Robin Hanson attended his third GenCon and postulates a theory for why so many nerds are so dedicated to their gaming:
Since nerds are, in essence, folks with low natural social skills (relative to their other skills), you might think nerds would favor movies & TV over games, as movies don’t require one to be as social. And among games you might think they’d prefer games with less social interaction. But you’d be wrong on both counts.
[. . .]
Another explanation is that while nerds like to socialize, they are terrified of making social mistakes. This explains why they tend to avoid eye-contact — it is too easy to make the wrong eye contacts. Games let nerds interact socially, yet avoid mistakes via well-defined rules, and a social norm that all legal moves are “fair game.” Role-playing has less well-defined rules, but the norm there is that social mistakes are to be blamed on characters, not players.
An third explanation is hinted at by the fact that we use the word “game” to refer both to “fun/frivolous” and to “seriously selfishly strategic.” While social norms usually forbid overt strategic selfishness in social behavior, such strategic selfishness is allowed in games.
Tyler Cowan likes this explanation:
I endorse this explanation (I am not sure if Robin does) and I notice some testable predictions. If nerds are otherwise constrained and thus underconsuming social experiences, nerd-run games should be especially boisterous and enjoyable. Nerds should invest more resources to play these games than non-nerds will find explicable; to non-nerds the games will seem superfluous. Nerds should seek out games with intensely social elements. In my limited sample of experience (I don’t like these games myself, but every now and then they are played in my place of employment), I see these predictions being validated.
H/T to Tim Harford for the link to Marginal Revolution.
