I think the real difference for the "Character Creation Focus" of 3e and the explanation of all these 'generations' is very simple and has little to do with what videogames were doing:
AD&D was a new version of D&D that tried to give you as much of everything D&D did as possible with the core rulebooks.... while putting it into a new system. There were also some outright improvements, like making Dwarf a race instead of a class, which made most people happy!
2e and the Revised version thereof were attempts to do the same thing: Consolidate as much as possible what improvements were made.
3e did that, too, while doing a couple -huge- changes to attack rolls and saving throws by making both more easily understood and managed. Gone was 7/2 and in was +20/+15/+10/+5.
And then 3.5e was just taking changes that had been added to 3e over the years and adding them in to a new official product, same as 2e.
4e, on the other hand, was mostly Heinsoo, Collins, and Wyatt trying to do something daring and avante-garde! 3e was already the 'culmination' of the current class structure paradigm and something new had to be built! Specifically one that could be heavily monetized through peripherals like 1st party miniatures, battle mats, maps, and more!
It certainly had NOTHING TO DO with Pathfinder gaining success and Hasbro/WotC wanting to shift the paradigm to keep as much of the D&D and TTRPG income in-house with the new GSL to replace the OGL and the aforementioned 1st party minis and maps and other accoutrements for playing 4e D&D.
It was also streamlined for easy conversion to computer gaming, but that has less to do with it, I think, than wanting to rebuild the wall around their garden.
And that went over like a lead balloon, which is why 5e came back as essentially an updated 3.5e with a few new mechanics.
None of it is seismic shifts in playstyle representing specific generations who wanted something 'new' or 'specific' from D&D. Just the slow accumulation of feature-creep across half a dozen editions.
Hell. That's why people are still clamoring for old classes and campaign settings for 5e: The desire hasn't changed, only the availability has. Some stuff got kept, some stuff got left behind. And the people who played it back then still want to play it, now.
