The Pundit got the memo, and has some details to add.
Sorcerers By The Sea loses money on anything physical.
Only digital is profitable for them. A lot of that is likely due to the incompetency of their DIE Regime Clients not being corrected by competent management because there is no such thing at SOBS anymore.
Put in yet another former videogame executive into the C-Suite as CEO, establish that only digital meets revenue goals, and it could not be any clearer as to whree SOBS will take the Brand and thus the User Network for Current Edition.
More and more people are picking up what I put down. More and more people are forced admit that I have the correct conclusion. More and more people are going to freakout over where this is going, because if the Pundit can see that Tabletop Conventional Play is fucked (and no, the OSR isn't immune) especially as a commercial operation then that damn will break sooner than later and people are going to start openly admitting it.
And more and more people are going to get hammered by Network Effects if they think they are going to continue more or less as things are once that medium transition is done.
The collapse of Official D&D as a thing is a cataclysmic cultural collapse and if SOBS screws up this transition then we're looking at a total annihiliation of Tabletop as a commercial concern within a decade.
Conventional Play needs SOBS to sustain itself. There is no one able, willing or not, to fill that void; no one gets movies made, gets into Walmarts in the middle of nowhere, or otherwise shoves itself before the faces of Normies (who--I remind you--never go out of their way for a God-damned thing and NEVER work for their entertainment) to get them to play at all so there is no more intake into the Cargo Cult to offset those bled off by attrition.
This is what the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play fails to comprehend: they are utterly dependent upon the market leader to get their own users into their sub-networks. Again, for Normies "D&D" IS SYNONYMOUS with "RPG" (and "RPG" for Normies also means Conventional Play, which videogames do better across the board: NUMBERS DO NOT LIE!) They need to scraps from SOBS's Big Table or they'd collapse as a commercial concern.
No matter how this works out for SOBS, Conventional Play in Tabletop is doomed and lives on borrowed time. You either return to the Clubhouse or you follow SOBS to Vidya. Some folks just need to find this out the hard way.
"The collapse of Official D&D as a thing is a cataclysmic cultural collapse..."
ReplyDeleteNo.
There will be a short-term market collapse as the table-top market readjusts. People that have hitched their wagon to 5e support will wail and moan.
The 4e debacle has empirically shown that people will move on to an "alternative D&D" if driven to do so. Will the alternative market be as big as the current D&D market? Hell No. It will take decades to recover.
The rpg hobby will likely go back to late 80's early 90's numbers. RPG's will be a "niche" hobby again. Wotc will also not cut off the TTRPG all at once - it will be a gradual transition over a few years. Enough time for a group of alternatives to arise.
Unfortunately, due to the refusal to use conventional ascending AC, ACKS will not be seen as a viable alternative...