I think it has some influence, but hardly what you would call a game changer, more a gradual and logical progression as more people from minority groups move into positions of influence.
No, but there is a difference between encouraging (via more inclusive art work and the like), catering to your existing audience (art work that reflects the European roots of the game) and explicitly discouraging people from playing which I've not seen occur in any published material, or at any game table I've sat at or convention I've attended.
Would you say Luke Cage or Spike Lee movies explicitly discourages white audiences from watching?
First, couldn't care less about the nit picking over the term "game changer".
That out of the way, your response seems tangential to what I asked. Do you recognize that act of inclusiveness add up to make a trend of increased inclusiveness? Having answered that, do you agree or disagree that that trend impacts how welcome people feel in the hobby?
Because the thing is, if all you look at is what happens at tables you game at, you are missing most of the picture. For the rest, you have to actually listen to the diverse groups of people telling their stories of not feeling like DnD was "for them", because it was entirely (or close enough as to make no difference) full of white, male, cishet heroes.
Your stories of playing with POC, women, and LGBT people don't negate those stories, in any way. No one anywhere is claiming that no one but white cishet dudes ever played DnD before 1990, or whatever. That just isn't a claim being made. What people are saying is that the hobby is growing, in part, due to a more directly and explicitly inclusive approach, and that we all know people who were interested but felt unwelcome, or who used to play but got tired of the misogyny, homophobia, etc and lack of representation, and who have come back, because those things have improved.
Trying to claim that the concerted efforts of publishers to be more inclusive has had nothing to do with that is just silly. None of this happens on its own. It happens because people try, and succeed, to make it happen. And media is a huge part of that.
As for Luke Cage and Spike Lee, of course not. You're comparing things that are entirely different. Context changes things, and the context of a single show that is about almost entirely black characters is very different than one "white people" show in a never ending avalanche of popular media whiteness.
Luke Cage is something different from anything Marvel has done before, from what anyone has done before, really. Not since the 70's has there been an action hero type story like this that was entirely about black people, in a black community, with no need or desire to be saved by some white kid, and rather a lot of that stuff in the 70's was so full of caricaturised stereotypes meant to make white people laugh enough to throw more money at it, that it hardly counts.
Spike Lee and Luke Cage are about and for black people, and that is good. Because so much of media only includes black people as sidekicks and bad guys, or people who need saving by the white hero, and usually if there is a black person with a speaking role, they are the only one, as if two would be just too many, etc.