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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nisarg" data-source="post: 1892834" data-attributes="member: 19893">While that phenomenon (made famous in an episode of the simpsons) is fairly common, its not nearly as common as the trick you're pulling, which is to make it seem like an undistributed middle means what I'm saying is not true, or a mistake, or an outright lie.It isn't any of those things. Its a theory.And in my case a pretty solid theory with some pretty clear circumstantial evidence.You're engaging in the same dirty tricks that creation scientists use to try to "disprove evolution" ("They have a monkey and they have a human, but there's no missing link!! oh wait... homo erectus.. right, well where's the link between homo erectus and the monkeys, huh? Huh???").Or Global Warming.. "Yea sure we're pumping 200% more toxic emissions into the air each year, and the earth's temperature goes up .02% each year, but that doesn't mean there's any connection! It could be a natural temperature change! It could be space aliens, it could be Jeebus!"Theoretically, any "connections" I created for you short of a photo of White Wolf staff hunting down gamers with machetes would not serve as sufficient "proof" that White Wolf was responsible for a net decline in gamers, and you could continue to label my argument as an "undistributed middle". Hence, until you come up with a conclusively better theory, with better evidence to explain why the gaming community was so ill equipped to handle the attack from other media (CCGs, computers, etc) and why so many people left the hobby in disgust during that era, my theory stands.Incidentally, I also have more than enough personal anecdotal evidence. Of a group of about 20 friends of mine that I was gaming with since I was 12 years old, I am one of only 2 who continues to game, and all the rest left during that era. For many of them, there were certain mitigating circumstances that caused them to leave (marriage, school, work), but all have told me repeatedly that if they had been making games in that time that were worth playing, and not angsty-wankfests they would have persevered.I myself quit playing for about 6 months, finally burnt out of trying to buy or run decent games in an era where everything was about metaplot and "splatbooks" and railroaded adventures made to show off failed novelists' writing talents, rather than actually involved the players proactively, I just got tired of it all.What saved me was D20. It brought me back to gaming, but I was one of the last holdouts from all my old group, and the others who had quit earlier just couldn't bring themselves back into the game, lamentably, because they were great gamers.Nisarg</blockquote>

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