Gareth M. Skarka is at it again: The hobby is DOOMED!
(link to GMS's blog from Oct. 21, 10)

From the link above:

Quote from: GMSThere’s a lot of denial among gamers that their hobby is shrinking — a combination of anecdotal evidence (“There are plenty of gamers around here.”) and One-True-Way purity (“My hobby will NEVER die!”). Mixed into this is the always-charming assertion that the industry may be shrinking, but that “the hobby doesn’t need the industry.” (Never mind asking such geniuses to ponder where new players will come from without product on store shelves drawing their attention — or when was the last time they met a player-piano enthusiast, another form of entertainment that no longer has an industry producing material for it…)

LOL You gotta love the comparisons.

(Sound in incredibly loud, long flatulence here.)

Shock!  Horror!

I posted this yesterday on the S&W forums:

Quote[T]here's a perpetual undercurrent of fear in the RPG community that the hobby is on the verge of death and will fade away if we don't keep trying to renew it by celebrating each new edition of the flagship game.

The imminent demise of roleplaying games has been confidently predicted for the last 30 years, but The Fear never goes away. I feel it most when someone says "Meh. New edition. I've already got all the books I need to keep gaming for the rest of my life". But...but...if you don't buy books, the industry collapses and there'll be no new players and no-one will know about RPGs until reptilian archeologists dig up the remains of Old Earth far into the future!

Alright, dissection.

QuoteThere's a lot of denial among gamers that their hobby is shrinking — a combination of anecdotal evidence ("There are plenty of gamers around here.") and One-True-Way purity ("My hobby will NEVER die!"). Mixed into this is the always-charming assertion that the industry may be shrinking, but that "the hobby doesn't need the industry." (Never mind asking such geniuses to ponder where new players will come from without product on store shelves drawing their attention — or when was the last time they met a player-piano enthusiast, another form of entertainment that no longer has an industry producing material for it...)

I agree that the industry is important to the hobby, but Skarka is apparently conflating the two.  In fact, having a few thousand people out there playing, say, 1e D&D, but not buying new books does help to keep the hobby afloat.  Does he think those gamers exist in non-communicative bubble of sub-reality?

And the player-piano comparison is beyond absurd.  P-Ps were replaced by radios, which do exactly the same job, but better.  Despite the flight to computer MMOs, there has been no true improvement on pen & paper RPGs.

Exactly why he chose to compare a piece of technology that has no input from anyone but the manufacturing engineers with a type of flexible, social game of creativity and randomness is anyone's guess.

QuoteIt's not a matter of debate though. Anyone who has paid attention over the past two decades has seen the undeniable shrinking. There are far fewer dedicated speciality stores any more (current estimates place total numbers in the US at somewhere in the low-to-mid 2000s, according to ICV2, Diamond/Alliance distributors, and others). Fewer stores means fewer orders, as well as fewer social centers for the tabletop gaming community. Sales numbers are massively down from the 90s, much less the numbers seen during the 'd20 explosion' of the early 2000s.

Yes, it is a matter of debate despite a blogger using the decline of brick & mortar shops to infer a a lack of sales and interest while completely ignoring the explosion of both online merchants and downloading-for-free-but-very-enthusiastic game pirates.

QuoteTake a look at this: ICV2's report of the top 5 selling RPGs for Q3 2010. You'll note that number 5 is the Dresden Files. An excellent game, and Fred Hicks & Co. over at Evil Hat deserve every bit of that success. The interesting thing about Fred, though, is that he's a big fan of transparency. So much so, in fact, that He posts his actual sales numbers. Fred gives the total distribution sales for each of the two Dresden Files rulebooks as follows: DFRPG:Our World: 1285 copies. DFRPG:Your Story: 1776 copies.

That's as good as meaningless.  Sales are total, not relative.  4E and Pathfinder could outsell Dresden Files by millions of copies and it wouldn't show in the rankings.

Evidence so far suggests that 4E is lagging behind sales of 3.x over the same time period, but that hardly indicates the death throes of the RPG industry.

Conspicuously absent from Skarka's foretelling of doom is the fact that many RPG gamers are using systems that can be downloaded free and legally, and hence won't show up in sales figures.  And if he thinks that means new players won't enter the hobby because the books have little physical presence, it just shows that he has no knowledge of what's actually happening within the classic gaming community.

