I live in a State where there are no LAN Parties. Bare in mind, I live in a small State, but it's densely populated per square mile and it has a higher Population than North Dakota.
It's hard to be a social PC Gamer in areas without LAN Parties. I could drive for an hour to visit my State's Capital and not find a LAN Party there, Just a Statbucks, a independent Cyber Cafe and the only Apple Store in the State.
Social local Gaming goes as follows:
If I was a Wii Gamer...
Me: Hey, wanna go over my place and play Wii Bowling?
Them: Sure, sounds like fun!
[More likely to find females in that group and get laid]
Me asking as myself...
Me: Hey, anybody wanna play BF3 at my Place?
Them: OMG, you're a nerd, still playing video games as a grown Man!
Them: (if they're into it) Sure, which System do you got?
[at this point, our chances to have a more "intimate" female gamer friends are much lower and even if you had it on one console, chances are, they could have it for the console that you don't own]
Me: I play on PC
Them: OMG, you're a nerd, you spent thousands of dollars on a Gaming PC? (even though I only spent $100 on my Video Card and $100 on my CPU)
In a nutshell, your chances of making friends from work or whatever with local gaming are:
Wii: High for Female friends, low for Male friends.
Xbox/PS3: High for Male friends, low for Female friends. (again, if you only have one console, it's harder to match consoles)
PC: Low for Male friends, Really Low for Female friends
We're pretty much the Hipsters of the gaming world and if you live in the middle of nowhere, if your hobbies aren't sports, fishing, drinking, or nascar, you might as well be a vulcan in a coal town. Granted, there are people that play Video Games in hick towns, but it goes Facebook first, Android second, iPhone third, Xbox fourth, PS3 fourth and PC is dead last.