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<blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8859157" data-attributes="member: 177">Sure.&nbsp; Let me start with a biological example to demonstrate the idea.&nbsp; For this, I choose... American Bison.We view the American prairie as &quot;grasslands&quot;, and normally, they are - dominated by (iirc) four species of grass.&nbsp; Where bison graze, however, we find the diversity of plant matter increases, to include other grass species, goldenrod, and other other flora.&nbsp; The more diverse prairie flora is, among other things, more resistant to drought than areas of lower diversity, and has greater diversity of other animals, who feed on things other than the dominant grasses.Bison also churn the soil when they come marching through en masse.&nbsp; This helps create watering holes and mud wallows that other species use. Remove the apex bison, you have a less diverse prarie.&nbsp; This would seem paradoxical - having a major dominant species present would sound like it should lower diversity.&nbsp; But what happens is that the bison support niches in the ecosystem that they themselves don't use!We can then look at how a larger company, like WotC, might support niches in the RPG landscape that they don't themselves fill.&nbsp; Those niches are apt to collapse if there's not a dominant company or two around, meaning that you'd actually end up with less diversity in games if there weren't something like WotC around.&nbsp; Lower diversity means less resilience to changing conditions.As a very basic example - we should all expect that WotC is the largest force for bringing new people into the hobby, by far.&nbsp; Not all those people play only D&amp;D for the rest of their lives.&nbsp; While someone's particular home game may not need new people, the hobby as a whole does.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Umbran, post: 8859157, member: 177"] Sure. Let me start with a biological example to demonstrate the idea. For this, I choose... American Bison. We view the American prairie as "grasslands", and normally, they are - dominated by (iirc) four species of grass. Where bison graze, however, we find the diversity of plant matter [I]increases[/I], to include other grass species, goldenrod, and other other flora. The more diverse prairie flora is, among other things, more resistant to drought than areas of lower diversity, and has greater diversity of other animals, who feed on things other than the dominant grasses. Bison also churn the soil when they come marching through en masse. This helps create watering holes and mud wallows that other species use. Remove the apex bison, you have a less diverse prarie. This would seem paradoxical - having a major dominant species present would sound like it should lower diversity. But what happens is that the bison support niches in the ecosystem that they themselves don't use! We can then look at how a larger company, like WotC, might support niches in the RPG landscape that they don't themselves fill. Those niches are apt to collapse if there's not a dominant company or two around, meaning that you'd actually end up with [I]less[/I] diversity in games if there weren't something like WotC around. Lower diversity means less resilience to changing conditions. As a very basic example - we should all expect that WotC is the largest force for bringing new people into the hobby, by far. Not all those people play only D&D for the rest of their lives. While someone's particular home game may not need new people, the hobby as a whole does. [/QUOTE]

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