etherio Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Since the new format for the boards began displaying our ages in our signatures, I've noticed a distinct pattern. The bulk of us are around the same age: a bunch of 30ish to 40ish 'Gen Xers,' or whatever you'd call that group. I'm sure that RPGaming is generally continuing to be picked up by our societal counterparts among younger folks; the crowd that I see in my local hobby stores indicates as much to me. I wonder, though, if the HERO fanbase and demographic is something that's just going to grow old along with us. Is this style of gaming something that had a unique appeal to our age bracket? Is there something about the state of the geekdom hobbysphere (games, comics, etc.) or about the world at large during our adolescence that caused us to appreciate the hobby in a different way than our younger fellow hobbyists do? There are definitely some major differences between the world those younger folks have grown up in and the one that we, though we're not so much older, experienced as we grew up. No internet, no cel phones (to speak of, anyway), the Cold War. It was a different place to be a kid. I think that the values, conflicts, and general style offered by those entertainments we enjoyed as hobbyists reflected the times and we continue to reflect that in the way we express ourselves as gamers. Maybe I'm being too philosophical. Chime in if you have any opinions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citizen Keen Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Personally, I think the major difference between people in their teens and people in their thirties (those in the twenties can go either way) is that the thirties can go without the splendid graphics. Teens and early twenties expect splashy products, in whatever medium. They expect video games with good graphics, and roleplaying games with splashy covers. HERO isn't targeted at the 16 year old game - it's too dry. 16 year olds (as a rule - no offense to any on the boards) are going to go buy Wizards products, with their glossy, full color pages and wild fonts. Nobody in that age group wants a giant rules tome. My $.02 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Waters Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... My regular group are all twentysomethings, but I corrupted, er, I mean converted them as teenagers, so hopefully the game will have multi-generational appeal. My 10 year old son is beginning to show some interest.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyMitchell Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Personally' date=' I think the major difference between people in their teens and people in their thirties (those in the twenties can go either way) is that the thirties can go without the splendid graphics. Teens and early twenties expect splashy products, in whatever medium. They expect video games with good graphics, and roleplaying games with splashy covers.HERO isn't targeted at the 16 year old game - it's too dry. 16 year olds (as a rule - no offense to any on the boards) are going to go buy Wizards products, with their glossy, full color pages and wild fonts. Nobody in that age group wants a giant rules tome.My $.02[/quote'][violent agreement]I've found this to be true not only with entertainment, but even when I design software. People demand eye candy. When we were growing up, we had to, at least to some degree, use our imaginations to generate the visuals. Now, no imagination required - just hire a CGI team or an artist.Between the high-quality graphics in video games and the general glitz in TV and movies and the improved production values in books...nobody has the patience for visualization on their own. And they certainly don't have the patience for a "giant rules tome"... (shamelessly stealing good phrase) [/violent agreement] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Neilson Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Personally, I think the major difference between people in their teens and people in their thirties (those in the twenties can go either way) is that the thirties can go without the splendid graphics. Teens and early twenties expect splashy products, in whatever medium. They expect video games with good graphics, and roleplaying games with splashy covers. HERO isn't targeted at the 16 year old game - it's too dry. 16 year olds (as a rule - no offense to any on the boards) are going to go buy Wizards products, with their glossy, full color pages and wild fonts. Nobody in that age group wants a giant rules tome. Chiming in to add my agreement, the 30some set were the last to grow up before MTV and CNN took over. We remember actualkly reading a book, or watching TV for half an hour (or even a WHOLE HOUR!) to get a story. The further down the age chart we go, the more we get the "sound bite" generation, with reduced attention spans. Taking several hours to build a character commonly sits poorly with the MTV generation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Waters Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Chiming in to add my agreement' date=' the 30some set were the last to grow up before MTV and CNN took over. We remember actualkly reading a book, or watching TV for half an hour (or even a WHOLE HOUR!) to get a story. The further down the age chart we go, the more we get the "sound bite" generation, with reduced attention spans. Taking several hours to build a character commonly sits poorly with the MTV generation.[/quote'] Reduced attent....er, what were you saying dude? