another rpg industry doomsday article (merged: all 3 "Mishler Rant" threads)

[seskis281]

Just a little bit based only on my own experiences..

I've been teaching freshman entering college now from 1992 to the present, so my own perceptions are this:

"Intelligence" isn't as easily locked down...

Over the past 17 years I can say I see an increase in "knowledge" in some areas, especially in technological saavy and awareness. I agree that more students progress onward to higher levels than did in generations past, because of the cultural shift in expectations (both in general and specifically in employment demands - where a high school degree once served an Associates is needed, and Bachelors are becoming more the "norm" rather than the exception).

There are also areas where "knowledge" has certainly slipped quite a bit... "cultural capital" is one - a colleague was wearing a "Yale" sweatshirt and one of our top academic students walked up and asked "Yawhlee... what's that?" Younger generations of students today have greater extent of available knowledge, via the internet and mass media, but don't absorb as much depth within any specific area because, as one student queried me "why bother learning it - I can just google whatever I need to know anytime, even from my phone." Even the old buggaboos of film and tv, which were supposed to "warp our children's" minds, are actually slipping away from the radar a good bit. It used to be easy for me in a film or theatre class to come up with one or two cultural totems that almost everyone had seen for a common reference ("Titanic" during late 90's and early 2000's for instance) - that is no longer true.

Reading is also an area that has dropped dramatically. Just seven years ago, at LSU, there were always the students who just didn't read, but if I asked the question "so what did you read in high school" I'd get answers - often with a "yeah it was boring, I hated that one...." Now, a common answer is "I didn't read a book in high school...." To which I respond "None were required?" To which the response was "sure, but you could pass without bothering to read... just look up a synopsis on Wiki or something.." There have been "surges" around certain popular series such as Harry Potter and now the "Twilight" series, but an interesting phenomenon is that younger readers just repeat their reads of these more often than expanding to different novels or genres.

Finally there is the phenomenon of information bloat.... one thing that gets lost and forgotten is the mere fact that, in so many areas, there is always a continually growing spectra of knowledge to be covered, but without longer time to teach or learn it. Simple ex. - when I first took Intro to Film myself in 1988, there was just over 90 years of film history and movies to cover. Now, we have had 2 decades more, and that's A LOT of material added on when I teach the course now. Same with history, lit, most social sciences and humanities. Even sciences have changed and expanded rapidly. Only mathematics (at this level - higher levels of graduate studies different yes) remains relatively static. Because of this, simple assumed facts become "left behind" or skimmed so quickly they are not retained - if I asked "who fought on which side in World War II" you would be surprised at the fumbling around for answers.

For my speech class, my 1st project is a mad-lib excercise designed to get everyone up, speaking a bit of funny nonsensical text to help with comfort in public speaking.... when I pass this out, hands go up - "what's an adverb? what do you mean by infinitive verb...?"

These students are not "stupid," there are just big holes in their knowledge base. On the other hand, if I have a computer question, a tech communication question, I will ask my students before I ask my colleagues with PhDs.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[malraux]

I'll admit that there has been a huge shift in how information is handled by the younger generations. It will take time to deal with the idea that information in electronic form is almost as available as information in nerve cells. My generation saw this more in the calculators are better at simple arithmetic than the brain is, but I can't say that much was lost in that change.

In addition, there is somewhat less of a homogenizing force in cultural matters and there is a much larger pool of people participating in cultural issues. I won't deny that there are some big issues to deal with as human knowledge continually expands and our methods of accessing so much of that change radically, but that's a dramatically different statement from the age old "kids these days" sort of rant.

 

[seskis281]

It is a struggle and a challenge I can tell you, and pedagogically speaking many of us do indeed adapt and change.

It is easy to say "these damn kids today," which has probably been uttered by older generations for centuries in some form or another. It is difficult to sometimes reconcile the differences and changes, and sometimes the changes can be so negative as to be dangerous unless fought against... (I'm speaking in general eductaion - I'm far afield from RPGs or gaming here lol)

As I said, I see the knowledge base issues and I work hard to not get peeved about them, but to deal with them.

