http://web.mac.com/rsdancey/iWeb/RSD...03410A740.html

Good news everybody! Former industry insider Ryan Dancey has jumped on the bandwagon and predicted bad things to come - but he ups the ante by claiming the entire industry is going south, rather than just VS or Upper Deck.

Dancey has a history of negativity, so I wouldn't lend his post much credence. Mainly I think of this as good ammo in about nine months, when VS is still strong and operating.

I refuse to agree with anyone who uses a mac :P

In all seriousness though, the market is currently loaded with dozens of ccgs. Some are good, some are bad, some are useful only as rectangular frisbees. But people still play them.

I know everyone has their own points of view re: professional vs casual, but as long as there's a kitchen table available to the super-hero-gamer, there'll be a place for a game like VS.

There are still people who play Overpower, for cryin' out loud.

Hey! Don't lump all Mac users in with that tool. Some of us aren't so bad.

I refuse to agree with you too!

... and since I'm listening to my iPod right now, I refuse to agree with me too!

vs isnt going anywhere but up. many places near me are opening hobby leagues where as before there werent any or they were closing

Dang i thought the sky is falling guys were bad on here that guy says gaming and game stores are going to crash

Man talk about being negitive on an industy that got rid of you lol

This sort of thing happens in cycles.

Several months worth of crappy CCGs get produced by random companies, and then *BOOM* everything disappears except the 'big guns'. By summer, I'll be there'll be a glut where there's nothing but UDE/Wizards/AEG games to play. Then some random company will come up with a new mechanic, several other wanna-be companies will show up with something similar, and the cycle will begin again.

No worries from me. There's too much money and support coming from companies like UDE and Wizards to worry about our games. It's the random Anime-TCG game manufacturers that should be worried. I have a 30-gal tote FULL of games that lasted less than 6 months.

What exactly is the basis for all this negativity?

Didn't you see? He was a manager for WoTC!

Therefore he has specifically unique insight into the gaming industry as a whole.....

a+b= 42

See? See?

I don't necessarily agree with everything the guy says, and I happen to be in the "if there's a kitchen table, Vs lives on" camp. Still, he makes a very compelling argument with some rational points and (gasp!) logic to back them up. I doubt that he believes with all his heart every single item on his list will come to pass, but it'll be interesting to see just how right he is. Granted, I hope he's not, but wishing doesn't make it so, as much as I'd like to believe what the resident cuddly chaos magicians say. ;)

I meant the general negativity for the state of the desktop gaming industry.
This isn't the first time I've heard it's in some type of decay - can't remember where I heard it from originally. Is this because of the advent of online gaming? Lack of good games? What is it exactly?

Being a teacher of todays youth I will tell you they are one of the problems with table top gaming

They are all about me and now and dont want to read about it or imagine somthing all they want is like the video games tell them what to do and were to do it.

As long as we have kids in school who can barley read and dont enjoy reading table top gaming is going to have a hard time.

Im hoping soon ill get to start a gaming club at my highschool the main problem with that is the sterotype "NERD" is tied into most if not all gaming so many kids wont get involved because of social presure

I speak this from experince i was a closet "NERD" through all of highschool and most of college

Gaming industry is not going to die anytime soon but I think that is the problem with the industy (lack of new gamers)

The gaming industry in general is on a decline nearly everywhere. Shops are trying almost anything these days to support games and players, but the reality of it is that there are just other things for people to spend money on.

Magic experienced a large decline due to Kamigawa block. That is simple truth. Ravnica helped bring MAgic back. I hate MTG, but I follow the trends to keep up to date on things.

VS has experienced a similar decline, and that has to do with the main comics characters sucking out most of the time in most people's eyes. Add to that multiple sets featuring second and third string characters, that, while good for the game, are still not popular enough to carry sets on their own.

Collectible minis games are another genre that is simply on the decline. Does any of this make the games less fun? Not really. The games don't have to die out just because a company stops producing them. SWCCG still has tournaments even now, nearly 6 years after the game was ended.

But, people that refuse to be honest about the state of the game are not helping things either. The industry as a whole is in trouble. Don't like that? Do something about it, other than trying to 'disbelieve' it. I assure you, this isn't just the monster under your bed. This is an actual issue that people who care can help do something about.

Generate ideas for bringing more people in to gaming. Generate ways to make it affordable to get people in to gaming for their first time ever.

Support your local area by having fun days and fun events where players can bring in a totally themed deck, where if you play Teen Titans, you cannot play with characters that were not on the team at the same time. Or Arkham where you only use characters that are actually held in Arkham right now in continuity.

I'm about to push for my hobby league to keep up with monthly story arcs and build decks centered around such.

The game needs people who can understand that there is a problem and are willing to do more than just say 'there is no problem'.

For the record, I have never said "There is no problem."

There are many problems, but constant complaining only makes them worse.

I choose to focus only upon the positive. Why?

It makes my life better.

It creates a good vibe that can help to alleviate the problems.

It feels good.

As for Ryan Dancey, it seems an awful lot like he is auditioning for a job as a stock analyst now that the gaming industry got sick of him.

Totally agree. All gaming goes in cycles. MK had it's way in the mini's realm. That spawned MW and that spawned HC. Now MK and MW are (nearly) gone, and HC is strong (and it went on to spawn HorrorClix and a couple other things to come).

Upper Deck works the same way as a mini's company does. VS is giving way to WoW. You can tell me I'm wrong later (or...now, I guess), but these City Championships are the first step towards dropping the money tour. They're taking things from National and making them Centralized and Regional. Turning it more towards casual play. Pushing the game that's making you money is the way it's gotta work. The problem with this strategy (and why it's a dangerous thing to do in the long term) is that dropping major support the VS line makes it very difficult to resurrect in case WoW fails in a year (as predicted by the guy who this thread is about).

One of his predictions has already kinda come true. Wizkids has gone with a solo distributor for all of its sales. This is one quick and heavy blow to the other 12 smaller distributors that used to carry Wizkids products. All it'll take is for a few more game companies to jump on that bandwagon for these distributors to be DOA.

Anyway, seems I need a blog of my own at this point.

:speechles