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tae Kwon Dan Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Something else to consider is that your average teenager to low twenty-something is more of a I want it now type personality. So they are willing to go for the quick solution with a gorgeous sugar coating instead of maybe spending more time on making the entire thing scrumptious. As you get older and start learning the concepts of steady work ethic something like HERO should gain some appeal, because it allows you to do more more with a little more effort. All I can say is that I bought FREd when I was like 23 and didn't do anything with it. Now I'm 27 and it's the only thing I even remotely want to play in. I even want to adapt Call of Cthulhu to HERO and I like the CoC system as it is. D20 will always have a special place for me, because it's where I really cut my gaming teeth in terms of truly thinking about systems and balance (instead of just playing like I did with CoC, WoD, and 2E). I'll still play D20, but I just love the flexibility that HERO gives me even if I miss the pretty art of my 3E books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDU Neil Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Well, since I'm pushing the "old fogey" age level... I have to state that I don't totally agree. These days, I have much less time and energy to spend reading dense boring rules text... whereas a short description and a pretty picture can be all I need to spin an entire tale of adventure and tragedy. I don't want or need to look at tons of stats and whether the stealth roll is 13- or 14- to run a game. I can use a generic EB character, generic Brick, generic martial artist, generic mentalist... and if I have cool pictures for each of them... I could have five blasters that all seem vastly different... but technically all have the same stats... as I change what I need to change on the spot as the game progresses. Art and images should not be dismissed as "eye candy." They are powerful tools for communication. Even if D&D is a crap system... the evocative nature of the layout and images and fonts serve a purpose of getting people "into the mood" of the game... and that is HUGE. I'm actually very picky about the art I use for characters or images for settings... because style and quality will affect the impact. I don't use anime stylings, because I don't want an anime tone to my world (though there are anime elements I can't avoid because players like 'em). I don't like 3d animation unless it is for sci-fi elements of a game... and want more fine arts technique in my fantasy images. I'm old and I still read... but a rules tome does NOTHING to create a shared, integrated group of players who are all "feeling it." It's there when grey area disputes come up... but with myself and my group... reading abstracted system concepts (which is what Fred and 5er are) do nothing to inspire actual games or stories and characters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tancred Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... [Old geezer goblin] You young whippersnappers and your color art! In my day, we had to walk uphill in the snow, both ways, to get a black-and-white game book. And we were proud to have it! Next thing you know, you young'uns'll be taking computers to a game, or some such nonsense. (shakes cane) [/Old geezer goblin] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhamin Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Might I propose that is isn't so much that younger people have short attention spans as it is they aren't "ready" for Hero yet? My own anecdotal observation is that Hero is a game you come to after you have grown dissatisfied with your other options. I would submit that when you have only been gaming for 3 years you haven't had enough time to get burnt out on D20. My friends and I went through half a dozen systems over 7 years before we found Hero, and we played intensely, 2-3 times a week. The core concept of a gaming toolkit that you put together yourself was brilliant, yet we could only appreciate it because of our experience in other systems. Hero isn't everyone's cup of tea, and even then you have to have a sophisticated pallet to even understand why it's good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDU Neil Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Might I propose that is isn't so much that younger people have short attention spans as it is they aren't "ready" for Hero yet? My own anecdotal observation is that Hero is a game you come to after you have grown dissatisfied with your other options. I would submit that when you have only been gaming for 3 years you haven't had enough time to get burnt out on D20. My friends and I went through half a dozen systems over 7 years before we found Hero, and we played intensely, 2-3 times a week. The core concept of a gaming toolkit that you put together yourself was brilliant, yet we could only appreciate it because of our experience in other systems. Hero isn't everyone's cup of tea, and even then you have to have a sophisticated pallet to even understand why it's good. HEY HEY HEY!!! Stop being all reasonable and stuff! Geeze! Seriously, I do agree that Hero is a "mature" system in a variety of ways. It's been around long enough to build up the density of a collapsed star... and it requires a mature, measured approach to gaming, rather than the "gosh gee whiz" feel of being swept away in your first RPG experience. My thing is, as I get older, I don't want to dismiss that "gosh gee whiz" feeling. I still remember my very first RPG experience in detail. It was amazing... not because of mechanics and system... but because of the magic gestalt that is role