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WotC Reveal Exodus, a New Video Game from the Decelopers of Mass Effect and Neverwinter Nights
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9214767" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>I don't see any reason to believe fantasy is going anyway in the next 10-20 years, to be honest. Beyond that, obviously, things could change, but it's more likely, fantasy, as a highly adaptive and acquisitive genre, which casually steals from any number of other genres, particularly science-fiction, as and when it wants to, will still be around. I agree that it continually changes, but that's why it's so hard to kill.</p><p></p><p>And it's space SF that's dwindled in popularity over the last few decades, and I think Star Wars and Star Trek fandoms are partially responsible for that, in that instead of people being fans of space SF, they pick one (or both) of those two and become fans of that instead (and both of those kind of border more on fantasy than harder SF, notably). Non-space-SF has continued to be very strong. Cyberpunk dwindled in the 1990s, post-cyberpunk never got that popular, though was incredibly influential in a quiet way, and then whatever we're calling this modern retro cyberpunk came in, heralded by Altered Carbon both in novels and TV (pity the author lost his damn mind, brainworms are a hell of a drug). Space SF is a little more popular now than it was, but it's still a pretty minor cultural force if it's expressed in any form but Star Trek or Star Wars (or Guardians of the Galaxy, I guess, if you count that). The Expanse, faux-hard-SF, got some traction, but mostly with a certain kind of male nerd not the general audience - and particularly not the broad audience GoT/HotD have, despite it essentially being GoT In Space (a charmless/gormless lead might be partially blamed). The death of Iain M Banks and concomitant failure to adapt any of his SF works has also been a major blow, though writers clearly inspired by him have since emerged and are getting pretty good (Ann Leckie, for example).</p><p></p><p>But as you point out, fantasy has changed and adapted and space SF has had much more difficulty doing that. Part of it is that space SF has a pretty obnoxious and ultra-conservative (in terms of what they want from space SF, not necessarily political views) Gen X audience, who get incredibly loud if space SF does anything which wouldn't have done in say, the 1980s through mid-late 1990s. That audience can milked for money pretty well if you use the right techniques, as Star Citizen has shown, which has extracted literally <em>hundreds of millions of dollars</em>, mostly from well-paid nerdy men who are now in their 50s or early 60s. But it does that by selling a dream, not an actual product. And particularly by selling imaginary spaceships for real money - many (most?) of which aren't actually implemented in the current skeleton of a game, and which were sold for dozens to hundreds to thousands of dollars when they were nothing but concept art.</p><p></p><p>I'd love to see WotC have a successful SF RPG, but I'm skeptical that they could target it right, because, especially with space SF, it's a very hard target to strike directly. I think, with their financial resources and ability to do research, they're wildly better positioned than any other company to intentionally create a huge hit space SF RPG, but I think deriving that from Exodus would be 100% putting the cart before the horse. Exodus is a fine idea for a videogame, but that doesn't remotely mean it's the right idea, right setting, right concepts for TT RPG to go big, let alone huge.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9214767, member: 18"] I don't see any reason to believe fantasy is going anyway in the next 10-20 years, to be honest. Beyond that, obviously, things could change, but it's more likely, fantasy, as a highly adaptive and acquisitive genre, which casually steals from any number of other genres, particularly science-fiction, as and when it wants to, will still be around. I agree that it continually changes, but that's why it's so hard to kill. And it's space SF that's dwindled in popularity over the last few decades, and I think Star Wars and Star Trek fandoms are partially responsible for that, in that instead of people being fans of space SF, they pick one (or both) of those two and become fans of that instead (and both of those kind of border more on fantasy than harder SF, notably). Non-space-SF has continued to be very strong. Cyberpunk dwindled in the 1990s, post-cyberpunk never got that popular, though was incredibly influential in a quiet way, and then whatever we're calling this modern retro cyberpunk came in, heralded by Altered Carbon both in novels and TV (pity the author lost his damn mind, brainworms are a hell of a drug). Space SF is a little more popular now than it was, but it's still a pretty minor cultural force if it's expressed in any form but Star Trek or Star Wars (or Guardians of the Galaxy, I guess, if you count that). The Expanse, faux-hard-SF, got some traction, but mostly with a certain kind of male nerd not the general audience - and particularly not the broad audience GoT/HotD have, despite it essentially being GoT In Space (a charmless/gormless lead might be partially blamed). The death of Iain M Banks and concomitant failure to adapt any of his SF works has also been a major blow, though writers clearly inspired by him have since emerged and are getting pretty good (Ann Leckie, for example). But as you point out, fantasy has changed and adapted and space SF has had much more difficulty doing that. Part of it is that space SF has a pretty obnoxious and ultra-conservative (in terms of what they want from space SF, not necessarily political views) Gen X audience, who get incredibly loud if space SF does anything which wouldn't have done in say, the 1980s through mid-late 1990s. That audience can milked for money pretty well if you use the right techniques, as Star Citizen has shown, which has extracted literally [I]hundreds of millions of dollars[/I], mostly from well-paid nerdy men who are now in their 50s or early 60s. But it does that by selling a dream, not an actual product. And particularly by selling imaginary spaceships for real money - many (most?) of which aren't actually implemented in the current skeleton of a game, and which were sold for dozens to hundreds to thousands of dollars when they were nothing but concept art. I'd love to see WotC have a successful SF RPG, but I'm skeptical that they could target it right, because, especially with space SF, it's a very hard target to strike directly. I think, with their financial resources and ability to do research, they're wildly better positioned than any other company to intentionally create a huge hit space SF RPG, but I think deriving that from Exodus would be 100% putting the cart before the horse. Exodus is a fine idea for a videogame, but that doesn't remotely mean it's the right idea, right setting, right concepts for TT RPG to go big, let alone huge. [/QUOTE]
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