Gaming Fashion

When did gaming become the supercool, chic hobby that it is today? It's been a gradual climb up from the realms of pure geekery up to this point that we are today. Game developers enjoy rock star like wages( at least the more prolific and talented gaming devs), millions are spent on advertising budgets and videogames pull in ten times the amount of cash that Blockbuster movies do. 
For me though the time that I realised that gaming was not solely the preserve of the social disaffected  permanent bedroom dwellers anymore was the day that it actually became chic to wear funny t shirts of the gaming variety. Suddenly as if overnight Mario and Sonic and even the old stalwart of the dawn of Gaming time, the original Space Invader himself was adorning a t shirt. And to top it off when I wandered my local shopping center and saw people of all ages and types sporting this geek chic, they weren't social pariahs, indeed they were from all walks of life and some even had vigour and panache to them. They were proud to be gamers and openly display their allegiance to their hobby/lifestyle with a brazenly worn gaming icon emblazoned across their chest.
Truly it is now proven that Gaming is the new cool.