playing. That was 1980, with AD&D... but by late '81, we had already found the first copies of Champions. Almost all of us were comic readers... and this system had armor that reduces damage, not make you harder to hit! Holy Shit! I've never really played anything else since. (well I have, but I never really ran another system as GM, and see no reason to in the foreseeable future.) The big point I've made in the past though... is that it wasn't the "system" that attracted us to Champions (not Hero System... Champions) but the fact that the game was about playing Superheroes and as flawed an poorly type set, and ugly art as those early books were... they created that same "gosh gee whiz" feeling. The big black book of rules has no "gosh gee whiz" and frankly, the supplements along with them don't either... but that may be a matter of taste in my part. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Neilson Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... The big black book of rules has no "gosh gee whiz" and frankly' date=' the supplements along with them don't either... but that may be a matter of taste in my part.[/quote'] While not a fan of "Art for Art's Sake", I have noted that, putting a BBB and a 5e (or 5er) on the shelf, it's pretty obvious which one the eye gravitates towards. Had I not already been a Hero-ite, or even an RPGer, I might well have picked up a BBB (at least to see what it was), I doubt the "green man in the hex" would have caught my eye at all. As for "gosh gee whiz", I do agree Hero leaves this to the gamer, and provides a pretty dry read. I would note that, when I read "enemies" books, I generally read the text, not the stats. I'll use the ones I find interesting (and likely restat many of them to fit my view of the text description). But I haven't read many 5er enemies books, so I'm not sure how viable this is in the post-4e world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MitchellS Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... I've had plenty of posts where I've stated my opinions about who Hero Games is marketing to. If DoJ thinks they have enough established fans to keep the company going then I guess that's good enough for them. I personally feel it's not that difficult to market to younger gamers; it doesn't even require full-color. But DoJ will do what DoJ will do. Hopefully the buying-direct thing is working out for them. I started playing the game in '81 with Champions. I seriously doubt I would have turned away from D&D and V&V if the game I saw on the shelf was called Hero System Sidekick [i never would have even of picked up to look at 5E or 5Er]. There are tens of thousands of under 30 gamers out there just waiting to be inspired. It's not that hard to do. Just meet them on their level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Hyborian Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... I think part of it is that the gaming community has gotten older on average. Many of the peole who started playing in the early days of the hobby (late 70s early 80s) as kids are still playing. And honestly, Im not sure how well the industry is doing at recruiting younger players. Back in gradeschool when I got my first edition AD&D hardbacks I lived in a town that had 5 TV channels, no internet, and video game technology that peaked at the Atari 2600. RPG's were the natural extension of my geek interests. Clearly, there is a big interest in genre material out there right now, but I think only a fairly small percentage of that fanbase is attracted to pen and pager rpgs. How many hundreds of thousands of subscribers is World of Warcraft up to now? And even for a niche genre like supers, City of Heros had 180,000 subscribers at one point (dont know if they lost any ground since WOW took over the world.) A lot of people clearly enjoy the RPG experience, but I think a great many of them are getting it from the Internet these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... It's evolutionary. At one point folks were completely satisfied with chess, backgammon and simply reading adventure stories (not acting them out). Then RPGs were invented and it drew a unique set of folks. Now you've got plenty of video game consoles, computers, handhelds, etc. I'd also point out that the internet to a degree seems to be the outlet for people who want to pretend they're someone else. (Hmmm... who could Blue be talking about?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... [Old geezer goblin] You young whippersnappers and your color art! In my day, we had to walk uphill in the snow, both ways, to get a black-and-white game book. And we were proud to have it! Next thing you know, you young'uns'll be taking computers to a game, or some such nonsense. (shakes cane) [/Old geezer goblin] So true, so true! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDU Neil Posted March 4, 2005 Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... I think part of it is that the gaming community has gotten older on average. Many of the peole who started playing in the early days of the hobby (late 70s early 80s) as kids are still playing. And honestly, Im not sure how well the industry is doing at recruiting younger players. Back in gradeschool when I got my first edition AD&D hardbacks I lived in a town that had 5 TV channels, no internet, and video game technology that peaked at the Atari 2600. RPG's were the natural extension of my geek interests. Clearly, there is a big interest in genre material out there right now, but I think only a fairly small percentage of that fanbase is attracted to pen and pager rpgs. How many hundreds of thousands of subscribers