The Business: Here Come The Receipts On The Doom Of The Cargo Cult

As if in answer to my post yesterday, a one-two from Clownfish.

Magic-Users By The Water and Hassle Brothers are tanking.

The transition by MBTW of Current Edition into an all-digital psuedo-videogame can't come fast enough, and they're already deploying shills to push it.

Guy who always ends up shilling for MBTW ends up shilling for MBTW. Same formula as the Devil Mouse for Mouse Wars.

This is proof that Cargo Cultists have no future in the tabletop hobby. The Tourists will go where MBTW wants them to go because they are weak to social pressure and easily bullied into going along with stupid ideas like what MBTW wants to do with Current Edition. The Cargo Cultists will follow them because they'll run out of people to play with otherwise.

The (Not So) Friendly Local Game Stores will have to go like the Comic Shops and dump the Cargo Cult crap in favor of Things That Sell, which means they too will become Manga Stores and add on related merchandise. Tabletop hobby games will scale back to Real RPGs--the few that exist--until the stores phase them out as useless vestiges that are no longer commercially viable unless they also sell lots of related crap like miniatures (and all that goes with that- the Stupid British Toy Company approach).

Once the Biggest Boy goes, the next in line will follow; they won't be able to fill the void, so the collapse expands to consume them in turn.

After that, the last brick in the wall falls out and the dam breaks. The entire sector collapses, taking out companies left and right unless they are prepared to pivot- either to Real RPGs, or to some other product category entirely (i.e. boardgames, card games, IP farm for videogame adaptations, IP farm for merchandising, etc.). Even the dinosaurs will fall in short order- a great culling heretofore unseen in this market niche.

Too many think they can replace this with Neopatronage. They won't. Too many offerings chasing too little money means only a handful can hang on enough to attempt a pivot, and given how pants-on-head retarded too many in this niche are most of them won't even conceive of needing to do so; they only delay the inevitable.

Some will go like Gonnerman and downshift to a self-funding hobby. A few will switch media and continue that way. Most will just die, and they won't be missed as they've always been surplus to requirements, unfit for purpose, and thus their demise will be better for everyone.

And sooner than many will ever admit, they will be forced to admit it.

#JEFFROISRIGHT