Rob, and Patrick talk through the highlights...

On a slightly out-of-control episode of Waypoints, Rob has been watching ​Ordeal by Innocence​ ​and enjoying a fresh take on a classic mystery genre: Which posh asshole is murdering other rich dirtbags on an English country estate? Meanwhile, Patrick is working through his feelings about a new parenting trend: Parents who eat lunch at school​ with their kids. And finally, Austin has everyone liste...

As the days pass on and the weather gets colder (then warmer, then colder again), we're finally leaving beyond the rush of big AAA fall games. Sure, we still found time to chat about new releases like ​Just Cause 4​, ​BattleTech: Flashpoint​, and ​(more) ​Darksiders 3​, but under this bright December sun, our focus has shifted: Today, we talk about video game industry news and rumors. Will we see...

Join Danielle as she interviews Ark from New York Excelsior, our local Overwatch League team! NYXL is in town this weekend to meet fans and play a few exhibition games, and ArK stopped by Lobby 1 to chat about his experiences visiting NYC, his past in Nursing, and how that ties in to being a Mercy main. You can find ArK @Arkyjun on twitter, and the rest of the New York Excelsior team @NYXL . Hoste...

Content warning: discussion of bodies (especially women's bodies) and ideal beauty, and references to stalking and sexual assault in 80s movies. When you look at Soulcalibur's Ivy Valentine, plenty of things may come to mind. She's a tall, dominating (in many senses) fighting game character with an exaggerated pin-up figure and a whip, and she's the subject of Kotaku editor Maddy Myers evolving fe...

This week, Austin introduces the gang to ​Evangelion​ with the first two episodes, and places the series' in the broader context of mecha anime the preceded it. Why is ​Evangelion ​so much more explicitly horrifying than most Gundam shows, despite sharing their anti-war politics? And how about that penguin, huh? Danielle has also been watching SB Nation's video series on the history of MMA, "​ Fig...

The First Purge is about the first purge, but it’s not actually the first Purge movie. It’s the fourth Purge movie, but set during the first purge in the Purge universe. Still following? No matter, Be Good and Rewatch It is here to help. Writer/director James DeMonaco, who helmed the past three movies, only worked on the script for The First Purge, with Gerard McMurray (Burning Sands) stepping in—...

CW: Discussion of Self Harm, Homophobia, and Transphobia during discussion of "The Missing" at 57-58 minutes in, to around 1:18:00 (time varies with ads, When you hear Patrick start talking about staying home instead of going out bowling you can skip 22 minutes and you will skip this entire section) It was a long weekend in the US, so the Waypoint Crew has come back with plenty of games to chew on...

This week's Waypoints has us returning to horror from a new angle. First, we consider the domestic horror of ​Channel Zero: The Dream Door ​and what it has to say about the baggage we all carry, and how the past's survival tactics can become deadly as they follow us through life. Then we take a look at ​The Ballad of Black Tom ​by Victor LaValle, which reimagines a famously bigoted Lovecraft story...

In this bonus episode Austin Walker interviews Ben Makuch, host of Motherboard's new podcast "Cyber", about cyber security, why we always seem caught off guard by each new cyber threat, and what responsibilities large companies like Facebook have in keeping people safe on the internet, followed by the first full episode of "Cyber." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What, if anything, does a sequel owe its predecessors? While didn't realize it at the time, that's the question we chewed on during this nearly two-hour long episode of Waypoint Radio. Some games, like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate​, try to satisfy long time fan and newcomer alike. Others, like ​Fallout 76​, eject much of what made the series what it was in favor of new experimentation. Which one of...

​This week's Waypoint Radio is about the anxieties surrounding commercial art and the way they can often overshadow art's cultural value, and how the latter often has more to do with personal meaning and artistic goals than performance in "the marketplace". Our first point of entry to this topic comes via an article by Liz Ryerson, over at the New and Improved Deorbital, called "There Are Not 'Too...

For this week, we have an unusually music-centered episode as the gang welcomes Noisey's Colin Joyce to talk about Lil Peep's posthumous Come Over When You're Sober, Pt. 2. What does it imply about the what Peep's creative direction might have been, and do the circumstances, assumptions, and compromises around its production complicate its place in Peep's body of work? And then Rob has been listen...

Most horror franchises don’t survive the transition to a sequel, let alone a third movie. We were pleasantly surprised by the action-y, Punisher-esque turn of The Purge: Anarchy, but there were enough red flags to have us deeply concerned about where The Purge would go with its third entry, Election Year, a movie centered around protecting a bizarre Hillary Clinton stand-in, who promises to save t...

The holidays are upon us, which means new video games are dropping fast and furious. That makes it the perfect time to spend a long time talking about...Vampyr? Rob spent the weekend with one of Patrick's favorites from earlier this year, much to his delight. In an episode that was supposed to be "short," Rob and Patrick join Austin to spend nearly two hours also discussing Tetris Effect, how ever...

​With the 200th episode of Waypoint Radio behind us, we turn back to our roots: The Question Bucket. Join Austin, Rob, Natalie, and Patrick as they answer your questions about all of the most important topics: Being disappointed by your favorite series. How to grit your teeth and send your creative work into the uncaring void of the internet. Peanut Butter. We promised you that Sim City article fr...

This week, Rob has convinced Austin to watch one of his favorite screwball comedies, ​My Man Godfrey​. This may been a poor choice! (Or the best choice - Cado) ​But the main focus in this episode is politics! You want election takes? We got 'em! But first, we need to explore some of the context and history of this political moment by taking a look at McKay Coppins' profile of Newt Gingrich and the...

Episode 200 of Waypoint Radio is here! And we worked hard to ensure that it is the quintessential episode. No special guests or new segments or live bands, no, this puppy is stuffed to the brim with the games we've been playing. Austin and Rob have both Red Dead Redemption 2 updates and a sort of Subterfuge post-mortem. Danielle has further thoughts on Call of Cthulhu and a very fun, very 90s-tast...

Content warning for discussion of racism in horror games and movies, and a mention of rape in horror movies at 1:10:00-1:11:00. H.P. Lovecraft, the author so well-known for his works of horror, his writings on monsters and madness and cosmic horror, was a radically, horrifically racist person, even for his time. So, how do we deal with that, when his influence is all over the horror genre, indirec...

​In the second (and final) part of our Red Dead Redemption playthrough for Waypoint 101, we—ugh—survive the extremely long Mexico section of the game, and revisit the still-memorable finale and epilogue. Red Dead Redemption is a game that's aged weirdly in the eight years since its release, as Austin, Patrick, Natalie, and Rob discover over the nearly two hours spent picking apart the game's concl...

We have a monster-sized episode this week, as we've all been extremely on our bullshit. Rob was stunned by Jez Butterworth's  The Ferryman , a powerful family tragedy set in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. Patrick's troubled by the swiftly evolving dystopia typified by t his Planet Money episode on China's experiment  in giving citizens "social credit scores". Danielle has been thinking a...

This week on Waypoint Radio: Austin and Rob are still living Subterfuge, Danielle is getting in to the Halloween spirit with some spooky indie horror games, and just about everyone is finally playing Red Dead Redemption 2. The team then dips into the question bucket to discuss the impulse to monetize or professionalize our hobbies, Danielle and Patrick make a quick and dirty list of their top 5 pl...