It has been quite some time since I have posted on these forums, but I thought that this would be best best audience for this post.

Just the other day, I was hit in the face of the apparent dissolving of the gaming subculture.

First, I should probably explain what I mean by this subculture. I am primarily writing about the group of people around the 2000s. Mostly it shared the following characteristics.

-near goth style cloths. Mostly a color palate of Black, gray, and blue. A good amount of piercings. extremely white skin. Black hair. Girls possibly had some highlights or something but not dyed to some insane color. Guys normally were not muscular at all.

-They acted different from Emo, scene, or Goth people. It was not about attention and there were not the exaggerations (not to insult anyone belonging to these subcultures, but a lot of people dress like this because it draws attention). Gaming was looked down upon and not a common thing.

-Played what I would consider "real games", ones that were more in depth or with a darker tone. Games like Morrowind, Starcraft, Warcraft(1,2,and 3) Vanilla WOW and TBC, Everquest I and II, Warhammer games, Zelda (Majoras Mask and previous), Soul caliber, Star wars Battle front, and Half life.

- These were the kind of people you would see working at gamestop or Rhino in my town before they were bought out.

With the sudden infulx of gamers in the past few years, my whole childhood of gaming is now discontinued. Instead of content, developers increasing focus on and promote their new graphics which people never realize do not matter because when you are playing the game, you don't even pay that much attention to them. With this sudden explosion of popularity, it seems that it is more the focus of making a game that sells then one that is fun.

Games have become more and more of a sport and less of an experience. It is no longer about enjoying the game but being better than everyone else.

I used to wish that more people were gamers so that I would more in common with everyone but the masses did not adapt to gaming, gaming adapted to the masses. The games became clones of each other just like their new audience. Maybe there are some fun games, but they are not fun for long because they had to be simplified for people that did not care to figure them out.

I feel like I am a generation late. Some of my major personality influences were people who I became familiar with at Rhino when I would go every week and buy a 2 dollar game for the 64 or Dreamcast.

Does anyone agree with me, or am I insane and none of this happened. Is my mind just exaggerating these changes?