Will the RPG industry disappear by 2014?

[pogre]

All this makes me wonder: has the RPG industry a future?

Basic roleplaying has not changed that much in the last 30 years. I would wager we will see something very recognizable as the RPG industry in 10 more. Will there be more innovations like MMPORG? Probably, but I think face-to-face playing with all of its warts will still have its place.

One time I had a player leave a session early to go play Everquest and to be honest, I was shocked. That's a trade I would never make. In his defense the EQ was new at the time and he played online with friends from his hometown. However, I have heard similar stories of others making the same choice.

We were hearing about the doom of boardgames a few years ago and they seem to be hanging in there and even flourishing.

 

[Incenjucar]

Playing pretend predates h. sapiens sapiens.

An industry to supply it has existed for at least as long as people wanted to wear leather collars when they played BDSM bedroom games, and at least as lon as people traded some flint-tipped arrows for a costume of a giant bird to dance around in circles in when they told their people's stories.

The warfare-based version has existed since people started making little maps of battlefields and moved them around to try and figure out how the opponent would attack.

The modern, fantasy-based version of the industry has survived psychotic preachers and bad-mothers-in-denial, television's ever-lasting grasp on humanity, video games, and easy-access porn.

I seriously, seriously doubt the roleplaying industry is at any risk. At least as long as people still like to be spanked while wearing a leather zipper-covered hood that probably cost them more than fifty bucks, as long as children still crash their toys together, or make Barbie try to 'straighten out' her poor eunich buddy Ken, or run around on the lawn going 'Brrrooom!' trying to be airplanes, or cats chase a bit of string pretending its a rodent or some other tasty treat.

Until we lose the kinky folk, the children, and the kitties, I think the industry will survive.

 

[jester47]

Just as a quick hijack-

The problem with MMORPGS is that they do not have an element of risk. Or if they do, they are very low risk (you might loose stuff).

For MMORPGS to be really successful, they have to implement permanent death. But it has to be relatively hard to kill. This is somthing that many companies are not willing to do because they feel that people will be mad when a character dies. Also, the question comes to how do you spawn a new character when there are PKers around?

The place where every company has screwed up is that they make it a level based system. So you have uber characters that if PKing is allowed, dominate the game. The best method of handling this I have seen is the alligence system from Asherons Call. If someone kills you, they probably will have to answer to your leige.

What I think would be the best is to have a leveless system where gear and skill only play a limited role in actual damage. This would make it hard to kill anything. Everything being hard to kill (even you) makes people band together to get the dragon, or the orc hoarde or whatever. I think if you do it that way, with an alligence system, you would have a game that was fun to play, but where people knew there was risk.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Aaron.

 

[Akrasia]

Thanks for the interesting replies.

Just to clarify: I was not suggesting that people will stop playing RPGs.

I was only suggesting that, with the internet, the availability of free material, and likely changes in printing technology over the next 1-2 decades, RPG companies may fade away.

A few people have claimed that so long as people keep playing RPGs, companies will find a way to make a profit off of them. Perhaps. But how will they do this in the brave new future? :\

 

[Akrasia]

Someone needs to make a poll to determine when these *** **** ************ "the sky is falling! the sky is falling!" threads are going to stop.

Chuck

No one forced you to read this thread or post here. If you feel so upset, move along...

 

[Akrasia]

Clearly you are insane. .

Oh yes!

...
To recapture the level of popularity enjoyed in the eighties, only one out of every thousand gamers would be allowed to live or retain any knowledge of RPGs. ...

Data please?

The recent BBC documentary on DnD was of the "where-are-they-now" variety. Many people, apparently, were surprised the game was still being played. This does not suggest to me that DnD has expanded a 1000-fold since the early 80s.

Indeed, IIRC the WotC spokesperson they interviewed pretty much acknowledged this fact.

I started playing in the late 70s. Back then, you could find RPG material almost everywhere. Today, only the big book chains and specialist game shops carry RPG material. And there seem to be far fewer game shops that cater heavily to RPGs.

Actually, I think I made this request in my initial post -- does anyone have hard data on the current popularity of RPGs/DnD? Or its popularity over the course of the past 30 years? I remember recently reading an article that claimed that there were about 5 million players at the height of DnD's popularity in the early 80s, and only about 2 million today. But I could be wrong (I don't have the article here, or know its source).

 

[Paragon Kobold]

But, frankly, a lot of the current gamers are having or have had kids. Those kids grow up immersed in RPGs to one extent or another. They're your future client base for the industry.

And so, eventually, gamers will evolve into a separate spices.

 

[Numion]

Virtual reality goggles aren't going to kill PnP RPGs any more than movies killed written books.

Predicting the future is notoriously difficult though. The oracle studies done in the 60s are very funny to read.

 

[wedgeski]

I started playing in the late 70s. Back then, you could find RPG material almost everywhere. Today, only the big book chains and specialist game shops carry RPG material. And there seem to be far fewer game shops that cater heavily to RPGs.

I think this says more about changes in retail trade than it does about RPG's. But, I can tell you unequivocally that I can buy D&D material in my home town in more shops today than I could in, say 1984. YMMV.

I think the internet will mean there will never be another mid-late-90's-style RPG slump. Even if there is a retail downturn and no-one wants to stock anything anymore, the internet will keep gaming warm and the underlying health of the hobby will stay strong. Pretty much for the forseeable future, I'd say.

 

[Rawwedge]

***I started playing in the late 70s. Back then, you could find RPG material almost everywhere. Today, only the big book chains and specialist game shops carry RPG material. And there seem to be far fewer game shops that cater heavily to RPGs.***

I can attest to this fact; I grew up playing in a little podunk town just outside of nowhere in the early eighties and you could get D&D books from the major retail book chains all over my region. Now us hicks have to send away for our stuff or get in a car and drive a few hours to a specialty hobby shop.