The Business: Network Effects Demonstrated By A Snarky Brit

Josh Strife Hayes, without intending to do so, explained how and why D&D is The Only Game That Matters.

All of this applies to Tabletop. Not only does it apply, it started here. That Network Effect briefing Ryan Dancey gave 25 years ago is built off data demonstrating this very cycle in the older Adventure Game medium. (Side note: This is why MMOs are the direct competitor to Tabletop; they are directly comparable.)

What Josh described is the process by which D&D, once it hit a critical mass, became the unstoppable juggernaught that it is now. He is showing you how Network Effects work EXACTLY as Dancey said they would: to reinforce the dominance of the Top Network.

There is only a short window within which a would be Apprentice is able to shiv and replace the Master. As multiple Roll For Combat episodes of late revealed, no one is even close to that status. Wizards of the Coast has no competition at all within the Tabletop Adventure Game marketplace, and all of the "competitors" agree that this is the case- that is why all of them that can are following WOTC's abandonment of Tabletop for Vidya.

Back in the 1970s, when this all kicked off, there was sweet fuck-all momentum for any one actor in the market. You could, if you were on the ball, get into that space and fight for dominance. Some tried, but D&D won that early knife-fight and by 1980 it was already very late; by 1984--the 10 year mark--the window rapidly closed and by 1989 (and Second Edition) it shut.

What happened every single time someone tried? Look at the video; the same thing happened- folks would try out Something Else for a bit, and then like clockwork come back to whatever the current edition was. You'd get a few Also-Rans out of this, which would benefit from the same thing in their specific subniche, but by the time Dancey came out in 2000 to explain Network Effects to sell the Open Game License all of the actors that matter now were there then- all that happened since was the winnowing of the outer rings of the circle.

That's where we're at now: a massive culling of Also-Rans and Never-Weres. The Only Game That Matters will be fine. The oldest and most massive of the Also-Rans should survive (such as Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, BattleTech, Shadowrun/Cyberpunk, and All Things Palladium Books) but most of these will either stop pretending to be anything but hobbyist publications (which, I remind you, is not only fine but desirable) or stop existing at all (most of them) because they can't or won't make the leap.

Note the thing that keeps tripping people up when we talk about Network Effects: this is not about YOU, it's about what everyone agrees is worth playing. The reason D&D (in all its editions) survives is due to the massive number of people that are willing and able to play it, even if they prefer something else, because this is the only game everyone will agree to play. Consensus matters, which means numbers and ease of connection matters. D&D has it; most alternatives don't.

This is what WOTC has focused on improving with its digital initiatives, and why its C-Suite (biased as they are, coming from Tech and Vidya) concluded that going to Vidya is best for D&D. They saw how Revealed Preferences showed that the people they target as customers prefer the ease and convenience of playing online from home over meeting in person so they're going to make that the norm going forward.

It's going to work, for them. For everyone else?

Especially if WOTC gets critical mass adoption of their Walled Garden system, as Blizzard did with their Launcher-based system (itself a Walled Garden), making it too much of a hassle to go outside of it to play other games.

And yes, this same thing applies to the wargaming end; there's a reason that (a) Warhammer is the D&D of that niche and (b) those who quit Warhammer quit the hobby entirely instead of going on to other games and then (c) only to come back to Warhammer when a new edition releases and they think the changes are to their liking. Same process at work, gang.

In order to pull off what Blizzard (with WOW) did to Sony (with EQ), you need to be a peer actor. No one in Tabletop is even close. That's why There Is No Alternative, in Conventional Play terms. Your viable solution is (a) to go non-commercial and (b) to retreat to the Clubhouse and accept that the Real Hobby is neither commercially viable nor Normie-friendly. It's an occult practice, and it always will be, by its very nature.

You can't stop the Colony Drop. You can only run as fast as you can away from it, so haul ass!