The Business: Conventional Play Gutting The Hobby And Wearing As A Skinsuit

Roll For Combat again, this time coming back with the 10 year predictions.

Takeaways:

• Conventional Play across the board will go either All-Digital or Primary Digital; print is depreciated, will move to Print On Demand (if meant-to-be-used is done at all) or be limited run collectors.
• Bots will take over Referee roles in Conventional Play across the board, and are likely going to replace other human players.
• Commercial incentives to gut player agency and user agency to maximize viability will only accelerate; Live Service, microtransactions, Walled Gardens, subscription-based models. Think of Adobe or MS Office, and it's going to be dogshit. They will also use the same model as street-level drug pushers: The First Hit Is Free (i.e. a part of their online stuff is Free To Play).
• Acknowledgement that all of these changes are just abandoning Tabletop for Vidya, but not saying that it is so because of Ego Defense through the denial of Network Effects and their overwhelming influence upon how all of this works.
• Lack of respect for IP integrity (i.e. the lore) in favor of following commercial incentives to maximize revenue and profitability. (e.g. the FF set in Magic) Nothing is allowed to be seperate and distinct unto itself, but instead blended together into a grey goo of Brand Cult madness. It's Muh Multiculturalism/Muh Diversity for Pop Culture, with the same intent as forcibly mixing dissimilar cultures in real life and to the same ends.
• The same Push The Widget thing will go on, changed into the most atomized model: Microtransactions.
• Unblockable Digital Ads, rampant FOMO, and other totally predatory business practices aimed to weaponize psychology to extract maximum revenue per user.
• The Six Session Campaign is not only the norm, but EXPLICITLY DESIGNED TO BE THAT WAY.
• Wizards of the Coast will be the only company in 10 years, and they won't be a Tabletop company anymore, so there is no internal competition and there never will be. Every other "competitor" will fold or revert to hobbyist operation (as most already are; if you beg on Kickstarter, you're not a business- you're hobbyists in denial). The only viable competition is external to Tabletop, and none of them are going to do it because they'd be better off collaborating with WOTC.
• Acknoledgement that Current Edition cultivated a wholly passive CONSUME PRODUCT audience that cannot into Tabletop and HATE that they have to be active participants in their fun. They don't read, they don't use print products, they don't think. They are purely driven off Stimulus/Response operations, working off Trope-driven cues. They do not know how they would feel if they did not have breakfast that morning.

This is a horror show.

This is not a hobby. This is not a business. This is failure in the happening. There is nothing here that Vidya already does, does better, and already has a massive Network Effect with the target market.

Where I differ with this panel is that there is one company that is certain to survive until its founder dies or retires: Palladium Books. (And of the non-WOTCs, the only one worth buying from after Autarch.)

Oh, and they are delusional if they think the Third World generally or Imperial rivals to Globohomo are viable markets. They're not. This is a hobby that requires a triple digit IQ to be viable and a series of cultural norms; those other places to lack one or both of these pre-requistes, which is why all such efforts will fail.

These people are openly aiming to transform the hobby into something that it is not. Not because of Death Cult Wokeshit dogma, but purely and solely due to Mammon Mobster LINE MUST GO UP! insanity. They are independently confirming every last thing I've said about The Big Move, and are filling in the gaps for how actors other than WOTC could be able to do so and why they would opt to do that, while confusing Brand and Network (because they think they can replace the Network like government think they can replace the People), and as a result they are barely capable of acknowledging that this is not the Tabletop Adventure Game hobby anymore. It's just different (shit) flavors of Vidya.

The Clubhouse is not only the only viable alternative, it is of vital importance that its return and spread happen at speed.

All of this horror is due to the perverse incentives that come as part-and-parcel of pursuing commercial incentives. Sanity can only survive behind the gates of the Clubhouse.