MJ Weise
@mjweise.bsky.social
Principal Writer / Narrative Designer of Chaos Gate: Deathwatch. Worked at MIT, Harmonix, Eko, and others. Lifelong cinephile. Horror influencer. (previously @sajon77 on Twitter)
Hey, how's the AAA games industry doing about now?
[4K] Independence Day - Times Up (1996)
YouTube video by kittycat123
youtu.be
Happy Juneteenth! I promise I didn't plan it this way, but we happened to talk a lot about being a black game developer in 2026 with @shawndoublea.bsky.social in the podcast last week and they're passions and insights are perfect for the holiday. youtu.be/NEq9dH9hflw?...
Surviving and Thriving in Beatdown City Survivors with Shawn Alexander Allen
YouTube video by Maximum Utcast
youtu.be
Black Voices in Gaming is where all the best Black developers hang. We had and amazing showcase this year, and we've got an excellent collection of newly released and upcoming games on steam from Next fest. store.steampowered.com/sale/BlackVo...
Black Voices in Gaming Summer Game Fest Showcase
Spotlighting new games, exciting updates and demos from talented Black creators around the world.
store.steampowered.com
More than anything else, I want video games to be a space where Black art flourishes. This week we got a brand new @shawndoublea.bsky.social game Beatdown City Survivors! But we also lost Compulsion Games after its excellent example of gaming Blackness, the deeply underappreciated South of Midnight
this may well be the defining joke of our era theonion.com/guy-who-suck...
Guy Who Sucks At Being A Person Sees Huge Potential In AI
SAN MATEO, CA—After spending the past three decades of his life being totally unable and unwilling to engage in any meaningful way with the world around him, James Parker, a local guy who sucks at bei...
theonion.com
I truly fucking love the idea that universities are "indoctrinating" students to do anything. The sort of sentence uttered by someone who's never tried to get a college student to attend class or turn in a paper.
Think of creative advice the same way you would dating advice: be your authentic self, not a pick-up artist creep. People can smell the difference.
merritt@merrittk.com · 2mo agohell yeah illomens.itch.io/no-one-is-go...
So proud to be on this list! @literaryhub.bsky.social says The Cruelty of Nice Folks:"deftly situates the state’s paradoxical history of outwardly progressive politics and quietly regressive policies within the epoch-making tumult of the past six years"
Ten Great Nonfiction Titles to Read in June
If you’re the kind of reader who prefers some heft in your beach reads, than June is the month for you. This month’s picks feature natural histories of American megafauna, domestic memoirs of paren…
lithub.com
Marjane Satrapi died today & the world lost a powerful and eloquent voice. I met her almost 20yrs ago and spent an afternoon w/her drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. I loved her. She was only 56. That monsters live to 100 proves to me of the absence of god. filmfreakcentral.net/2008/04/satr...
Satrapolis: FFC Interviews Marjane Satrapi - FILM FREAK CENTRAL
April 13, 2008|I sat down with Iranian writer/cartoonist/columnist and now filmmaker Marjane Satrapi at Denver’s Hotel Monaco, right off 16th Street Mall–just a few minutes from the Convention Center,...
filmfreakcentral.net
This is not an exaggeration. My parents literally forced me to destroy my RPGs when I was 16 because the Christian psychologist they sent me to told me "Satan is real" and I might "catch a demon" if I didn't stop. This man had a PhD on his wall.
@1kr5ur43m.bsky.social · 2mo ago
If you ever wondered why Lucas' projects seemed different after Return of the Jedi, you need to read up on Marcia's *enormous* contribution to his early work, as well as her collaborations with Scorsese and others. The Death Star raid is one of the great film sequences primarily because of her.
San Francisco Chronicle@sfchronicle.com · 2mo agoOscar winner and San Francisco resident Marcia Lucas — the former wife of George Lucas who edited the original “Star Wars,” “American Graffiti” and “Taxi Driver” — has died.
Best thing about IOI's #JamesBondGame so far is how it uses familiar tropes against you, like when the classically hot girl at the bar is not your contact, or how you think the tux is yours but then Q informs you're going to be the chauffeur on this mission.
Yes, this is famously why Stranger Things never made any money or connected with Gen-Z audiences. :P People who think this don't understand what the point of referencing pop-culture / generational specificity even is in a story. [1/21]
Erik Hane@erikhane.bsky.social · 2mo agoWrong to the point of malpractice
Peter's the best collaborator a Narrative Designer could want, and was a blast to work with in crafting the main story campaign. Check out his interview here if you want to know what makes #ChaosGateDeathwatch unique from its predecessor. www.ign.com/articles/war...
