Games is not in a position of minimizing all risk. What industry is? If you want a safe job get into defense contracting. Go back to university and retrain like everybody else does.
It's baffling to see this attitude on Hackernews, famous for tech entrepreneurs who have more pivots in their career than a pirouetting ice skater.
Are comic books mainstream? They sold millions of copies, they are still a niche interest. Not until the Wii did games open up to a 'casual' market. With phones it's truly everywhere now.
There is a generalized dissatisfaction that the wealth generated by tech is not adequately being reached by its workers. Union advocacy is only a component of it. Tech might pay better than other industries, but its workers are just as affected by costs in housing and healthcare, just as everyone else.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923085
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065
Really? So the Atari boom was niche? 500,000 arcade machines sold in 1982 was niche? 30 million Nintendo Entertainment systems in American homes was niche?
It hasn't been a fledgling industry by any reasonable measure for at least 25 years if not much longer.
How many artists, testers and game designers do you know that moved into finance, media jobs, or architectural visualization (very much a niche industry). At least 75% of people working in the video game industry doing skilled and professional work can't easily transfer to a different field in the same way as an electrician cant move in to plumbing.