The Business: There Is Only Competition WITHIN The Network

The Critical Role revelation confirms what I have long explained: There Is Only One Game That Matters.

While D&DTube continues to huff that copium like they're having heart attacks (because they are; they need to hold their delusional beliefs that their dogshit matters), what I am seeing manifest as concrete reality is what Ryan Dancey explained 25 years ago: there is no competition between Network Effects within a niche, but only within that network (and thus only within that brand).

I started saying "Just play D&D" for a reason. Note that I did not say which version.

I can get people to play 1st Edition. It is far harder to get people to play anything Not D&D, even if it's close like a Palladium game, because they trust the brand and disdain all else. Furthermore, being that this is a group-centered hobby, everyone can agree on D&D and will refuse Not D&Ds. Thus you get people not playing anything but D&D because no one else can agree on anything else.

The Off-Brand D&Ds (the clones) get traction because they are still D&D, to the point where even the most lame retroclone beats the most successful Not D&Ds.

Why? There is no risk to the Normies in playing it because it's still within the network, brand or no. To overcome this you need a massive brand, and that is not at all guaranteed as the Star Wars, Warhammer, and Conan experiences show. (Call of Cthulhu endures because it is the D&D equivalent in its niche, same as why Traveller and HERO/Champions does.)

What does this mean? There is only a VERY NARROW window of competition in the hobby, commercially speaking. Since most folks don't get it without parallel examples from beyond the hobby, here it is:

Because WOW recovered from its Shadowlands botchjob in record time with Dragonflight, and Final Fantasy XIV flubbed its chance to pull off the Sith Succession Scheme by botching its follow-up to Endwalker with Dawntrail, WOW retained its position of dominance in the MMORPG marketplace. Furthermore, the recovery was so strong that WOW has begun to break away from everyone else as WOTC pulled off with D&D when 3e arrived 25 years ago.

The reality is that most people do not bounce between MMOs. They stay within a single MMO, either playing that game or not any MMO at all, and only Blizzard has figured this out.

What WOTC has figured out under Dancey is how Network Effects create that bubble effect. Blizzard figured it out almost 25 years later, but they tacitly allowed for it for years by ignoring the rise of the clones--private servers--until Nostalrius got too loud to ignore; this would later lead to official Classic WOW servers, mirroring WOTC having to make past D&D editions available again to blunt the demand for retroclones.

Now WOW players that don't want to play Retail have Official Classic (past editions) and private servers (clones) to stay in the WOW bubble indefinitely. They never need to learn a non-WOW game. D&D is not only in the same boat, it's been there for three generations longer.

This is why the #BROSR is a viable threat, and Le Indie Darlings and other Non-D&Ds are not; the Bros compete within the network, so what they say and do is recognizable and applicable to the doings and interests of hobbyists and Normies whereas Non-D&Ds might as well be aliens pretending to be real people.

You want to challenge D&D? Do it from the inside. You get nowhere otherwise, and after 50 years that is not a conclusion that you can gainsay in good faith anymore.