My intent is not to provoke, but this is a composition fallacy. “Instagram flips out every fall for pumpkin spice latte, so pumpkin spice latte is inherently delicious”. No, it’s not. I hate pumpkin spice latte.

As I replied to another post with a similar complaint, when the author says “No, I don’t believe that BlueTwelve Studios is intentionally racist”, the subtext, for me, is that she thinks it’s unintentionally racist, but racist nonetheless. She also says she doesn’t think this is the “worst offender”, which, again,…

I mean no disrespect, but this is a logical fallacy. More specifically, it’s an appeal to a self-evident truth. Why does the depiction of non-white people become “obviously” political in a society that encourages capitalism, materialism and commodity? Is it impossible to make a non-white character that doesn’t stand…

I respectfully disagree. On your first point, language is a living thing, and racism is not objective at all, as a concept. For starters, there are multiple strict meanings for the word, and then there are a ton of subjective connotations to it. In this example, we’re not talking about antagonism towards Asians, and…

From all that I read on the whitewashing controversy surrounding Ghost in The Shell, Japanese people didn’t really care much for Scarlett Johansson being cast as Kusanagi. I don’t live there, so I can’t give you a first-hand account, but Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft (who does live there), confirmed this at the time (tried…

I know this thing as a Maneki Neko, which, as far as I know, is Japanese. Japanese culture took so many stuff from China that I’m not sure it’s really Japanese, though. Like, even “ninja” is the Chinese-based phonetic reading (on’yomi) for the Japanese word “shinobi”.

I can’t speak for all Japanese, but my experience visiting Japan with a Caucasian, blonde wife (I’m descended from Japanese) was that they were just happy to share their culture with us. And I’m not even talking tourist traps, but just regular businesses.

I don’t claim to be objectively the voice of reason. I’m just giving my personal opinion, which is why I felt compelled to tell my background, not because I claim to be the voice of all Asians everywhere (i.e. if it were the objective truth, my background would be unnecessary). And yes, everyone is entitled to their…

Yeah, I see now that the parallel is imperfect, so I half take it back. That said, Indiana Jones does gloss over imperialism and cultural theft, right? And LoTR doesn’t have serfs in the same way Stray doesn’t have Chinese and British people, I guess.

As I started my post with, everyone is free to be offended by whatever they feel offended by. And the opposite is also true: you don’t decide what should and should not offend me, personally. And also, don’t assume that I don’t care through conformism or a lack of thought. I don’t feel offended by this sort of trope…

I’ll start this by saying that anyone is free to feel insulted by whatever they feel insulted by. But I - an Asian-American living in a third world country - really think this criticism is stretching a bit.

Kinda. If I understand this correctly, NPCs can reject your Sims based on their orientation. Which detracts from the sandboxy nature of this series, IMO.

Player: Ooh, I want to romance Bella Goth!

Right now I think Kotaku is very much dug into their trenches in what they call a culture war and, weirdly enough, they chose to back the side with the giant corporation that defends predatory monetization and actual sexual abusers.

I think it’s really weird that this is the hill Kotaku is willing to die on, out of everything one can choose to defend.

Honest question: why is the $100k math dubious? I’m not following this story super closely - nor have I read the post or played the game -, but if the streamer you mentioned can spend thousands of dollars (I believe his latest update was at $10k) without getting a single max-tiered equipment, and you need multiple of…

I’ve been primarily a PC gamer for the better part of the last two decades, but the Switch is the best console ever created, in my opinion. It’s versatile, has a load of indies, it’s mostly hassle-free, low noise, pretty decent battery life. If only Nintendo could stop screwing up with their legacy portfolio...

Not being snarky, just an honest question: do you know if they fixed that 1HP hack that made Battlefront 2 unplayable for months? Can’t seem to find a news update on it.

TMNT: Hyperstone Heist and Streets of Rage 2 were my favorite games growing up. DotEmu did such a great job with SoR4 that I’m really hyped for this.

There’s no long range plan in NFTs that doesn’t require magical thinking. In the short term there’s a lot of money to be scammed out of people’s pockets, and that’s why even executives that reject NFTs are pretty noncommittal about it.