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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rygar" data-source="post: 6365559" data-attributes="member: 6756765">To counterpoint the OP...The Industry's problem isn't,  and never has been,  that the hobby is "Greying" or that it new generations aren't interested.  The Industry's problem has always been the Myths it constructs to explain its inability to advance beyond a business model that quite frankly sucked in the 70's and hasn't improved.The Industry generally claims that the reason board games and RPG's fell out of favor was because of video games.  The problem with this assertion is that it assumes that video games are some kind of unbeatable product that people are drawn to.  Video games are what people are having fun playing,  the reason board games and RPG's fell out of favor is because people weren't having fun playing them.  It's really that simple,  if a person enjoys something,  they'll spend time doing it.  If they don't enjoy it,  they won't.D&D,  and to a lesser extent board games,  have a number of impediments that impact enjoyment.-For RPG's there's a *major* hurdle in learning the game.  To play the game,  with just core books,  you're talking several hundred pages at a minimum.  With accessories,  you're talking thousands of pages.  Starting in the late 90's,  people's time spent on reading decreased significantly enough that the bookstore industry pretty much died.  If people aren't reading books as much as they used to,  and your product requires people to read many books,  there's a correlation there.  Nevermind the issues with memorizing all of those rules.-For both RPG's and board games there's a state issue.  Saving the state of the game is challenging when compared to video games.  If you're playing a video game,  you click a button and your game state is stored.  If you're playing at a table you have to write down the state of all of the characters and adventure,  or cover the game pieces with boxes and hope no one jostles the table.-There's also the movement away from quality retail adventures.  If you're time limited,  or imagination limited,  without good pre-written adventures you simply are not a player.  These people don't have time or imagination to come up with a coherent and cohesive campaign.  A whole section of the market is lost.  It's really another Industry Myth,  "DM products don't sell as well as Player products",  except without good DM products that enable fast play,  you don't have those players.This can easily be seen to be the case once one reflects on Magic the Gathering.  People start out or participate casually with a fast-play solution like preconstructed decks or netdecks,  as they become more enamoured with the game they end up spending hundreds of hours preparing to go play for 4 hours.  Magic the Gathering is successful because it doesn't have a major requirement to get started,  and easily has the same time footprint as D&D (If not more),  but people play Mtg and not D&D.  Because you don't need the same time investment to play casually.  Mtg has a ascending curve in how much you have to learn to play,  D&D has a high flat requirement in terms of required knowledge to play.  I don't need to know how Humility interacts with comes into play effects to go play at my shop,  I do need to know it if I want to play at a Vintage tournament.  I need to know what the grappling rules are no matter what level I want to play D&D at.If the Industry had ever made an effort to address its root problems we wouldn't be having this conversation.  It has stayed rooted in a decades old format resisting embracing a digital world,  likely because many of its leaders simply do not understand a digital world.The solution to the Industry's problems has always been:  Virtual Tabletop.  Abstract away the "Behind the scenes" math of mechanics,  substantially reducing the "Reading footprint" and allow for fast play and game state preservation.  The things that make video games so attractive are easily adapted by the RPG and Board Game markets.  These games now and always will have a significant knowledge requirement in order to play,  but simply making use of computer technology can remove substantial amounts of that barrier to entry that makes it so unattractive.  If I had a viable VT,  I don't need to know what the equations are for Grapple,  all I need to know is that it exists,  and a touch interface implementation could even remind me I have that option.  The truth is:  World of Warcraft is identical in complexity to Dungeons & Dragons,  the only difference is that WoW abstracts away all of the "Nuts and bolts" of gameplay so that the Player doesn't need to know how to calculate his chances of hitting a goat,  he just has to click a button,  while D&D forces you to memorize:  Strength bonus,  character level's To Hit value,  magic item bonuses,  magic spell bonuses,  target's AC,  etc,  etc.  They're basically the same system,  except one abstracts away the learning curve and has millions of players,  the other doesn't and has only hundreds of thousands.  Board games suffer similiarly,  if you want to play Axis & Allies you have to memorize blitzing rules,  what counts as a move for a plane,  etc.The Industry suffers because it is immured in an analogue format with comparitively very high requirements for entry.  It isn't MMO's,  it isn't video games,  it isn't anything more than the fact that the Industry refuses to make use of the digital tools to improve the accessibility of its products.Quite honestly,  a lot of the problem is Hasbro.  Hasbro doesn't understand digital technology,  the company is deeply rooted in an analogue world.  They owned Microprose,  and sold it off because they couldn't see a way to leverage it.  They had the rights to D&D and Mtg,  two products *Guaranteed* to sell a metric ton of copies of games,  and they've never figured out how to leverage it in house.  MTGO is an embarassment at this point,  each release makes the product worse and in some cases less stable.  Hasbro has never shown that it has any idea how to take its analogue library and expand into digital versions of them.  Hasbro was the leader in board gaming and RPG's,  they set the stage,  and since they don't appear to know what to do with computer technology,  they left the Industry mired in an increasingly archaic state.I also have to point out,  the person who commented about Target and Wallmart missed a very important piece of information.  Target and Wallmart do not stock Magic the Gathering.  They lease shelf space to a company who happens to put Mtg on those shelves,  but the sales of those products in stores is apparently so low that neither store feels it is worth their time selling it themselves.  If Mtg isn't worth their time,  D&D absolutely isn't.</blockquote>

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