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Many discussions in games, programming and life in general can be reduced to one of borders vs. no borders manifested through the differences in people's personalities.
People who like borders do so because ideas and concepts, when properly defined in their boxes, can be more easily manipulated and fit into existing processes. This diminishes the cognitive load of working in an otherwise chaotic environment.
People who dislike borders do so because they want to mix and match ideas and concepts so that something new emerges out of it. They thrive in the chaos and can generally move faster because there are less barriers between units of their environment.
You can also think about it in terms of information flow. When borders are well defined there's less information flow between units of the environment. This is good when you don't want things to change significantly, when you need stability and control.
When borders are not well defined there's more information flow, which is good if you want to mix and match parts of different units to create new ones. Change is good when things are too static, and the way it happens is by messing around with existing structures.
This difference in how people are at their most fundamental level can be used to explain a lot of different discussions. These differences are mostly biological. You can change them, but by and large you're instinctively looking at the world through one or both of these lens.
In programming, one of the most fundamental and perhaps religious discussions there is happens around static vs. dynamic typing. Static typing is order, structure, borders, linear processes. Dynamic typing is chaos, disorganization, borderlessness, non-linear processes.
Dynamic typing is seen as faster to work with at the start of a project, but as the project grows in complexity and its structures become more set in stone, static typing starts making more sense as both the units and the processes to navigate the environment become more defined.
In these cases, once the structures are more set in stone, the chaotic potential offered by dynamic typing diminishes, and the reduction in cognitive load offered by static typing increases, up to a point where a switch becomes inevitable.
Dynamic typing is also seen as more attractive to younger developers because it allows them to move faster, but as they get older and see the problems that the chaotic environment generates they become more conservative and switch to static typing.
Here the same dynamic applies, except more due to the fact that people are naturally more adventurous and risk-seeking when they are younger, and as they get older they naturally become more conservative in various ways.
Static typing is seen as better for writing engine code. This type of code falls into the more static and structured part of gamedev, as it's code that's supposed to be used across multiple projects without changing.
Gameplay code is more fluid than engine code, so dynamic typing has an opening to make sense there. And so this ends up being the approach multiple engines take, where their engine code is written in a static language while their gameplay code can be written in Lua, JS, GML, etc.
Here, again, we see that the more structured elements naturally gravitate towards borders and well defined processes, while the less structured ones don't. This theme repeats itself everywhere in programming, not just in static vs. dynamic debates.
You can look at discussions people have about what kinds of frameworks to use. Should the framework do a lot itself and offer less customization or should it give the user basic units and let him combine those units himself?
The former has borders more well defined, which decreases cognitive load for defined paths, but increases it for undefined ones. The latter has borders less well defined, which increases cognitive load for defined paths, but decreases it (comparatively) for undefined ones.
In gamedev this manifests itself as engines vs. frameworks debates. Engines like Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, Godot, RPG Maker, etc, have borders more well defined, and the decreases in cognitive load for known workloads makes it attractive to programmers and non-programmers alike.
Frameworks like MonoGame, LÖVE, libGDX, Phaser, Heaps, and so on, have borders less well defined, which increases the cognitive load for known workloads, making them less attractive, especially to non-programmers.
But when compared more bordered engines, a lot of workloads in these frameworks are easier to accomplish because the working units are smaller and less well defined, enabling more mix and matching of these basic elements into whatever is necessary at the time.
This distinction also applies to things other than programming. For instance, in media in general there are always debates about genre definitions. The most prominent one I can think of is roguelikes vs. roguelites.
Those who think roguelikes should have a strict definition, the definition that was there before, want to conserve what was and do away with all these new people who want to change the meaning of the word. Why? It's just a word, right?
Well, given what I've said so far it should be clear that it isn't just a word. The word roguelike having a strict definition decreases the cognitive load necessary for navigating the environment.
When you're looking for a turn-based roguelike, you don't want to find an action game. And this is explicitly what strict roguelikers defend. Once the word opens up its meaning, it becomes useless as an identifier and thus increases the work you'll have to do find what you want.
On the other hand, the word having a flexible meaning means that it can be used in new and interesting ways and introduce new ideas into a rather stagnant genre (in terms of popularity at least), which is roughly what happened this last decade.
