Hardcore gamer = someone who plays only cinematic grizzed white dude games and/or military fetishizing FPS
Casual gamer = anyone that is not a 15-25 yo male, and/or plays anything outside of the previously mentioned games, especially if those games are colorful.
So basically the gaming community is full of gatekeeping, misogyny, toxic masculinity and general chuddery. They make sure they're the loudest voice heard when anything about games is talked about, and won't be happy until all games a homogenous stream of bland, hyper-realistic but with a grey filter slog of mindless action with no heart or soul. And don't you dare force them to read any dialogue or story.
G*mers never had a chance.
The 70s saw the development of really old games like Dnd, essentially some STEMlord's pet project. Many of these ancient games were tied to Dnd, where the reactionary Gary Gygax's influence in Dnd was completely dominant.
The 80s continued that tradition with games like Rogue and Nethack. This was also when Nintendo exclusively marketed the NES as a "boy toy." Both of what could be retroactively labeled as indie and AAA gaming were firmly men only. Arcades tended to be dominated by men as well.
The 90s further perpetuated this trend with the console wars between Nintendo and Sega, with Sega pushing really hard as the cool and definitely being played by dudes with 'tude console. If you looked at Sega ads during that time, they were all hyper-trying-too-hard-masculine.
The 00s, while carrying the misogynist torch, reflected a qualitative shift in its misogyny. The 00s, or more specifically, 2001 was when Halo 1 was released on the Xbox. This game, more than any other, was what pushed gaming from some nerdy shit into the mainstream. With the mainstreamification of gaming came the dudebros. The previously misogynist nerds were transformed into misogynist dudebros, and the dudebros carried their toxic competitiveness into gaming.
The 10s was when esports, or more specifically L*ague of L*gends, became commercially viable. The esportification of games began and along with it, the toxic competitiveness seeped even in games that weren't designed to be competitive. And it pains me to say this, but speedrunning contributed to this as well. Suddenly, you started hearing about the "meta" and "optimal strats" in some indie platformer. And of course, G*merg*te sealed the deal by politicizing gaming, making g*mers consciously reactionary.
I have checked out of gaming so I can't give you a rundown of the 20s, but it's more of the same shit honestly. The seeds were sown during the 70s, with each subsequent decade nurturing the seedling, until it blossomed into some hideous plant with G*merg*te.
I hate esports i hate how Riot took all the actually fun modes in league like OFA and nexus clash and the pve game modes and decides to only make them appear in rotations (or not even appear for pve modes) because apparently Riot only cares about competitive and ranked play.
Also hate how certain characters like Azir is effectively neutered because its too good for the highly coordinated esport teams, whose gameplay barely resembles even the highest ranked play.
Billion dollar game cant even afford to support other game modes.
LoL says "here's a game and some pieces tailor-made to play it" while DotA says "here's some toys and a sandbox, it's out of my hands now" and I think about that every day
hell yeah, same
honestly I think dota's way should be the way for fun+challenging games in general