I remember when I was 12 or 13, and the SNES had been out about a year, and there were rumors in video game magazines about Sony entering the ring, with a CD based console. Just rumblings, hearsay. Then later on in 1993, they became real.

I remember taking a look at the sega CD and thinking "They want more of that?" it was filled with FMV games, or games that could easily have been put on a cartridge if they left out the cut scenes. The FMV games in particular were barely qualified games. Most of them were Dragon's Layer level of interaction, but with worse quality video.

I'm not sure what happened after 1994, but it seems like people who were calling everyone who played video games losers were desperate for a piece of the growing financial pie, while continuing to shit on and destroy video games.

The thing is, it may not be possible to keep video games niche. It just attracts too many people for any sort of gate keeping at all. You can try, and you can be vitriolic to those that want in, to make them less interested. But they'll just avoid you, and try it if they're actually curious about it.

I'm not sure what can be done anymore. I've almost entirely abandoned AAA gaming and buying new games in general. With the exception of the games I suggested in another thread, the newest game I bought this year was released in 2006.