iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Many, if not most, games that invite steamers / influencers / "top players" to tests and then act on their feedback.

Forum post asking for examples of games that got worse due to player feedback?

James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

jmargaris.substack.com/p/a-plea-for... Some people are saying "it's a new essay." On writing dialogue that reflects what a character might genuinely think, on posing the wrong questions, and 10 paragraphs on "yeah armor -- good idea."

“What if a Starfleet ship was manned by regular folks like you and me? One has constant emotional breakdowns and can’t stop discussing their trauma, one freezes up in combat, one regularly screws up then hides their mistakes, and one is insubordinate? You know — relatable stuff.”

Maybe that’s a compelling question, but here’s the answer: that ship would fucking explode two weeks after leaving Space Dock.

Zoe De Vera, the woman on the headset, is a handler for the Federal Bureau of Control. It’s her job (I gather) to keep agents informed and lend them the best chance of success.

If there’s an eldritch abomination ahead that can melt my brain with a piercing scream you should tell me that, not say “you’ll know it when you hear it.”

This is not the time to be cute or coy. “Just try to stay alive out there, okay?” Help me do that by giving me relevant information. That is, in fact, your job!

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

(I'm going to spell Zeiram every possible way, one must be right!) Zeiram's weird little face guy has one set of eyes but a double-stacked look. I believe Zeiram also flies around in hat form at one point, like this guy does in the Metroid trailer.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Weird alien with a crazy hat who wants to suck your life energy? Clearly that's Zeiram. (The double stacked eyes are reminiscent of Zieram's little mini face thing as well)

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I didn't see this at all today, you guys are slipping!

Transporter Chief / Head of DS9 Ops, Miles Edward O'Brien, saying "he was more than a hero. He was a union man."

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Your argument here is that this argument was right even though 2% was a made up number? You are hopelessly lost.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I'm not sure how often you realistically run into a scenario like "I need a picture of 3 people in an ancient tomb and I need it in an hour" but when you do simply use your encyclopedic knowledge of video games to find art from Konami's Dark Adventure / Devil World.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

The chart he has been using for months (years?) that he thinks is a "layoff rate" chart is a chart of raw numbers, and the rate chart is a different chart on the same website. I'm howling.

Image showing a rate vs level chart are different because those words in fact mean different things (they teach that when you get "Econ PhD2"

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

HOLY SHIT I WAS RIGHT. I jokingly suggested that Matt Darling, economist extraordinaire, thought the layoff rate in the US was 2% because he thought a comma was a decimal point AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED lol. That's a raw number not a percentage!!

Chart of layoffs BY RAW NUMBER NOT BY RATE

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

At best there are different sources of layoff data with different rates and Matt - for some reason - didn't go with the widely accepted one, despite using that data in his own reporting. My pet theory is he just read a graph wrong but who knows!

Graph of layoffs that is raw numbers not percentages.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I only started talking about Matt Darling because he decided to weigh in on video games (lol) to say that XBox layoffs weren't unusual. His claim, unsourced, was that "economy wide background layoff is 2% a month" but the widely accepted authoritative source is about half that.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Matt Darling "corrected" me by repeating almost verbatim what I had just said! This is such a bad habit: adopt an argumentative pose *while not actually disagreeing.* (Also why are chicken feet in quotes, does he not believe that chicken have feet???)

Matt Darling agreeing with me while not realizing he's agreeing with me?

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I had this already saved to my desktop anticipating a deluge of Stancil followers. Anyone can just look up the old price of a family TV - it isn't lost knowledge and it isn't $7000 lol. Yes you could find an obscure $7000 TV back then and you can find an obscure $70,000 TV today.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I normally don't approve of this sort of AI chat but this AI chatbot is a good substitute for Matt Darling so I'll let it slide. If you ask it about the cost of toys it swears they cost 1/4 what they used to, but if you force to be specific it admits they cost 4x what they used to!

Google AI conversation on the actual price of toys vs CPI

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I'm going to belabor this a bit because it's a real pet peeve of mine. Darling loves to post charts he finds online (mostly from the same website, he doesn't make them himself) related to CPI, which he uses to "prove" his newest "vibecession" conjecture. Including charts like this one.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Incredible tipofmytongue post. Even only reading the title and not seeing any details I knew who it was. Hideki Kamiya

Reddit Tip of my Tongue post asking about a game developer who would always block people.

(It was Hideki Kamiya)

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

1. This is not technical evaluation. This may be a technically accomplished individual but that doesn't mean they have the technical side of their brain currently switched on. This is purely emotional / religious zeal, totally laughable on a technical basis.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Someone on ResetEra posted this. I still vividly remember this, is was the first screenshots I saw of SF2. It particularly stands out because my neighbor had already played it and told me about a stretchy Indian character, which I thought meant Native American.... (different time!)

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

You can tell this is genuine statement from the developers at Id because it talks about flat structures and makers, which is exactly how real game developers talk!

Statement from id software about how things are great

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Working on a water level (a good one though!) and it's pretty empty so it's hard to tell if it looks good or not, so as a test I threw Anor Londo into it.

Little guy swimming around with Anor Londo in the background

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Side note, I wrote about this topic in my seminal blog on Dark Souls. (Someone once called it "seminal" maybe!)

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.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

The problem here is not just that the language is anachronistic. To a frost giant warrior armor is not some novel concept. It doesn't make sense to even have the thought. It's anachronistic in that it's "what if a redditor was in God of War?"

