The Professor independently confirms what I've said about Games vs. Brands.
Where the Professor goes wrong is in thinking that Tabletop's Conventional Play will still be here without Wizards of the Coast propping it up.
Which says a lot about the willful ignorance of the Cargo Cult, as they still insist that there is any sort of hobby onboarding that Wizards does not provide. (No, dear Cultists, you do not have any such process. If you did, you would be far more successful than you are now- as in "We regularly sell through at Walmart" levels of successful.)
Wizards of the Coast, and its Hasbro parent, are going where the money is easiest to maximize. That's Vidya and merchandise, not Tabletop. That's why they're quittting Tabletop, doing tie-in media, doing branded LEGO sets, and reinforcing the widely-accepted premise that "RPG" equals "D&D".
It's that last part, coupled with Current Editions mega-Kaiju sized Network Effect vs. all competitors combined, that constitutes the pillar propping up Conventional Play in Tabletop.
It is that pillar that every also-ran and never-were in Conventional Play has no plan to replace. There is no plan to usurp Current Edition's user network. There is no plan to take over Current Edition's place in Tabletop. There is no plan to replace Current Edition's users with another demographic entirely. There is no plan AT ALL!
I sound this alarm again and again because those willing to heed my warning here and now will not only survive Wizards' yanking out the pillar propping up Conventional Play, it will be in a position to conquer and dominate the hobby after the collapse and thereby become the New Normal.
That said, Conventional Play has no future in Tabletop no matter what happens because those publishing for the Cargo Cult cannot survive the collapse and remain in the Cargo Cult. They will either choose the Cult and die, they will leave the hobby and live, or they will choose the hobby--the Clubhouse, and the pre-Cult paradigm it embodies--and turn this Consumerist crapfest into a proper social hobby again, with all the pro-social qualities and norms we see in club-focused hobbies.
You better learn how to act, like you do when you frequent dance halls, if you want to be in the hobby after Corpo Chris Cox takes Wizards' balls and fucks off forever.
Why does it matter? I'm finding it hard to care.
ReplyDeleteCurrent D&D players will look for another game if their game disappears; or if they're not really hobbyists they won't, in which case no loss. Maybe someone will step forward, maybe they won't. The best thing that can happen to the hobby is to go back into the garage. If it's meant to be mainstream it will be. But everything that goes mainstream becomes enshittified and draws a huge crowd of half interested wannabes. Not a game I want to play, not people I want to play with unless they can be converted to something else. The games I play do just fine publishing by a Kickstarter or whatever, and I've been quite successful in introducing new people to the hobby. Someday I'll be dead and then I *really* won't care.
It's the same reason I don't care if Linux ever goes mainstream. As soon as it draws corporate dollars it turns to s***, and I end up having to support people who don't know an OS from an ass. Better to remain underground.
Hasbro is the worst thing that ever happened to D&D, and sooner they're out of the picture the better I'll like it. Hell even the D&D brand name has been ruined. I kind of feel like the brand is holding tabletop back. Let it go digital and no longer be associated with tabletop. IBM used to be the 800 lb gorilla in the computing space, they packed up their toys and went home and the industry flourished without them.
Still, you have an interesting perspective. Not many people talking about it.
Attrition is why being in the public eye, widely available in Normie retail outlets, and not considered a threat to public safety or national security.
DeletePeople go away. Why doesn't matter. What matters is if enough go away, it becomes impossible to maintain a viable level of activity and thus the hobby itself ceases to exist. To prevent this, hobby groups have to maintain some level of recruitment; it is far easier to do this when it is easy to get into it, which is what Wizards' is about to crash right into the dirt with no survivors by abandoning Tabletop for Vidya.
All these also-rans think they'll be able to carry on without Wizards. They're retarded; TSR's collapse signalled a general hobby collapse, which would have happened at Wizards not stepped in and taken over in 1999.
That was under different (better) management. Today's cohort is MBAed to the max, so they don't have that long-term view.
However, because everyone else benefited from Wizards' presence for 25+ years (and TSR before that), NO ONE has even tried to put themselves into a position where they could replace Wizards.
Going underground is _bad for the hobby._ Not the business, the practice itself, because unless you're willing to go full Masonic Lodge organization you'll see every game, every store, every publisher, and every table wither and die within 10-20 years because you have no onboarding for new blood to replace those attrited out.
Just as the American Legion or the Veterans of Foreign Wars what that feels like, as that's happened to both them badly since the Global War on Terror happened but the Boomers from Vietnam won't do shit to recruit them and make them welcome.
Or many a Western church that failed to appreciate this, graying and dying out due to not ensuring that they bring in new people (and retain their own children).
This is a cultural institution. It has to be valued as such.
You make some good points. The landscape is littered with dying and dead social institutions. I see them in every small town I drive through and I wonder if even a single person is still involved.
ReplyDeleteI feel like it's a little different though because we have a hobby of books. Books live on for generations, and a group could completely fade away and an innocent person pick up a book, I start the ball rolling all again.
Then again with the internet, shrinking reading comprehension, maybe books don't play prominently in the future. I wonder how long physical libraries will stay around...
I would like to see role playing stick around, in part because of it's rich output, and in part because it really captures an entire segment of popular cultural and literary influence.