Quote from: J Arcane;390073As a current player of WoW I find your implication that I don't know anything about the game to be fucking insulting.

Yes, you can get decent gear from grinding Heroics every day, running the same fucking dungeon over and over again every day for weeks on end.  

But it's still not as good as the raiding gear, which is why any guild of enough size inevitably still starts pushing everyone at cap to raid.

Well if that is what you chose to be "fucking insulted" over, so be it. Doesn't change that the game has never been that accessible to even the most casual of players.
As for the need to raid. Not sure where you are getting that from, if someone doesn't want to raid then he or she can easily enjoy the wow content in dungeon purples and quest blues and still have a good chance of doing all non raid content, like the multiple epic questlines (return of muradin, fate of arthas, wrathgate etc.).
Why your guildmaster is pushing people to raid, that is between you and him. In my guild and in virtually every guild I have contact with raiding is not required and we still are at 11/12 ICC.
And as for the gear not being up to snuff. I just recently tanked sindragosa in frost gear and heroics gear. So either I am imba or you are wrong. I am pretty sure I am not THAT imba.

Sequel article to OP.

http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2010/06/25/why-you-should-have-nice-things/

Quote from: ggroy;390215Sequel article to OP.

http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2010/06/25/why-you-should-have-nice-things/

From his "So after saying all these bad things about a subset of gamers, why do I think they should be a part of all the cool stuff that's happening in media and fiction?" comment at the end, I suspect his version of the "nice things" I deserve is MUCH different than mine. I would not be surprised if most of the gaming-related things he things are nice are things I think are a waste of time and money -- and vice-versa.

I've gotten some really nice gaming things over the last couple of years. Most of them have nothing in common with what's happening in fiction and media. The gaming stuff I've seen that does have a lot in common with a big media production is stuff I have had zero interest in participating in, let alone spending money on.

Quote from: kregmosier;389051This would be News, except that you can replace "tabletop role-playing gamers" online with:

* Model Train Enthusiasts
* Gun Nuts
* Sports Fans
* Fitness Buffs
* Historians
* New Mothers
* Librarians

etc. etc. ad nauseum...

I dunno. Pretty much all of those at lack the "theoretically self sustaining after initial buy-in" quality Benoist speaks of.

QuoteReads like someone needed to vent and had no content for a blog update.  Low hanging fruit and all...

Well, I didn't click the link but I did see it was mob united media, aka Malcom, who has also brought us other such thoughts on gamer loathing as "gamers can't be trusted to decide what is fun in a game."

Quote from: ggroy;390215Sequel article to OP.

http://www.mobunited.com/mobunitedmedia/2010/06/25/why-you-should-have-nice-things/

Will you please stop getting this thread back on topic!  

Well, this guy seems to have completely bought in on the Cluetrain Manifesto, but completely ignores two important factors.

One - Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is crap.  Which, if you apply to "networked market conversation", parts of which like Twitter and Facebook raise the crap percentage significantly.

Two - Pareto's Principle applied to business 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.  Guess what, the people he wants to jettison are most of that 20%.

Quote from: CRKrueger;390260Well, this guy seems to have completely bought in on the Cluetrain Manifesto, but completely ignores two important factors.

One - Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is crap.  Which, if you apply to "networked market conversation", parts of which like Twitter and Facebook raise the crap percentage significantly.

Two - Pareto's Principle applied to business 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.  Guess what, the people he wants to jettison are most of that 20%.

This is what he, that client he claims he worked for (not buying it) and GMS forgets.  All of life belongs to the hardcore; the rest just come along for the ride, and are ultimately expendable because they don't bring in the same sales.

Wonder if they've been taking their cue from music and movie companies, where they're trying to score "home runs" (ie. Britney Spears, N'Sync, New Kids on the Block, Boston, Duran Duran, Nirvana, etc ...) instead of "base hits" (ie. everybody else).

The "home runs" may very well be when tons of casual players latch on when something is the "new shiny thing".  (ie.  Core rulebook for players).

