The Business: Conventional Play has Gone Digital Primary Now And Digital Only Soon

Roll For Combat's stream was another round of shop-talk.

Which means that the collapse has already accelerated to the point where those able to follow Wizards of the Coast to Vidya are doing so. Meanwhile, those too small to remain viable as commercial enterprises are already folding or converting back to non-commercial operation.

Within the paradigm of the Cargo Cult of Conventional Play what Derik says--VTT or Death--is correct. That is how Normies, Casuals, and Tourists engage with the hobby and thus with Conventional Play; they are wholly unable to play properly, and they have no interest in trying to play properly, because they just see the hobby as yet another digital-primary thing or a weird boardgame alternative (and WOTC pitches it that way).

Yes, younger generations are presuming that everything is digital. This should be used as a filtering mechanism; you can sift out those unwilling to go analog because those are the folks that will not have what it takes to learn and master the Real Game. The Real Hobby is now on an inevitable path back into the underground where it belongs, meaning that gatekeeping is easy to practice again, because this is not something worth doing other than on an analog basis.

The bifurcation proceeds exactly as I have forseen.