The notion that the State of Play in the Futures Field (SoPiFF) was a topic worth considering emerged from a conversation with Sesh Velamoor, Director of the Seattle-based Foundation for the Future (FFF), at a 2006 conference at Tamkang University in Taiwan. It posed the question "has futurism failed?" and suggested, among other things that, in the US at least, futures-related activities had perhaps peaked as early as 1980. This conclusion seemed worth investigating further. Four of the papers here provide overviews of the methods, results and implications of the project.