is World of Warcraft up to now? And even for a niche genre like supers, City of Heros had 180,000 subscribers at one point (dont know if they lost any ground since WOW took over the world.) A lot of people clearly enjoy the RPG experience, but I think a great many of them are getting it from the Internet these days. Total tangent here... I would like to add a little anecdote to this. I have a group of five players right now. Two of us in late thirties, two in early thirties, one about thirty... and a 23 year old. (We would have two early twenties but Bush swept up the husband of this pair and shipped him off to Iraq, damn him to hell...) So anyway... last game session, we are all in the kitchen BSing until the last guy shows up... talking all things geek... and our youngster is talking WoW with our almost 30 guy. He's a total online game addict... and the two of them were saying things like, "What server do you play on? Maybe we could meet up some time?" Now, while I understand what they are going on about... it had ZERO appeal. My thought was, "Hey... you are RIGHT HERE... RIGHT NOW... in front of each other! You are talking and interacting like REAL FUCKING PEOPLE, and when we start gaming, we will still be REAL PEOPLE in a room together!" But they wanted the interface. They wanted the structured anonymity/false identity and "otherness" to interact through. Personally, I'm more than disturbed by this. Even boards like this are of a similar vein... with the maleable, shifting reality... false identities and isolationist interaction paradox. Part of my distaste for this is the dependence on technology. The dependence on a highly manipulative system (the internet) is really dangerous on a social level. Mainly though, it's the enabling of behaviors that keep us more and more isolated from each other. Even as a strong introvert myself... someone who can be easily drawn into this stuff... I see the dangers. What we have is a generation coming up that simply accepts this without any clue about what a vast and seismic social shift has taken place. This is a generation that has more filters between itself and the outside world than have every existed before. How bad might it be if those filters are removed? What have we lost because we don't really know eachother anymore? The things I've learned about my friends through actual, FtF games and conversation and real life interaction... all of that is lost to the pale faces staring into glowing screens... ... the irony of which is that I'm doing that right now. End tangent Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etherio Posted March 4, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Total tangent here... I would like to add a little anecdote to this. I have a group of five players right now. Two of us in late thirties, two in early thirties, one about thirty... and a 23 year old. (We would have two early twenties but Bush swept up the husband of this pair and shipped him off to Iraq, damn him to hell...) So anyway... last game session, we are all in the kitchen BSing until the last guy shows up... talking all things geek... and our youngster is talking WoW with our almost 30 guy. He's a total online game addict... and the two of them were saying things like, "What server do you play on? Maybe we could meet up some time?" Now, while I understand what they are going on about... it had ZERO appeal. My thought was, "Hey... you are RIGHT HERE... RIGHT NOW... in front of each other! You are talking and interacting like REAL FUCKING PEOPLE, and when we start gaming, we will still be REAL PEOPLE in a room together!" But they wanted the interface. They wanted the structured anonymity/false identity and "otherness" to interact through. Personally, I'm more than disturbed by this. Even boards like this are of a similar vein... with the maleable, shifting reality... false identities and isolationist interaction paradox. Part of my distaste for this is the dependence on technology. The dependence on a highly manipulative system (the internet) is really dangerous on a social level. Mainly though, it's the enabling of behaviors that keep us more and more isolated from each other. Even as a strong introvert myself... someone who can be easily drawn into this stuff... I see the dangers. What we have is a generation coming up that simply accepts this without any clue about what a vast and seismic social shift has taken place. This is a generation that has more filters between itself and the outside world than have every existed before. How bad might it be if those filters are removed? What have we lost because we don't really know eachother anymore? The things I've learned about my friends through actual, FtF games and conversation and real life interaction... all of that is lost to the pale faces staring into glowing screens... ... the irony of which is that I'm doing that right now. End tangent Not a tangent at all, in my opinion. This (and several other comments made by posters here) is very similar to the sentiment I was trying to express in the thread starter. I don't think it's largely because of age. I was 10 when I first played D&D; I was 13 when I picked up my first HERO game (Justice, Inc. by the way). I was blown away, and I really felt that this was something different and altogether more of a creative medium than other games. With a few exceptional circumstances when AD&D was fun for a while to cleanse the palate from HERO, I've never gone back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike W Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... I think that the reason a lot of younger people aren't playing right now comes down to a few things. First, HERO hasn't been consistently out the last few years. It's hard for people to buy a product that isn't on the shelf. Second, CHAMPIONS has been the flagship HERO product - and there aren't as many people into comics anymore, which probably translates into a decreased interest in super hero rpgs. Third, HERO is, if not an "advanced" game, it is not an entry game either. I suspect that if you took a poll of all the people on this board, most of us started off in D&D or some other similar game and found HERO at a later date(college for me). You probably just have to give 'em time to find the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
