Blast From The Past - Hardcore Gamer Elitism Began In The '80s

Castrum - And here you were, thinking this is something new to gaming:

From the March 1988 Newsweek article: 

Rawson Stovall, a 16-year-old syndicated columnist on video and computer games, warns against the lure of complexity. Arcane simulations requiring thick instruction manuals "aren't games to me," he says. "A game is something with action and a joystick and firing the button and shooting the aliens." For the born-again video-game industry, the key to sustaining this new boom may be not to forget that the joystick generation will always be its best market.

Yes, once upon a time, games more complex than Pong were considered "arcane simulations". I guess Farmville and Kinect are the backlash from this traumatic development.

http://kotaku.com/5830298/video-game-snobbery-started-a-long-time-ago