I don't care to address the rest of Skarka's blog, but it's essentially the same old pessimistic shit we've been hearing since computers killed the chit & hex wargame industry.

:hmm:
To expect constant growth in any industry or endeavor is not realistic to begin with so ho-hum.

If the art of RP attracts fewer new players for a time then perhaps that will instigate more inovation in the hobby.If there is a shaking out of companies along the way well...wheat from the chaff...bloat is never good.

Rhetorical statements about the demise of the hobby are nothing new. The audience may very well be shrinking at this juncture but is that a harbinger of doom or...opportunity?
 

Quote from: Hairfoot;411510*snip*
I don't care to address the rest of Skarka's blog, but it's essentially the same old pessimistic shit we've been hearing since computers killed the chit & hex wargame industry.

Nice post Hairfoot, but about this last bit...I still see plenty of new chit (or block) & hex wargames (as well as card systems) being produced.

Perhaps the industry is leaner...by no means "killed".

I come from a family of folklorists.  One of the constant refrains from amateur folklorists is he notion of the approaching death of various folk-art/lore forms.  The amazing thing is that the field of folklore essentially exists because of the belief a little over two-undred years ago that much folk-knowledge was going to disappear if it wasn't collected and preserved.  This was and is a false belief in typostrophism, a projection of a perceived condition unaltered into the future.  If the only screenpainters in Baltimore are all over seventy and retired, the alarmist realizes that all of those seventy plus year old painters will be dead in less than forty years leaving no one to screenpaint.  This ignores the fact that in forty years those painters' grandchildren will be retired and looking for a way to fill up their days and will have the memory (and even the output) of grandma and grandpa to inspire them.
Those of us who were gamers in the eighties and early nineties remember the explosion of commercial role-playing games that flooded the market then.  The reason for that flood, the first generation of RPGers had eached the age of adulthood and sought to make a living from their hobby.
Their failure to do so and the implosion of the RPG market is not evidence of the end of the hobby, merely evidence that tabletop RPG design is not a viable career path.  Many an economist or consumer analyst would then say the hobby is doomed because if you can't make enough money at an activity, you won't engage in it; but the reality is that even without remuneration the hobby is appealing enough that the old books continue to circulate and new ideas are tried out for no reason but love of the games.
Our passion for tabletop RPGing remains and we will inoculate others with that passion.  Tabletop RPGs may be dying as a business, but the hobby is well and will remain so.  If dying means no one is getting rich from them, then sure tabletop RPGs are dying, but nobody who is an enthusiast today is making money at it.  Hell, EGG quit his job and became a shoe repair man in order to devote more time to his brand new hobby/venture.  As long as some of us love tabletop RPGs someone will keep supporting the hobby even if there is no money in it.

yeah! all that stuff Zoot said...

The Hobby is not The Industry.

At first tabletop roleplaying games were not going to die, they were going to be stillborn - because they could never possibly compete with real wargames like Advanced Squad Leader.

Later, tabletop roleplaying games were going to be killed by the Satanic cult scare. Then computer games. Then Magic cards. Then computer games again. Then online roleplaying games. Then computer games again. Then the internet. Then...

Tabletop roleplaying games have been dying for so long they have become undead.

Look, the truth is that we'll never return to the glory days of the early to mid 80s, when every second kid in high school was gaming. But gaming will still happen, and there'll still be an rpg industry - as much deserving of the name "industry" as it ever has been.

Rather than "player pianos" or whatever the fuck Goddamned Morbid Skarka was talking about, the better comparison is with the plain old card game bridge. Back in the 50s bridge used to be huge, every suburban slob was playing it after dinner or in clubs. Then it kind of flopped - but oodles of people still play bridge.

Quote from: ZootMany an economist or consumer analyst would then say the hobby is doomed because if you can't make enough money at an activity, you won't engage in it;

Daniel Pink in Drive makes a good comparison, that in the 90s two bunches of people were planning to make an online encyclopedia, one hired a bunch of professors and experts to write excellent articles for good money, the other hired nobody and just let any nerd with too much time on their hands write and edit articles and nobody got money for it, which would an economist consider to be most likely to succeed? Well, Encarta flopped and Wikipedia is stunningly successful.

