Hmmm this post brings together quite a lot of interesting perspectives. The first part is I'm not quite sure why onealfa and edicted are singled out here several times to this regard? Maybe you can shine a bit of light on why so I can understand if not that is okay...

So before this last year to my understanding a lot of games already existed just none anywhere near these levels take Axie Infinity which was already a game out several years whom only recently started seeing some insane spikes (Probably because of covid making us stay at home bringing more massive adoption or discovery of projects such as this)

I'm still new to crypto scene as stated, but even after discovering Splinterlands, hive was still somewhat of an unknown to me so I'm not quite sure it is so cut and dry. For true massive adoption into the crypto world or lets even say hive as a target it would require a major game to really launch off like splinterlands, ragnarok, or whatever maybe coming, VR event, or Music event because for me these are some of the major events that will immerse the news world with that of the "metaverse." Just look at the results from facebook announcing metaverse change and the effects on mana/sand, but looking at charts it is almost as if a little while after that hive took that as a chance to boost up, but that boost to me honestly felt a little unnatural.

I don't believe it is good to shame anyone stating that they are focused on nonsense as people will always have differences of opinions. It is about our own personal choices to agree to disagree and move on or dwell on such things. I have noticed that hive often times has this clash of egos situation which doesn't seem healthy in any sense not just on hive, but any social media. But when you have financial metrics tied into this it can spin it to become a whole different type of outcome then.

Well people follow their work probably because of the time, history, or relationship already built with those individuals and sure status may play a huge role in that and I'm sort of against that to a degree as well as it devalues meritocracy, but instead of putting others down in which I don't know the scenerio to full, I'd rather educate and work on discussing with those who are likeminded or have different growth mindset ideas to better grow the platform.

There are many solutions that may work you are correct that the people that have a lot of voice and influence could really start to consider and adopt, but sometimes due to short term gains or sighted vision can be the reason holding it from a insaneeeee gain upwards.
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got"

So for people to see and get the realized gain of say 5-10x there needs to be something coming up or a reasoning for the price to get that increase. Massive adoption phase may have already happened if it was, but who knows it can be splinterlands land application that really pops the game off bringing a massive awareness to hive, or a hive post that ends up changing the direction of someone's life who leads a great impact in the "real world."

It is really hard and none of us are Nostradamus we just try to make educated guesses and theories based off our own understandings. Anyways have a happy new year and this was an interesting read. Normally I skip big walls of text as time consuming (despite writing them myself hahaha), but something compelled me to read this one and sort of glad I did to some regards.