The End of the Industry?

The debate has waged for decades, maybe since the industry came to be.

Every few years, sales of Role Playing games dies off. Then, something comes along to reinvigorate the industry. When I was in college, it seemed like the industry was in its last days. Then along came a little company from the Pacific Northwest with a little card game. Magic the Gathering players moved from collecting cards to collecting RPG books and the industry was alive again.

When I was a kid, the industry revolved around D&D. The media and people on the Religious Right set D&D as the main target of their agendas. TSR suffered, it probably never recovered. Many thought role playing would die off. I remember having conversations with people older than I at that time. I was just getting into the hobby and I wondered how others felt about it. I ran into several young adults who claimed to have played D&D once or twice. They were almost embarrassed to admit it in the light of all the media hubbub. I meet young adults now who admit they played a game or two of Magic. They, too, seem almost embarrassed.

Up until just recently, I usually explained to people that I was a role player almost as if I was making my own apology. "Yeah, I'm one of those D&D playing freaks" I would say, even though it had been years since I picked up a d20. D&D was the only RPG the masses knew, thanks to the bad press in the 80s and 90s.

These days, things are a little different. Everyone I know, including family members who looked at me funny for playing D&D, plays World of Warcraft! Okay, not everyone, but huge numbers of people. In my day, WoW would have been dismissed as hack and slash and not worth a gamer's time. So many people own Xboxes and Play Stations - if they aren't playing WoW, they are home playing Halo. Let's face it, Halo is just more hack and slash - but with guns.

Today, it's almost as if I have come out of the closet. I admit in, well, mixed company, if you will, that I am a role player. I likes me some GURPS! People still look at me funny, so I have to explain that it's like WoW or Halo except with paper, pencils and dice. Sometimes I have to go so far as to explain it's like D&D - that usually gets them to nod their heads. But, I don't get the same reaction I got when I was 25. At that age, it almost seemed liked people were sniffing me to see if I had recently showered, or they looked at what I was wearing, expecting Doritos stained tee shirts or something. I didn't live in my parent's basement, playing D&D by candle light - that came later! But people really did have an image: cultist. That image has changed a bit.

Many still think the industry is on the out. I don't think so. Geekly hobbies have been a growing trend for the last decade or more. As video games become more like paper RPGs and as table top gaming becomes more like video games, I think we will see new players. Players who want to do more than shoot at their friends and run around looking for ore and troll ears.

Already, Wizards has announced new electronic features for D&D 4th edition. If you haven't yet, click on our link to Dungeons and Dragons there on the right. You will see links off their main page about the new features in 4th ed. It's an hour well spent for those of us concerned about the future of the hobby.

For those of you looking for a way to make a mint off the Internet and gaming in general - there has to be a way to take the 3D gaming environment being proposed and use it more generically. As in, what if I want to play in a sci-fi or supers game? Setting up an SF street scene or the lair of an mad scientist would be great! If someone can come up with that and not restrict it to one game system - they will make the big dollars!

I think a lot of this can be done already. There are plenty of ways to chat on the Internet and there are ways to make electronic copies of character sheets and there are ways to share documents. A devoted enough group could set up an online game and I think they could have a great time. It would take some work, but I think it could be done. Give it a try and let us know what happened.