Endpoint

Well...it looks like Waypoint is soon to be no more, and while I can't say I'm especially upset by the demise of that website, I'm not exactly happy about it either.  For me, Waypoint was very hit or miss.  If they talked about films, books, or games it was enjoyable.  If they talked about pretty much anything else it wasn't.  Even so, I was fond of the crew - Rob, Ren, Cado and Patrick.  They had good chemistry.  It's weirdly paradoxical that as the industry grows, employing people to cover it becomes less and less viable.  Certainly, corporations have shown that they lack flexibility and even the biggest such as IGN have to let most titles slip past.  In turn, this means niche streamers and Youtube channels are the only places that pay all but the biggest games any heed.  

There's an old song that goes "Video killed the radio star."  Maybe there needs to be a new song that goes "Internet killed the journalist."  I'm not sure games journalism ever really existed.  There's an argument to made that it was always just a mix of amatures and enthusiast press.  If there ever was a game journalist it would have to be Jason Schreier.  Incidentally, if ever there was a games newscaster it would have to be Yong Yea.  Regardless of all that, there's an unfortunate trend in the industry to favor the cult-of-personality approach.  More specifically, people who are often sustained by Patreon and labeled with nauseating terms like "influencer" or "content creator".  That's not to imply these people are universally bad, it's just there's a sever lack of quality control going on.  Trying to filter through all the low-effort garbage in order to find something worth while is a tedious process to put it lightly.  Case-in-point, I've been browsing various gaming podcasts for interesting topics or themes.  So far all of the ones I've bothered listening to though have suffered from abysmal audio for one or more of the people speaking.  I guess if all you need is something to throw on in the background while you do other stuff it's fine, but aside from a handful of underrated Youtube channels I'm subscribed to (that produce a slow drip-feed of quality content) it feels like there's a whole lot of wasted bandwidth out there - doubly so when everyone is uploading their playthrough of whatever the hot new release of the month is.  At least guys like CJUGames and Splattercat dedicate their time to giving indie titles a moment in the spotlight.  As for Waypoint...I hope the crew find new opportunities worthy of their talents.  Beyond that, I don't have a whole lot else to say about them.