> In my experience there's a substantial number of women who are fans of something like overwatch, but not of actually playing Overwatch. They like the designs and the world, they make fanart and fics and such, but they don't actually play

I'm the same way with Warhammer 40K. I love the lore, but have no interest in actually playing with the miniatures.

Yep! There's nothing wrong with this. It doesn't make you lesser or anything

But from the company's sales perspective it's important to recognize the difference between fans and customers

How many games or products had huge social media followings and then flopped hard when they came out? Plenty.

> Isn't it kind of misguided to approach this as men studying women and trying to make more things that appeal to them?

Why would it be misguided? There are plenty of works that are created by women that appeal to men (Harry Potter, Animorphs, Full Metal Alchemist), so I don't think there's anything wrong with men trying to make something that appeals to women.

Knowing your audience is the most important step in serving them content they want.

I think you are saying something fundamentally different than the parent comment.

I think they are saying 'make something that appeals specifically to you as the creator, and it will resonate with some people out there'.

I personally agree that this seems top result in works I enjoy. (As evidenced by behind-the-scenes content or interviews with creators espousing a similar philosophy.)

I think my advice still follows. If you're making a game for yourself, then it's best to know and understand yourself. There's often a difference between what people think they want and what will actually bring them joy.

Nice try, but no: honey is not 'insect vomit.'

Honey isn’t actually created or stored in the bee’s stomach. It is excreted through the mouth of the bee: but it is not 'vomit' since it does not empty from the bee's primary digestive stomach, but a separate, dedicated, pleated expandable pouch or crop.

Good work, bees.

https://theholyhabibee.com/honey-bee-stomach

It's easy: bugs look icky. I wouldn't eat them. Grind them up out of sight and use them as an ingredient? Suddenly I'm fine with it.

I've purposely eaten insects while traveling. for me it is hard to get over the fact that they are not 'cleaned' - you eat everything in their digestive tracts. I intellectually understand that is safe, but my conditioning makes it hard to handle. taste and texture can be challenging once you get past grasshoppers and ants (for my palate of course).

Following your organization's data security practices is not immoral. To me, refusing to accept a PDF is no different than running a cash only store and refusing to accept credit cards as payment.

And how long would that store stay open with such a policy? That's the problem. The government has less competency than small businesses with 5 employees. And not just a bit less, a lot less. Its hard to believe it is just the bureaucrats. I think the leaders of those parts of the government didn't get their posts from merit. And they have no idea just how bad they are at their jobs. It also is probably a bit of too many cooks in the kitchen too.

> The government has less competency than small businesses with 5 employees. And not just a bit less, a lot less.

The US government manages a more diverse array of problems (critical, life and death problems) than any other US organization (and probably more than any other org in the world). Amazon has only a tiny fraction of the competence of the US government and is not nearly as reliable. Remember the last time a significant portion of the social security system went down? I can't, but I can remember the last time AWS went down.

> the far right are bereft of original ideas and always co-opt other pre-existing concepts.

That's not unique to them: Good artists copy; great artists steal.

Yes, but I'd have difficulty in pronouncing Andrew Tate as a good or great artist. Maybe con-artist would be the highest that I'd go.

"It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes. And he annexes everything."

- Oscar Wilde

> Many people don't choose what OS they use for work, and even when one can pick, the environment we exist in is one where being less productive is often hard to afford.

Sure, but I also think that a lot of the issues with Windows 11 don't really matter much if its just used as a work OS. For example, I refuse to upgrade my home PC to 11, because I don't want Microsoft to spy on me; however, when I am using my work computer, I know that I am already being spied upon, so that's not a concern for me.

No, I'm pretty sure they would have. I remember during the primaries, Hillary tried to attack Obama by showing him in a "Muslim" garment.

The Internet has a fairly long memory and a lot of research on topics like this, and it does not agree that Hillary ever tried such a thing. Ample evidence that GOP politicians, including Trump, tried to claim she did. And late in the primary season a few of her supporters made some sounds like that. But nobody has ever found any shred of evidence her campaign made any accusations, or started any rumors.

Well, frankly, that's exactly how it should work.

If the paper vote is the source of truth, then the database just seems unnecessary.

I believe they do. When people talk in person, there is a lot of non verbal communication that give context to their words (smiles, shrugs, side glances, etc). Even when it's just people talking over the phone, the way they pronounce words carries information (it's a lot easier to tell if someone is being sarcastic if you hear their voice, for example). So, emojis are useful for providing that missing context.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, but it's exactly this.

Pre-emojis, there were so many times I misinterpreted a text, or had a text misinterpreted. Something that is obviously a joke or sarcasm or teasing with non-verbal communication, can come across as an insult without it. When somebody adds a wink emoji or similar at the end, it changes everything.

Emoji are fantastic at communicating tone and attitude alongside the text itself. They're not a 1-1 correspondence with non-verbal communication, or a perfect replacement, but they vastly improve the chances that something playful isn't misunderstood in a negative way.

I think some emoji have directly and already entered the colloquial lexicon of being essentially emotional content punctuation marks and modifiers. It's still a different communication channel than facial, body language, and tonal modifiers of physical presence and verbal communications, but it still feels like the gap is closing.

There are also ways that emoji used as such are better, or at least more accessible, than their facial/body language counterparts: a screen reader can read the name of an emoji to a blind person to get a sense of it whereas facial recognition software that can verbalize such things still isn't always so accurate; that same tool of glancing at an emoji name is also open to neuro-divergent and other differently abled people that may have difficulty interpreting facial expressions and body language in real time.

How do you feel about plaintext smilies? People were doing those long before emoji existed. :) :p :D

The same way. For me the proper use of emojis is in reactions, to cut down on brief responses that cause clutter and undesirable notifications. I am less welcoming of them in the middle of a message, where they don't serve that purpose.