I remember hearing about the Sugiyama thing a while ago and thinking what a shit he was. Pretty sure Gamasutra did an article about it a few years ago from what I can recall.
Anyway in my personal life I try not to hold grudges because they generally mutate in to horrible and dark things. I love the Dragon Quest music immensely but a lot of that attachment is steeped on to the games themselves; when I listen to
Prologue from DQ3 all I can see is a lone figure on a path in front of a massive waterfall, or the
dungeon music from DQ5 and I envision the hero as a child walking through the very first cavern in the game. Thankfully whatever crazy nationalism Sugiyama contains within that ancient skull of his has not been produced through the Dragon Quest music collectively.
Is his stance forgivable? No, especially when it ties indirectly to things that have happened in the past concerning my own family and my partner's family. Does it affect my enjoyment of what he produces? Only if I concentrate on the meaningless bullshit he has said and done in the past.
Thankfully games are usually an entertainment medium first, a political agenda second. I recall receiving a few PMs due to my
somewhat negative synopsis about the "Phil Fish vs Japanese games" debacle and my reasoning for the bulletpoint list being portrayed as such was due to the atmosphere of the thread itself. I even delved a bit further and explained in a reply where I myself stood on the issue:
speedpop said:
I threw my own 2c with two posts scattered throughout that thread and both of them did not contain personal attacks on Fish, nor stating that I wasn't going to buy Fez. Ideally I would like everyone to stand back and consider their own thoughts and actions about Fish, Polytron, and Fez without resorting to some of the petty levels others may have stooped toward. If they came to the conclusion that Fish's words were too much to affect their decision to buying a game he slaved over for several years, then all I can hope for is that they came to that choice with tact rather than blind rage.
Perhaps people that live in those black or white backgrounds of straight conviction don't like that grey area that I enjoy standing in. I have my own convictions and my own beliefs and I don't allow the circumstances to collide against one another in regards to the arts. In a way it is similar to an argument I throw around sometimes - "despite not being religious, and not enjoying religion as a whole, that does not give me the right to dismiss righteous and sound words written in the Bible, or attributed to Muhammad, or stop me from listening to the greatness of Bach, or admire the beauty of art that was commissioned by the Church."
Perhaps a far easier and understandable anecdote follows: "There's no reason to hate the German people because of one man's atrocities."