I was there too. I work in the game industry. That culture you're describing was completely destroyed by not having to leave the house to participate in it.
It's even killing off conventions, it even got major ones 20 years in - like E3. Covid just hastened the slow decline.
This is way before mmorpgs, mass online multiplayer and consoles mostly completely took over.
It killed the culture. But of course as we know, gaming is now a billion dollar industry so maybe it was the gamers that had it right all along.