Any other hobbies cause you to lose players?

[sniffles]

Nobody in my group is currently obsessed with any MMORPG or CCG, thank the gawds!!

Back when MtG was new and really hot, I think it reduced the amount of time my group spent roleplaying, but we didn't stop. We used to have more videogame nights back then, too.
Mostly what happens is that one campaign steals players from another.

We also had a romance that busted up a campaign - one player started with the group as girlfriend of Player A, decided she liked Player B better, so she and Player B quit that campaign to avoid hard feelings. Everybody still games, just not with each other.

 

[beldar1215]

WoW!! My roommate is addicted to the game. He would rather play WoW than anything else. He plays on weekends for 14+ hours at a time. He really needs help!!

I run a game at a FLGS for kids and lose players all the time to sports, vacations, etc.

Beldar

 

[Kanegrundar]

I guess I could say I've lost a player to WoW, but since then I've moved and started playing it myself. That group also took an RPG hiatus to play Heroscape and HeroClix, but we never left RPG's entirely.

Kane

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I have lost players to moving, working ner shifts, having personality comflicts with other players, etc. I have never (to my knowledge) lost players to other (quasi-related) hobbies.

I wonder if anyone has ever lost any players to a competing RPG.

 

[Psion]

CCGs served as a temporary distraction when they were big, and a nice backup for slow nights.

But only ever have I had a player decline to come and game because they are now getting their fix through MMORPGs.

 

[Mr. Kaze]

Let's rephrase the question: What other hobbies have your players cited as being more enjoyable when they left your game?

I recently quit my D&D group because the DM couldn't run a decent session. It'd be polite to say that the game lost me to World of Warcraft, but it'd also be wrong -- the game the DM was running just wasn't worth my time.

Compare to my other WoW Guild members, many of whom play D&D together (several hours away from me ) -- WoW hasn't killed their D&D game because their D&D game is, presumably, more interesting than WoW. But we have lost one guild member to CounterStrike and another one is finding that a new series of books is cutting in on their WoW time. It's all an issue of what's worth time when; good D&D games that are convienently scheduled won't be losing players to other games if the players can help it. Simple as that. Nobody's going to leave a source of much enjoyment for a source of little enjoyment.

So it's not that other hobbies are causing games to lose players; it's that the games DMs are running that are losing players just aren't as fun and interesting as the new hobbies.

::Kaze (notes that nobody expects a dwarven waraxe to be tactful, either...)

 

[Threedub]

Have never lost a real player (real meaning someone who stuck around for more than a few sessions and obviously enjoyed it) to another hobby. Losses have been related to work, school, relationships, or that they got booted.

We did lose one person to D&D though, after playing with us a couple months he decided he liked the other D&D game he was in better. The parting was mutually beneficial.

 

[NCSUCodeMonkey]

I had one player that I lost for every NFL season (we played on Sunday). We only had him at the table like 3-4 months out of the year.

NCSUCodeMonkey

 

[Darth K'Trava]

None of the Above.

Ours would be more to real life stuff than other forms of gaming.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Myself, to music. Specifically, the making of.