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<blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 5359035" data-attributes="member: 9225">My reply is at:<a href="http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2010/10/25/the-zombie-rpg-industry/" target="_blank">The Zombie RPG Industry | Mob | United | Malcolm | Sheppard</a>Basically, &quot;death&quot; is harped on to shift goalposts when we're talking about &quot;descent into an irrelevant degree of attenuation&quot; and anyone with common sense knows it, and industry activity is in no way responsible for the observable decline of broad-based interest.Sites like this select for the hardcore. By and large hobbyists, not companies, are losing interest in tabletop RPGs.I think many of you sense that there's something hollow about the creative direction of RPGs. The top games are all derivative and the spinoff movements are all examples of dogmatic schools of design. We're currently at the tail end of a economic meltdown compounded by an unprecedented intrusion of the values of marketing and commerce into interpersonal relationships via the Internet. Gamers are among the segment that I have observed uncritically absorbing these values and reproducing them. The natural results: derivative games (they have a history with known quantitative metrics -- sales and hits), an obsession with system over complex player/game relationships (they can be modelled in the absence of players to make qualitative statements) and other problems. Ironically, even while gamers say they want quantitative solutions, they don't vote for them with dollars or even page views.It's supposed to be all about the numbers, but the numbers say you don't care about the industry *or* hobby -- or anything in between.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="eyebeams, post: 5359035, member: 9225"] My reply is at: [url=http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2010/10/25/the-zombie-rpg-industry/]The Zombie RPG Industry | Mob | United | Malcolm | Sheppard[/url] Basically, "death" is harped on to shift goalposts when we're talking about "descent into an irrelevant degree of attenuation" and anyone with common sense knows it, and industry activity is in no way responsible for the observable decline of broad-based interest. Sites like this select for the hardcore. By and large hobbyists, not companies, are losing interest in tabletop RPGs. I think many of you sense that there's something hollow about the creative direction of RPGs. The top games are all derivative and the spinoff movements are all examples of dogmatic schools of design. We're currently at the tail end of a economic meltdown compounded by an unprecedented intrusion of the values of marketing and commerce into interpersonal relationships via the Internet. Gamers are among the segment that I have observed uncritically absorbing these values and reproducing them. The natural results: derivative games (they have a history with known quantitative metrics -- sales and hits), an obsession with system over complex player/game relationships (they can be modelled in the absence of players to make qualitative statements) and other problems. Ironically, even while gamers say they want quantitative solutions, they don't vote for them with dollars or even page views. It's supposed to be all about the numbers, but the numbers say you don't care about the industry *or* hobby -- or anything in between. [/QUOTE]

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