The hardcore crowd becomes the "base hits", when the casual players are gone and not returning.  (ie. Modules, supplement rulebooks, setting books, etc ...).

The OP article seems to be about pushing the hardcore crowd aside, so that initially they don't scare away the "casual" types from purchasing the "shiny new thing".

Quote from: CRKrueger;390260Well, this guy seems to have completely bought in on the Cluetrain Manifesto, but completely ignores two important factors.

One - Sturgeon's Law - 90% of everything is crap.  Which, if you apply to "networked market conversation", parts of which like Twitter and Facebook raise the crap percentage significantly.

Two - Pareto's Principle applied to business 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.  Guess what, the people he wants to jettison are most of that 20%.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;390264This is what he, that client he claims he worked for (not buying it) and GMS forgets.  All of life belongs to the hardcore; the rest just come along for the ride, and are ultimately expendable because they don't bring in the same sales.

Doesn't this business plan become a downward spiral where the publisher is catering to the 20% hardcore consistantly and that 20% gets smaller with each successive generation of hardcore gamers? The hardcore consumers being steadily replaced with consumers who are even more hardcore than the last, yet fewer in number than previous cycles.

Where is the business growth potential in that?

Quote from: jeff37923;390274Doesn't this business plan become a downward spiral where the publisher is catering to the 20% hardcore consistantly and that 20% gets smaller with each successive generation of hardcore gamers? The hardcore consumers being steadily replaced with consumers who are even more hardcore than the last, yet fewer in number than previous cycles.

Where is the business growth potential in that?

Good question.

Don't know what it would mean for a large company like Hasbro.

For a small company, in principle they can attempt to thrive on inertia with a steady number of hardcore people buying their books regularly (such as Palladium).  Albeit this is a slow death.

I can see a company like Paizo ending up in this direction, if they have a steady number of hardcore people buying their books every month for many years.  If this turns out to be the case, we very well may never see a 2E Pathfinder.

Quote from: jeff37923;390274Where is the business growth potential in that?

There's not any.

It's why Nintendo is set for the next decade while Sony and Microsoft continue to cater 90% of their output to the "hardcore" 20 and 30 year-olds, losing the younger fandom and setting themselves up for the same collapse as the comic industry (or the PC game industry).  Nintendo rejected the status quo for "progress" in their industry and took things in a different direction, and even with mixed results in terms of quality, it's worked for them financially.  There has not been such an epiphany or challenging the notions of "progress" in the industry that's actually succeeded in a marketing sense.

But, which has the better quality titles in terms of content, production values, and higher actual software sales?  Sony and MS.  Nintendo doesn't have a plethora of quality titles -- they're riding on gimmicks and a few rehashes.  The difference is they let the general public consume all the millions of loads of crap (or maybe just buying the hardware) while the hardcore fans feed them their software sales for the time being, as they're slowly replaced with a different market altogether.

The distinction I think he's missing is that RPGs began as a niche creative hobby based on sharing, not as a market with products for the end-user to consume -- that would come a few years after.  They are not video games, they are toolkits for groups to create with (whether you consider it art, or not), but the marketing trends established by TSR over the years set the stage for imitation.  

Think of it this way:  If Home Depot tried to market a slightly "better" set of tools every ten years, claiming your old hammer and screwdrivers don't work, and the only observable difference is a gel grip and maybe a better color-scheme, you'd think they were fusking nuts.  But here in the RPG hobby, someone selling you reworked rulesets every few years that aren't subsantially different (or are substantially different and they're trying to tell you it's the same) is commonplace.

Where do we see this sort of behavior?  "Core" Nintendo titles.  Which sector of Nintendo consumers is disappearing?  The "core".  It doesn't matter how many fat, unbathed fucks we get rid of, unless the companies involved in this so-called "industry" realize that they're going to have to break with tradition in terms of how they relate to their audience, nothing is going to change.  Selling the same game only "better" only works for so long before it starts to kick you in the ass.

