mearls said:
I have a theory that every geek pastime has a sort of apocalyptic death cult attached to it. Just as there's religious cults utterly convinced that the end of the world is just around the corner, in RPGs, SF, TCGs, whatever, there's always going to be a hard core that almost seems like they *need* their hobby to be in dire straits.
Here are true words.
Not just in geek pastimes (although that's certainly a big place for it), but everywhere you'll see pessimists who say the end is nigh. Before gamingreport.com required people to register to post, any bad news from any source would be immediately followed by a torrent of posts saying that the RPG industry was dying, that WotC was about to fold, that in 6 months there would be no RPG's still in print, or my personal favorite "In a year we'll all have new hobbies". I'm a little dulled to gloom & doom talk because while I've only been gaming since 1997, I've been hearing nothing prognostications of imminent doom from certain quarters the entire time (including the dawn of 3e, when I heard predictions that it would be "the Edsel of gaming and destroy D&D" or that the OGL was some insidious WotC plot to steal everybody's works from their web pages and message board posts and make money off of them without paying the fans they took them from). In fact, in the 8 years I've been a gamer, I can't remember a single time I've heard many good predictions about the industry.
Some people say RPG's are dying because MMO's and virtual reality will replace them "in the future". Of course, "in the future", electronic commerce was supposed to replace all cash, eBooks were supposed to replace all print books, we were all supposed to be shopping online for everything from groceries to cars, and TV will be interactive and we'll be shopping on TV. Sometimes you just need butts in the seats, and no virtual world will ever truly replace to the comaraderie of a few friends around a table slinging dice and playing a game. Just like online poker hasn't replaced live poker, virtual chess hasn't replaced real chess, and we still read hardcopy books, we'll still play actual D&D.
Just like electronic commerce experienced a huge surge in the late '90's as everybody moved to online sales of everything, and the buzz was that "brick & mortar" had no future, investors poured fortunes into e-Commerce, thinking it was the wave of the future. Then the bust came: it's not practical to shop for a lot of things online, and people still like to physically examine articles before they buy them and to get them from local stores instead of having it shipped to them. People decried this as a bust, a crash, but in reality it was the market normalizing itself. Some people succeeded, but only by doing things that could not be done before. Amazon and eBay were the two most famous success stories, the former for having a selection no physical store could match with highly competitive prices, the latter for being a collector's dream as a sort of ultimate electronic flea market. A failure would be Tandy Leather, a chain of leatherworking stores that in late '98 shut down their nationwide chain of stores to only offer leatherworking supplies online, since that was The Way of the Future. It was a failure, as raw crafting materials were impractical to buy that way, and the experience of selecting your materials and getting help from the employees was quite valuable. Years later, they've begun to reopen their chain of stores.
This is very much like what the RPG industry has been through in the last few years. Back in 2000, the d20 STL and D&D 3e changed the market. Now, every homebrewer and wannabe game writer could make D&D compatible RPG's and sell them. Since almost every GM thinks they are an excellent writer of material, almost every one tried to produce something to sell (or so it seems). The quality of 3e gave D&D a fresh infusion of life, as gamers came back to D&D after sometimes long absences, new gamers flooded in, and other gamers were invigorated with the new rule set. Riding on these coattails were many other companies, who converted product lines to d20, trying to ride the wave, or they produced wave after wave of poorly written drek. Then things started to fade. People realized that quality counts, and just being d20 isn't any sign of quality. Companies who got into the industry to take advantage of d20 are feeling the pinch as the winds that power them die down, and the consumers go back to trusted names they know will bring them quality and entertainment. WotC and White Wolf are the first names on that list.
. The only debacle that somehow affected me was that of Green Ronin and their distributor. After 3 canceled orders, my urge to get hold of a copy of Blue Rose cooled substantially down; but thats a minor discomfort.
