Hi Ars M. I had to comment....
When I was 25 and a gamer (also graduating from college) it was 1995 and I definitely didn't feel the way you do now. My wife, who is your age, doesn't feel the way you do (she's a hardcore gamer) but she's also a woman who is happy with the same 5 games she's had in her possession and feels no need for more and shinier to replace them. But I think you probably managed to get in on the hobby and see a bit of what it was like before things started changing, which is why you and I feel similarly now.
I think a lot of today's problems arise from media competition. We have a glut of numerous forms of entertainment today that are very flashy and often do all the mental work for the participants. Video games are (imo) the single biggest threat to the table top hobby today, and part of the reason it's not growing and expanding. I think you make a very succinct point that rpgs today are not always a labor of love so much as part of a marketing process, one which will abandon them if they don't seem to be making enough cash. True, I agree....but....
Back in the 80's, (I started gaming as a kid in 1981) every company was tantamount to a small start up, and the level of fun one could imaginatively have with RPGs was far in excess of the kind of interest that games like Zork, Wizardry or Ultima could produce. There simply was no competition for RPGs in terms of entertainment...if anything, books and comics where the biggest direct competitor for time, along with movies. And movies always have been and likely shall remain a separate market for a long time...although it's interesting to note that films today are being challenged by video games, as well, for dollars and time.
Today, as I see it, the growth in the industry is mainly in independent and smaller press publishers; look at all the cool RPGs out of IPR, for example. Some smaller game companies that are entirely focused on the RPG experience are still doing okay, or at least staying focused (Hero, Chaosium, SJGames + or - Munchkin, I suppose; and Mongoose) but I tend to think of WotC with D&D as now being more "mainstream," as it must need to be to survive the expectations of it's parent company. This makes for some really strange times, since it means the market for RPGs has changed so much in the last decade.
I also think that the median age of gamers is older, now. To enjoy an RPG these days, I think you have to have a keen interest in a broader story or more calculated game experience. You need to want to interact directly with real people. You have to be willing to use your imagination. And you need to be willing to be a bit geekier than the nutty Warcraft players, who will call you a geek for playing D&D and other tabletop games while they spend their time in an all-day raid on WoW....without a trace of hypocricy.
I also think that the internet is turning, bit by bit, in to a new sort of lifeblood for tabletop gaming. It's now much easier to produce and get some recognition for your game or product via the web than it ever was before...and easier to make it look good in the process.
My personal method for dealing with this has been to try and focus my purchasing support exclusively on those companies which still fit the "niche" I feel I am in. So I buy interesting games from IPR and continue to support Hero Games, SJGames, Chaosium and Mongoose (when I am confident the book won't blow up in confetti after I open it, that is
)
I also try to just relax and find like-minded gamers, who tend to simply enjoy playing whatever games they've always enjoyed....I'm really amazed at the number of people out there who are slowly no longer being fazed by the trendiness of new editions to games.
All that said, I do kind of like the idea of making BRP "The Last Game I'll Ever Need." But I love being a consumer, so I guess I'll keep buying other stuff I like, too....and holding on to the old stuff that's fun. Just because BL stopped publishing/supporting WHFR, for example, doesn't mean it's not still a good game and viable....you just need to be a bigger supporter for it to rally in players and show them how cool it is. If enough people showed loyalty to their faovorite systems over time, they'll get ressurrected eventually, guaranteed. I think BRP is a great example of how loyalty to a system works.
EDIT: Not sure I had a point. Just liked your thread and wanted to comment thru a bit of free-association...