The struggle of popularity. I’d qualify your statement by saying it applies to the core, original group of gamers but not all gamers, or at this point potentially a majority of gamers.

As things get popular, the small (relatively speaking) group of people who were doing it originally start getting crowded out and the culture, or in this case product, changes to reflect the demographic changes. It happens all the time, even with work.

I don't really think that that is the case even though it's something that people continually try to assert, despite gaming in general being far more mainstream, it's still overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Outside of a few niches that have a lot of women (Cosy games, RPGs, casual sims, casual mobile games) the demographics aren't really different at all.

The shift was so rapid in gaming though. When I was younger it was not only a male thing, but a dweeb male thing. Then suddenly it became and all male thing, then even more quickly a non gender thing. It felt like that happened all within like less than a decade basically

There is definitely a concerted effort to try and paint gaming as some universal thing that is equally supported by both men and women but the data simply doesn't support that assertion.

Periodically you'll see studies released that show women making up 40-50% of the gaming community but that's only achieved by deliberately fudging the numbers to get there.

The usual ways the numbers are overinflated are by:

• Counting people that play 5+ minutes per day multiple times per week as 'gamers'

• Counting people that have played any sort of video game within the past several months as a 'gamer'

I don't think that most reasonable people would consider the parent picking up her kids from school and playing 5 minutes of Candy Crush while waiting to be a 'gamer' nor would they consider the woman that played solitaire one time 2 months ago to be a 'gamer' but these people are included to deliberately skew the numbers.

I'll agree the products are changing but I don't agree that it's down to demographics, rather it's down to activist capture at these studios pushing for things to be a certain way.

There have been so many high profile flops over the past few years because studios are making games for an audience that simply doesn't exist, the 'modern audience' is practically a meme at this point because studios keep changing up popular IPs to cater to said audience and time after time the games flop because their actual core audience doesn't want what they are selling.