I agree that it appears that there seems an imminent demise of our hobby...but...
My two children love gaming...though their level of "involvment" is still strictly dungeon crawls and battles...they lack the experience to do heavy role playing that CoC requires, so for now it is dungeon crawls...but they do love it and they will be very happily tossing cash into the gaming monster's gullet for years.
I think the new generation is being "grown" by old gamers plus there is good ol' WoTC creating new gamers with it's vastly popular D&D line, add in WizKidz with HeroClix and of course the massive amount of computer RPG's and MMORPG's...there are more than enough gamers...that isn't even counting the hard corps mini-crowds that old Wahammer/WH40K gamers are making out of their kids, and the thousands of CCG players out there...
So we have plenty of gamers, but instead of just pen and paper gaming, they have a choice of playing CCG's, MMORPG's, miniatures, computer games or table top...
And frankly, all of the other types of gaming take less investment in time, and time is the one thing that nobody has enough of...so while there isn't a lack of gamers, there is a lack of gamers with time, and when given a choice between playing a game that takes a bit of time but still scratches the gaming itch or reorganizing your schedule and the schedule of 1 to 5 other people to play a game...and repeat that schedule fixing on a weekly or bi-monthly basis for months or years...that just isn't going to happen.
There are two forces at work here. One is that there is not enough time. I know lots of gamers...and they all have the same problem, no time to game. I live in a house with 3 other gamers and we still have trouble finding time to just sit and game for 4 hours a week. When faced with school and work, bill paying and errand running, and of course extended absences up to a year...gaming, as much fun as it is, falls to the wayside. It is much worse for other people.
The other force here is divisiveness...I like to call it the false division...between gamers. Gamers are gamers...whether you play Magic, or D20 or BRP or World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIII or Warhammer 40K...all gamers. Each of those focuses on different aspects of gaming, but they all share the same focus...taking the gamer to a different more exciting place/reality as an active participant.
It would be nice if D20 gamers did not see Warhammer40K gamers as the enemy, but rather people who are gamers and play something different and just enjoy being a "geek".
On the subject of PDF's...I love them and I am happy I have a few gigs worth of them, but I like paper...I can sit down with an old CoC supplement for hours and be happy, but staring at some PDF for more than 30 minutes irritates me. I am happy that I have them as opposed to nothing at all, but I do much prefer hardcopy, but that is just me (as a dinosaur) speaking of a preference. My kids are trained to read off computer screens for hours and have no difficulty switching between electronic and hard copy. I am told that is due to the new "easy reading" fonts that are being used, but be that as it may, I still prefer to flip pages.
Just my opinion on a few things.
-STS
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