In other words, it's not the "core" fans that keep others away (didn't hurt Nintendo at all that their fans were bitching high and low and everywhere for the first 2 years their console was out), it's the company and how they seek to engage people who normally wouldn't be customers.

Nintendo has simple games that anyone can play, that don't require you to dedicate 10000 hours to "beat", don't require you to read a 350 page "hint book", or to chat on forums about how to maximize your character, or to have to master a whole complex set of mechanics or moves.
Everyone thought they were out of their mind for essentially going back to the "Pong" mentality instead of catering to the fucking retarded uber-nerds who want ever-more complex games, ever-more-exclusive (in the sense of the amount of commitment required to become a "serious player") RPGs, and ever more violent and dizzying first-person shooters (that otherwise are all the same).  But everybody but Nintendo forgot something: that the era of Pong was a fucking golden age, where you had a much vaster potential market. Where "video games" was not just the domain of 14-40 year old white male virgins.

And now Nintendo was proven right.

And RPGs should follow that example. Where's the tabletop RPG equivalent of the Wii? Where's the D&D Red Box set equivalent to their Pong?

RPGPundit

I'd say the "Golden Age" of video games is right now, and never before has interactive media been so accepted by the mainstream, nor number of sales or units moved.

The industry moved a bit slower due to a collapse back in the 80s (killing off growth until Nintendo took over with licensing to have some sort of quality control), but I think the video-game industry is more at the crossroads now like the RPG industry was back in the late 80s.  They've got the sales numbers, they have the appeal (they haven't completely lost younger gamers -- yet), now it's a matter of whether they continue to cater to the "maturing" audience, the hardcore fanboys, or seek to make games that are more universal in appeal.

That said, I'm not sure RPGs can really be salvaged at this point.  It's very hard to bring back an industry that's already cut itself off culturally from a few generations of potential buyers (as always with industries tied to subcultures, adolescents).

Quote from: RPGPundit;390372Nintendo has simple games that anyone can play, that don't require you to dedicate 10000 hours to "beat", don't require you to read a 350 page "hint book", or to chat on forums about how to maximize your character, or to have to master a whole complex set of mechanics or moves.
Everyone thought they were out of their mind for essentially going back to the "Pong" mentality instead of catering to the fucking retarded uber-nerds who want ever-more complex games, ever-more-exclusive (in the sense of the amount of commitment required to become a "serious player") RPGs, and ever more violent and dizzying first-person shooters (that otherwise are all the same).  But everybody but Nintendo forgot something: that the era of Pong was a fucking golden age, where you had a much vaster potential market. Where "video games" was not just the domain of 14-40 year old white male virgins.

And now Nintendo was proven right.

And RPGs should follow that example. Where's the tabletop RPG equivalent of the Wii? Where's the D&D Red Box set equivalent to their Pong?

RPGPundit

Not sure where you are living but right now the average video game takes round about 20-40 hours to beat if you have both thumbs, with 40 being the exception rather than the rule.
And it being the domain of white male virgins... I think every 4th player in my current guild is female but that's probably due to the fact that we are a bunch of couples playing together. Usually it is a tad lower I think.

Quote from: Peregrin;390378I'd say the "Golden Age" of video games is right now, and never before has interactive media been so accepted by the mainstream, nor number of sales or units moved.

I'd say some of what RPGPundit is talking about is a different 'golden age' of video games.  Mainly because of the pong reference.  I feel there was a golden age of video games a couple decades back, the 'Arcade Golden Age' when they were raking in millions upon millions one quarter at a time.  Nowdays you could consider it a 'Golden Age for home video games' or something like that.  

So why they may be moving a ton of a certain game today it may, or may not, be getting any more actual people playing it than an arcade hit of the 80's.  I remember when I was young and seeing a line of people waiting to play Dragons Lair at the local 7-11 or the packed out arcades in Six Flags (lined up outside the doors).