James Margaris

@markymarg2.bsky.social

153 Followers 94 Following

A perfectly harmless box. Game dev, half of Dark Roast Entertainment. Games criticism at http://jmargaris.substack.com

Guy one-shot by AI
EGM Coverage of SF2
Statement from id software about how things are great
Little guy swimming around with Anor Londo in the background
Generational dumb-dumb Lakshya Jain doign a real version of "this guy isn't popular in Ohio!"
In modern games it's common for invisible walls to block off areas that should logically be accessible. For doors to exist that can't be opened. For geometry with no physics to decorate the landscape. Dark Souls takes the opposite approach - much like how Dark Souls' combat is "What You Do is What You Get" Dark Souls' layout is "What You See is What You Get." If there's a door you can probably open it if you have the right key. If there's a ledge you can probably jump to it, even if it looks like the sort of ledge that wouldn't have physics data in other games. Traversing Anor Londo requires that the player unlearn internalized lessons of which game objects in a world are relevant and which are for graphical show, to walk on small, off-angle ledges that look like purely art elements rather than game structural ones.
Image of text that reads "A frost giant from ancient mythology probably would not say: "Yeah. Armor. Good idea." Maybe they would say something closer to: "You speak truly. Armor would be wise.""
"If you've got a problem with my mixtape post blog about it"
"What's Wrong with Writing on Games" graphic
Gamepro's famous face-based review system
Bogost claiming that "David Lynch is only possible if you already have a Michael Bay."
Outline of me bashing mixtape takes
Squirrel with a bagel
Kalama from Tokon, doing a pose that looks a lot like the art for Hyper Fighting Blanka
"I'm glad you finished talking"
The vibes-driven nature of Mixtape, a game so music-driven that the name tells you what it is, means that there are some formal elements that you have to deal with up top. The list of songs that make up the game are frankly bizarre. They are ostensibly collated and organized by the protagonist Stacy Rockford, who yearns to be a music supervisor and set the tone for other visual media for people to look at in the future.
There’s no way around this: Mixtape uses nostalgia as a bludgeon to beat players to death with. There is a specific Type Of Guy whose presence is overrepresented in games media for whom this game is basically catnip. It is meant to trigger emotions so powerful in that specific Type Of Guy that when they write or talk about it, they frame the bill of goods that Mixtape is selling as the universal growing up and coming-of-age experience, that it is so authentic and classic and true-to-life that surely everyone who has ever lived has experienced, or wanted to experience it.
"Can the Silver Survive the awesome threat of GIGO?" (Cover to Silver Surfer comic book)
Big blog of test that ends with "DO NOT CHANGE THIS unless you are a fucking genius (or at least smarter than me)"
The Crypt Keeper
"Cardi cinnamon roll" pastry in a coffee shop display case
Star Trek: The Original Series screen of Spock and another character playing Tri-Dimensional Chess
Project X Zone "joke": "Here, Reiji, have some nice hot coffee. Got you! It's iced coffee. I LIED, IT WAS HOT!"
Andy Masley admitting that he's paid to write pro-AI slop
Code snippet using GPU projection matrix
DLSS5 ON/OFF joke where Ryu's sprite looks different but Morrigan's sprite looks the same on/off (a joke about how her sprite never changes)
"We get it -- you like the game (which is FINE), but your reaction is exactly what toxic positivity is. You've been presented with evidence (both inferred and observable) that Marathon is not resonating with gamers, and you're refusing to acknowledge them. These inferred sale numbers are also from somebody with reliable experience in the industry, and aren't from a YouTube grifter."
Red velvet cake slice
OLD TIMER: "Well look at that. It's just like old times."
Twitter guy: "Are you so ignorant as to not recognize what that will enable for marginalized creators?"
DLSS 5 removes shadows being cast by the cap in Starfield screenshot
GDC awards hosting announcement
Presumably Nintendo has real reasons to stick to this design — they did some research that showed that players struggle with more complex UI, for example. But I suspect that those reasons are outdated, inapplicable and need revisiting. Maybe sticking to a single horizontal line makes sense when the UI only displays up to 15 icons, but breaks down when Echoes of Wisdom displays dozens of choices. There’s a smart person at Nintendo who could make a sophisticated argument for this UI style, while any dummy can say “this single-line list is just too damn long!” But in this case the dummy is probably correct. Similarly Nintendo’s sports games no longer have the story / RPG modes that people enjoyed. I assume there’s a good rationalization for that but that’s not the same as a good reason. Sometimes developers can outfox themselves and execute on a sophisticated philosophy that performs worse than “give the people what they want.”
