Just to be clear - I've wasted much of my youth with single player gaming. It was pretty addictive, no question about it. I'll do my best to get my kids have better life than that - no active screen around their young age, being very active in sports, nature, mountain activities, travel around the world backpacking etc. If they will choose to get hooked on games, so be it, but at least I've shown them many other, for me better options.
On a side note I tend to think kids have a lot of self regulating abilities but that might not matter anymore since it seems that the brightest minds of this generation are focused on "increasing engagement" and fucking ads...
Dating someone who plays games is not issue. Most young people of both genders play games. Athletes play games too, there never was any dichotomy between sport and playing video games.
But, dating obsessed gamer is kind of like being alone, except you get yelled at more. If excessively competitive sport dude is asshole to his mates, you don't get to witness that every evening either.
Maybe it is something about the ultra-competitive streak - being "driven" - that makes it not nice to be around?
Personally, I gave up playing even the lowest grade of social hockey as people seemed to have forgotten the "game for fun" part and were "playing to win" - including hard shots at your legs, playing on no matter the breach of game rules unless the ref whistled etc.
I mean, people who do sport at amateur level drink a lot too. But, the high sport is not the same at all.
True. But following a sport and being able to hold forth on it competently will allow you to start conversations and engage in connections with a much broader social circle than demonstrating your knowledge of vidya memes.
People also often get to know each other through gaming or it is their first interaction with technical things, setting up networking and firewalls for LAN parties, installing and creating mods etc.