In Lunchtime Poll #17: Long-Term, High-Yield, Li repeats Narrative Guy’s querstion:
“New games are popping up all of the time, yet they don’t stay around very long at all anymore. Magic: The Gathering has lasted 10 years…The White Wolf “storytelling” system reached its apex at about 4 years old…the (*shudder*) Pokemon game lasted maybe two years…what’s going to last?”
The games that are established are the ones that will stick around; long after D&D was obsolete, it was still the gateway RPG. More importantly, though– I don’t care which ones stick around. Once I buy a game, I’m rarely interested in a lot of supplements [Mage was a sad exception]; I can run the core game at my leisure.
Except that I’m really enjoying the new wave of indie games. I want to play them– and to play any significant proportion of them, the games I do play should be short. That works fine for me, for now at least.