The group being oblivious about Elite surprised me. It showed two things, both are slightly worrying to me. First it made me feel old because a lot if not most people at my age (above 40) know about Elite and its significance and second it proves what a national one way street discussion about games is. It is so US centric because that's where most of the media is based since the internet became the most important sector. While magazines were still a thing Europe could compete for mindshare, but essentially the communities were seperate. "We" did our C64, Spectrum and Amiga thing and "they" played their consoles and visited arcades. Ever since the floodgates for worldwide discussion opened "our" backgrounds got pushed to the side and "their" history became the de facto history of video games. This leads to an unfortunate imbalance where Europeans probably have heard about games like "Oregon Trail" although most of us never played it - we might know you can die of dysentery though. Important games like Elite have a much harder time being remembered unfortunately.
This isn't the EZA's fault of course and I'm not saying Elite needs to be in that arbitrary Hall of Fame over any of those other candidates, it just made me think.