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James Margaris

@markymarg2.bsky.social
176 followers 94 following 2K posts

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

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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 13h
They love Bayes Theorem because they can use it to make any bullshit seem plausible. You start with a totally made up estimate, cherry pick whatever evidence they want, ignore counter evidence, then non-mathematically update their priors to "prove" that their initial assumption was valid.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 13h
It's very telling that the big Bayes Theorem dudes are mostly, philosophers, sociologists, engineers, Redditors (mostly this TBH) etc, and not mathematicians. Yud and Scott Alexander are both Christ-complex bloggers with no math background who treat "Bayes Theorem" as a magic phrase.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 14h
They are using "Bayes Theorem" (their incredibly botched understand of it) to "prove" that God is real, like: "the probability of God existing is 50%, but my friend Dave claims he saw an angel during a drug trip, so I've updated my priors to 70%." It is absolutely not math in any real sense.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 14h
Most of them don't even understand the math! They're hyper-fixated on Bayes Theorem as the One True Source of Truth but they have no idea how to apply it. In practice they "update their priors" with totally made up numbers to support their existing world view or current fad.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 16h
Weird aspect of the new Castlevania game demo is that it has swinging that's a callback to CV4, but instead of being physics-based it's more of a canned animation. Very strange for an SNES game to be more dynamic and physics-based than a 2026 game.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
It has very memorable costumes, sets, individual scenes, etc, but I've never actually watched it from start to finish. (Because it's terrible and also pretty boring)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Boss projectile coming at you, press attack button to hit it away, attack doesn't come out in time and you get hit. Boss uses attack you're supposed to jump over, jump doesn't come out in time, you get hit. Some of this is skill issue but the controls are pretty unresponsive.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Castlevania demo kinda weird. Your Tarot card attack is a cool-looking projectile but you can spend all your mana using it to kill one basic enemy, and instead of blowing through enemy projectiles it just cancels them out. Real feels-bad ability - a button you almost never want to press.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I didn't make this point before as it's a bit self-centering, but if people are saying "but what about the tremendous value he delivers?" I think it's fair to say that he's making video essays, not curing cancer. And there are plenty of people making high-effort low-content video essays.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I saw one of his older videos many years ago and thought it was good, and assumed they were all like that. But the others I've seen a largely an ode to self and a lot of production value, lighting, clips, editing, etc. Surface appearance of "prestige content."
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
When someone is busted for something I know many consider it poor form to say "I never liked them anyway", but when other people are saying "well I did and still do!" it seems fair enough. I've seen a few of Youtube Man's essays and they are platonic ideal Youtube Video essays - not a compliment.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
If you think my assessment is too charitable (the first tweet was more charitable than tweet 5...) I included the link so you can just read it for yourself. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything beyond "reading primary sources is good."
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
You're an anon loser with some sort of loli avatar - nobody cares what you think lol.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
You're just saying words that you read on terrible forums and hear in bad youtube videos - not sure what you think you're accomplishing.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Probably more the former I would imagine, but I can't really say.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Yeah pretty much!
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
1/5
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
From what I understand Godot, for example, is more AI friendly than Unity since AI tools can't handle Unity prefabs and complex object hierarchies very well, whereas Godot uses more plain text files and such. (My understanding of Godot is close to zero, don't at me)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
To be clear, it doesn't having *nothing* to do with AI. But Capcom isn't converting their engine to be an "AI-generation engine", they're making their engine more open to AI tooling etc. (You're still allowed to be mad about that if you want!)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I think "the engine is being changed to allow for easier AI integration" is fair but "AI-generation game engine" is a stretch yes.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
So it doesn't have *nothing* to do with AI - a lot of these changes are "AI friendly" and pave the way for easier AI integration. (Some of them just seem like practical changes though - outputting a key instead of a Japanese string doesn't seem terribly nefarious)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I assume another angle here is similar to Epic looking at Blueprints, saying "AI sucks at this", and trying to find a text-based alternate. Here the increased model / view separation probably makes it easier to have an AI do testing since it doesn't have to do screen reading.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Instead of outputting a string, output a number that corresponds to a string. A number is smaller than a string and you can look up the string in localization tables. That's not "AI" in the same way Professor Layton backgrounds are. (IS that AI at all? Maybe AI helped convert the code?)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I assume that some of these changes make it easier to use AI to author and test, or that these changes / tools are being made with the help of AI, and that's the AI connection. But the actual changes are things like "animate character in batches" basically don't run update loops per character.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
If you read the presentation (gamebiz.jp/news/433531) this has very little to do with "AI" - it's stuff like if there are 100 widgets onscreen you can draw them all by stamping them out rather than having 100 full instances, which is an optimization technique that's like 40 years old.
gamebiz.jp
カプコンのゲーム開発を支える「RE ENGINE」はどう進化するのか…新プロジェクト「REX」が目指す未来 | gamebiz
カプコン<9697>は、本日10月2日、ゲーム開発技術に特化した自社テックカンファレンス「CAPCOM オープンカンファレンス RE:2026」を開催。本稿では、プログラマーとして活躍する石田智史氏が登壇した、「次世代に向けRE ENGINEをさらに進化させる『REX』プロジェクトの展望と未来」の内容を紹介する。石田智史氏【AD】エンタメ業界の転職支援サービス「エンターエンタ」カプコンの心臓部「…
