I used to associate a lot with Max Temkin—panels, podcasts, etc.—and at one point rented office at the CAH co-work space. Though I privately started cutting ties years ago, the stories of abuse and mistreatment from #CAHIsOver forced me to face my own longstanding complicity.
I owe people a more public reckoning. As I’ve sat with it, I found myself drawn to a passage written by Anita Sarkeesian on the subject:
That is not an excuse, but an attempt at an explanation. To my colleagues, if you looked at me and thought it gave you permission: I’m sorry. To my readers, I apologize for any cover that my silence provided or any sense claims against abusers shouldn't be trusted or acted on.
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I'm not sure where to begin, except to say, with equal parts fury and sadness, that Waypoint is over. The team, myself included, have been terminated by VICE, and our final day running the website, the podcasts, and streams, will come to an end on June 2nd.
I have never been more proud to have been associated with a website, or a group of people, than I have since @austin_walker called me up so many years ago, and asked if I'd start this project, what we would eventually call Waypoint, with him. It's my proudest achievement.
Waypoint should have ended a long time ago. We've always been an extremely weird website—our podcast sign off is "fuck captilaism, go home," after all—but we survived six long years. That's a goddamn eternity in media. We tried to hold on as long as we could.
Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a frustrating collection of great games. Super Mario All-Stars was a historical document, a tribute to Nintendo’s history and creative achievement in 2D. This, on the other hand, is some games bundled together. vice.com/en_us/article/…
Super Mario 64, a towering achievement in game design, shows its age here. It’s no longer fun to watch the camera get stuck because Nintendo is still imaging there are yellow C-buttons. It demands a full update, and that’s not present here. It’s hard to play.
Weirdly, a company like Activision has shown the path forward in balancing nostalgia with modernization. See: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Super Mario 64 deserves the…Activision treatment? 2020 is strange.
Before I link to my latest story, I want you to tell me what you see in this image. Take a good look.
OK, what if I zoom in?
One month after a photo of a bare ass was snuck into Halo 2 on PC, not long after the infamous Hot Coffee incident, fans thought they saw a Halo 3 trailer with a big dick. It caused a 24-hour panic at Bungie. Here is the story of what happened: vice.com/en_us/article/…
I do not think Epic’s timing on this is accidental. Apple is facing legitimate antitrust scrutiny on the App Store, and tech in general is under threat of regulation from both political parties. vice.com/en_us/article/…
Apple has removed Fortnite from the App Store, per reports and verified by my own search. It remains on Google Play. Neither Apple nor Google have yet to comment.
Apple claims it will not give Epic and Fortnite a “special arrangement” and has removed Fortnite until it becomes compliant with App Store policies. Epic has not yet responded. vice.com/en_us/article/…
PR calling to talk about a game review after it's published isn't exclusive to The Last of Us 2, but it's definitely unusual and not common. polygon.com/2020/6/30/2130…
Back during the 1UP/EGM days, it *was* common for PR to learn about a review score from the print mag, which would later be published on 1UP, ahead of time, and throw a fuss (or threaten to pull ads). I tried to write about a specific instance and my story was killed internally.
I would share specifics but literally the story was more than a decade ago, so it's mostly that I've forgotten.
I’ve had a lot of media jobs, so my memory is fuzzy on the older salaries, but this is my best guess:
1UP: 45k
MTV: 50k (“Permalancer”)
G4: 55k
EGM: 72k
Giant Bomb: 65k (no raise over 4 years, iirc)
Kotaku: 77k
Waypoint: 90k
Today: $100k, thanks to yearly union pay raises.
The secret reason I left so many jobs and why it became a running joke: the only way I could get paid more was to get an offer letter. It wasn’t until I was in a union at Gawker/VICE that I received regular raises.
If you work in media, or want to work in media, and ever need help with salary negotiations or want to talk through what you should be we worth, always know my door is open.