It does take some time to get going and a few stories are pretty dense. But it’s also a good re-read, especially after reading some notes about the things you missed the first time around. There’s a crazy amount of detail and characters.
I think that there is a massive gap between competitive sports (almost inherently toxic) and massively online games (juvenile masses combined with lack of moderation) and, for example, speed running and challenge games or tabletop and board gaming which are all likely to be more wholesome and positive even if there is a competitive angle.
There is probably more visibility on the first side. Maybe because that’s where the money is. And I very much agree that this was a nice story and I hope there will be more of this kind of inspiration shown in public.
Arcade games or handheld or video games didn’t have any storage. Even on old home computers if you’d want to program in a save feature, you’d need to instruct the user to change to a fresh cassette for save. Then back to the game tape for reloading the game. And rewind and find the save on top of that to load.
It took a long time before floppies became ubiquitous, even longer for hard disks.
Well, they’ve probably been markets for some hundreds of years before they dug a parking cave underneath. Old cities especially get increasingly cramped with time.