> When you spend hundreds to thousands of hours mastering a game and immersing yourself in the culture surrounding it, an article on "your" game, unless it's wr

> When you spend hundreds to thousands of hours mastering a game and immersing yourself in the culture surrounding it, an article on "your" game, unless it's written by someone as keyed-in to the meta as you are, is likely to come off as a series of poorly informed hot takes. In other words, generalist journalists frequently have a hard time developing the level of experience in a particular area necessary to write about it in such a way that's not laughable to the "experts". An alternate way to say this is that these communities are incredibly insular, and the most active participants work hard to keep them that way by using their status in the group to set themselves up as gatekeepers, policing the bounds of acceptable opinion. Perspectives that differ from that of the in-group threaten their status, so they react against them violently in order to signal to the group that they're still in charge, nothing to see here, move along. These gatekeepers also often see their "elite" status in the group as a fundamental part of their self-worth, so they interpret challenges to their ideas as attacks on them personally, and respond in kind. And it doesn't help either that gaming communities tend to disproportionately attract teenagers and young adults, who are right at that moment in life when their passions tend to run hottest.