etherio Posted March 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... I think that the reason a lot of younger people aren't playing right now comes down to a few things. First, HERO hasn't been consistently out the last few years. It's hard for people to buy a product that isn't on the shelf. Second, CHAMPIONS has been the flagship HERO product - and there aren't as many people into comics anymore, which probably translates into a decreased interest in super hero rpgs. Third, HERO is, if not an "advanced" game, it is not an entry game either. I suspect that if you took a poll of all the people on this board, most of us started off in D&D or some other similar game and found HERO at a later date(college for me). You probably just have to give 'em time to find the game. Excellent points, all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost-angel Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Actually, I think the biggest thing isn't the game system at all, or even the idea of RPGs. The human mind tends to return to the familiar and the nostalgic. Almost every generation has uttered the words "It was better back when..." Meaning "I have fond happy memories and I'd like the time that they came to be to return." So we, the older gaming group, who started some 20+ years ago (I just realized I started gaming 20 years ago myself... at a wee lil age) return to that childhood wonderment and fun. Because that's what we had. And segue into point 2.... today those of the early 20s and down have something we didn't - A LOT OF FRICKING CHOICES. Seriously. Computers, cell phones, online games, offline games, CCGs, TV, Movies, Internet Surfing, Ebay, books, RPGs, dance clubs, comics and all the other millions of hobbys out there too boot... and within all those there's a million sub-choices. All of them competing for a finite amount of time. Reality is becoming schizophrenic. There's almost too much to do. Too many choices. Pop-Culture is a good word because eventually your mind will POP. those are my thoughts on it. Hyper-Culture can be a scary thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Citizen Keen Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... Might I propose that is isn't so much that younger people have short attention spans as it is they aren't "ready" for Hero yet? My own anecdotal observation is that Hero is a game you come to after you have grown dissatisfied with your other options. I would agree with this as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zornwil Posted March 10, 2005 Report Share Posted March 10, 2005 Re: Feelin' philosophical... I think part of it is that the gaming community has gotten older on average. Many of the peole who started playing in the early days of the hobby (late 70s early 80s) as kids are still playing. And honestly, Im not sure how well the industry is doing at recruiting younger players. Back in gradeschool when I got my first edition AD&D hardbacks I lived in a town that had 5 TV channels, no internet, and video game technology that peaked at the Atari 2600. RPG's were the natural extension of my geek interests. Clearly, there is a big interest in genre material out there right now, but I think only a fairly small percentage of that fanbase is attracted to pen and pager rpgs. How many hundreds of thousands of subscribers is World of Warcraft up to now? And even for a niche genre like supers, City of Heros had 180,000 subscribers at one point (dont know if they lost any ground since WOW took over the world.) A lot of people clearly enjoy the RPG experience, but I think a great many of them are getting it from the Internet these days. First, I very much agree with this. I know this is all anecdotal, well, here's my anecdote - generally I don't see so many younger people in the RPG section over at Bridgetown Hobbies and Games as I do "older" (vanity precludes me from not putting that in quotes, hey, at least I admit it!) gamers. Yes, there are younger gamers, and I know many among us are teaching their kids. But in general, I agree/believe that F2F traditional RPGing is in real decline. I don't agree, for the most part, that the issue is glitz and such and that kids are too impatient or too spoilt. Our generation was (despite an economic turmoil from about 1970-1983, sporadically) doing okay and I really believe we are a very spoilt generation on the whole. Perhaps the younger people are more spoilt, but anyway I don't think that's the determinant here. I don't think that glitz and push-button immediate gratificaiton is so much the issue (but see below, I see some relationship). I think what many people are missing is that our generation was certainly more D&D/AD&D steeped and attracted to the increasing glitzy products they sold over time. But early on, nobody had a choice, and even in 1983 AD&D wasn't slick at all (better produced than HERO, sure, but not slick). So I think it's very hard to judge on this basis, as well, given those circumstances. Bear in mind, in this same vein, that