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I can't stress enough that "an Italian guy reportedly regrew an eyeball" is not an example I made up, the "rationalist" community is now obsessed with taking miracle claims at face value and then "updating their priors" in favor of God existing.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Exact same "the bible and God may not be literally real but rationally it makes sense to follow them as they promote strong western values" followed immediately by "actually they are real though, here's the proof!" (30,000 word nonsense essay follows)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"Rationalism" is following the exact same path that many extremely vocal atheists followed: using purported rationalism to argue in favor of God, the Bible, etc, with arguments like "an Italian paper from 1862 says a guy regrew an eyeball, so clearly God must exist." (This a real argument they use!)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
"Effective Altruism" and "Rationalism" (capital r) are like "The Defense of Marriage Act" in that they are named to be the exact opposite of what they are. (Smart!) Effective Altruists now argue that the most effective form of altruism is hoarding money.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
At some point we have to internalize that being a soyfaced performatively enlightened Cool Guy Who Totally Gets It and Really Understands Allyship is actually a warning sign, not even just neutral. Why that is the case: not sure (I have theories but whatever). But clearly that is the case.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
It's a bread, how much could it cost, $10?
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Romance is the leading edge of this (see Archive of our Own and stories having more keywords than actual words...) but it's happening across genres. People know what they like and very explicitly want more of that same thing - how good it is is a lesser concern.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This manifests in lit fiction as "we want post-colonial stories where the diaspora protag struggles with Trumpian...." - where the top criteria for evaluation is which keywords the summary hits. (Probably doesn't help that for awards the judges sometimes aren't reading the work!)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
This is increasingly true in all fiction genres, which is part of why bad AI-written stories are being nominated for and winning awards. But it's especially true in romance - people want fiction that first and foremost fulfills X Y and Z hard criteria: friends to lovers, medium spice, blah blah
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I'm sure there are plenty of good romance novels but many romance readers WANT formula. This is incredibly obvious if you visit the places where they hang out and observe that they speak mostly in terms of checklist characters and plot points.
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Reposted by James Margaris
Mason Remaley @masonremaley.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Now You're Cooking! is a roguelike deckbuilder about running your own restaurant. Cook delicious meals, build an extravagant menu, and keep your patrons happy. Did I mention that rent doubles every month? Boosts much appreciated!! :) #gamedev #indiedev
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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?
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Reposted by James Margaris
Lindsey Wailes (looking for work!) @linwail.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I made a LinkedIn post asking for help today. If anyone knows of ANY full time roles with a livable wage please reach out. I really need the help. Thank you.❤️ 🔗My email: lindseywailes@gmail.com 🎬Demo Reel: vimeo.com/1082323434 🎨Artstation: www.artstation.com/linwail lnkd.in/p/gHmJg4N9
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
You can also swap your items around and see if that changes the fight IIRC, or turn abilities on off, and often small changes can make a huge difference. So you can play the game by searching for the best possible outcome. I wish the game would deter that more.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Interestingly Ogre Battle itself doesn't really have this problem because damage is pretty low compared to HP, which allows RNG to come out in the wash, and it has no abilities like "if you crit attack again" or "if the enemy is poisoned they take double damage." It's very numerically stable.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
UO fights are chaos theory in action. (Nobody talks about Chaos Theory anymore! Remember that?) "A butterfly flaps its wings in Japan and causes a hurricane in California." I think they basically *have* to preview the results or else the game would be tremendously frustrating and random.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I worked on a game like UO (Lucadian Chronicles, also an Ogre Battle inspired game) that had no RNG other than that units of the same speed took turns in random order, and fights could still be pretty swingy just due to order. In one fight two of your guys go first and kill their key guy, battle won
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
With fairly low damage fights would be more of a war of attrition in which battles have similar results even with different RNG, but UO does the opposite. And there's also crit chance, abilities that trigger when you do X or Y good thing which leads to snowballing, etc.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I could write A LOT about this. UO basically has to show you the odds because fights are incredibly swingy due to the game mechanics. In one fight you might go first, kill a key guy, then wipe the enemy team while barely taking damage, but with different RNG they wipe you instead.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I have no interest in the top 100 list of shows because without checking I am confident that they made the right pick for #1, La Brea, and that's all that really matters.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Throughout Phil Spencer's run at XBox the standard line was that he was fixing Mattrick's mistakes and his hands were tied, having been backed into a corner by Mattrick. Now the people who said that for a decade have immediately pivoted to Sharma is fixing Spencer's mistakes and her hands are tied.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
They made a bunch of changes that "influencers" liked. The "top" fighting game content creators "influence" a couple hundred people - even if you get them on board it does basically nothing for you. (Except Max I guess, which Riot didn't try to get on board lol)
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Some studios overestimate the importance of "influencers" now, in genres where the influencers don't even have that much influence, and fail to realize how different "influencers" are from normal people. Riot and 2XKO is another example of catering to influencers to the detriment of the game.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The only modern Bungie game I've played is Marathon and it's shocking to me how much they cater to "influencers" in ways that make the game clearly worse. And in the case of Marathon those influences don't promote or even play the game anyway, even while being constantly catered to.
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James Margaris @markymarg2.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
(it seems what happened here is that the people in charge of Star Trek at Paramount started paying more attention to it, which is the kiss of death since they are terrible at their jobs and hate Star Trek)
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