The "meta" has been solved and everyone's just min-maxing now. The few who aren't min-maxing are considered a waste.
AI, crypto, etc. feels like potentially new meta opportunities and it is eerie how similar the mania is whenever a new major patch for a game is released. Everyone immediately starts exploring how to exploit and min-max the new niche. Everyone wants to be the first to "discover" a viable meta.
Brilliant take.
Competition nowadays is so intense and fine-grained. Every new innovation or exploration is eventually folded into the existing exploits especially in monopolistic markets. Pricing models don’t change, revenue streams neither, consumer rarely benefits from these optimisation efforts, all leads to greater profit margins by any means.
It sucks for the ones who just want to play the game as "intended". The min-maxers always ruin it for everyone else. The devs ultimately balance the game around the few percent who min-max and everyone else just has to deal with it or stop playing. And the they say "don't blame the players, blame the game" but the game is literally being warped because of the players.
Also, often the new meta doesn't even make sense and the changes need to be rolled back. So all that pain and hustle will often be for nothing, but a lot of players will end up having a bad taste of the game altogether. So the damage has been done and a roll back can't fix it.
The game is social engineering to "exit" for early investors to bag holders through an IPO just like an ICO. The irony is with crypto everyone knows it's a scam, but with IPO's there's still true believers who think the business operations will be sustained. Uber is the case study. They've just hid their financials in shell companies that assume a future monopoly of the entire planet.
https://boingboing.net/2019/05/08/forever-unprofitable.html