This discussion also applies to game mechanics. Since we're already talking about roguelikes/roguelites, a debate often had in that sphere is if they should or shouldn't have progression between runs.
Those who don't want progression between runs say that the progression should happen as the player plays more runs and gets more experienced. This is a call for a higher state of cognitive load, but one that allows for potentially more creativity and problem-solving.
If all the player gets is personal experience, then he is forced to use that experience in new and interesting ways to overcome the challenges of the game, to mix and match his knowledge to create something new. This gives him those Aha! moments that can be very satisfying.
On other hand, those who like progression between runs are calling for a lower amount of cognitive load. They want their playtime to be converted into some resource, which can then be used to buy a well defined, bordered, concrete advantage that accrues over runs.
The more powerful you get with your permanent upgrades, the less you have to think while playing the game and the more you can just play it on auto, which can be very relaxing. And while you lose some mix and matching here, the genre has enough of it that it might not be so bad,
as one aspect of roguelikes/lites that is really good is that they have tons of items/passives that can be combined in unexpected ways. Based on everything we know so far, this looks like a very pure and distilled manifestation of that mix and matching property of borderlessness.
You can also think about this in terms of professions. Some professions are more suited to bordered and process oriented environments, while others are more suited to borderless and chaotic ones.
Lawyers, top executives, doctors, accountants, managers, politicians, government workers, military personnel, are all examples of professions that operate in highly bordered and process oriented environments.
These are all professions where there are strict rules and laws that must be followed and where attention to detail tends to matter a lot. These are also highly hierarchical professions, especially the military, which is probably the most bordered and process oriented of the lot.
On the other hand, scholars, teachers, journalists, artists, musicians, game developers, entrepreneurs, are all examples of professions that operate in less bordered and more chaotic environments, where information flow and mix and matching of ideas is more important.
We (game developers) have a bias towards thinking about things in terms of borderlessness, that's what we prefer and that's our natural environment. But this can often come into conflict with the rest of the population that isn't so tilted in that way.
Many debates online around games often naturally coalesce into a subset of game developers and journalists vs. the rest of the gaming population. This border vs. no border biological substrate is primarily why.
Debates around difficulty and accessibility, for instance, are partly about where the borders on difficulty should be or if they should even exist. Those who naturally look at the world through a borderless lens argue that there should be no borders, while the others disagree.
Debates around words, like "are games art", "are e-sports real sports", and so on are similar to the roguelike/lite debate. They're about borders around the meaning of a word such that cognitive load is decreased, or about opening it up so that something new can come out of it.
Debates around social justice issues can also be cast in this manner, with the most prominent one being around gender. Those who naturally see the world through borderlessness will see value in something new coming out of less defined borders between genders.
While those who don't only see an increase in cognitive load in navigating the environment. This increase will range from simple pronouns all the way to being mistakenly attracted to someone of the same sex, which is a serious (and sometimes deadly) fear that many men have.
Debates around grinding are partly about process orientation vs. chaos orientation. Those who like more process oriented environments will enjoy mindless grinding more, as it involves doing the same activity over and over without many new things happening.
While those who like more chaotic environments will dislike grinding precisely because nothing new is happening. Those people will instead prefer games that give them an ability to explore and find new things all the time.
Debates around how open or closed Steam should be also run along these lines, although this one in particular is complicated by people's other biases, like being given a potential opportunity to remove (what they view as) competition from the market.
In summary, a lot of things can be reduced to borders vs. no borders. Every time there are religious-like discussions online, I first check if it's a border discussion, and if it is then I know to not get too into it as people are essentially arguing for their biology.
All else being equal, different people have different personalities. Some people have a preference towards borders, while others don't, and these differences will nudge them towards one or another conclusion regardless of any rational arguments presented.
This way of viewing the issue allows me to not get emotionally invested in these discussions, which also allows me to look at them more calmly and from a more detached perspective.
This ability to detach yourself emotionally from discussions is good because it decreases your stress levels and also because acting like a cheerleader for one side or another is usually cringe.
But fundamentally, it's good because it increases your chances of seeing things for what they actually are, unclouded by the biases cursed upon us by our meat prisons.
