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Message: <blockquote data-quote="joethelawyer" data-source="post: 4622980" data-attributes="member: 55764">Some folks in another thread were talking about how reading fantasy books is what got them into D&D.  I know for me reading those books went hand in hand with playing D&D.  There are studies out which are showing dramatic drops in reading amongst kids today.  The study referenced in the article below is attached to this post, as well as another. <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6503742.html" target="_blank">Social Studies 101 - 11/19/2007 - Publishers Weekly</a>We all know about the Harry Potter craze, and how kids were into that. Now we have the Twilight craze, and teens are into it big time.  With both series, there is an adult audience as well. A lot of us have read from both series.  Did the Potter series bring in new gamers?  Do you think the Twilight craze will?  Is there a carry-over from reading this genre of books to playing D&D?There are many more multimedia distractions today with kids. When I was growing up it was basically TV.  Now with the Internet, Facebook/MySpace, IPods, Cell Phones, IM, MMORPG's, the window of opportunity in a kid's day to read has shrunken down to be much smaller than what we had.  Plus, a lot of what books compete with is social in nature, whereas books are not.   Selling the social aspects of gaming seems to be the way to go in order to get more people into the hobby.  We know 4e has incorporated elements of MMORPG's.  WOTC is trying to sell the electronic social aspects with DDI.  Smart moves, I think.  For reasons stated ad nauseum in other threads, the results don't seem to be what was originally hoped for so far.Even worse, we still don't know how many new people have been brought into the hobby.  I know based on some recent polls that we're mostly a bunch of old geezers on this board, not many kids.  I'm 38, been playing since '84.  Our perspetive may be a bit different, and we may be a bit out of touch.  Probably those of us who do have kids in the target market, don't have the typical kids, bcause they were influnced by the gaming hobbies of their parents.But still it has to be asked--where is the next gaming generation coming from?  Are they coming at all in the numbers needed to sustain the hobby? Can more be done to get them involved?  How do you sell it to them?  How do you deal with a lack of young readers of the type of books that inspired us to play?  How does gaming compete with all the rest of the things that take up their time?We all know what we want th future of gaming to look like, in that we all want a bunch of new gamers to help the hobby grow.  How do we get there?</blockquote>

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