🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Oct 12, 2008 01:55 AM UTC:
Chess may lose its prominence not because it is a bad game or has been
played out but because the environment around it is changing. The web is
making knowledge of Chess variants much more widespread and accessible,
and it is making it much easier for people from around the world to play
Chess variants than they were ever able to before. Chess still has a large
hegemony, but this may be largely due to the fact that most people living
today grew up without the web, and until the web existed, people
interested in Chess-like games had few options but Chess. Many of these
people are now too set in their ways to consider any variants besides
Chess. But as younger generations grow up and older generations die off,
the accessibility to Chess variants that the web brings to the world will
begin to erode the hegemony that Chess currently enjoys. This doesn't
mean that a Next Chess will arise to replace Chess. Rather it may mean
that Chess variants in general begin to share more of an equal footing
with Chess, such as there exists between card games. A few card games are
more prominent than others, but no card game has the supreme position
above other card games that Chess today enjoys above the variants.
