In my mind, it’s really more of a scale thing - when we’re talking about something like this where the fanbase is in the multi-millions, is a couple thousand angry people really a “controversy”? Even if the internet makes it feel like those few thousands are really, really loud, I’d argue that no, that is not…

I see that they went to the This Outfit Needs More Straps school of design.

“Duringthis period, software sales were powered by Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield to the tune of 16.06 million units worldwide.”

I’m sure you were joking but I actually think this is a really good example of the issue. I imagine that there were legitimately many people who lived through the terror of the Nazi atrocities who came to associate German with these horribly traumatic experiences. There were (and maybe still are) likely people for…

There is a meaningful, logical difference between “this term has been used in some contexts in ways that were harmful” and “this term is harmful in all contexts”. This article seems to be implying that the former conclusion should always lead to the latter. I do not believe that is a rational viewpoint.

Not trying to be a jerk but I kept looking at those two comparison screenshots you posted and I genuinely can't tell which one is supposed to be the improved one. Maybe it's more noticeable in motion?

Close enough, I suppose! It’s a movie called The Breadwinner which Wikipedia says “the film was an international co-production between Canada, Ireland, and Luxembourg”.

Pop-quiz - based on just the art, which country does this come from?

I don't think that's true at all. There are other cultures that do animation besides Japan and the US. Based on just the art style, there's no reason to think that many US cartoons couldn't have been drawn by Europeans or others.

The weird thing is that even though you are obviously right and each of those is very different, I could still tell at a glance that, yup, those sure are from Japan. You couldn't really do that with the drawings of other cartoons/comics, somehow it's only the ones from Japan (or Japan influenced).

Huh. As someone who has never liked the “this person believed some very bad things so everything about them must be shunned forever” approach that is common in progressive circles, I really like this approach.

I feel the same way. It’s particularly odd to me that people insist that it’s a complicated situation. Which, uh, not really. Jewish people, with the help of Britian, stole some land that wasn’t theirs because they wanted it. The people who had long been established their got kicked out and given nowhere to go. That’s…

Making a large, complex piece of software from scratch is VASTLY, VASTLY more complicated than making a movie or TV show. Even the biggest, most complex movies are child's play compared to the enormity of the challenge of releasing an average video game.

Did it? I feel like I ran across a lot of articles about how great it was but I don't think I ever once saw praise for the awesome art. Hopefully you're right and I just didn't see it!

When people who have never tried to do something - say, for example, make a large scale video game within a budget - try to tell the many, many people who *have* done it that they know exactly why they are doing their jobs badly and how to fix all their problems, well, those people are very likely to look pretty…

I’m going to completely ignore the topic of this article to say that, while I have not played this game and likely never will - sorry! I don’t like lots of reading in my video games! Sorry! - based on the pics and videos I’ve seen of it, gawd, why does nobody ever mention this game’s amazing, gorgeous art style???…

Ah, thanks for the thoughtful response. I really do find this conversation interesting and have lots of thoughts on the subject. I do totally get whete you’re coming from. There’s this unfortunate thing where these topics really, really need to be discussed with more nuance and subtlety, but then of course you are…

I didn’t say that it doesn’t take real skill, I said my issue (and issue is really too strong a word for how much I care) with this isn’t about whether or not it takes skill (this obviously does) but about whether or not forcing programing errors to play the credits for you can be called “beating the game” in any…

It’s not so much about “real skill”, so much as it’s just kind of meaningless. Saying “hey look everybody, I found a weird glitch that makes the credits pop up” is really neat from a perspective of how weird and complicated game code is. But it makes the concept of “I beat the game really fast!” so meaningless that it…

If you had told me that the header image was a picture of FE characters already in Smash, I would have no reason to doubt you.