Why is it that most people who play collectible card games exclusively, think that people who play role playing games are bags of human atrophy? Isn't it funny how gamers see exclusive card players as elitist misanthropes who frequent coffee houses using decks of cards as a means to bolster a decrepit ego? And yet, strangely, collectors think of both gamers and card players as one group of so much puerile pseudo-intellectual sludge, and gamers and card players see collectors as freaks of nature that are more concerned with their next addition than their next bathing. Funny, don't all of us share floor space at every convention floor? There are few places you can go to buy role playing games without passing by a glass case of toys or a wall of comic books. I know people who play role playing games who have never picked up a comic book, and people who read comic books but don't even now what a role playing game is. If these industries are so different why are they presented in the same market? Who put them together: the people who patronize the industries, the retailers, who? Is it a bad thing? Are they really that different?
Sadly, there are retailers out there who carry all of the aforementioned groups but express bias or disinterest in one. They have elaborate comic and collectible displays, collectible card games on the front counter, and in the back corner they throw the role playing games. I've seen predominantly game oriented stores keep a token amount of comic books in the back seemingly just to take up space. It seems like no industry is willing to really help the other, but like it or not their fate is inexorably intertwined. Deal with it.
Wizards of the Coast(tm) and their brain child Magic the Gathering(tm), have opened up a rift in the hobby and collectibles industry. Many believe that they have lowered the market to the lowest common denominator. Some people are sick of going to conventions just because they're tired of walking over little kids throwing cards at each other and playing in the middle of the halls. It's a very real complaint. But there is a plus side for these new collectible card games. They're losing steam. People aren't as loyal to card games as they are to collecting and role playing. Card games are a flash in the pot, an appetizer for all the other pursuits that await them. When people put away their cards out of boredom they turn to other pursuits. So eventually, a sizable majority of the people who tire of playing card games on a daily basis will come to accept role playing games and comic books more and more. After all, there are only so many combinations of cards. Role playing games provide infinite possibilities in the realm of entertainment, and comic books provide a continuous, non-depleting flow of adventure and action. You cannot discount the benefit that card games bring to the industry as a whole, and you cannot consider it a separate beast operating on its own volition.
I have always played role playing games, I got in and out of Magic the Gathering(tm) before it got popular, and I have kept all the Star Wars(r) toys I used to play with, and every magazine I have ever read. I am a hybrid hobbyist. Sure, I favor role playing games over the others, but heck, I run a local RPG publishing company. All of these hobbies are locked in an ever turning cycle of progression. When one does poorly, the other picks up the slack. They need each other. Period.