James Margaris

I did not know that and now I wish to forget it

(I realize that people have tried to make lists like these before, but most of the time those lists end up being games that are 'influential' in that they were popular then and still well-liked today)

I don't know if FF was the first game to have this particular winning combination but it definitely was the game that popularized it. Every time you punch a guy in any action game and it feels good that's probably thanks to Final Fight.

There's a really clear difference in pre and post FF brawlers in terms of the combination of hit stop, hit sparks, sound effects, etc - FF essentially established the modern era of the genre, and follow-on genres like fighting games, "character action" etc.

I think it would be fun to try to create a list of historically important and influential games. Not highly rated games or crowd pleasers, avoiding (as much as possible) recency bias and nostalgia.

For example Final Fight is a hugely influential game but rarely acknowledged as one.

Pickle it and put it on top of curry or any spicy food.

It's interesting reading the Tokon reddit which is like "this game doesn't have sauce combos are only 40 hits and only do 55% damage and only take 20 seconds" and then the Discord is like "how do I make Spider-Man punch?"

I do like a good takedown and I *really* empathize with the impulse to push back against these guys. I have "bogost.jpg" saved to my desktop as a shorthand way to do that.

I don't disagree with much here but I can't help but feel like doing a lot of serious hand-wringing over their takes makes these guys seem more important than they are.

In 2014 Daniel Cook identified Bogost as already tired and not worth engaging with.

www.gamedeveloper.com/design/top-5...

Ian Bogost claiming that "a David Lynch is only possible if you already have a Michael Bay"

He is our greatest gaming thinker.

Bogost is an example of someone who got rewarded for doing schtick , and now he, intentionally or not, leans into the schtick to the point of self-parody. A rat pressing a bar to get a pellet, where the pellet is attention.

(Please chuckle at the included "bogost.jpg")

I was hoping that Horses and Metroid discourse would somehow combine to create one of those SyFy channel "Ice Twisters" disaster-mashup movies.

Oh yeah? Name three!

(So that I can follow them or mute them - could go either way!)

It's nice that some people are giving Horses good reviews but I agree with the post that went around yesterday: the quality is immaterial. There's some extra sting if a high-quality thing is censored but the principle is the same regardless of quality.

That axis would have a monster representing trauma at one endpoint and a shark at the other.

YouTube video by Boy the Flip Cat 🤸🏼 Cat YELLS for mom to watch his DOUBLE FLIP #funnycat #acrobatics #catvideos #meow

I never used to watch Youtube shorts (or much youtube at all) but for some reason now half my shorts feed is of this one cat doing flips while his mom laughs so I watch it a lot.

www.youtube.com/shorts/QIxyV...

I've seen a bunch of people claim that that the Horses devs tried to get themselves banned from Steam as a marketing ploy.

Getting your game banned from the biggest storefront, so that you can sell extra copies on way less popular storefronts? I don't think that maths out.

Calamo is the best.

"I'm not just a traveler, I can fight too!" (Chucks hornet's nest at a guy)

Well at least in this case the Dragon Age guy positioned it as him actively changing his mind. (Although his reasons for changing his mind were pretty flimsy as he didn't revisit the game)

I made up the 20,000 number but it turned out to be exactly right! (If we're only counting Steam...if you add in mobile and everything else I assume it's significantly higher)

The Eurogamer re-review of Dragon Age was especially weird in that they titled it "our opinion has changed" rather than "my opinion has changed." The argument is always that a review represents only the author and not the site as a whole.

I feel like a point-counterpoint where an author rebuts their past self is verging into the territory of writing stuff just because there's a blank page you need to fill up to get paid.

There's some nuance to it, preview vs review etc - but I don't think there's all that much nuance TBH.

Eurogamer ran a very positive review of Dragon Age then later the same author said the game wasn't great.

They ran a story freaking out about the amount of chatty marines in Metroid, then ran another story by the same guy saying the chatty marines are fine and Samus should talk more.

Indie devs complaining that the media doesn't highlight their games enough vastly underestimate how many games there are and how few media jobs there are. There are 20,000 releases a year and 7 people left to cover them.

The Chair Company finale - at no point did I have *any* idea of what would happen next, but, while it was extremely unpredictable and weird, it didn't come off as totally random or unmotivated.

TL;DR - they need to treat it more like early access and less like a 1.0 release and fix underlying issues like the control scheme (both the design and the technical issues), how long, slow-paced and dull combos are, etc.

People actively playing the game complain about balance but the bigger problem is the people who either quickly bounce off the game or never try it. Fixing the lack of characters and single player content is hard but fixing the systems doesn't seem that hard if they commit to it.

I'm down on the game but it's very fixable. But they have to a) recognize that it needs fixing b) acknowledge that it needs fixing and c) fix it. Each of these steps is hard for a variety of reasons and they're stuck on the first step. Now is the time, before console release.

Balance patches should be rare once a game is in a reasonable state.

2XKO is not a great state balance wise, but the bigger issue is that it has a lot of problems that go beyond balance. Now is the time to make big changes, not to just do little ticky-tack balance adjustments.