About 15 or so years ago (as of writing this) video game journalism had been almost completely invaded by far-leftist activists who, inspired by the way-too-successful anti-video-game campaigns by the likes of Anita Sarkeesian, joined the campaign and started writing article after article attacking, deriding and dehumanizing their very audience, ie. gamers.
And what do you know, they got what they wanted: A massive counter-reaction from said audience, who didn't feel like being insulted, derided and dehumanized in that manner. Something that the journalists and other activists in the industry and elsewhere are still milking to its full potential to this day, as much as they can.
These defamatory articles were oftentimes actually aimed at video game developer companies rather than anybody else. The most infamous such articles directly told those companies and the people running them things like "gamers don't need to be your audience."
And the scary thing is that, at least with some companies (including some of the biggest and most successful ones), it worked: They swallowed that narrative hook, line and sinker. Wholesale.
The picture painted by this narrative is that not only are gamers "toxic" (besides being sex-starved lonely misogynist anti-social pigs who do nothing with their lives than to engage in toxic behavior and flamewars on the internet), but moreover, and this is the crucial part, that they are a minuscule minority of people who buy and play the video games produced by these game companies.
No actual numbers were ever presented (rather obviously), but the implication was very clear. The woman-hating toxic "gamer bros" were just a small minority of the customerbase, of the people buying and playing games. That losing their support and their purchases wouldn't even be felt. While, perhaps, none of the activist journalists said this directly (especially not while providing hard statistics), the implication was strong and clear.
Of course anybody with half a brain cell would realize that cannot possibly be true.
Playing video games, no matter how popular it is, and how big of an industry it is, is nevertheless a quite niche hobby, all things considered.
Suppose a particularly popular video game sells, let's say, 10 million copies, which in the industry would be considered quite a success. That still leaves about 7.99 billion people in this word who did not buy the game in question. Even with such big numbers, that's still about 0.125% of the world's population. A tenth of a percent. Obviously the portion of people is even lower for games that sell just 1 million copies or less. The rest either can't afford it, or aren't interested. That 7.99 billion people are not part of the customerbase. The people who actually buy the games are a very small minority of all people. In other words, those who both can afford it, and are interested enough to spend quite large amounts of money on it.
So from all the 8 billion people in the world, what's this 0.1% of the population that might purchase a game because they are interested enough?
Gamers, that's who.
The very same people that the journalists despise and the game developers that have been convinced by them dismiss as a small inconsequential minority.
Both the journalists and those game developers are biting the hand that feeds them. And that's because they have completely believed a lie.
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