Maybe you haven’t been convinced by a good enough argument. Maybe you just don’t want to admit you are wrong. Or maybe the chaos is the objective, but what are you knowingly on the wrong side of?
In my case: I don’t think any games are obliged to offer an easy mode. If developers want to tailor a specific experience, they don’t have to dilute it with easier or harder modes that aren’t actually interesting and/or anything more than poorly done numbers adjustments. BUT I also know that for the people that need and want them, it helps a LOT. But I can’t really accept making the game worse so that some people get to play it. They wouldn’t actually be playing the same game after all…
I disagree on this point. It’s convenient for a vegan, vegetarian or just someone who is trying to eat less meat to be able to make a substitution in a recipe. Tempeh is a great protein, but you have to know how to prepare it and what dishes it will work best in, whereas vegan “chicken” or plant based “beef” can be easily substituted 1:1 in recipes. As you get more comfortable, you can start substituting things like ground tofu, lentils or seitan, but having the culinary shorthand is helpful for lots of people.
I’ve had the opposite experience. Most of the vegan recipes I’ve found online use clever plant based substitutions that aren’t processed meat alternatives. A good exercise is to take your favorite dish and Google “vegan [that dish]” and see what ingredients are in those recipes. Many of the recipes you find will likely have whole food ingredients!
I don’t think vegan food brands are trying to change hearts and minds necessarily. I think they’re just providing easily substitutable alternatives for people who have already decided to eat fewer animal products.
This is why I prefaced my comment with the old man bit. There is a lot of exaggeration in my comment.
My experiences has been that meat substitutes marketed as such are usually chuck full of spices, ultra-processed and just taste bad on their own. 95% of the recipes I make with meat, I often replace with a vegan alternative protein.
I do think that vegan brands try to appeal to a lot of meat eater and lean hard on the green/healthy marketing, but it has been played out and abused by marketing and doesn’t mean much anymore. Just market the products on their own merits.
There is so much good vegan food out there, but it’s often branded as the X alternative. IMO, it hurts the product because it pidgeon hole it in that comparison.
But your points are entirely valid, and my point are really just an uneducated opinion without backing data. I just know that I avoid vegan products marketed as meat alternative to X because they taste terrible 99% of the time.