My take : VR games are probably going to steal tabletop D&D's lunch money, stick it in a locker, then forget it there all summer until the janitor smells the flies coming out from all the sticky mountain dew residue.
2016 is the year VR is going to take off. And playing D&D just won't really be able to compete. If wizards were smart they would see the writing on the wall. D&D was always meant to be unlimited except by your imagination. But virtual reality worlds are a whole other level. Photorealistic games, where you can swing swords and cast fireballs and fight gargantuan monsters atop flying dragons are going to make table top seem positively stone age in comparison.
Good luck getting a new generation of zero-attention span gamers to hop on board to their grandpa's RPG. Roleplaying can't really compete with full immersion presence. It doesn't need to, it filled its niche during its time and all good things come to an end. Sure, some people will still play it, but developers and companies won't release new rules which produce pennies in revenue compared to making something like a Ravenloft VR Experience. I can't wait. 5th edition is the last D&D I'm interested in playing. It did a good job letting me use my imagination until computer graphics could catch up. D&D is supposed to be immersive, but is stifled by its own tabletop limitations and the problems of a human being trying to run a believable world simulation. They didn't even try to make a sensible item economy in 5th edition, for example. In a VR game, you could easily have a steel longsword break 46% less often, and have a price that varies by design with subtle variations in delay factor and point of balance, all of which affecting combat stats in a physically realistic and also fun way.
I also can't see myself bothering to argue about another edition's rules, I'm finished with that after 5th edition. It's like arguing about a tricycle's pedals not being greased enough, while I can easily step into a shiny Ferrarri over here. It's like a future space man going to the past and getting into a debate with bronze-age shepherds about the nature of the universe.
The big problem with D&D rules is that they're turn-based, which is a pointless limitation for a computer game that is wholly unnecessary. The only thing that will matter in the future regarding D&D are the IPs that its associated with, and how well those are rendered into games, and how successful those games are.
Rodney Thompson is probably realizing this now, how much more intricate videogames are to TTRPG rules, making them quaint by comparison, an anachronism if we're truly being honest. He jumped ship at a good time, before becoming fossilized in a more or less irrelevant and dwindling, market. A market that's probably doomed, and was from the start. It's had a good run though. I hope to play maybe one or two more full campaigns before hanging up my dice bag and moving on to greener pastures.
At a certain point, it's inevitable that most will be forced to admit it's time to put those horse carriages away and pick up a Ford. You can always go up to a farm once in a blue moon, but to get to work, you're going to have to commute like everybody else. And you might not even have a choice. The more people migrate to VR for their fantasy, the less of a market there will be, the less products will be produced, the less players there will be to find, and the futility of it all will finally put it out to pasture.
