I aint yo guy

Back in the day when I lived, breathed, and died for Super Smash Bros. Melee, one of the main things that drew me into the game was the depth of the metagame.

At the most basic level, you would play Melee with some of your friends. Inevitably each of you progress more and more, getting better and better with time. Each of you toy around with different strategies in order to gain an advantage over each other. You find different combos, different approaches, and different recoveries that work to further the depth of your game. Eventually, your friendly home games develop a culture and you get accustomed to each others' playstyle. You know that your friend abuses Falco's lasers, so you adjust and develop an aerial game. Realizing this, your friend works aerials into his game as well. This metagame continues until each of you can't possibly figure out a way to counter your friend's strategy. Eventually your games look more and more similar, as you can't identify any more counters to each others' strategies.

So you guys decide to go to a city-wide tournament. And at the tournament level, you have an amalgamation of gamers, each coming from their own home games, complete with different cultures, strategies, and playstyles. Now each of you have to adjust to completely different playstyles that you're not accustomed to. You see and play against other people whose strategies are completely foreign to you. You and your buddies from your home games see different strategies that you incorporate into your game. You take those strategies back with you and work them into your home games against your buddies, and slowly you guys get better and better. Even though you thought you had reached the peak of your ability, you've found another way to further your game.

I see the same phenomenon when I look back at my college experience. My entire life before I came to college had mostly the same people, all from the same city, all with similar experiences resulting from being in more or less the same culture.

Then I look at how so many different people from different areas around California all come together at my college. All these people come from different cultures and backgrounds. This results in the craziest blend of fashion, humor, taste in music, etc.

My fellow college students take what they've absorbed from the college experience, come back to their hometowns and spread what they've learned. Then their hometown friends react and respond to this new experience, and the cycle continues