I don't think people take media literacy as seriously as they should in general, but especially not in games. A lot of YouTube video essayist-types, critics, and even designers don't have a full grasp of their chosen medium. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen a game advertised as being completely new and original only to do something I've played before, often several times, and more often worse.
Look, I'm coming at this from a place of love. I am an eternal amateur as far as critique and commentary goes. Most of my reviews are pretty lean in terms of genre-wide analysis because I'd rather be efficient and useful to a reader than attempt to be deep. But I'm really, really tired of reviews that can go no deeper than "it's like Dark Souls!" or the more understandable but still uninformed "I've never played anything like this so that means it's never been done!".
If you value your work, if you want it to be of use to others, you need to know what the fuck you're talking about. That means becoming an expert, and becoming an expert means putting in the time to gain literacy in your medium/mediums of choice. Otherwise the only difference between you and some goober leaving a Steam review that just says "balls" is that the goober will actually get read.
