I think that while it's easy to argue that the community of gaming has been damaged by the problems the internet creates, it's really a problem for a broader spectrum of culture and not just gaming. In terms of our corner, the net gain of such ease of access to information, community, publishing and sharing is enormous for what we do and need. Learning to navigate the mine field of weird and unpleasant groupthink that takes over certain corners of the hobby is just a modest price to pay for all the perks.

The hobby has had a net negative impact on the Internet.

Positive, but more so for the hobby of talking about RPGs than the hobby of playing them.

Yeah, positive, but I still clicked zen monk on a tulip, because that's some fine imagery there.

It is what you make of it.
Overall, that makes it a net positive effect, for me. Not every website is going to offer what I'm looking for. No harm no foul. Move on to somewhere that inspires you. Don't get dragged down by negativity (hence why I don't post on RPG.net and PMB much anymore).

Quote from: Spinachcat;808968I disagree. Just because the Internet has been good for content creation and distribution of free content does NOT automatically mean the Internet has been good for the hobby community.

Also, I am unsure if the glut of free content is an overall good for the health of the hobby in the long term.

I also look at the quality of communication online and despair. I also wonder if the online RPG community has added, or detracted from the amount of actual play.

Maybe you are right and the web is an overall uber-positive for RPGs. I am just very unsure because of the volume of the "troglodytes".  Nasty and creepy non-gamers in the pre-internet age were a non-issue to the hobby, but now many of those fucks have become the self-styled RPG "thought leaders".

Well ... a couple of rebuttals.  I'll break this down into multiple posts to make it easier to follow:

How do you figure?  Certainly the glut of free content must be alarming to a number of game companies, and can't be helpful to FLGSes, or to those who can't picture a world without pervasive FLGSes.  

As against that, the Internet's freed us from the necessity of FLGSes.  A generation ago, the FLGS was the necessary point-of-entry into the hobby: you had to buy the stuff from somewhere, and for those wannabe gamers who didn't live near one, you were pretty much non-existent as far as the hobby was concerned, and you were pretty much limited to the owner's taste in games.  Except for collegiate clubs or the occasional HS enthusiast, you wouldn't find a group outside the dogeared notices on the FLGS bulletin board.

Now you don't.  Other than returning old gamers, every player I've had over the last twelve years came from online gamer meetup sites or from friends of the same.  You can order stuff online.  You have umpteen zillion reviews online.  You can get everything in print online, and a good bit of stuff that isn't in print.  And you can do so at an average cost of less than the FLGS can deliver, which I know I'd have appreciated when I was a broke college student.

About the only potential losers aside from the FLGS groupies -- and really, FLGSes opened and closed with startling frequency 20 years ago, and 30 years ago, and 40 years ago -- are those who need to have slick full-color glossy content.  But hang on: since when was that ubiquitous?  The first corebook that was slick paper, all full color illos and hardcover wasn't until the fall of 1989.  And these days, even the indie outfits can manage that.

Quote from: Spinachcat;808944I sometimes wonder if the world wide web / online experience / social media / compu-whatever has been a net positive or net negative for our hobby.

I am unsure how to weigh the positives vs. the negatives to view the whole enchilada in total.

What do you think? Why?

Discuss...and shank anyone who disagrees with you!

In my anecdotal experience, the "hobby" - even at this stage - is mainly not on the internet.

Almost everybody I know is on the internet.  During my years of gaming, I've become friends with a lot of gamers, and made gamers out of a lot of my friends.

I can count on both hands how many of those people come to RPG boards, blogs or websites.

So I believe that gamers on the internet are a tip of the iceberg of gamers overall.  

Again - in my experience - people have time to add an active internet presence to perhaps one or two activities that they spend time on regularly.  For some, they go to car mod forums.  Others, weightlifting/exercise forums.  I knew one woman who was all over kitting, crafting and etsy, but had never come to a gaming forum and would never think to do so.  But all of these people game.  

The internet has been good for the gamer who games as their predominant use of free time.  That's it.  And since I believe those lifestyle gamers don't understand that they are a minority, instead of the majority of the gaming world, I also believe that the loud small voices on the internet drive the RPG hobby in a way that makes sense to the connected, and to the disconnected makes little sense.

The internet gives producers too easy of access to too small of a population fraction.  And the feedback gained drives too much of what is done.  Which is probably great for a lifestyle gamer, but - again, in my experience - the casual gamer and the lifestyle gamer look for different types of activities and immersion in RPGs.

Quote from: Spinachcat;808968I am just very unsure because of the volume of the "troglodytes".  Nasty and creepy non-gamers in the pre-internet age were a non-issue to the hobby, but now many of those fucks have become the self-styled RPG "thought leaders".

You do mean "gamers" instead of "non-gamers," right?  Because absolutely, nasty and creepy gamers in the pre-Internet age were a dreadful burden to the hobby: a lot of folks were turned off, and a lot of them permanently, by Cat Piss Man and that ilk haunting FLGSes and gaming clubs.

But that being said, you phrased it exactly right: there are a lot of self-styled "thought leaders" out there ... pretty much the same way there was in the heyday of the APAs and prozines.  Yes, absolutely, a lot of RPG forum junkies know who Ron Edwards is.

