The Obsessive Self-Mutilation of Mainstream Entertainment

From film, to comics, to tabletop games, it seems every corner of the mainstream is dead set on carving its nose off to spite its face.

A few short days ago the now infamous Seattle based tabletop gaming company Wizards of the Coast, best known as the current publishers of the iconic Dungeons & Dragons RPG and Magic: The Gathering TCG, announced the latest in what has been a near decade’s long spate of questionable decisions within their flagship properties. While part of me still struggles to call these properties mainstream - you’ll still find plenty of people who might recognize the names, only to give a glazed over look once you begin discussing them in detail - it’s difficult to argue that within the tabletop gaming niche, WotC is about as close as it gets, at least where America, much of Western Europe, and Australia is concerned. This position has only been further cemented by the recent success of Larian Studios’ most recent outing, Baldur’s Gate 3, though we’ll come back around to this one later.

The point here is that these games both have long and storied histories which helped to put WotC on the map, as it were. Yet in spite of that, the company that publishes two of the world’s most recognized hobby games, a pair of titans within the tabletop niche, apparently can’t avoid ineptly stumbling from controversy to controversy. Long time members of the hobby who cut their teeth on these games, such as myself, have seen WotC pilloried over the following gaffes within the last year alone:

• WotC/Hasbro’s hyper-monetization plans for their upcoming virtual tabletop, in which damn near every element of a game meant to be played with dice, books, and imagination will come with a price tag.

• Leaked plans for the replacement of the current Open Gaming License, (OGL) used by countless independent designers to publish third party content, with one that would require copious royalties be paid to WotC/Hasbro.

• Unnecessary warning labels slapped on “problematic” older content that’s been republished.

• The altering and censoring of text within both older and current (Fifth) edition D&D books, PDFs, and digital supplements.

• Ongoing decline in sales and interest of newly published books.

• Ongoing banning of older MTG cards, many of which are out of print and already tournament illegal.

• The $1,000 MTG Anniversary Pack debacle.

• Bizarre crossover events with other properties.

• Race-swapping of Tolkien’s characters in MTG’s Lord of the Rings crossover art.

All of this culminates in this most recent of stumbles which I alluded to at the start of this essay: WotC’s decision to retire the use of the term “Witch” as a creature type in Magic: The Gathering as it’s a “real world religious identifier.” This comes alongside the potential of the terms “Druid” and “Shaman” being retired in the same way. As you can see from the list above, this is just the latest in a long line of decisions that has left the core fanbases, and therefore the core markets, of both products scratching their heads at best or expressing anger and apathy at worst. Indeed, the frequency with which WotC has walked into these marketing messes has all the hallmarks of Sideshow Bob’s inexorable draw toward stepping on rakes.

You’d think it’d be easy to avoid them, but apparently not.

Of course, to those of us who’ve been observing this type of pattern developing over the past couple decades or so, the above represents little more than a microcosm of the decay and decline we’ve been witnessing in just about every form of mainstream entertainment. A decline which has grown so precipitous in recent years, that even the average layperson who doesn’t pay much attention can’t help but notice that something is just plain off these days. Movies have become boring and preachy, chock full of the same unwelcome tropes on repeat: hyper-competent women who’re often bitter and unpleasant to those around them; men who are either bumbling buffoons in urgent need of rescue or irredeemable villains reduced to one dimensional caricatures of incels, republicans, or whatever outgroup du jour Twitter obsessed Hollywood wishes to hate on during any particular week; girls who are the key to everything; families as functional as a broken clock; and characters written with about as much consistency as hagfish slime.

Hollywood is just the tip of the iceberg here, too. This particular brand of rot has spread to just about every form of entertainment media, resulting in a marked reduction in the quality that people outside of their early twenties got to see more frequently when we were younger. This isn’t to say that the past is perfect in this respect, far from it. I still remember how completely dull and dead the late 90’s movie landscape was, the sharp dip in quality kids content in the late 2000’s through the early 2010’s, (Western animation suffered horribly in this time) and I’ve got older friends who remember damn well the video game crash of the 80’s and worse, the Satanic Panic that was going strong around that same time. But even if we take these troughs into account, I would still argue that there’s never been a time where the mainstream has been as sick as it is right now.

