It's just distinguishing what is in-game for legacy audiences it's not scaring anybody

> it's not scaring anybody

i don't use the term 'scare-quotes' to mean "to scare people", but rather because that's actually what the practice is called[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

I know what a scare quote is, and their implication could be to "scare" like calling someone "an artist" or saying that you made a "good comment".

But the article isn't trying to imply skepticism or disclaim particular words, it's just trying to distinguish what is in-game for people who don't know what minecraft is.

maybe it was slightly too subtle for me to have used single quotes in my comment and not pointed it out. in this case they would have been more appropriate

it's entirely likely this was just a formatting mistake, but it still feels "off" enough for me to get uncomfortable and stop reading

If you're using the word 'item' to describe a data structure in minecraft, you're not using it in the traditional way, you're using it in a technical way.

i think it's perfectly reasonable for them to have used double-quotes for 'chests' because that is a very gaming-specific item (perhaps not minecraft-specific- looks at every dungeon crawler).

however, something being a data structure or not doesn't really matter when 'items' means exactly what you would expect it to mean within minecraft, especially when said item is a book!

People who don't play video games don't know what an item is in a video game.

Really? I have a hard time believing that. The concept has been around since the 80's, if not before then. Should we be putting scare quotes around the word "Mouse" when we use it to refer to a computer mouse because it's not a literal animal mouse?

There are probably way more people familiar with computer mice than video games.

that's like saying people who don't use computers won't understand that text is in a computer even though it has the same meaning as, say, text in a book

Item in plain English means basically anything that can be counted, usually something small. Item in a video game usually means something players can pick up, maybe use, and drop, as opposed to something that's part of the environment. Item in Minecraft has a technical meaning, basically anything that can go into a hopper inventory, as opposed to particles, blocks, mobs, stuck arrows, other entities...

saying there is an item called a book in minecraft will not go over the average person's head