You’re definitely right, although I grew up in Sweden and not Australia. But the same general cultural and societal trends applied. Growing up in the 90s/early 00s video games were still absolutely stigmatised and associated with nerds and social pariahs. It’s not that there weren’t games or gamers, but they were not really socially acceptable outside of the nerd subcultures and subgroups.

It wasn’t anything at all like how it is today, where everyone and their aunt is playing games and every kid from every social strata is playing some kind of video game.