Quote from: Abyssal MawThe kids (if my kids and their friends are any indication) don't play WoW. They play Battleon.

I know a kid that's...hrmm, I think 15, that plays WoW fairly regularly. Son of a friend. He happens to occasionally play WoW online with another mutual friend (in his early 30s) who moved to Perth, Australia. And also plays WoW with a friend or two his age.

Anyway this 15-year old also plays a few different CCGs, collects and paints WH40k with his 12-year brother, and plays P&P RPGs with his little brother, father, and father's friends. I'm also likely going to GM a Lovecraft based campaign with them of some indeterminate length starting sometime in the spring (partially because it's easier for their dad to find time to play that way and spend time with his kids).

Now perhaps he'd spend more money on P&P RPGs alone if those other options weren't there. But I'm not certain of that. Maybe he'd actually just go out on dates with girls when they ask him out?

I was thinking about the RPG to digital games thing this evening, in between a completely crazed session of D&D.

The more I think about, the more I think it's a mistake to attribute WoW or MMOs as stealing away prime talent. People move on, but people have *always* moved on. Plenty of designers in the 80s moved from RPGs to computer games.

Paper and pencial RPGs have never paid well, unless you worked for TSR/WotC or White Wolf. Even then, a person with 4 to 5 years of paper and pencil experience at either of those companies can find better paying work in digital games.

Even back in the early days of the hobby, no one outside of the big two has really made money on RPGs. It's been a nice side job, or the kind of job you can afford before you settle down, get married, and buy a house, but very few people have ever made a good, white collar wage off RPGs.

Anyway, like I said before I think it's foolish to say there isn't an effect, but I'm not convinced that RPGs are in a unique, perilous position due to MMOs. I'm sure people who play WoW 30+ hours had hobbies that the game has replaced. I'm just not convinced that most of those people stopped D&D and other RPGs.

QuoteI'm just not convinced that most of those people stopped D&D and other RPGs.

To support that point:
I have some friends who are totally into WoW, but it´s their  RPG Methadone. They say, they need the social aspect of FtF Gaming.

And that´s guys and gals who have found several girlfriends/boyfrinds over WoW. Those Guilds sure are a breeding ground for promiscuity, I was amazed to hear all those soap-opera stories of love, deceit, reunions & partner swaps.

Anybody any data if this is true for North America too?

Anyway, the 27 year average user is an interesting data point.

John Tynes left rpgs to work in the MMORPG field, he's working on a pirate MMORPG that hasn't been launched yet.

Quote from: mearlsEven back in the early days of the hobby, no one outside of the big two has really made money on RPGs. It's been a nice side job, or the kind of job you can afford before you settle down, get married, and buy a house, but very few people have ever made a good, white collar wage off RPGs.

I think this is the key.  There's a lot more money to be made in computer games than there is in TTRPGs and people have always followed the money.  Pundit has occasionally made jibes about "frustrated novelists" and I think it's true.  In my experience, most game designers also have a screenplay, a novel or a comic pitch that they are tinkering with (in my case, it's all three) and the ones that don't tend to be exceptional, in both senses of the word

Erol Otus left rpgs to work in video games!

...Like in 1985.

Yeah, I wouldn't be so quick to buy into the whole "The Best and Brightest are going to work in videogames spiel".

  Videogames are incredibly knuckleheaded modes of entertainment.  On this level, there's been no development over the last 30 years.  Sure you get your civs and your football managers but they're very much the exceptions that make the rule.  Videogames are all about the kind of activity that even the more neanderthal gamist would consider a bit brutal and violent.

  If the best and the brightest are leaving for the videogame industry and the best the videogame industry can produce is EA Sports Penis Wars 4 then I say god bless and don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out as clearly they're either not all that gifted to start with or their impact has been completely negligeable.

I don't see a strong negative impact of video games on RPG creativity either. But there is a blood loss, and its magnitude seems to be recent--the erosion of the middle tier RPG company. Not a turnover, an erosion.

Atlas Games, Fantasy Flight, Holistic, AEG, DP9: middle-tier, doing well in the 90s, no longer publishing RPGs. Some of their creative people now design card or board games, some work in video games, some work for the two remaining big companies.

The fact remains, and I'm paraphrasing this Ken Hite quote for the umptieth time now, but it's true:

So far, in the 21st century, there has been only one majorly successful* game that hasn't been either a license or an edition: Exalted.

So, while I don't know exactly what WoW does to RPG creativity, I do know we're seeing less creativity than we have.

