Gamers are important because they are consistent customers. Crypto buying of GPUs is done (anyone still in this area is buying ASICs). Meanwhile gamers are still buying GPUs - they do sometimes hold off when the economy doesn't allow, but you can trust that gamers will continue to buy GPUs to play their games and thus they are a safe investment. It is rational to sell CPUs to a gamer for much less than someone in crypto because the gamer will be back (even if the gamer "grows up" there are more replacing them). Thus gamer is an important group while crypto is not.

The above was their prediction during the crypto boom and it turns out correct. I'm not sure how AI will turn out, but it isn't unreasonable to predict that AI will also move to dedicated chips (or die?) in a few years thus making gamers more important because gamers will be buying GPUs when this fad is over. Though of course if AI turns out to be a constant demand for more/better GPUs long term they are more important.

Gamers are not the only important GPU market. CAD comes to mind as another group that is a consistent demand for GPUs over the years. I know there are others, they are all important.

I think they're just a proxy/alias for 'state-of-the-art personal computing'.

I’d rather prefer that the average Joe has a good entertainment system than our corporate overlords has a good surveillance system.