Gaming is Dead

Really, when you look across computer gaming, tabletop, and board games, gaming is dead.

AAA titles come out and are instant flops; the new version of D&D landed with a thud; crowdfunding campaigns are way down; and conventions are being cancelled. Yeah, gaming is dead.

For roleplaying, it doesn't really matter, since the hobby is shifting back into niche gaming, like it has been for most of its history. D&D was always a niche, fringe, strange hobby for most of its history, and it is only when performative play, like Critical Role, took over that we saw the gold rush and eventual collapse. For most of D&D's history, it's been in an undead, the hobby is dead, mode. The late 1980s, when Gygax was kicked out? It was dying. The 1990s, when TSR went bankrupt? It was still dead. The end of 3.5E when 4E failed? Yep, dead again.

Here we are at the end of 5E. Yep, here we go again.

5E wasn't really 5E; it was Critical Role, fueled by Stranger Things. They co-opted the hobby, and that style of play became a fad, just like the Atari 2600 before it. The whole thing crashed when YouTube started demonetizing D&D creators and telling them to switch subjects. D&D was never really about D&D; it is always about riding a fad up, living at the peak, and pretending D&D was the reason it was popular, and then watching it all come crashing down when D&D could never "keep the audience."

Wizards never invested in their authors and campaign worlds; there was nothing to keep people there in the first place. At least in the 1990s, they had the novels. These days, kids are graduating high school not knowing how to read, so what does anyone expect?

The hobby is doomed to grow old and die with its fans since the education system collapsed and failed. Good luck competing with mobile games, which won the war 10 years ago, and tabletop gaming is still living in denial. How will anybody play books with over a thousand pages of required reading if no new players can read?

Niche gaming? The OSR? Indie games? Small publishers? They will be just fine, surviving on the fringe market like the hobby was started on. Shadowdark is far better positioned to survive a downturn than companies with huge structural organizations.

Cons? Games that are published on a massive scale? Industry giants? Huge library games? Dead like the AAA games they pretend to be. D&D is so large, and nobody can define what it is, so it will survive on the mass of 2014 books still floating out there. D&D 6E better be so different that people throw out their 2014 books, or Wizards will find they can't compete with themselves.

It is 2026, publish from your basement or perish.

D&D is dead, but it will be fine. YouTubers decrying the death of the hobby will be clickbaiting, as usual; nothing changes. Doom and gloom get doom-clicks, hate-clicks, and the-world-is-ending-clicks.

Who cares? Just play.

Enjoy your books.

Get the money out of them that you paid for.

Ignore the doom and gloom, because it too shall pass.