I agree whole heartedly with the comments made by 'Razor 42', and I despair that none of this will be even recognised by the 'tight cliques' as you put it, the 'private members club' as I call them. They are happy with things as they stand and why not, they dominate every aspect of this site, I would question if they spend the most money on this site though.

Renderosity as it is now reminds me very much of a British company 'Games Workshop' about 30 years ago, some of you no doubt have heard of it. It produced by far the finest gaming figures in the world, at the time and had retail outlets throughout the UK. It was set up and owned by two of it's own figure designers, who were treated like gods by the hobby community, the products were loved by the wargaming community and they produced their own in-house magazine.

The problem was the company was almost broke. The retail outlets were inhabited by the 'real' gamers, and the company encouraged them to hang around the stores playing games and painting figures, which meant that newbies were bullied out of the stores, and parents would never go into the stores with their children, because they were populated by, as they saw it, a bunch of weirdo's.

Anyone who dared to suggest a new range of figures, or even painted their own figures other than that shown in the magazines were branded 'heratics' or were just brushed off as not 'real' gamers.

 To cut a long story short, the two, god like, owners decided to sell out and the company went into new ownership. Within a decade the company was a multi million global force with interests in PC and consul games, producing films and remaining the world leader in figure design and sales. How did they achieve this? Well by putting their whole emphasis on bringing new people into the hobby, that was the priority of every section of the company. An order was issued to clear all the retail stores of the 'real' hobbyists, because it was realised they didn't purchase much anyway, just used the facilities. Gaming boards were set up in the stores purely for staff to show new customers how the games worked, painting classes were given in the stores to encourage newbies to paint their own figures, and direction and advice was given so the newbies didn't become discouraged in their new hobby.

How do I know this, well I was once part of the new regime in 'Games Workshop', now I run a company of my own, not related to either 'Games Workshop' or Renderosity, this is just my hobby, but the same principles apply to any hobby based industry, if you don't nurture the future you will soon be something of the past.  

 

 

That expresses the issue very well.