May I offer my two penneth. I was born in 1959, UK. Growing up I constantly heard stories from people who had participated in WW2. My Grandfather was evacuated at Dunkirk, you can imagine stories he told at Christmas. Near my school there was a junk shop filled with old gas masks, steel helmets, military clothing. On beach holidays next to the North Sea we played in concrete bunkers and ran around tank traps. You could even take a trip from the beach out to sea in a genuine DUKW amphibious vehicle. My weekly comic was Hotspur which had WW2 heroic stories. And Airfix were producing very cheap 1/72 scale military figures and kits of WW2 vehicles. All of this fed into a young boys imagination of war. But how did this turn to gaming. For me it was watching the film Red Badge of Courage and other big war films, but I think RBC was probably the most influential. Airfix produced a good range of ACW figures and I started playing with the figures and I copied the war scenes from the film. As I got older this turned into proper wargaming which I still do today. I have 2 sons and neither play TT wargames and they were brought up around wargames and wargaming.
I was born two years later, my brother a year and a half after that. We didn't have to paraphernalia of war around in Michigan, but war movies were common, veterans, etc. So we played TT wargames. No children to refer to; I think many of the younger TT wargamers are children of TT wargamers.
I think the overall number of tabletop war games, board games, role playing games and most of all - computer games has grown massively since the 1980s. As the number of ‘channels’ increase however, the viewer numbers for any individual channel decreases.
Agreed! How many copies did Hearts of Iron sell?? That's a wargame, even if a lot of the elements are out of wack - conquer Eurasia starting off as Bulgaria? I don't think that would be possible. (sarcasm) But computer games have a immediate gratification element that boardgames don't. My first wargame was AH's 1914 - which, when I look back at it, was a dreadful slog of a game.
I think the one key factor not mentioned, is the lack of appreciation for history in younger generations. Wargaming and history go hand in hand. I've never met a wargamer who had little or no interest in history. A deep interest in history is something all wargamers have in common.
In the 60' and 70' there was many westerns and war movies and TV series. And Vietnam was the "living room war", televised every day to the whole family gathered around the familial only TV. Also, we had relatives who were veterans of WW2 or Korea. That may have contributed to the awareness and interest in history. History courses where centered around battles whose heroes where kings and generals. Nowadays history courses are more comprehensive, including the evolution of societies, ideas, techniques, economy.
@@nicolasi1844 You make some good points. I'm also thinking, there's so much more competition for our time now a days with what is available on internet vs what the "wargaming generation" had when we were growing up. The same can be said about the plastic modeling hobby. Kids of today choose to have instant gratification rather than spending hours on playing a wargame or building a plastic model.
Well, if by 'wargames' we mean here several sheets of small counters which need to be clipped, a hex map and 40+ pages rulebook, then I would ask how on Earth were they popular in the first place? And would bet, the reason was, there was really nothing else available, for I remember playing them too. Nowadays, we've sold more copies of Hannibal & Hamilcar than two earlier editions of Hannibal combined and sold the print run in a year. I expect the Successors to follow suit. Ah, yes, and U-boot is 'not a wargame' because it is a worker placement. The very idea that the wargame must be hex and counter (or wargame is defined by hex and counter) makes wargames popularity plummeting.
Well I would say now video games are more competitive than ever, so I don't see how competiton does not sell. I would say you are focusing on a wargamers perspective, ratcher than a person who is looking to spend some quality time. First of all- wargames take a whole day and you can have only two people playing. So you cannot play them in a group of frinds like you can a role play game or euro board game. Second- most wargames did not addapt and are uninviting. If someonwe will want to get into tabletop gaming for the first time and you put a euro board game with colorful artwork that instantly give you the theme and help you to read what is happening and then you show him a wargame that is just a black and white map with tons of counters that just have NATO unit symbols on them, you think somebody will decide to go with the wargame? That's why transition games are popular- more people play Commands and Colors than SPQR. That's because it is accesible. But at some point a person who got hooked on Commands and Colors would want more realism and deep mechanics and then they could be persuaded to pick up SPQR. So the reason why wargame boardgames are a niche hobby is because they are deaigned to be a niche hobby. Nothing wrong with that, but blaming the zeitgeist or someones ego that they don't want to play is missing the point in my opinion.
Im 62. I had at least 30 or more Avalon Hill wargames. It has been sad to watch this decline, and very close to total demise of this genre. Lately, I decided to get back into table top games, and noticed how difficult it is to find military history type wargames. Even when you think you find one, lo and behold, it has some fantasy or mythical element injected into it. Since then, I have undertaken to designing a couple of my own, using parts of other games, miniatures, rule sets and images to create my board...anything I can find. This has been a challenge, but the process of doing this has been very gratifying, and interesting!. I surely regret getting rid of my old collection, but glad to see some embers of a great fire still burning
Some companies specialize in military history board games" Worthington, Compass, to a lesser extent GMT. History has become something people wish rather than reality.
