As a gamer myself, i find that the social isolation and everything else is not caused by games, but much rather games offer almost a ecological niche to exist in. A defined space where you can exist without much interruption and focus your partial/full attention to the tasks in hand.
The biggest crutch i find personally is as a result of boredom with a activity (from linear/narrowly open ended games, where you've run out of ideas to tread upon) meaning that the usually dormant thoughts of PMO suddenly rise with enourmous force to fill the void. Gaming can be repetitive, so it requires creative, outside thinking/information digging types to find new challenges for as long as needed.
I am by nature disinterested in the world what some people could call my peers live in. I look from the outside in as has been the case for a while. Aloof maybe, but clubs, partying etc. dont rock my boat, enjoyable at time sure but i couldn't handle having them even in successive months, people who used to know me commented on me being dug into my phone or technology/books. No wonder, because we both considered each other to be stone-dead boring mutually. As different as bonobos from chimps, to the untrained eye the same but with distinctly different behaviors and interests.
I bother only because i know sometimes i can't do it all by myself, and again, by nature am a social creature that fares poorly with little actual contact. (I also can't talk about other people than myself because of my underlying condition, in that i have little/negated empathy so its not my place to talk about how other people feel and i can't programme myself to even if i wanted to, i have to really concentrate.)
