There are many eras in video game industry that made people stop playing games, however most of them introduced changes new customers would like:
1) Arcade crash
Shift to video game consoles changed what video games are. It made some arcade people lose interest, but new customers saw no problem with it. They enjoyed their video game consoles.
2) Console video gaming crash
This is when the concept "PC Master Race" introduced lol. People made fun of console games due to how low quality they are in terms of resolution and frame per second rate. Even arcade people may enjoyed console games but for higher quality they are shifted to PC gaming when consoles couldn't keep up. People felt like console games prevent PC gaming improve, people wanted to kill console gaming completely to stop being dragged down.
3) Online games crash and popularity of action games, diminished sense of American RPGs
They even made Skyrim turn into mindless action game that have some copy-paste side quests of Oblivion but never the ones that would be "too much bother to develop" ones. EA dude said "no one wanna play a singleplayer game" and then IDK industry shifted into some online game model. Action was so popular. Mass Effect was barely "RPG", they used popularity of KOTOR 1 to spam "similar" bad RPG games that have "dating sim" elements. This is when older gamers gave up playing games, new gamers liked dating sim games, action games and online games.
4) Modern video game industry crash
Games lacked so much quality compared to what people learned since PS2-era video games people just lost interest. If you were no action, JRPG, online and dating sim American bad RPG gamer you had nothing to play. This is when indie video game industry exploded.
5) Indie industry almost replaced AAA industry
Industry was so confused when people even left 3D gaming and played 2D games. "We better play Super Meat Boy" yo. The popular flash games released on Steam and they made profit.
6) "We are sick of Ubisoft copy games!!!!"
Indie industry made whole industry come up with bold risks to "improve" industry. Ubisoft games became a "formula" for many games. Capture areas, collect whatever, complete missions by doing side tasks and all. They produced Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed 4 as fun games of the era because nothing else was much fun. But then this formula started to be copy-pasted and the idea is so overused Ubisoft games started to lose interest. Afterwards Witcher 3 released.
6) Witcher 3 polished video game industry, but Witcher clones deteriorated industry
Witcher 3 was the last decent game western video game industry ever developed, but then industry shifted to Witcher 3-like games. As a result Assassin's Creed games became a hybrid of simple Witcher 3 mixed with bad JRPG elements didn't go well with the series. JRPG was always successful in its context. Western industries paniced so much they started to made their games more like JRPG but still keeping action gameplay.
7) Video game industry lacking vision
It's when people started to think "this is not a JRPG I used to like" and then "this is not the American game I used to like" because west and east started to copy paste from each other so hard games started to lose any identity, they became generic mess.
8) Netflix is more popular than video gaming hobby
It made video game industry started to develop games more like Netflix stuff so games became more like about watching and character dramas further
9) We have no idea what to do, better develop a video game by studying social media
This is the reason of the current crash. Writing about specific topic would be the reason for why they would delete this message. Let's say instead of understanding the "gamer" profile they try to befit into minority of society that's a more minority % in gamer profile as if this is the popular and common person profile. And then American culture shifted and effected many aspects in American society and as far as I know even Japan is perhaps too effected.
As a result American and Japanese games lacking their "good" aspects and therefore giving people from outside of America and Japan, especially societies that has no close resemblance of America and Japan has no interest left in video game industry anymore because new video games are not about something they would be interested in anymore.
X) Would Americans and Japanese people give up video gaming?
Video game companies from these countries will make "enough" profit but they shouldn't expect international profit at this point as much as 2 decades ago. Their industries perhaps pushing world to focus on kindling their own video game industry, even releasing their own video game consoles at this point.
Personally I don't think AAA means anything anymore. AAA budget but FFF quality games. Since past a decade I focus more on indie video game industry more but it has its own crash moments due to porn games and generic horror game spams mostly.
Back then AAA games were like "Hollywood movie" in a sense it has a sense of quality and non-AAA games were more like TV movies. Both would be enjoyable in their own context but real deal was cinema movies. Now TV movies are better than Hollywood movies (this is my analogy). Perhaps people disliked their own countries' movie industry before (still an analogy here) so they were too focused on American movies, but American stuff gets so low quality people would rather watch Indian movies at this point lol.
Back then American and Japanese games had human elements in them so game could interest people despite they are not American and Japanese. Now I don't understand the culture of current America and Japan. Still what I mean is something a reason to delete this message so what I would say is, their games started to be so narrow in their target audiance I cannot find anything to be interested in such games. I don't understand why they care about these topics nor I don't understand what's interesting about it. I rather dig out and play video games that released before I was born at this point. If you fell into a hole and cannot fly up then dig down and go out from China lolol.
