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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheFindus" data-source="post: 4838044" data-attributes="member: 75791">Sometimes I think that Mr. Dancey's views are just too negative. It seems to me that he exaggerates a bit. I would also like to see some concrete facts to support his theory that the the roleplaying hobby is absolutely doomed.  First of all, does anybody have the numbers that support the claim that actually less and less people play roleplaying games? Comparing, lets say 1982, 1990 or 2000 to 2009? I would really like to see these numbers, because for me, the roleplaying hobby has always been a very niche kind of hobby and the number of people who play these kind of games are small compared to the players of, lets say, Settlers of Catan or WoW.  Is there actually less money made with roleplaying games comparing 1982 or 1990 or 1995 to today in the entire roleplaying industry? Again, I would really like to see somebody post some numbers before becoming too dramatic about it.  Do online-games really destroy pen and paper roleplaying games or push them aside? I think we are talking about two different kinds of games here. In WOW there is no roleplay, it is not a roleplaying game. DnD is. Is there a significant amount of people who would belong to the roleplaying game target group but are not playing roleplaying games but play online games instead? Again, where are the numbers to support this?  It would be strange that we fill page after page about this issue without having something real to base this discussion on. And if there are no such numbers: What is the basis for Mr. Dancey's claim? I have a problem to understand "Neighborhood culture is breaking down", for example. Do kids not have a circle of friends anymore? My kids do. So do all of the kids they go to school with.And how should WotC  be able to create a "widely success mass market introductory product", if RPGs have always been a niche product? It just is not "cool" to play DnD. Never was. Not here in Germany and not over there.It also seems to me that Mr. Dancey does actually support the spread of pessimism towards the latest edition of DnD with his comments. Why complain about it then?Also, the miniature train hobby, which seems to be the way Mr. Dancey wants our hobby to go, has a lot of problems: Maerklin, one of the world's most famous miniature train manufacturing companies, declared bancrupcy only recently. Now that's a hobby that is going down the drain. That makes me think it is not a very good idea to go that route.But: I agree with him very much on the fact that eventually, computers will be able to generate worlds in which full-blown roleplay will be possible. Something less than described in the Otherworld novels, but believable if not realistic nonetheless. Maybe then we will all be playing virtual roleplaying games on our computer. But even then, they will still be roleplaying games, which is what this game is about and what distinguishes it from other games. And what is so bad about that?</blockquote>

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