When my parents retired they moved to about 20 miles away from me and they had a lot of stuff in boxes that belonged to my siblings and I. They had some of my old gaming magazines from the 90s. It was so nice to read a gaming magazine where the main focus was on games or to read interviews with game developers that talked about games and not the diversity of the staff or whatever woke trendy talking points you hear today. You could also see that they had an actual interest in video games.

Just made me think what a great time the 80s - Early 2000s were for nerdy stuff. All the cool online forums in the 90s/Early 2000s as well as nerd websites that had a weird concept of marketing to nerds.

So pretty much all these sites/gaming magazines were bought by corporations who are obsessed with chasing the mythical female audience? Ignoring the fact that there are already women who are in the hobby?

I don't understand these companies. I live in Texas where bbq is very popular. It would be like my favorite bbq place getting bought out by vegans and then all the meat product being phased out. Instead of understanding who their customers are they attack them.

Probably one of the most head scratching examples of this was when I heard that Disney originally bought Star Wars because they wanted something that appealed to boys. Then Kathleen Kennedy droned on and on about how no girls were in Star Wars. I remember at that time wondering how she had worked at Lucasfilms so long and didn't know much about Star Wars. There were always female fans and as a longtime reader of the old EU books/comic books (that she apparently didn't know about) I can attest to the fact that a lot of women read those. But I guess they weren't the type of female fans she wanted.

I would so love to tell some board of an entertainment company that some hobbies will always appeal to more men than women and vice versa and that is OK. Stop trying to force stories that nobody wants, and to gaming companies..... people want games, not some social commentary. There are plenty of news outlets for that.