3 ms·

Doomed to be forever dominated by nerds, perhaps. Can anybody name an example of a field of entertainment that was successfully de-nerdified?

• ricree 17y ago
  Video games, to an extent. Though at least some of that comes from branching out into new genres that appeal outside of what would be considered traditional nerd interests. Sports games come to mind, for example.
• uriel 17y ago
  > Can anybody name an example of a field of entertainment that was successfully de-nerdified? Reddit. (Or great parts of it anyway.)
  • cheald 17y ago
    World of Warcraft. MMORPGs were very squarely the domain of the archtypical basement-dwelling nerd - they were intensely mathematical (which is natural, given its D&D lineage), brutally punishing in the case of mistakes (corpse runs, XP loss), and tuned to the highly-methodical, cause-and-effect nerd mentality ("blind" crafting lists, week-long spawn timers, etc). Then WoW came along, sucked out all the "nerd sauce", and replaced it with an easily-accessible set of rules that made the game approachable and appealing to the mass markets, and it has been wildly successful as a result. The nerd bits are still there, buried deep down, but the average player never has to touch them to fully enjoy the game. Sure, if you play WoW, you're still a "nerd" by social standards, because hey, let's face it, you're playing an online role playing game in your underwear with hundreds of people you've never met, but there are a lot of people who we wouldn't classify as "nerds" that play the game.
• philwelch 17y ago
  Some of the highest grossing movies of all time are either comic book adaptations or science fiction or fantasy extravaganzas.