Whether it’s music, television, film, comics, fiction/non-fiction publishing, video games, or tabletop games, you’ll be hard pressed to find any form of entertainment media that hasn’t experienced some kind of sharp quality decline. There are numerous reasons why this is the case, any one of which could be pointed to as the cause. Some will point to the slew of activistic employees seated in multiple positions across various companies. Others will point to the World Economic Forum’s enforcement of ESG scores. Others still will say that people aren’t being hired on merit anymore, so the quality of our entertainment suffers. While all of these do share a chunk of the blame, some larger than others, I think that two factors stand out above the rest here.

Firstly, the people being paid to create the entertainment the public is clamoring for aren’t interested in it. There’s countless reasons why this could be and you’re free to take your pick on a case by case basis, but the end result is still the same. More often than not, particularly in the case of well established properties, you’re more likely to end up with a higher quality product if you hire people who’re passionate about the projects being put in their hands. Take some current examples like Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer or Gareth Edwards’ The Creator. Both movies undoubtedly have their flaws, but both also show the level of quality you can achieve when passionate people are put in charge of the projects they’re working on. Problem is, the mainstream isn’t interested in passionate people. Passion means risk, and risk means the possibility of losing money, or so their thinking goes. How ironic that is, considering their risk averse nature has lead to a starved market full of people with firmly closed wallets.

Which leads me nicely to my second point, the mainstream doesn’t seem to have the interest in respecting or listening to the desires of the core fanbases that should make up the bulk of their higher paying audiences. Every one of us has properties that we absolutely adore, or at least did at one point. For myself, it’s Toho’s single most recognizable character, the irradiated King of the Monsters himself, Godzilla. Put something relating to him in front of me and chances are I’m going to consume it voraciously. But the difference with Godzilla versus many other legacy characters and franchises is that his legacy is currently in the hands of people who care about it. They generally understand the wants of fans and know how to cater to the different niches within, so his outings usually continue to please. Can the same be said for Star Wars, or Marvel & DC? Can it be said for 007, James Bond? What about Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons, based on what I showed earlier?

With that last one you might be tempted to say, “Yes, it can be said for D&D.” After all, the D&D movie was decently received by those who went to see it, (which wasn’t many) and Baldur’s Gate 3 has been a massive success! But that’s just the thing, Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t made by Wizards of the Coast, it was made by Larian Studios. They purchased the rights to use the D&D license as well as the lore and characters from the previous two games, plus the greater Forgotten Realms property, for use in their game. If WotC had been left to their own devices I highly doubt the game would’ve been made with nearly the level of care that Larian showed, and if the list of their recent foibles isn’t convincing enough, look up reviews for Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance from 2021. You’ll find most are middling at best, and many of those are being quite generous at that.

So, what should we do in the face of all of this? Clearly the market is starved for satisfying entertainment media and while complaining is cathartic, it’s not a solution. People are going to the movies less and less, comics sales are being absolutely stomped on by Japanese manga, fiction publishers are actively keeping out anyone that writes work which goes against their preferred views, and so on and so forth. What’s the solution?

To put it far too simply, go independent. This isn’t to say you need to go out and start making the things you want to see yourself, though if you are creatively minded I absolutely think you should do that. It’s why I started to really knuckle down and write recently, to make use of this skill I’ve developed over the last couple decades. Not everyone is going to want to do that, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. There’s a whole slew of talented independent creators out there, many of whom I plan to shout out yet again in the very near future, and they’re creating a wide variety of new entertainment for us to enjoy.

However, the number of people who’ll be able to find and enjoy it directly relies on how well known it becomes. Independents rarely have the benefit of mass marketing teams to get the word out about their work. In most cases, we do it all on our own. Naturally that means no small part of the onus of our success is on us. We need to learn how to advertise and market for ourselves so those who wish to consume the kind of entertainment we’re creating can find it and see if it’s something they’d enjoy. But nothing is stronger than word of mouth, so if you there's creators who’s work you enjoy and you know friends and family who might enjoy them too, tell them. Let someone borrow a copy of the new comic you got from Iconic or the Rippaverse, or the novella you just bought from an Iron Age writer you like. Spread the good word that yes, there are people out there writing the kinds of stories you all missed, trying to make the sort of entertainment you’ve been wishing would come back into play.

Who knows? If enough of us stick it out and share what we’ve found, we might see a more lush media landscape yet.

Oh, and I’ll probably have the next chapter of In the Giant’s Shadow up by Thursday.

Thank you for reading,

~The Man Behind the Screen

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