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.""

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Here's a cool graphic version. jmargaris.substack.com/p/whats-wron...

"The thrust of this piece is that commercialized nostalgia (and more broadly capitalism) is bad. This might have been an interesting observation in 2010, before Ready Player One was published. But this is 2026. There’s a Barbie and a He-Man movie, two new Ghostbusters. The Ninja Turtles and Simpsons are in Fortnite. The new Star Wars movie is about a Yoda and a Boba Fett. There’s a new season of Scrubs, two new Dexters. The Last of Us is remastered every 2 years.

“There sure is a lot of commercialized nostalgia” is only interesting as a screaming cathartic polemic. It doesn’t work as a novel observation. And the “truth” that Mixtape is nostalgic is blindingly obvious to everyone. Nobody is claiming otherwise"

"The comparison is made, I assume, because Space Jam: A New Legacy is about as cynically exploitative as a movie can get. The comparison adds weight to the accusations against Mixtape; it’s the Space Jam of games!

Except it isn’t. It just isn’t. Fortnite is the Space Jam of games. Mixtape is the Lisa Frankenstein of games."

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

Ask and you shall receive. jmargaris.substack.com/p/whats-wron... What's wrong with writing on Mixtape, featuring: How weak criticism robs us of time and offers little in return Baudrillard's hyperreality What does "ostensibly" mean? Critics repeating other critics

"If you've got a problem with my mixtape post blog about it"

Blog snippet about how critics demand LESS from Mixtape

Blog snippet about how weak this criticism is

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Update: I accidentally dialed the mean up to a 13 but eventually managed to get it down to a 5 or so. Coming soon: 8000 words on how someone didn't use "ostensibly" correctly. (And some other topics as well....)

"What's Wrong with Writing on Games" graphic

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

its_happenging.jpg I've read four different Mixtape pieces all fixated on "but when does it take place?" and like...do these guys all hang out on the same Discord? Because I don't know how so many people independently decide that this is the single most important aspect of the game.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

This has to be intentional right? A lot of the Tokon art uses a similar foreshortening that all the Hyper Fighting art did, but this is straight up a reference? Right? I can't be only person to notice this. (Oldsters rise up!)

Kalama from Tokon, doing a pose that looks a lot like the art for Hyper Fighting Blanka

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Does Mixtape have a plot twist where it turns out the mixtape was created by someone else? If not what does "ostensibly" mean here?

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.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Perfect excuse to repost this. If you get an explicit warning it's just Bayonetta and a Zdzisław Beksiński that looks like Bayonetta (with some toplessness) This has to be intentional right?

Zdzisław Beksiński art that looks a lot like Bayonetta

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

This thinking is seductive in that, vaguely described, everyone can imagine their own villain. I think, if you're going to be honest and brave, be specific about the type of guy. Like: white, middle-aged, only eats dino nuggies. Let us decide for ourselves if that guy is real and a problem.

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.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

jmargaris.substack.com/p/how-not-to... Used examples / case studies to look at various traps teams can fall into when they collect and respond to feedback from (not on-site) playtests. Including Marathon's alpha testing, Overland's paid "First Access" and Valve's Artifact. (And Star Wars Galaxies)

"Can the Silver Survive the awesome threat of GIGO?" (Cover to Silver Surfer comic book)

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Underrated trick in game programming: leave notes to help the people who come after you, including your future self who will have no idea what's going on, look at your code and say "this is weird and bad I bet I can fix this, what was a I thinking!" then break everything.

Big blog of test that ends with "DO NOT CHANGE THIS unless you are a fucking genius (or at least smarter than me)"

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

"Great news boys and ghouls - Tales from the Crypt is now screaming on Shudder / AMC+"

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

I'm just going to post this every year.

Project X Zone "joke": "Here, Reiji, have some nice hot coffee. Got you! It's iced coffee. I LIED, IT WAS HOT!"

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

Writing pro-AI arguments is *literally* his full-time job, and even worse it's under the guise of being "effective altruism" and "philanthropy." Effective altruism - making sure your charitable donations help the most people - is when you pay a guy to copy and paste pro AI arguments from Claude.

Andy Masley admitting that he's paid to write pro-AI slop

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Sounds like you already solved this but FYI there is GL.GetGPUProjectionMatrix Here's a little note I wrote for myself years ago

Code snippet using GPU projection matrix

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 25/03/2026

We need to build a time machine and use it to travel to the past and murder whoever exposed gamers to "toxic positivity", which to gamers just means "being positive." Harsh? Or not harsh enough? "your reaction is exactly what toxic positivity is" Is it though?

"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."

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

My Crimson Dessert review: Striking and moist, but too much icing.

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Truly disgusting that people like this will pretend to care about "marginalized creators" only in that it allows them to push gooner tech on the masses. It's the US caring about women's rights abroad only when we want to bomb the countries those women live in.

Twitter guy: "Are you so ignorant as to not recognize what that will enable for marginalized creators?"

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

If this were "AI-assisted path tracing" or a new kind of lighting tech it would know that this scene has a sun and that the cap is blocking it, casting a shadow. Instead it pushed the image towards a genericized one while ignoring the actual scene lighting. This is not "lighting" it's anti-lighting.

DLSS 5 removes shadows being cast by the cap in Starfield screenshot

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