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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grainger" data-source="post: 7679631" data-attributes="member: 6779234">Not sure I buy everything in the article:In terms of politics in gaming, there was plenty of discussion about representation etc. in gaming back in the 80s, and probably before. I did a (not very good) project on this at University in the early 90s, and I wouldn't have claimed it was an original idea.But that all said, the article touches on interesting issues. I personally have mixed feelings about the "mainstreaming" of gaming. I do feel slightly patronised, like a label's being applied to me that doesn't quite apply (I hate labels, and I'm not really a cookie-cutter geek - I positively hate super heroes, horror, most fantasy and much popular sci fi and Cthulu, vampires and steampunk bore me; I just happen to like some "geek stuff"). However, I'm also pleased that I can make references that other people will get, or at least get the direction it's coming from. And if more people get to experience gaming, then that's a good thing. As long as there are still games around in a variety of styles, it doesn't matter if an influx comes in, and the overall type of game changes. However, I don't think we need to worry about the mainstream damaging the range of games we have to play. In board gaming, which has gone sort-of mainstream, I'd say we have a high diversity of game type, theme and price point. The relatively low cost of developing a tabletop game helps. It's not like with mainstream video games where there's so much money at stake that no-one wants to take a risk. An RPG can be developed by one person, in their free time, so we'll always have a wide variety of games available - and if board gaming is anything to go by, we might end up with a flood of games with tired themes (zombies, sword and sorcery, big men shooting aliens, sodding Cthulu), but by sheer dint of market size, we also get a massive variety of other themes and game types.I love the Mentzer quote by the way. All we need is a pen and paper, really. The rest is just companies selling us stuff. It reflects the famous Gygax quote (which may be apocryphal): "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules."</blockquote>

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