Quote from: sureshot;1062119I don't know why members of our hobby insist on blindly being anti-tech luddites. Even for older kids and for many adults You-tube and similar places are their primary forms of entertainment. With the right set-up one can have almost cinema like sound and movie/picture quality at home. It's not a fad and I don't know why again why some insist it will be. Reminds me of some members and devs on other rpg forums insisting that PDFs were a fad. If anything it's getting hard to find some rpgs in stores with a POD option so that they can save on printing and shipping costs.

Streaming isn't a fad. That's new tech, especially as its leaped from desktop to mobile to big screen TVs. However, the watching of amateurs doing stuff might not be a forever thing, just like how people burnt out on reality shows, thus narrowing that field. You can already see how many YouTubers are engaging in effectively professional lighting and editing for their episodes. In LA, we have LOADS of freelance behind-the-scenes people working for YouTubers who can afford studio production whereas a few years ago, even the top YT producers were doing it solo in their home.

Of course, semi-pro work costs money and if the YT fanbase starts expecting semi-pro level production, the bar to entry for amateurs will rise significantly. That's why I see it as a fad, also combined with generational changes. AKA, the younger siblings want their own cool stuff, certainly different than their older siblings or old stuff their parents like.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1062124In regards to Youtube, I don't see the bitches about it as much different that those of parents when I was growing up against TV and video games. For years my mother fought against us getting an Atari 2600 because "we would just sit on the couch and get fat". Funny thing, after the novelty wore of it went into rotation with all of our other activities.

Comparing Youtubers to professional sports doesn't sync up for me. Most of these people are just good amatuers (some not even all that good). I'm not aware of any youtubers with multi million dollar contracts. Much more comparable to high level amateur sports or local theater groups. It is kind of a disservice to many of them to compare to corporate sponsored media, it is much harder to turn out quality content on the budgets most of these people have. Most are just subject nerds with passion, which is of course why they can turn out good material. No overlords meddling in the content (Google / Youtube excepted).

Also what things are fun to watch and what things are fun to do can be really different.

The sports I like playing are horribly boring to watch and the sports I like watching would be horribly boring for me to play since they'd require so much repetitive practice.

Remember when you used to go to your friend's house to watch him play Nintendo? Streaming is just that, now you can experience all the joy of watching the back of your friend's head as he refuses to let you have a go at Sonic, with none of the inconvenience of having to actually make a friend.

I think that more likely, what you're seeing is a swing back from a long period where mechanics took precedence over role-playing.

3e was crunch-over-fluff to begin with, and it became much more crunch-focused as time went by.

Then it was replaced by The Abomination, which was designed on the theory that D&D should only be a 'gamist' Forge-theory game and to design it accordingly.

5e is a swing back to the other side, putting more emphasis on being more loose with the rules, and focusing a great deal on RP. This is closer to my own style, actually, so I don't find this a big problem in and of itself.