Excerpt: I don’t love the term “toxic positivity” as people apply it to teams without knowing anything about that team’s culture. Sometimes teams suppress negative feedback through a variety of cultural mechanisms, and reward the relentlessly positive as “team players.” But sometimes teams are just naturally optimistic and perhaps a smidge pollyannaish — that’s not “toxic positivity” that’s plain old positivity. But plain old positivity can still be a problem and result in the same conclusion.
"Its honestly so easy for games to make money. Just sell what people want."
Blurb from my blog about how mock reviews are fine but I don't know why you'd listen to a game journalist on how to make your game
Not big on making predictions but I might write about it later and “predicting” after the fact is obnoxious: I think 2XKO is going to underperform 1. The control scheme is weird and doesn’t fulfill the purpose of making the game “accessible” 2. League is a popular game but it doesn’t have much wide appeal - it’s not Marvel. It’s not even Capcom, in terms of exciting gamers 3. Having a bunch of fighting game community people on the team sounds smart, but is probably actually a problem That last one is a little hard to explain- you run the danger of people with a very different perspective than average players, stubborn/ peculiar ideas, and fixated on things most players don’t care about Kind of like film nerds making a movie and it’s all tracking shots, rack zooms and split diopters. (I have no idea about the monetization so by underperform I mean player metrics not dollars collected) An example of this is the emphasis on leverless controllers - 0% of average gamers own a leverless. Making the game play better on leverless at the cost of playing worse on normal controllers is something only fighting game superfans would do Sf2 HD Remix had a bunch of fighting game experts consult on it and that didn’t help the game at all. Skullgirls was made by a fighting game nerd and it’s fine but it’s very plainly MVC2 +CVS2 + panty shots, without any distinguishing features Having “experts” / superfans work on a derivative game is a mixed bag, but I think it’s much more dangerous in competitive games compared to say a Metroidvania, especially a competitive game with complex systems and technical elements
Adrian Chmielarz saying that Highguard is bad and includes edgy characters.
Obama on Twitter proudly supporting our athletes
Code comment "todo figure out what the fuck this does"
Garfield doing a dance, saying "every movement has a meaning" and hitting Jon
Liz Warren pathetically begging for cash
Dicaprio pointing meme image
Ian Fisch on twitter arguing with ICE supporters
Headline that reads "Every game should copy Death Stranding's Very Easy Mode"
Polaris list of most influential games for game design
Cantonese-dubbed Boss Baby 2 DVD
Screenshot of Sword and Fairy 4: Remake trailer, that shows Chinese comment comparing the game to Expedition 33
Screenshot of Chinese Sword and Fairy 4: Remake trailer with text from Chinese gamers noting similarities to Expedition 33
Screenshot of Chinese comment on Chinese Sword and Fairy trailer comparing the game to Expedition 33
Screenshot of Chinese comment on the Sword and Fairy Remake trailer that very mysteriously includes "33", perhaps as a reference to something who can say?
Norman Rockwell guy standing up
Astral Chain screenshot
Image of a blog post with a screenshot showing a bunch of dialog options and text of the blog post reads "They’re all basically “please infodump for me.” For every single character. Ever. In the game. People in Planescape: Torment aren’t so much people as they are exposition pinatas, raining information down on you when you take a swing at ’em with the number keys."
Alpha 2 Adon low strong. Red = hitbox, blue - hurtbox
"Some choose-your-own-adventure games present multiple paths assuming that most players will only play the game once or maybe twice — games like Dispatch and Detroit: Become Human. Those paths exist to provide interesting choices, different outcomes (or the illusion of different outcomes) and to spark conversation. 999 and previous visual novels, including the foundational “Sound Novel” games, expect the player to run through short scenarios many times. The player makes one set of choices, gets one ending, plays through again with different choices and a different ending, then stops when they’ve seen the best ending or simply had enough. These games feel like wandering through a possibility space."
Block of text about psychographic profiles and making up a guy who agrees with you, that ends with "if you're creative enough you can make up a guy for any occasion"
"Slop 'em up"