The end of the 90s seems to mark a kind of cultural turning point for games, where at one point there was a need for better writing, the PSX era ushered in a much more strongly visual and cinematic construction, one that moved far away from Nintendo's more cartoon-influenced vision of games. It resulted in a fairly large upheaval and video games were quickly talked about very differently. There was a desire for what I can best describe as exploitation of the media, and a move towards that cinematic aesthetic resulted in a massive proliferation of pornography that seems to have simultaneously seeped into video games more commonly. And for whatever reason (there are many I would speculate on), the pushback towards that kind of media simply didn't happen, and the reality of that industry absorption has deeply impacted the current state of video games, from the current gambling-oriented attitudes to the "continuous delivery" models of game development. Finished products have fallen away in favor of models that are much more closely aligned with gambling and pornography industries, whereby the goal is to exploit and addict, rather than a secondary industry being formed around franchise creation, as is the case with toy and movie industries. This has happened to limited degrees in video games, but the goal of video games is not to promote a creative franchise or creator but instead to keep users "using" their game.
The result has been a deep tie to those exploitation industries, and video games currently largely reflect that embedded exploitation in many ways, including the frequently embedded misogyny and racism, classism, homophobia, gambling, etc.
I draw some of these conclusions from experience, but many of them are from a distinct linguistic dimorphism from interviews stemming in part from places like shmuplations.com and other websites that do translations of video game interviews, particularly those that have a longer or older history. There's a sort of language that starts to embed itself in the 2000s that is highly similar to industries where the primary method of consumption is an exploitative relationship. If you've ever looked at books about the history of Las Vegas or the construction of the Playboy empire, you'll see very similar language and attitudes towards the content being developed and the method of consumption (piecemeal sales, a specific construction and visual style, a highly particular audience).
