I actually don't think that for Patrick and Austin (or Danielle for that matter) it's as much a political thing as much as hitting a point in their career thing. Patrick has always been like this in one way or another, he's just now playing with social studies warrior and family notions for the first time and it's blatant.
Rufus made a good point that I sorta want to touch on:
Also, Austin actually can talk about mechanics, from what I remember of his input on Giantbomb. He's not like the typical English-degree-having reviewers who focus on story and themes.
This also meant Giant Bomb wasn't the right place for him, as Brad regularly proves any time he tries to talk about a video game. Where Austin has faltered is that he hasn't made Waypoint this place as editor-in-chief. I think it would have more cachet to become a critical place in general and do away with daily clickbait and any other kind of regular coverage that one can get from literally anywhere else. Talking about how you want Resident Evil 2 to be a completely different game is a better critique when your site hasn't been covering it normally for a year. I don't take you seriously when you whine about Overwatch skins when every other blog post you make is literally scraping r/pcgaming or whatever. It's a completely confused mashup that is actually hindering the writers from knowing what they actually want to write about. (Waypoint is not alone in this, nearly every "major" site has this same problem except GI and GB, both of which deal with the limits of human resource allocation in unique and different ways that become the
why of what they do.)
The latest according to VICE Games, I have taken the liberty to underline the only non-blogpost/podcast entries of a couple paragraphs linking you to elsewhere, and also bolded my favorite:
Why We Still Need a Women-Only 'Counter-Strike' Tournament
This week DreamHack announced a $100,000 prize pool for its women’s CS:GO event.
Stop Turning Overwatch Characters Into Cops
A new skin for Brigitte celebrates police militarization.
Why 'Game of Thrones' Lost Its Magic
Where will all the clicks go now that it's over?
This New Gaming Handheld Has a Crank (!!) And Looks Cool as Hell
Panic, the company who funded 'Firewatch,' has spent the last 20 years making Mac software. Now, they're doing something different.
PSA: 'The Sims 4' Is Free Right Now
You can download the game for free until May 28 and keep playing it forever.
Valve Is Creating Its Own Version of 'Dota Auto Chess,' a Mod of 'Dota 2'
'Dota Auto Chess' is being forked into two commercial versions of a mod of a game which is itself a commercial version of a mod.
This 'Fortnite' Pro's Lawsuit Could Change How Streamers Do Business
Turnery ‘Tfue’ Tenney is suing FaZe Clan for allegedly acting against his interests.
'Mordhau' Convinced Me I'd Definitely Die In a Medieval Battle
The graveyards are full of middling swordsmen, and now you can be one of them!
Sony Shows Off 'Ultra High Speed' Loading Times for Next PlayStation
During a demo, Sony’s next-generation console was able to load Marvel’s Spider-Man nearly ten times faster than the PlayStation 4 Pro.
Newly Surfaced Arcade Documents from the 1970s Predicted a Wild Future for Video Games
Atari executives thought we'd replace roller coasters with arcade machines.
What to Make of Microsoft and Sony's Surprising New Partnership
We also talk rogue A.I. and Chinese dynasties on this week's episode.
Waypoint Radio Wants a Better Kind of Dystopia
Starting with the eradication of any future Mario Maker video games.
‘Project Hospital’ is A Great Way to Understand Our Broken Healthcare System
My father has run emergency rooms for years, but I didn't fully understand his job until we played a game together.
From ‘Too Online’ to Alt-Right and Back Again
We also talk 'Jason X' and how books might actually be bad for learning.
'Totally Accurate Battle Simulator' Captures the Goofy Mayhem of Mass Violence
Nobody knows anything and nobody is in control.
How 'Homestuck' Defined What It Means to Be a Fan Online
After 10 years, Homestuck's epilogue leaves its fate in the hands of its fans.
We Need to Talk About 'Final Fantasy VII' And Spoilers
A whole generation of players didn't experience [blank]. Are we allowed to talk about [blank]?
'Totally Accurate Battle Simulator' Captures the Goofy Mayhem of Mass Violence
Nobody knows anything and nobody is in control.
why books don't work
https://andymatuschak.org/books/Why books don’t work
Books are easy to take for granted. Not any specific book, I mean: the form of a book. Paper or pixels—it hardly matters. Words in lines on pages in chapters. And at least for non-fiction books, one implied assumption at the foundation: people absorb knowledge by reading sentences. This last idea so invisibly defines the medium that it’s hard not to take for granted, which is a shame because, as we’ll see, it’s quite mistaken.
Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel; etc. Have you ever had a book like this—one you’d read—come up in conversation, only to discover that you’d absorbed what amounts to a few sentences? I’ll be honest: it happens to me regularly. Often things go well at first. I’ll feel I can sketch the basic claims, paint the surface; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details. But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment.
Unfortunately, these tactics don’t come easily. Readers must learn specific reflective strategies. “What questions should I be asking? How should I summarize what I’m reading?” Readers must run their own feedback loops. “Did I understand that? Should I re-read it? Consult another text?” Readers must understand their own cognition. “What does it feel like to understand something? Where are my blind spots?”
These skills fall into a bucket which learning science calls “metacognition.” The experimental evidence suggests that it’s challenging to learn these types of skills, and that many adults lack them. Worse, even if readers know how to do all these things, the process is quite taxing.
How might we make books actually work reliably? At this point, the slope before us might feel awfully steep. Some early footholds might be visible—a few possible improvements to books, or tools one might make to assist readers—but it’s not at all clear how to reach the summit. In the face of such a puzzle, it’s worth asking: are we climbing the right hill? Why are we climbing this particular hill at all?
I argued earlier that books, as a medium, weren’t built around any explicit model of how people learn. It’s possible that, in spite of this “original sin,” iterative improvements to the form, along with new tools to support readers, can make books much more reliable. But it’s also possible that we’ll never discover the insights we need while tethered to the patterns of thought implicit in this medium.
Instead, I propose: we don’t necessarily have to make books work. We can make new forms instead.
