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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5357807" data-attributes="member: 957">There are so many points to agree with and so many points to completely laugh at, that it is hard to know where to begin.I think a major flaw in the whole conversation is equating "tabletop" and "the hobby".To me, personally, that equivalence fits.  But if either of my daughters are gamers 15 years from now, electronic tools will be a presumption that is given no more thought than dice are to people my age.  And there may not be a dead tree to be seen anywhere.  It is easy for me to think of electronic RPGs and immediately think of things like WoW or Dragon Age.  And while they both may be cool, neither of them meet my standard of being "the hobby".  "The hobby" comes down to total freedom of creation amongst the imagination of the players.  Maybe 25 years from now WOW3 technology will reach that, but I doubt it, and for purposes here I'm presuming it won't be there yet.  There will always be a demand for purely imagination based RPGs and so the hobby isn't going to die.Tracking the sell of books to track the health of the hobby is like counting wisdom teeth to track the health of a person.  Or, at this stage of technology, counting milk teeth may be a better comparison.DDI isn't even the tip of the iceberg of change coming to the industry.It is interesting to note that White Wolf is pretty much walking away from the industry.  And on one hand, that seems pretty damning evidence.  But, I don't think that follows the logic all the way through.  Yes, online games can generate vastly more income than pen and paper games.  So it makes total sense that successful games will move to that.  But, the other side of the coin is that same online community makes it feasible for two guys in their basement to provide games to the entire world.  And it makes it possible for the best options of hundreds of pairs to two guys to get their "word of message board" on their product out.  White wolf moves on to make huge profits (or fail) for a company and two guys move on to make solid income (or fail) for two guys.  And if those two guys move on to bigger things, there is more where that came from.  And in either case, their sales won't be counted in dead trees.It is true that a lot simple players don't have a sense of the nuts of bolts of the industry.  And their comments should be taken with that in mind.  But, the other side of the coin is that the current field of micro-publishers are blinded by their own day to day livelihood needs. Change is painful and it can be hard to realize the need.  So while the gamers may not know how tall the stack is, they do know that some insiders are measuring it with last years ruler and that ruler is obsolete.</blockquote>

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