Building a strong social circle is more important than ever now. You got chicks that only f**k with dudes they meet through friends/family/church/school etc
In the old days, all you had to be good at was conversation and you could go to the club and bag a chick that was your physical equal. Now you have to have a solid amount of friends, and your friends have to have friends. If you meet a group of dudes and they don't know chicks, you have meet new friends that know chicks. The amount of women open to being approached in public is dwindling, unless there is a clear discrepancy in looks.
The game is light work for the dudes that were popular in HS/College and dudes that have tons of social validation. But the "regular" guy that wants to go out and bag chicks on par with him, just off the strength of sex being a fun activity that both sexes enjoy, that's going extinct. If you're gonna do that, it's mainly online, and online dating usually comes with a lowering of standards.
Going out sucks because the amount of pu**y available to men that the women don't already know is limited. Going out is now just a validation of status, attractiveness, wealth, and "coolness", when before there was a meat market element to it. The meat market is now online.