GMS is probably confusing his own personal career success with the future of the hobby as a whole.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;411536At first tabletop roleplaying games were not going to die, they were going to be stillborn - because they could never possibly compete with real wargames like Advanced Squad Leader.

Later, tabletop roleplaying games were going to be killed by the Satanic cult scare. Then computer games. Then Magic cards. Then computer games again. Then online roleplaying games. Then computer games again. Then the internet. Then...

Tabletop roleplaying games have been dying for so long they have become undead.

Look, the truth is that we'll never return to the glory days of the early to mid 80s, when every second kid in high school was gaming. But gaming will still happen, and there'll still be an rpg industry - as much deserving of the name "industry" as it ever has been.

Rather than "player pianos" or whatever the fuck Goddamned Morbid Skarka was talking about, the better comparison is with the plain old card game bridge. Back in the 50s bridge used to be huge, every suburban slob was playing it after dinner or in clubs. Then it kind of flopped - but oodles of people still play bridge.

Daniel Pink in Drive makes a good comparison, that in the 90s two bunches of people were planning to make an online encyclopedia, one hired a bunch of professors and experts to write excellent articles for good money, the other hired nobody and just let any nerd with too much time on their hands write and edit articles and nobody got money for it, which would an economist consider to be most likely to succeed? Well, Encarta flopped and Wikipedia is stunningly successful.

GMS is probably confusing his own personal career success with the future of the hobby as a whole.

I agree with you and it's also "strange" that the quality and vitality of the majority of the products available now are as good if not IMHO better than the "heyday" of the hobby.

A lot of the best stuff being produced right now is by passionate "amatuer" publishers who play regularly, the games are being played and guess what all these people are having kids!  I wonder what hobby these younger generations are going to grow up around?

I think some publishers are their own worst enemies sometimes.  If they're not shooting themselves in the foot with crap like this, then they are making daft decisions.  Take Eden for example, they have a forum of people crying out for hard copies of their excellent Witchcraft rpg and supplements but they haven't got the resources to produce the books.  Obviously they have the source material so they could do POD or use Lulu and get the games selling again but they won't because they will make less profit.  Jesus, less profit is better than no profit at all!  

Back to Skarka though, how much time did he waste researching this nonsense and writing a Blog post about it?  How much of that time could have been spent on his business?  Did this exercise earn him any goodwill or profit?  Was it a worthwhile exercise?  Crazy!

How in hell is going to die a hobby that uses imagination, dice and a couple of dudes as key components?
Really, tabletop RPG are not CRPGs, videogames and such... they don't need actualizations to keep playing it. There are like hundreds of RPGs around and you only need to choose one, read the rules and play it. For years. Yes, it's cool to see new games, learn new rules and such, but if you like D&D or Vampire or CoC you can play them the next 20 years only with the material edited just now.

I don't see anyone crying "Bingo is Dying!" or "Jumping the Rope is Dying!" and are two games that have not seen an improvement IN AGES.

The idea that an industry, any industry, will continue to grow endlessly is absurd. It's the mental model that has gotten all of us into the economic mess we are currently experiencing. What we need is an economic 'ecology'. Self-sustaining and capable of weathering the ups and downs of the market. Not endless, blindly hopeful growth that sets us up for yet another round of failures, recessions and possible depressions. There are dozens of gaming publishers out there that will fill the void once WotC bows out of the RPG market. Something I think can't happen soon enough. Let the torch pass to those that love the hobby and want to make a profit rather than those that just want to make a profit.

Quote from: Tetsubo;411547The idea that an industry, any industry, will continue to grow endlessly is absurd. It's the mental model that has gotten all of us into the economic mess we are currently experiencing. What we need is an economic 'ecology'. Self-sustaining and capable of weathering the ups and downs of the market. Not endless, blindly hopeful growth that sets us up for yet another round of failures, recessions and possible depressions. There are dozens of gaming publishers out there that will fill the void once WotC bows out of the RPG market. Something I think can't happen soon enough. Let the torch pass to those that love the hobby and want to make a profit rather than those that just want to make a profit.

Hear! Hear!