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.
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.