Well, for me, the obviously conclusion would be that the play happened but they never wrote them up in posts. I know that sometimes I have the intention of writing up play in posts or on websites or what have you, and sometimes I get really into it and do it but if my time gets short, it’s not the play that suffers, but my desire to post about it online.

I take the time to organize, prep and run a game, and I do it despite the fact that I have a new baby and a number of close friends, who take up a portion of my time. I do it because the gaming group is made up of my close friends, friends that I cultivated over years of mostly gaming.

If there is a decline in friendship, it’s because we choose it – by being too lazy or self-absorbed to do the work that ongoing friendships require. But gaming has always, in my experience, been a place where friends are made and kept, far more so than almost any other activity, barring competitive sports.

Maybe. I think there’s a great lack of empathy in the scene right now, and many designs seem to assume no responsibility to be empathetic.

I think “hazing” is real in RPG culture, but not necessarily in texts, which were designed by scenes who’d finished the actual hazing. You’re absolutely right that friendship doesn’t eliminate pervasive social problems — but you will *never* solve those problems without it. Why should somebody care about sexism in RPGs (for example) when they don’t really give a shit about the ppeople they play with at all except as instruments for self-gratification?

A lot of online discourse is sincere, but a lot more of it isn’t. There are deep rooted reasons for this that can’t be waved away as semantics. We are tuned to understand people through a series of cues that are not all transmitted through common online media.

Any broad examination is going to catch outliers. In any event, I do think there’s a bigger chunk of gamers who don’t game much/at all (as opposed to people who’ve turned their back on gaming completely) now than there has been before.

People who write gaming blogs also game, and plenty of them don’t talk about it in their blogs because at least one survey had shown people find it boring. I think many of us instinctively knew this before the survey was out.

I’m not just talking about gaming blogs. In multiple online mediam descriptions of playing (or not playing) when they do appear are telling. I see people plan stuff weeks, months in advance and commit to describing sessions — but the sessions never materialize. Plus, RPG bloggers do blog about play a whole lot. I think I may be exceptional in *not* talking about my house games much.

The Geek Social Fallacies essay is interesting. I hadn’t seen it before; thanks for linking it. GSF1 makes things make a lot more sense to me. I see a lot of people complaining about problem gamers, and my response has always been, “So why do you game with them?” Now I get it.

It’s not without insight, but it’s not evidence-backed psychology, either, and its presence as a meme is not largely destructive.

But as far as general social trends, yikes. That linked study was terrifying. I admit that I must have mis-extrapolated from personal experience: I have more friends now than I did 15 years ago, and more of them play games, and everyone I’m friends with also plays games (not because they are “gamers,” but because they are nice humans, and nice humans play games with one another when given the right opportunity). But it seems I am a outlier. Which is strange, because I’m sure I’m not doing anything especially right.

I think the homosexual terror discussed by the wikipedia article is a real barrier between men, but I’m not sure if it explains the recent downtick in friendship, especially if the survey recorded equal alienation among women. The first explanation that occurred to me was people becoming less and less tethered geographically; you invest in friendships, but everyone separates after high-school, after college, after they change jobs, etc…but again, this is probably just color from my own recent experience.

How can we best look for a solution, above and beyond, the excellent personal steps you suggest? Can’t the internet be a tool for communication and connection? I certainly couldn’t have met the friends with whom I currently play without it, or coordinate our schedules, or discover the various thoughts that challenge and (occasionally improve our play.

PS:I had never thought of the Geek Social Fallacies as being used as the justification for burning bridges! That’s terrible! Was that what they were for, originally? I admit I took them in the exact opposite spirit: the worst sin is to not talk to your friends about the normal problems that you encounter, and the second worse is cultivating a small number of shallow relationships.