It's essentially impossible to get real numbers about how many people are playing tabletop roleplaying games so this post is mostly speculation, but for a while I've been partial to the theory that the advent of using Kickstarter to launch games has led to a reduction in play. The thinking goes like this: in the old days a game was at its maximum level of hype when the game was launched, which would lead people to play the game because they were excited about it. If it wasn't great it might be the “new hotness” for a while but would get quickly forgotten, or maybe it would have some staying power and only begin falling off the radar after having a healthy run.
The current trend among independent tabletop RPG designers is to run a Kickstarter for their game. Now a game is at its maximum hype level during a Kickstarter campaign to maximize how much gets contributed. Then, months or years later when the game is released in its final form, the hype is long over and fewer people are enthusiastic about getting it to the table. Sometimes people are surprised when their books show up, having forgotten that they even contributed to the Kickstarter campaign. A book can go straight into someone's collection unplayed and often even unread, something that's less likely when you just paid to get something you were really excited about.
There are also some other factors that may be at play. In a recent social media thread the point was raised that it can feel like the conversation has “moved on” from a game that seemed hot during its Kickstarter. In addition, Kickstarters often release previews or beta versions of the game in dribs and drabs, perhaps leaving you with the impression that you've “already seen it” by the time that the final version is ready to be read. I also wonder of there might be something going on with an element of “social proof”: when people on social media start talking about receiving their final Kickstarter rewards they're making thoughts about the game salient but since they're generally not talking about playing the game there might be an unintentional signal that the game is a “dud”.
Does the Kickstarter model have downsides?
In addition to the above, I'm also concerned that chasing big Kickstarters may have unfortunate results for the creative process. Like with Hollywood blockbusters or AAA video games where creators feel compelled to make certain creative choices to “guarantee” success that can paradoxically leave the end product feeling more stale, I think Kickstarter making it into the “conventional wisdom” about how you make an independent game can have some downsides, such as increasing the importance of having “names” attached to the product or spending a lot of energy chasing “production values” at the expense of new and interesting ideas. It's possible that I'm wrong, without data we won't know for sure, but I suspect that Kickstarter has been more of a curse than a blessing for the independent RPG movement.
Now that's a topic. It sure feels to me like Kickstarted games
get released and no one's playing them. But is that an effect of an increasing number of independently published games being released, so the amount of play is just getting spread thin? It sure seems to me that there's more games like Dialect, that get released and no one's talking about them, than there are Blades In the Dark, that's getting a ton of play, but then there is Blades In the Dark, released late, could easily have been forgotten, and yet getting a ton of play. So maybe Kickstarter somehow accentuates the disparity in play of the "haves" and the "have nots"?
This lines up with my own buying habits. I hope it isn't that way for everyone. I've often forgotten why I cared about a game by the time it arrives if I backed it on Kickstarter.
Dungeon World was Kickstarted, and I'm still playing it ... how many years since its release, now? Same with Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.
Just an anecdote, of course, but some games do have long tails, play-wise.