until a couple years ago HERO was moribund and gamers coming into the market didn't even know it was a choice. When HERO started, the market was expanding and the choices were growing perhaps exponentially year-to-year. We were all trying new things and the market was not at all mature. It was really easy for the innovations Champions brought together and added to take off. ~20 years later, HERO was nearly dead and had been fading for some time. Each year new gamers came into the marketplace - to the extent they did at all - and didn't see HERO. To expect younger gamers to stand up and take great notice of HERO after all that and during a period of market dominance of d20 is simply not realistic. Related story - in the sportswear industry, do you know what Nike's share of the market is in the US? It has been 40%-50% the last few years. adidas - which I bet almost all of you recognize - has been coming back but not exceeded (IIRC) around 13%. Most of the last few years they've been #3 or #4 (these figures are available through trade magazines, I'm in the industry but giving no secrets away here, and, no, I will not say on the boards which company I work for). But their name recognition is huge and among trend setters, over the last few years, sometimes been more popular in some areas. The reason for Nike's dominance was linked to Michael Jordan and marketing (as well as good shoes). The reason for adidas' survival has been their brand credibility and legacy (as well as good shoes). adidas could break through over time, surely, and it is clear that it hopes to, but much of the reason it - nor any other competitor - has not has everything to do with Nike establishing such market dominance that since that time succeeding years of young people simply arent seeing the alternative and the combo of peer pressure and such keeps them linked to Nike. And of course Nike has continued to be a superlative marketing company. I think this compares well to d20 and HERO. Not identical, but many similarities (like HERO, adidas was almost deathly inactive for many years, though different years, during the entire '80s pretty much in the US, for a number of reasons too much to bother to get into here). Now, you can make a case that Nike has glitz, and I don't disagree. And you can make a case they coincide well with the "MTV approach" and again I do not disagree. But no amount of glitz by many competitors has dislodged their position. And on top of this a company in the industry, New Balance, does excellent (though in a relative, but profitable, niche) with virtually no glitz. New Balance competes with adidas for the #2-#4 positions in the industry, year to year. I think the glitz factor matters moreso in that (and here is where I grant it) it has brought people away from the entire F2F RPG sector of the industry to MMORPGs and computer games and the like. I do see the tie-in, easily, from MTV and similar sorts of aesthetics to video games, computer games, and so on. But it's not as simple as those things being glitzy, these kids grew up with computers and let's remember, critically, much more than us are into online communities. The "choice" for them to go in this direction is really just natural. It's not simply a matter of maturity or "candy" attraction. On that note of maturity, frankly, lately, the 20-somethings I've met I've been really impressed with. I don't think as a generation they're more "mature" exactly, but I think they are relating to the world in a slightly better manner than we were, though I think they are a bit more oriented towards instant gratification (and so are we, we are the Sharper Image generation, and we are way more oriented that way than our parents' generation). In the end, I think the lack of young blood in HERO has a lot more to do with HERO's unenviable (but not without strong potential) market position and the general decline in F2F RPGing, a decline I greatly lament, more and more with each passing year. Though I also think it doesn't have to and may not stay that way. The integration of computer tools with F2F and realistic virtual F2F interfaces will, I think, start to bring back RPGing that is very close to F2F or is F2F. I think also that with these better interfaces and tools, people will move away from MMORPGing to what I call REAL RPGing. But I also think that RPGing this way will mutate to more of a LARP sort of thing, more of a "holodeck" experience. And that's not bad at all. I've never done LARPs, but if our gaming group had the tools to virtually do one, moving our bodies and having entire images projected from/with that, I think it'd be cool. So while I am in actual great despair over where this interest will go over the next 10-20 years, I think it will be around the end of that timeframe or not much longer when we'll see a rebirth in RPGing - borne by the same industry that is right now killing us, computer gaming. And I do think that us old gamers will be able to contribute - we'll be increasingly retiring, and often the grandparents have better rapport and influence on grandchildren than the intermediate generation. So I think even demographics might be in our favor, there may be a real confluence of old gamers who are at least computer literate (even if not so savvy as our grandkids will be) and the tools to interest and enable young and old alike. In the meantime, hunker down and do what we can to keep the lights going. (PS - globally, while Nike is ahead, Nike and adidas are much more competitive; the lop-sided nature of the competition is only evident in the US) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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