Bonus Post: Conventional Play Copium Intesifies

Pat's also huffing the copium.

As one of the Commentors noted, Bookscan only snapshots sales data on a monthly basis and it ignored direct sales and specialist outlets, giving skewed results.

But the real thing to notice is how everyone thinks that Sorcerers By The Sea is aiming Next Edition at the legacy audience. Go ahead, read the Comments. See that presumption underlie all of their "but this is bad for them because (competitor)", which (a) shows that they still don't get Network Effects and (b) they don't get that they are not the target audience anymore.

Next Edition is doing well where it is meant to do well. Legacy audience being depreciated also means that legacy distribution channels are depreicated; this is no different than all the Battleship people in the Interwar Period insisting that Aircraft Carriers aren't going to be a thing that matters.

This is what I mean when I say that Conventional Play is in a bind. They refuse to admit that the biggest player no longer gives two shits about them because they decided to dissolve an audience and elect another, and their willful ignorance of the primary force driving the very thing they center their hobby life around is why they will be caught out when SOBS' Big Move concludes and they are now outside SOBS's Walled Garden- and thus the user network powering the thing they care about.

It's in that state where Conventional Play will find that their fallback has also disappeared behind Clubhouse gates of their own.

Without any ability to engage in Conventional Play, the Cargo Cultists now forced to deal with their lack of a decision to choose their future are going to have to cope with either conforming to the demands of a Clubhouse or to quit the hobby entirely.

I expect that most of them will freak out, and after that subsides those that are broken like an addict will slink to SOBS' Walled Garden because you can get away with being a Soup Aisle Sadsack to a degree there while the rest will just quit.