People like him are why gatekepeeping hobbies isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Once the flood of normies comes in, they outnumber the passionate ones and it all goes downhill from there.
I knew this phenomenon by the name Eternal September, though we might call them tourists or larpers today.
That said, a gently influx of new users is important for any hobby community to survive and thrive, and noobs are always slow to pick up on the conventions and norms of the group. It’s only a real problem when the group is unwelcoming to any number of noobs, or when the noobs flood in with such numbers as to overwhelm the existing group.
Used to be an expectation that this was an involved hobby where you would need to identify and fix problems, because computers are complicated.
Then that got eviscerated by a flood of doe eyed consumers that demand convienence and not having to be burdened with the cognitive weight of thinking about anything.
Which is ironic, given that original understanding of a video game is specifically that it is a kind of puzzle, a kind of problem, that is enjoyable to try to solve.
People like him are why gatekepeeping hobbies isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Once the flood of normies comes in, they outnumber the passionate ones and it all goes downhill from there.
I knew this phenomenon by the name Eternal September, though we might call them tourists or larpers today.
That said, a gently influx of new users is important for any hobby community to survive and thrive, and noobs are always slow to pick up on the conventions and norms of the group. It’s only a real problem when the group is unwelcoming to any number of noobs, or when the noobs flood in with such numbers as to overwhelm the existing group.
The story of PC gaming in a nutshell. Completely ruined by the entrance of casuals and the reaction of the industry to their arrival.
Yep.
Used to be an expectation that this was an involved hobby where you would need to identify and fix problems, because computers are complicated.
Then that got eviscerated by a flood of doe eyed consumers that demand convienence and not having to be burdened with the cognitive weight of thinking about anything.
Which is ironic, given that original understanding of a video game is specifically that it is a kind of puzzle, a kind of problem, that is enjoyable to try to solve.