Nothing Stays the Same

 “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte

Last year around this time I celebrated my 10th anniversary blogging at Hobby Games Recce. I reflected on many elements of my adventure gaming life that had changed. This year, as I mark 11 years blogging here, I wanted to take a broad look at how some elements in the gaming world have changed over more than a decade, particularly things that have disappeared from my gaming scene. I’m not doing a comprehensive review – I don’t have time to skim over more than 400 blog entries – but I’m going for general impressions on a few key observations. In doing so I’m reminded how fleeting anything really is. Games, companies, websites, hobby stores, even online communities come and go. Their popularity and our immense enjoyment of them do not guarantee they’ll always be here for us. We must appreciate what we have in the moment.

Over the years brick-and-mortar stores have faced tough times, both with the prominence and convenience of internet shopping and now nearly two years of covid-19 pandemic hammering them with supply and worker issues. Even before the pandemic some of my favorite stores closed. Places like Borders bookstores and A.C. Moore craft stores supplemented my gaming activities. They’re now long gone, with a handful of options for similar products: Barnes & Noble for books and media (which lately has failed to meet my expectations) and Hobby Lobby or Michael's for craft items.

Local game and hobby stores have fared a little better. Our town saw a good comics and game store open – with a vibrant in-store gaming crowd – only to suddenly close a year later. Another one opened in a less-than-ideal location that barely lasted a year. At least now we have a comic shop with some games and geek-culture-friendly staff. The hobby store in a nearby town closed, moved, and veered off to serve the radio control community; since then a dedicated gaming store opened and managed to survive the pandemic. The largest local game store, about an hour’s drive away, finally closed several years ago, only to have a larger one fill the void, survive the pandemic, and thrive enough to move to a new, larger location. All this demonstrates the ebb and flow time has on stores we come to rely on.

Numerous games have come and gone. In our ephemeral society – obsessed with the instant gratification electronic media grants and with ever-diminishing attention spans and limited patience – most new releases enjoy a flash in the pan before they fade in the face of the next “new hotness.” I still think back on various games I passed on at the time of their release that, only a few years later, have become hard-to-find items commanding collector’s prices. Kickstarter has certainly risen as a means to produce and distribute roleplaying and board games; some fund them for initial release and further production, but many remain available only to those who back them. These eventually fall into the realm of collector’s items shortly thereafter. I’ve missed out on a few of these never-to-be-released-again titles, but I’ve also learned to spot these – either from familiar companies/creators or games that engage my interest – so I hope to avoid such disappointments in the future.

The roleplaying game front perhaps best characterizes the ephemeral nature of the hobby. Certainly pillars of gaming like Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder have solid followings, and other, lesser known but still highly popular games maintain thriving communities. But many other games come and go, their fans indulging in intense interest for a while before moving on to the latest “new hotness.” The Old School Renaissance movement (OSR), or whatever you want to call it, increased the volume of new material exponentially and tied specific trends with active communities for support; even these waxed and waned in popularity and the size and enthusiasm of their followings.

Events, too, have come and gone. The large wargaming convention that once featured as a centerpiece of our summer has since retreated back north to familiar pastures well out of my own range, though I’ve occasionally purchased online from vendors I liked seeing there. Local library gaming events – which I used to help run for a brief time – have withered under pandemic restrictions on indoor group gatherings, especially with the younger crowd only eligible for vaccines in the past week or so; while this doesn’t affect me, I had hopes my son could enjoy them when he became old enough. Despite these departures the regional wargaming conventions in the Williamsburg, VA, area still endure in one form or another, even after a year of forced hiatus thanks to the covid-19 pandemic. I’d previously mourned the postponement of my planned wargaming events at the local history museum due to the pandemic; they have since enjoyed a tentative restart earlier in the summer – before the surge of delta-variant covid – and may still find an audience when they resume later this year and continue, hopefully, in the spring with renewed interest.

The internet has proven the most fluid landscape for changes in the adventure gaming hobby. Here things come and go and hardly leave a trace other than the 404 error message indicating a broken link. I’ve lost track of the blogs, websites, and other online resources that have closed down over the years. Of all the ones I’ve causally noted as lost, the Solo Nexus gaming blog still holds a place of honor as a source of innovative ideas and insights regarding solitaire gaming. Perhaps the biggest change was the closing of Google Plus in 2018. After several years hosting a burgeoning, engaging online community of gamers, Google Plus closing fractured those groups as people sought camaraderie in a fragmented social media landscape. For me this initiated a great reduction in the positive online gaming community interactions I’d previously enjoyed. Unlike other areas, this involvement has not seen much rebound. I’ve allowed my presence on Facebook to languish – it was little more than a platform to promote my gaming projects – but my persistence on MeWe has provided diminishing returns over the past few years. I more recently signed on with Twitter to promote my hobby activities, share personal insights and news, stay in touch with old friends, and generally seek (and mostly find) more meaningful engagement with those who share my interests.

Over these years the internet has seen the rise of rambling podcasts and slick video content eclipsing “print” venues like blogs and further vying for gamers’ attention in the screaming maelstrom of content flooding the ether. Between the disparate, fragmented gaming communities on social media and the growing irrelevance of “print” blogs, I often wonder why I still struggle onward with Hobby Games Recce. I continue to hammer away at the blog, perhaps not weekly as I’d like, but more regularly than not, despite a limited audience and diminishing fulfillment in online engagement.

Perhaps the most positive aspect of the inevitable ebb and flow in the adventure gaming hobby remains the host of new gaming goodness emerging over those years to endure to this particular moment; I’m thankful I’ve discovered them and how much they enhance my gaming activities. When I feel overwhelmed by the despair of all that has inevitably passed I try refocusing my attention at the wealth of new experiences I’ve discovered that satisfied my constant appetite for adventure gaming. I am fortunate to have the time and means to immerse myself in game activities. Like the seasons, the bleak winter gives way to a springtime filled with rebirth and new growth; I must remind myself that for all I’ve seen fade away the creative gaming hobby brings forth fresh material to renew our enthusiasm.

“Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”

– Frank Herbert