Back at the beginning of 2025 I made a few little predictions about how 2025 might go. So, how did Death Bat Camazotz do at predictions.....? Let's find out!
1. D&D will do just fine - specifically I suggested its too big to fail, but that they might not get their virtual tabletop thingy together. I think I was mostly right here, as D&D 5.24 seems to be going strong, more or less, but I do think that there are some signs its crumbling a bit.....the loss of a lot of long time WotC staff, the D&D Beyond portal getting shifted away from the now on life support virtual tabletop, and a thing that is only anecdotal right now, but it really doesn't look like anyone's buying the new D&D books at the local game shops this season....the new Forgotten Realms books have even been 50% off at one game store locally and they still can't move them. So.....I think while I am technically right here, I think 2025 showed a lot of cracks in the D&D exoskeleton that may impact it for 2026.
2. Nothing else steals D&D's marketshare - this is also a half true sort of prediction. D&D still seems to be getting played and WotC has pivoted to making it more like a franchise. They are making a new video game which appears to be an action focused game about a cool warlock. But meanwhile the tents of those alternative groups like Kobold Press and Paizo are growing bigger, and it seems like there's been a lot more non-D&D gamer interest going on in 2025. But this is all speculative and anecdotal without some sales figures.
3. The looming tariff wars will hurt gaming - damn I was spot on about this. Books have shrunk in size, grown in price, and many aspects of the gaming industry had to pivot to figure out how to handle potential price increases. This even when it seems some products like printed matter might have exceptions. Overall its probably not as bad as I would have imagined, but the actual general economy has done even worse, and this is the first year in a long time where my gaming purchases have slowed down considerably.
4. 13th Age won't come out in 2025 - well I have an order in place and the final PDFs of the Hero's Guide and GM's Guide as I write this, so 13th Age has arrived by the skin of its teeth! I am actually incredibly happy about this, the new edition looks fantastic, and I miss the 13th Age style of play.
Then I made some computer gaming predictions:
1. The games industry implodes further with games as a service models - Yeah to some degree, but then we still have successes like Helldivers II and Arc Raiders proving that you can pull this off. That said....Destiny 2 is doing poorly, Call of Duty is doing poorly, Battlefield 6 is apparently pivoting to a freemium cash shop experience which is making people mad, and it turns out the real story of 2025 in gaming is how much people hate the fact that developers are turning to generative AI to fluff out battle pass content and such. So I was right.....but with caveats.
2. Consoles and PC Hardware gets more expensive - yeah I sure wish I was wrong here but its honestly one of the easiest markets to watch the impact on with regards to tariffs and the economy. I bought a lot of tech this year and am glad I did, because its about to get worse. The additional unanticipated impact of AI datacenters soaking up RAM manufacturing is going to make things even worse in 2026.
3. 2025 will be the worst year for new games - I don't know that I was right here. What I can say is we are getting too many remakes, and not enough new content that gets proper exposure, but that is a side effect of gamers trapped in nostalgialand. That said, I played a lot of really great games this year, including Deadzone: Rogue, Cronus: The New Dawn, Silent Hill F, Fort Solis (okay, that one's older, but I played it this year), and the Steam metrics suggest that most gamers are spending more time playing older games now and less time on the new stuff, anyway.
4. Bungie hits rock bottom in 2025 - yeah sadly I think I was right here, though I don't think Sony is going to let this cash cow die as easily as they did the studio for Concord. The latest expansion for Destiny, which is loosely Star Wars themed, does not seem to be enough to retain old players after their last year of problematic design choices, or get new ones. Despite this, I took a really long break from the game and recently jumped back in, and find I am enjoying it again....it's still a good game, but it needs more careful curation now, I feel. We won't even talk about Bungie's nightmare with Marathon, though I still have high hopes for it whenever it does come out.
Okay! So for the next round of predictions I predict I will try to come up with some more volatile and less safe predictions, just for fun!
On the Gaming Plans for 2025
I posted at the end of 2024 my anticipated gaming plans for 2025. It's always fun to document this because I can see just how idealistic my plans were relative to how far they went awry! Specifically:
Dragonbane - yeah nope did not happen and I can't even remember why it didn't work out.
Savage Worlds - I did run this for a few sessions but just wasn't feeling it. It's complicated, but I think the short version is "you need the right group for the right game."
Mothership - I managed to run a couple short campaigns with Mothership in 2025, so success!
D&D 5.75 (D&D 2024) - I finished one whole campaign with this once the Monster Manual 2025 came out. I wrapped the game around level 7 and decided I had given the new system a fair shake, and did not like it. I put the books in to storage and then mulled over how to get my D&D fix from an edition that didn't seem to be taking a weed wacker to the core conceits of D&D.
Tales of the Valiant - it took a while but I ran a short campaign and really liked it. I was derailed with Starfinder arriving on the scene, but TotV is a worthy successor to classic D&D 5E.
GURPS - I read a lot of sourcebooks, thought about running it, and never got around to it. My time with GURPS lies in the past, when I gamed with like-minded souls in the nineties and early 00's who "got it" and I just don't feel my current group of players are gonna get it.
Mork Borg and Vast Grimm - I did not in fact get around to running either, though Mork Borg remains ready for a pick up and play session at any time. Mothership stole their thunder.
I had a final section on fever dreams, but it's funny because two of the games mentioned ended up being go-to systems: I ran a Mythras campaign (before also concluding it was a bad fit for the group, although my son loved it); and I have pretty much settled with Pathfinder 2E as the de facto replacement for D&D in 2025. Indeed, my Wednesday gaming group has been Pathfinder 2E and my Friday gaming group has been Starfinder 2E for months now.
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