*For purposes of this post, which is unconcerned with indie definitions of success, my definition of "majorly successful" shall simply be: "sold 5000+ copies of the core rules". Modest enough, you'd think.

The Mainstream RPG industry is what 80's stockbrokers used to call a carpark.

There's nothing new going on, nothing interesting, nothing dangerous.  The same people come and give them money and they get broadly the same type of product back.

I think the explosion of indie games has brought some real creativity into the scene but it's telling that the only new succesful game is one that dresses the D&D format up in a cosplay outfit.

One thing I got out of that Dancey interview is that basically most gamers are uncreative unadventurous idiots.  They're middle class suburban white males who frequently drop out of the hobby the second they get the abbility to drive to the cinema rather than sit at home.  They play the same games, do the same things in their games and buy the same things over and over.

The difference between now and the White Wolf era is that then, there was an attempt at least to say that RPGs are about more than killin monsters and that maybe some other people might be interested in gaming.

Now the RPG industry churns out shit that it feeds to idiots.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalOne thing I got out of that Dancey interview is that basically most gamers are uncreative unadventurous idiots.  They're middle class suburban white males who frequently drop out of the hobby the second they get the abbility to drive to the cinema rather than sit at home.  They play the same games, do the same things in their games and buy the same things over and over.

I'll buy the uncreative part -- and in fact he says exactly that.  However, even if I accept this view of the market, I don't see that this makes them idiots.  While some RPG fanatics might tell you otherwise, there's nothing wrong with not playing RPGs.  That these people drop RPGs to go out and instead do things outside the home would usually be called more adventurous than sitting around in your living rooms rolling dice with your friends, regardless of how innovative the dice-rolling mechanics are.

You miss my meaning.  They're idiots right up until they get cars and go off and discover the art cinema a couple of towns over or the cool rock club.

If Dancey's right about the typical gamer then effectively gamers are the absolute dregs of middle class culture.  They're not creative, they don't have that much money, they don't have good taste, they're not adventurous, they just sit out in suburbia doing the same old dungeon crawls they were doing 15 years ago.

In a sense, Dancey kind of confirms that the stereotypes about gamers are completely true.  They aren't people you'd want to socialise with.  They've got practically nothing to offer anyone.  Some of them get cars or move to towns and get lives but seemingly your average gamer is a loser.

I think Mr. A's sentence has to be understood as "uncreative unadventurous idiots within their hobby". I.e., most gamers are only interested in shallow, repetitive gaming.

Which might be true or not, I don't know.

(Ah, I see Mr. A has explained things along the same lines.)

The thing I really liked about the interview is that Dancey's completely honest about gamers.  I think a lot of us walk around with this idea that we're a little bit more imaginative and cultured than your average joe.

Turns out we're not... the average gamer's a bit like the guy in dennis Leary's Asshole song.

Quote from: BalbinusJohn Tynes left rpgs to work in the MMORPG field, he's working on a pirate MMORPG that hasn't been launched yet.

That was the first one I thought of, as well as angryman Costikyan.

Matthew over at RPGnet wound up at Pandemic, and did writing for Mercenaries.

Warren Spector these days is more known for his vidgame work that his tabletop.

Frankly there's been so many people over the years who've moved in that direction I always just saw it as one of the natural career paths for an RPG author . . .

Quote from: J ArcaneFrankly there's been so many people over the years who've moved in that direction I always just saw it as one of the natural career paths for an RPG author . . .

Yup, exactly.

Another thing got me thinking. Ryan talks about how computer games can't fill a GM's needs. I think that's always been the case, and I think that's why RPGs are still around. Hell, back in 1981 Wizardry did a pure, hack n' grab dungeon crawl better than D&D.

The thing is, DMs have always been the center of player recruitment. You can't play an RPG without a GM, and GMs need players to run campaigns. Some players buy stuff, others don't.

I think that's always been how things work.

But again, it'd be foolish to turn a blind eye to WoW, computers, Gears of War, German style boardgames, collectible miniatures, or whatever else people out there are playing. RPGs don't exist in a vacuum.

If I had to guess why the mid-tier guys are all dead or dying, I think it's really simple. Mid-tier companies have repeatedly failed to make good games. They've made niche games, but nothing as exciting or cool as Deadlands or Fading Suns. This decade has been a long study in mid-tier publishers losing touch with the market.

I also think the long tail helped kill them. It used to be that if you didn't want to play D&D, you were stuck choosing from the RPGs on the shelf of the local game store. With the 'net, you have tons more games to choose from. Sales that used to be concentrated on a dozen or so companies are now spread out over dozens of PDF outfits.