There’s another factor at work here.
Perhaps I should put this in a separate thread, insofar as
it touches on several of the threads I’ve seen having to do with the apparent
decline of the model/hobby industry.
A few years ago, I was helping a friend sort out some role
playing games in preparation for a move. He lamented that the market had
suffered a serious decline in the early nineties.
I asked him the reason for this. His response was that kids
just weren’t buying the stuff anymore- with the exception of the collectible
Card games.
I found myself thinking about that. I was aware that the
hobby and model sections of various stores like Kay Bee and Toys R US had also
drastically cut back their stock. Whereas back in the eighties they had often
dedicated the better part of an aisle to these materials, you will be lucky now
to find ten square feet in any given store, if that.
So what changed? Two major things.
First of all, the younger generation doesn’t have as much
free time.
Kids these days are much more scheduled in their activities,
and often have a substantial amount of school commitments and homework, and
they often work part time in addition. Growing up myself in the seventies and
eighties, I strongly suspect that I simply had more time to spend on various
pursuits than the present generation.
The other major factor however, is the development of far
more immersive electronic media.
The typical computer adventure game is far more complex than
those made fifteen-twenty years ago. Indeed, even when one looks at a map of
some of the fist generation Nintendo games like the Mario or Metroid
adventures, you realize that these are entire complex landscapes and
environments with all sorts of shortcuts, backdoors, traps, sublevels, and
tangents. Indeed, the developers originally drew the original designs for some
of these levels on huge rolls of butcher paper.
And that’s just a typical Hop N’ Bop scrolling adventure...
If you look at the level of problem solving, advanced
physics, and resolution of a game like Half Life 2, some of the Star Wars
games, or many of the other “shooters”, it becomes quickly apparent that you
are dealing with entire WORLDS.
Now add to this the role of multiplayer and customizability.
What this allows for is both the ability to shape one’s
environment, and to connect with other people.
One of the challenges growing up was that it could often be
difficult to get together enough people for a campaign. Mike had to mow the
lawn...Steve was visiting his grandparents in Florida, etc...
Now, you can log onto a server at any hour of day or night.
Even if Steve in Dallas is busy, there’s still Janet in Toronto, Brian in
Phoenix, Glenn in Tennessee who are up and ready to play.
The other huge change is that many of these new games do 90%
of the heavy lifting when it comes to calculating variables- everything from
character bonuses to combat- in near realtime speed. Furthermore, people now
have the ability to continue to develop and modify these characters on their
own time.
Indeed, in a sense, these virtual characters and
environments are a new form of model building, albeit rather different from
what we are accustomed to.
Honestly, it seems to me that much of the creative energy
that was previously given to model building and role-playing hobbies has now
been transferred to virtual environments in the new generation.
Just my two cents.