There were a lot more feeemales in arcades in Pong's time. It was more of a well-rounded social gathering place with jukeboxes, pool tables, air hockey, and the like.

It was a deliberate choice to nudge that culture with advertising and marketing tricks to make it increasingly hostile to feeemales once their internal studies indicated that male spend more money when they're not just chatting and flirting and otherwise hanging out for relatively free and are instead getting very serious about the bibeo bame.

Not this bad. People will literally hold grudges and send death threats for not liking a game nowadays. The worst I remember getting in the ninites is being called an asshole.