Woa guys! Just hang on a second!

Do people go out and do studies on whether or not yo-yo's create social groups and cause people to be anti social? Wait let me look.

...........

Phew! After searching the first three pages of a google search on the social effects of yo-yo's I couldn't find anything. Thankfully there's one thing that has been unadulterated by sociologists.

This was a very long winded article. It should not be read right after waking up with a cold as it will give you a headache. It is about online games as third places (ie. comparing them to pubs or swimming pools I guess). Here's the link if you want to read it:
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/steinkuehler.html

Ok so to start off we should have some things defined. When I refer to people as gamers, I do not refer to what a lot of people view as the current gaming demographic today. That is the x-box community. This is because Microsoft initially and still markets to a very narrow audience. This audience is the bear drinking frat boy crowd and the 13 year old male demographic. This can be clearly seen/heard by going into any of the console community chat rooms or in game chats. You can just feel the lack of intelligence.

What I view a gamer as is, basically everyone else. Either a relatively young age group or the 21-35 year old demographic that started playing games in the 80s. This latter group, mostly, knows a thing or two about about etiquette when it comes to all things done on the Internet.

Now what I am trying to do mostly is, explain the gamer. I thought this article was interesting but it's not something that roughly 95% of the gaming community would think of. And then the authors go and say something like,

"Like sports, MMOs appeal to people in part because they represent meritocracies otherwise unavailable in a world often filled with unfairness (Huizenga, 1949)."

They have just lumped thousands of people into a small small group. The gamer is a much simpler creature. The MMO player is some one who likes to explore a large in-game world, and work with a small or large group of people to improve their personal gaming experience.

Gamers don't play games to feel acceptance. They play games to kill things and get fat lootz.

The article does an exhaustive job of explaining why each and every social aspect of Asheron's Call and Lineage I & II cause gamers to feel like they are in a place where they can fit in.
But really if a player does not feel they can fit into a game world why would they play the game?