I really miss the old days of gaming on the PC as well. Seemed to be far better back then. It was the time where games were great, game developers weren't trying to monetize or restrict modding, and also the time where everyone wasn't so busy. It was also the time where gaming was literally like an underground organization which no one knew about, and people had really crappy PCs at times which meant people like me who had high end machines could destroy the competition. I'd host LAN parties often at my home as well, getting friends and neighbors to get on my network to play rounds of Halo Trial for example throughout the night, heck even a few friends connecting via the Internet to the LAN party at night. These days, I have quite a beefy network going under utilized besides my own use. These days I can barely get people to join games or for that matter come over to play a game. They're all busy.
Now, while I'm not the person that will say PC Gaming is at a demise since I believe it is still going strong, I can say though the times have changed. My area used to have a LAN gaming center which was literally dark inside except for Neon lights all over the place, Trance music and high end PCs, had HD projectors, one heck of an Internet connection and very fast servers and network there. Place shut down last year and sold all of their PCs on eBay for dirt cheap. I loved to go to that place bringing my PC with me to have some midnight frags with the locals back in 2006.