Another interesting side affect of these games has been huge crash in the number of people involved in other types of outside hobbies. I forget what the percentage was (it was pretty staggering though) but it came up in the results of a survey the Middle Ages club I'm in (SCA world wide) as to why group numbers were suddenly holding steady after nearly 50 years, after increasing slowly for most of that time period.
expatriate Californian living in rural Ireland with husband, dogs, horses. garden and many, many cats