[MasterBel2]

FWIW, meta pressures exist without an entire industry dedicated to them.

I’ve been playing BAR since it was called Balanced Annihilation and it peaked at 1 concurrent 8v8 daily and there was little/no youtube presence to speak of. Meta pressure was still huge, to the point that trying (now-meta) then-off-meta strategies would have you mocked, called a troll, and sometimes kicked from the room. Pretty much everyone was a meta slave, except for a few (mostly top) players who had their own quirky meta-rejecting style.

I think there’s a global desire for comfort/safety which drives meta, and this works without an industry. Copying is safe, playing the same map endlessly is comfortable, and fun for fun’s sake is neither. And ego seems to have something to do with it too. Players with less ego seem to experiment more, change things up more, break the meta more.

[estearum]

Yes, I am aware they exist. But the addition of an industry that systematically finds and disseminates this obviously accelerates the process of discovery and dissemination.

This is like saying "scientific progress exists even without scientists talking to each other." It sure does, but collaboration and competition among them dramatically accelerates the discovery process.