Might be a stretch, but have you tried climbing or similar social sports?

Climbing is a bit more for young adults, but since the wall is a shared resource, you have a lot of these social interactions, and it's mostly strangers as well, you just walk up, pay for a couple of hours and start climbing.

I'm sure there's social sports more appropriate for adults and elderly as well.

Even just keeping the focus on fighting video games, the community still exists. Search for something like "<your city> FGC" (ie "fighting game community") and you'll probably come up with several hits. Join the Discords, figure out the schedule for local events, then just hang out and be a positive person. I was playing SF2 with folks in person just this past Saturday.