The one area I might, myself, sometimes rant about in a "these damn kids" kind of mode is merely inquisitiveness... the past decade, and as Mal said technology increasingly replacing the need for nerve processing, I've seen a distinct shift to a paradigm where students have very little desire to QUESTION - a 4-year-old will never stop asking questions like "why is the sky blue?" or "what's that" when pointing a newly encountered object. College freshman used to routinely raise a hand or give me a quizzical look if they didn't understand a term or concept. Now, a blank stare is far too common in many classes. It's not a lack of intelligence or ability that I often get most frustrated with, it's the lack of CURIOSITY.

Now back to your regularly scheduled thread arguments lol.

 

[kenmarable]

Just to continue the "kids these days" discussion, I wonder if part of the issue of "I'll just look it up" attitude is a shift away from consumption to production? Between a truly awe-inspiring amount of readily available information online and the tools to allow easy content production and sharing, I'm thinking it is having a major cultural impact on children. Back when I was growing up in the 80's entertainment you could interact with (from D&D to Atari) was just beginning. The majority of the entertainment and information I experienced was fed to me - TV, movies, the set of encyclopedias my parents bought, or for really big matters - a trip to the local library. But all of it was static information that was not only presented to me, but seemed so far from anything I could produce. I still remember the one afternoon in the mid 90's when I first saw a web page and the code behind it. What astounded me the most actually was how easy it was to have pictures and text together on the computer screen, and link to other pages! I had visions of making "Choose Your Own Adventure" books on the world wide web. I was a senior in college and something that simple was amazing to me.

Even further, for my parents, interactive entertainment was seeing the neighbor kids were home. Heck, growing up for them the "TV schedule" was the times when shows were even broadcast, the rest of the time was a test pattern.

My kids however are leaps and bounds past us. My 9 year old daughter maintains several websites. She's even made several movies with iLife on our Mac. All of them (even our youngest who can't even read yet) prefer interactive websites to watching TV. They would rather spend an hour on Webkinz where they can interact and create than sit and stare at a TV show they can't do anything to.

So I can see that sort of attitude leading to not bothering to learn "facts" (after all, facts and information are trivial to find nowadays). It's a shift towards creating content and interacting with content than just being fed static information. It's pretty significantly different from how I was raised, and how my parents were raised. So if we're not careful, their education might not account for this different mindset and it's much harder to teach them. We also have to make sure it doesn't swing too far and we wind up with the students mentioned above who not only don't have much factual foundation but even begin to lose curiosity.

 

[Fifth Element]

The text of the OD&D books explicitly tells you that the rules do not assume use of miniatures!

The text stating that doesn't make it so, necessarily. If the 4E DMG stated "these rules do not assume the use of miniatures", would that counteract the fact that many of the rules rely on specific placement and positioning?

At best we can say the OD&D rules were contradictory, because though they claimed not to assume the use of minis, many rules were in fact written in direct reference to minis.

 

[Erik Mona]

I hope you'll think about it, Erik. (You might be surprised how good it actually feels to give someone a sincere apology. I know I have been!)

I have thought about it, I thought about it at the time, and I'm still thinking about it.

I do not apologize.

James made some terribly misinformed comments about the state of the industry, and in doing so literally said Paizo's pricing of one PDF was putting the nail in the coffin of the industry, and he was attempting to coin a phrase that put the onus of his own difficulties in a challenging industry on my company.

Which was BS, and I called it BS.

I can appreciate that you'd have preferred a more even-keeled response, and to that all I can point to are the thousands of words of passionless factual commentary I've posted on this issue over the course of the last week.

