So, how do you know a game is dead? You have no way of knowing that there are no solo gamers or isolated groups somewhere playing the game. You might have problems finding players for a particular game, but somewhere on a Pacific island or in Western Elbonia there might be a vibrant community. You just don't know. Proving the negative is, well, difficult.
To have meaningful discussion about the death of role-playing games, the criteria of death would have to be something people can agree on and that can be verified.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie"
I thought
The Arcanum by Bard Games was dead. I bought the game sort of by accident in the 1980s and never saw anything relating to it anywhere. Then, another company bought the rights for the game and launched a successful Kickstarters a few years ago. Is this a case of resurrection or just hibernation? If a game blooms only once in, say, 17 years, we have no way of knowing if it is one or the other.
According to one definition, language is dead when it no longer has native speakers. "Once a language is no longer a native language—that is, if no children are being socialized into it as their primary language—the process of transmission is ended and the language itself will not survive past the current generations." [
Wikipedia]
I would argue that
MERP and
Star Wars WEG are dead games: the publishers have ceased to exist and/or lost the license, and the current IP licensees do not have IP for the original games. As
commercial products these games are dead. A dead commercial product is less likely to attract new gamers, and similarly to a language without native speakers, it is less likely to survive past the current generation of hobbyist. It is not impossible that somewhere down the line they are revived, but that means restoring to life something that was dead as a commercial product.
Obviously, there are games that are not commercial products. Some open licenses and some games have active communities around them. How much do these communities attract new hobbyists and will the communities survive past the current generation of participants, who knows?
The death of games is a slow process, and we don't quite have the perspective for the real Test of Time. Therefore, calling a game dead is typically a value statement rather than a statement of fact. As a slur, it is effective.
