It is an indicator of the mental recession of the masses.

It will get worse with time.

YEAH BABY! YEAH!

As to why it's becoming harder to have a nice community and chat about games, I think it has to do with the fact that people are already exposed to so many games. Like you, they could have hundreds of games in their libraries. More are coming out all the time. Big sales happen all the time. Really people have more games than they could ever care for, and so it becomes less and less interesting to read from someone else hyping and talking about his favorite games or whatever.

Whereas back in the day, I'd imagine the average gamer was younger, had less disposable income, had to purchase physical copies that were quite expensive, didn't have these huge sales where you get a ton of games for nothing... in these times, such a gamer would have far fewer games, maybe buy 1-5 games a year and play these. In that context, when you're not exposed to thousands of games competing for attention all the time, you probably have more time & attention span left for chatting about games with friends or online communities. And then you'd actually play the same games with your friends. Now people play whatever..

I'm also somewhat troubled by this. On one hand, it's a relief. On the other hand, games are more and more just disposable entertainmetn, like B-grade movies you watch once and then forget, and not something you put your heart into.

On one hand, it is very troubling for me as I am considering a career as a [solo or indie] game developer. It is troubling because the prices get so low especially with the sales, and there are so many games I fear the gamers' wallets get spread thin. As in it gets harder and harder to actually make a profitable game. On the other hand, it's easier than ever before for an indie to get on the market. And people's willingness to buy tons of cheap games because they're cheap means it's quite possible to enter the market and actually make profit with a game that isn't quite AAA grade; contrast with the situation in the past where gamers would prefer to spend their hard earned allowance on just a few carefully chosen AAA titles.

Yeah, it's hard for me to find a community where I feel like I'm at home.

Nice post, +1 : )
I feel ya, in my city (non-casual) gamers must be ultra rare.
Btw, even Gog is full of trolls now..

I expected something else... And I understand your trouble. I only have a couple of gamer friends, and even those don't really mind DRM, I think only one complained once about Uplay. But most love Steam :(. And I have to admit that there are some things that steam does better than GOG, but in the end I prefer to be able to play however I want my games (especially offline).