--Erik

 

[Treebore]

James made some terribly misinformed comments about the state of the industry, and in doing so literally said Paizo's pricing of one PDF was putting the nail in the coffin of the industry, and he was attempting to coin a phrase that put the onus of his own difficulties in a challenging industry on my company.

--Erik

Ah! I haven't been following most of this... discussion, however I did read the beginning and didn't get why you were upset, but this definitely clarifies it. Yes, James can lament and try and blame, but the saying "survival of the fittest" is alive and well in the world of business and failure to adapt and thrive will still lead any company to extinction.

So to blame other companies for the failure of the other companies in a given "market" is just avoiding responsibility for their own failure to successfully adapt and prosper. People do hate to look in their own mirrors to see who is ultimately responsible for their own success or failure.

So I doubt you can avoid such blame, Erik. People tend to point the finger of blame everywhere but where it belongs.

James has awesome content, but his business plan has been turning into a dismal failure, and I can only assume he isn't able to acknowledge his own mistakes. When your a business, and you fail again and again to deliver on promises, you fail as a business. That is completely in James' own lap.

 

[Dilandau Kale]

Not really sure how the King of Snark comment came about since from what I've seen of this thread Skarka hasn't really been all that snarky he has asked that questions be answered (Which I notice still haven't been) and he has provided evidence that proves that some of the things that Mischler said were wrong. So to me it seem like he is trying to avoid the subject.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

This has been soundly refuted in other threads. OD&D didn't assume the use of miniatures, most didn't use them, and even said it didn't in the text. It offered little tactical options, and had swift combat resolution. 4E is the odd man out here, much as wishful thinking and assumption would have it otherwise.

I agree that this is true about 1e previous editions. During the latter half of 2e(Combat and Tactics), the books all specified the effects of abilities based on where you were standing on a grid compared to your enemies. There was increasing complexity in combat based on the kind of weapon you were using, the action you were taking, and what abilities you took with your proficiencies.

When we were playing 1e, we put the minis on a board, but they were mostly there for visualizing distance and position. Which we only used to figure out if we could move up to an enemy in one round or two..and if the magic missile was in range. But we also used it to determine if we were "behind" a creature in order to get the bonuses. It was much easier than keeping track of things in our head and the books recommended it.

However, we were all bored of having so few options. Tired of having the game be an exercise in rolling attack and damage rolls. We happily accepted Combat and Tactics when it came out.

When 3e came out, the entire rulebook had information on position on a battle mat. Nearly every power talked about how close you needed to be to someone in tactical distances. Creatures had abilities like cones and bursts that were defined by the squares they took up on a battle map. Creatures were defined by the squares they took up. All abilities from the ground up assumed the use of a battle map. Of course, distances were listed in real world units to avoid converting back and forth and for legacy purposes. Powers were explained in plain english to avoid confusing people.

And, by everything you've said and other people have said, this was the biggest edition of D&D ever.

But what they learned from 3e was that, since everyone was using a battle map anyways, we were doing MORE converting by constantly converting distances into squares and squares back to distances. They also learned that when you list abilities in plain english it causes MORE arguments due to misunderstanding of the language(something they learned from the early days of MTG as well). So, they fixed these two issues.

Other than that...4e isn't a major departure or "odd man out". It's just another step in the inevitable shift towards the way most people were playing the game.

I also keep seeing the phrase "it is proven and agreed that most people did not use minis". I disagree that this has been proven or agreed. I saw a survey done with some gamers that showed the majority of them DID use minis which keeps being thrown around with the statement, "Yeah, but the way the question was asked means the answer is most likely wrong."

 

[Mistwell]

When he insists that based on his "15 years of working in the game industry" he knows not just that the world is in an "economic depression", and not just that we are in a "Greater Depression" but that he literally projects the future of the entire world economy for decades to come...I dismissed what he had to say entirely. And I think that's a fair position for me to take. If he is going to speak with such firm authority on a topic he clearly has no background in whatsoever, then I feel it is safe to assume his comments about the industry he is in might well be just as unfounded.