For balance, I think that 16 core CPUs by AMD are totally pointless for general consumer tasks (including gaming) too, but obviously many people buying them engage in hefty doses of confirmation bias in order to justify their overspend. We see that with GPUs too.
The 16 core chips have always been touted as being for creators, and possibly streamers wanting to use a single rig. The 12 core is the true enthusiast chip, as it often games better, due to hitting higher clocks, vs the 16 core brethren. I would consider 8c/16t, in 2022, to be more mainstream, and enough for the typical gamer. Some games are starting to make use of that many cores. There are older titles, like Shadow of the Tomb Raider, that can use up to 75% total CPU usage of a 6c/12t chip. If you intend to keep your system long term, I wouldn't go below an 8 core.