'The Leman Russ Will Make Sure It Fits!' — How Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Deathwatch Packs a Bigger, More Flexible Punch
IGN interviews Complex Games on Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Deathwatch.
ign.com
Oh hey. The game I've been doing the Principal Writing / Narrative Design for these past few years has been announced. store.steampowered.com/app/3010270/...
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Deathwatch on Steam
Command the Imperium’s most elite alien-hunters in a brutal, turn-based tactical RPG. As an Inquisitor of the Deathwatch, every squad you build and every decision you make shapes the fate of a sector ...
store.steampowered.com
Wonder if this person has seen Last Night In Soho.
Christopher Mims@mims.bsky.social · 3mo agoGen Z has rediscovered the X-files & is realizing how dystopian the America of today is compared to the 90s "Watching The X-Files... has solidified my belief that I would have likely been happier in an age that preceded me." midnightmurmurations.substack.com/p/the-x-file...
The panel I was on ended up as one of the free videos on the #GDC Vault. Lots of solid advice from @toiya.bsky.social, @nessathewriter.bsky.social, @ashleyruhl.bsky.social, @asaraviapt.bsky.social. Check it out here: gdcvault.com/play/1035891...
It's Not in the Writer's Manual: Q&A for New Writers
How do newer writers fit into game design and narrative design teams? Do writers coming from the worlds of film and comics have advantages getting work over prose writers? Is it easier to be a freelan...
gdcvault.com
indie game making in the early 2010's was filled people making simple 2d platformers who had bizarre elaborate life philosophies behind what they were doing. now it's filled with people making weird 3d games called Dream Explorer but every word out of their mouth sounds like a marketing executive
How good an adaptation is #MarioGalaxyMovie of what is arguably the most cinematic game in the series? letterboxd.com/mjweise/film...
A ★★½ review of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026)
This review may contain spoilers. Visit the page to bypass this warning and read the review.
letterboxd.com
Orson Welles isn't having your media effects bullshit. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK7B...
Orson Welles discusses the effect of violent films - Talk Collection - BBC
YouTube video by BBC
youtube.com
The third Mario movie should be a straight adaptation of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead but with Wario and Waluigi.
I am begging people to stop acting like we have to compromise or right wingers will enact fascism. THEY WILL ENACT THE FASCISM ANYWAY. The conservative justices on SCOTUS are going to rule against trans rights no matter what principle Kagan and Sotomayor try to follow. So why join them?
Because #DarkSouls is in the news: here is an article I wrote for VICE a while back about how the true genre of FromSoft's games is RELIGIOUS HORROR, in which the only real enemy is a heartless God, and our only real triumph as players is to bear witness to mortal pain. share.google/kwnlgEKKyIyd...
The Horror That FromSoftware Lost Between ‘Demon's Souls’ and ‘Elden Ring’
The themes and mechanics are still there in places, but nothing has come close to the bleak religious survival horror of From's 2009 masterpiece.
share.google
Toxic game bros who misread the difficulty of these games as a macho challenge have sullied the legacy if one of the most thoughtful, empathetic franchises games have to offer. I love these games because they feel like the OPPOSITE of bro-y bullshit, but bros will fucking ruin anything, won't they?
Kotaku@kotaku.com · 4mo agoI Finally Tried Dark Souls And It's Even Better Than Everyone Said https://kotaku.com/dark-souls-rpg-nostalgia-taurus-demon-2000682716
I absolutely was turned off by the descriptions of these games - very often from men in the Souls community - were punishing and not for the faint of heart. But my bff @tylercolp.bsky.social loved them so much that I tried them and realized all the games were asking of me was to learn and be patient
Kotaku@kotaku.com · 4mo agoI Finally Tried Dark Souls And It's Even Better Than Everyone Said https://kotaku.com/dark-souls-rpg-nostalgia-taurus-demon-2000682716
Shoutouts to Signalis and Crow Country, two of the best survival horror games (indie or otherwise) of the last few years. And it's not indie, but Silent Hill f is basically a primal scream about languishing under systemic misogyny. There's some great stuff out there...
Ela Bambust 🏳️⚧️ (alleged transsexual)@ela-bambust.bsky.social · 4mo agoNarrative ones? Caravan Sandwich, Cairn, Signalis, Silksong, Still Wakes The Deep, The Séance of Blake Manor, Look Outside, Crow County, TR-49, Tactical Breach Wizards, Potioncraft, Strange Antiquities, I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Weird West, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Unheard, Heaven Will be Mine
Had a great time at GDC. Reconnected with the community, met cool new folks, commiserated with other writers (an important past time), and thanks to @toiya.bsky.social, @nessathewriter.bsky.social, @ashleyruhl.bsky.social, and @asaraviapt.bsky.social the panel was a smash. See y'all in the next one!
#RE9 feels like alternating between being Ash in Evil Dead 1 and Ash in Evil Dead 3.