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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9535022" data-attributes="member: 18">Sure, but when there are tens of millions to hundreds of millions of nerds, &quot;many&quot; will always work as an absolute term. I think that even back in the '90s it was maybe 15-25% of people who played RPGs, read comic books, and so on who thought that was &quot;the actual point&quot;. Is that significant? Yes. But again I would assert &quot;many&quot; of those people, perhaps the majority, tended not to understand the media/games they engaged with in the way their creators intended, and could frequently be problematic even back then.I don't really buy it, because that's extremely rare and the GoT TV show clearly demonstrated how mainstream audiences also love a mystery you can solve. You didn't need to be particularly &quot;invested&quot; in ASoIaF to guess at R+L=J - some people just figured it out. Discussion of it massively increased from about 2002 onwards, but that corresponds precisely with the sudden surge in popularity of the ASoIaF books at that time (I'm not exactly sure why that was - fantasy, esp. darker fantasy, just surged massively in popularity from 2000 through about 2005 - perhaps LotR's success at the cinema was connected).I feel like those people who like needless complexity, endless tomes of usually-pointless lore, worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake and so on are actually pretty well-catered-for nowadays, so I don't think there's much of a real complaint. There are even creators who entirely rely on such an audience, having essentially rejected the mainstream one, like Brandon Sanderson.Personally I'm a weird position because I don't actually like learning lore but am nonetheless something of a &quot;lore sponge&quot;. My knowledge of Star Wars lore is relatively encyclopedic (compared to most SW fans, old or new), but I'm not even really a &quot;fan&quot; of Star Wars in the sense of actually liking it hugely, nor have I ever been.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9535022, member: 18"] Sure, but when there are tens of millions to hundreds of millions of nerds, "many" will always work as an absolute term. I think that even back in the '90s it was maybe 15-25% of people who played RPGs, read comic books, and so on who thought that was "the actual point". Is that significant? Yes. But again I would assert "many" of those people, perhaps the majority, tended not to understand the media/games they engaged with in the way their creators intended, and could frequently be problematic even back then. I don't really buy it, because that's extremely rare and the GoT TV show clearly demonstrated how mainstream audiences also love a mystery you can solve. You didn't need to be particularly "invested" in ASoIaF to guess at R+L=J - some people just figured it out. Discussion of it massively increased from about 2002 onwards, but that corresponds precisely with the sudden surge in popularity of the ASoIaF books at that time (I'm not exactly sure why that was - fantasy, esp. darker fantasy, just surged massively in popularity from 2000 through about 2005 - perhaps LotR's success at the cinema was connected). I feel like those people who like needless complexity, endless tomes of usually-pointless lore, worldbuilding for worldbuilding's sake and so on are actually pretty well-catered-for nowadays, so I don't think there's much of a real complaint. There are even creators who entirely rely on such an audience, having essentially rejected the mainstream one, like Brandon Sanderson. Personally I'm a weird position because I don't actually like learning lore but am nonetheless something of a "lore sponge". My knowledge of Star Wars lore is relatively encyclopedic (compared to most SW fans, old or new), but I'm not even really a "fan" of Star Wars in the sense of actually liking it hugely, nor have I ever been. [/QUOTE]

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