But a lot fewer have any real handle on what he advocates.  A lot fewer than that give a damn.

Consider this: do you have any notion who Glenn Blacow was?  He was a prominent Boston-area gamer whose significant contribution to RPG Thought was the "Four-Fold Way" -- the first iteration of the Roleplayer / Storyteller / Wargamer / Powergamer divide.  Blacow's been dead now for decades, and he's got as much current name recognition in the hobby as the likes of Don Kaye or Brian Blume.

Hundreds of thousands of gamers have no idea who those people were, the same way that hundreds of thousands of gamers aren't forum junkies ... and those who are, I humbly submit, aren't very likely to toss all their game books into the trash can because Some Guy on Some Forum was mean to them.

And a lot of forum junkies don't care.  I really don't give a damn about Ron Edwards, for example.  I've never been on The Forge.  I haven't given GNS much thought.  I keep on playing the games I want to play, in the style I want to play them.  I pay attention to the folks on forums who strike me as smart cookies, and tune out the ones I think are idiots.

Don't we all?

Mostly positive. Information has never been more accessible-- even when you live far away. Would have greatly helped me learn to GM, something I regret I never learned, since RPGs weren't a thing where I'm from.

The negatives are easily ignored

Quote from: Ravenswing;809165How do you figure?  Certainly the glut of free content must be alarming to a number of game companies, and can't be helpful to FLGSes, or to those who can't picture a world without pervasive FLGSes.  

I am not an RPG company, nor a FLGS.

If they cannot find a way to compete then that is their problem not mine.

That might be a harsh view, but this is the real world.

Free content actually drives people to FLGS, as they want to see new content or to buy supplements. Some people like to see the books first, before they buy them.

Quote from: Ravenswing;809165As against that, the Internet's freed us from the necessity of FLGSes.  A generation ago, the FLGS was the necessary point-of-entry into the hobby: you had to buy the stuff from somewhere, and for those wannabe gamers who didn't live near one, you were pretty much non-existent as far as the hobby was concerned, and you were pretty much limited to the owner's taste in games.  Except for collegiate clubs or the occasional HS enthusiast, you wouldn't find a group outside the dogeared notices on the FLGS bulletin board.

I found my current gaming group online, so I didn't even need the FLGS for that.

Quote from: soltakss;809534I am not an RPG company, nor a FLGS.

If they cannot find a way to compete then that is their problem not mine.

That might be a harsh view, but this is the real world.

My point precisely.  There are a bunch of people who equate "the hobby" with a thriving local FLGS or their favorite game company doing well.  I think that especially now, the hobby would manage perfectly well if every FLGS vanished tomorrow, and people would still find a way to roleplay if every game company folded the day after.

I think, overall, a net positive, and voted as such, but the concerns I have would be:

1>  The fate of the hobby in the nebulous post-FLGS world.  I've seen a number of claims and speculations that the FLGS is critical to the hobby, as a means of introducing non-gamers to the hobby.  Certainly, we all recruit, but is that enough, or does the hobby need those retail outlets to make itself more visible?  From my own observation, while the online communities certainly have a fair number of people, I personally know very few gamers who actually participate in any kind of online activity as it relates to the hobby, save for ordering a book on Amazon.  Very many people I have become acquainted with were surprised to learn about sites like DTRPG even existing.

2>  Print as a dying medium.  Certainly not unique to the hobby, but more and more is being released exclusively in an electronic format.  I loves me some PDFs as supplements to my print, but I'm still not a fan of it as a primary source, and regularly pass up content that looks interesting as it's not offered as print - and while I own a couple of laser printers, one being color, printing PDFs for my own use just isn't good enough for me.  I don't consider myself particularly "old-school" but there's something far superior about a real book to me.

On one hand the net has allowed designers and companies broader access to fans which encourages them to what areas to develop.

Unfortunately its also shown designers and companies what a bunch of totally unreasoning fickle bunch of lunatics the fans can be. Its also lead a few down the absolutely wrong paths as internet polls do not equal real world views as much as some would like to claim.

Some designers and companies just do not realize that the online extremists are in no way representative usually of the rest of the gaming customer base. Really guys, RPGnet is NOT representative of the rest of the gaming community!

Quote from: Omega;809627Unfortunately its also shown designers and companies what a bunch of totally unreasoning fickle bunch of lunatics the fans can be. Its also lead a few down the absolutely wrong paths as internet polls do not equal real world views as much as some would like to claim.

But how different is this from any other poll a company might conduct?

SJ Games, for instance, got suckered into taking on the Conan license when a comment card included in products for a couple years turned up rabid support for the same, as well as for publishing solo adventures.  So they duly put out GURPS Conan, and put into print several solo adventures for Conan ... and found out that sales were flatter than a board.  It turned out that indeed, there was a slice of fans out there eager to buy everything with 'Conan' on it ... and an indifferent bunch of people beyond that.  Heck, they wound up shipping me a crate of copies of my own Conan solo, preferring to do that instead of just tossing them all into the trash for lack of warehouse space.

Game companies didn't start taking opinion polls when the Web got underway; they've been doing it in publications and prozines and at conventions throughout.