As I wrote in a comment somewhere on gamespot, it's what happened to all of us at one time or another. Being involved IRL to the extent that it caused the lack of time or even motivation to sit in front of the screen and be a gamer. I also found myself spending more time thinking about gaming than actually playing games.

Maybe that's normal when one is dealing with a lifelong addiction.

And yes, tastes change in those new situations... I will rarely have the time to immerse myself into a huge world of Forgotten Realms or Tyria; more often it will be some flash game on Kongregate or some mindless FPS.

This is where I see the core explanation of today's gaming industry evolution: gaming isn't something 10000 people over the world do in their basement, it's something everybody do, in the brief breaks between work and work (and sleep sometimes). So what do we get? More instant fun, and lack of quintessential substances that make gaming fullfiling.