@@LewisPulsipher Hey, Thanks! I never heard of Worthington....just ordered a game from them. Basically, I don"t want to go back to the cardboard counter days. Too old! But I am looking at anything with miniatures, (and begrudgingly, wooden blocks). I have heard of Compass games. Also..did'nt you design a game? I have it.."Doomstar"?
@@gowensbach2998 Yes, I designed Doomstar. Originally a board game. Cardboard counters are OK if they're an inch or more in size, but I prefer blocks most of the time, for the hidden info.
@@LewisPulsipher Doomstar kind of a stratego in space game, but with a bit more maneuvering and planning. In the later years of Avalon Hill, they had those bigger counters Ioved, like in Storm over Arnhem, and stand up counters like n Hannibal vs Rome. I loved Rommel in the Desert with the wood blocks. Ive been searching for some generic plastic minis of ancient/classical warfare without success. I someone could just make some like they did with Risk Europe, that would be great. Sadly, ancient warfare is not popular enough, so the best I have are wood bits for troops (sigh)
As an ex wargames manufacturer, i retired 5 years ago, it is a shock at what has happened to my hobby, a hobby i first came across in the early 1970's while in the army. The reason i would give for the UK is manufacturing greed. I can see it so easily, the wargames punter is being ripped off something cronic, but the few that are still in the hobby seem to be happy to be ripped off, maybe they do not know they are being ripped off.
Your market is dominated by a company that is/has been one of the worst at shitting on their customers: "Games Workshop" but do not judge the entire state of the hobby by this one organization (that does not/barely produces "board games" at all btw).
I wish I had the time to explain why I disagree with this opinion, particularly the "fragile ego" of our youth. Perhaps later I will elaborate, but I believe it is illustrative to examine the sales figures of such highly competitive games like Magic the Gathering, Star Wars X-Wing & Warhammer 40K; and perhaps the continued presence of competitive sports in schools.
Le sigh...it wouldn't be worth your effort -- anyone willing to take the time to string together this many senseless tropes wouldn't listen to you in any case...
We'd assume that "Dr. P" would have some direct sources to back his claims besides passing mention of a dissertation. To me, this seems more like an old man resenting younger generations for showing less interest in his hobby.
@@TheLimenyo The typical reaction of young people, who didn't live through an era and have no clue about it, to something they don't like is "old man complaining". I hope that comforts you.
Subject-matter has been exhausted. For example, how many Bulge games do you need? If you were to design one, how would you make it appeal to people, when there are over a dozen Bulge games out there? Also, I agree on the generational issue. Younger people don't have the attention span. Computer games don't usually require as much attention to learn a game. The computer does all of the "management", so you don't have to figure out how to move, it is highlighted on the computer screen.
Not sure how much exhaustion of subject matter applies, as long as someone finds a new way to model the subject. But saturation is a problem throughout the game hobby, with so many titles being published. Even older folks are less likely to play long games than in the distant past. There are certainly people who won't start a game that's expected to last more than an hour, but there are lots of short wargames now.
Semantic difference here: "wargame" usually refers to a boardgame in the USA, and to a miniatures game in the UK. I forget this sometimes. I talked here about boardgames, not minis.
On the bright side, due to the publication industry opening up, we have more to choose from than ever. Although Avalon Hill, SPI, GDW, TSR and others are long gone, we now have GMT, Compass, MMP, Decision, and many many more. One thing that NEVER changes is that we have people predicting the end of wargaming all the time. Not gonna happen. Not until it is as easy to program a computer as it is to produce a wargame. In the meantime, I enjoy both. Blood Reef Tarawa is on the table, and Steam's Lunar New Years sale just started...
Never heard anyone predict the end of it. There will always be people interested in games and in history. But as the title says, wargame have plummeted in popularity. Take note, with Unity it has become a lot easier to program a game than it was even 10 years ago.
Have been a wargamer since 1977. There was less games in the 1970s and 80s. Half a dozen titles put out each year. Most were solid playable games. Today there are hundreds of titles on a multitude of subjects. Overall the wargaming consumer has a far greater number of options and topics to game. Some of my favorite games are on specific titles such as the Taipei rebellion and the seven years war. They are far superior to the generic titles were 100, 000 titles were sold.
@@LewisPulsipher Very true. Wargaming used to be a casual hobby that appealed to a much wider audience. The old Stalingrad game and Alexander the Great game appealed to people had a general interest in historical gaming. They were easy games to learn but one could get to be an expert player after numerous game plays. Today there are some games like this but many that are very complex and not very appealing or inviting. Wargaming has become a niche very specific hobby. I do agree with your reasons why wargaming is in decline and the same thing is happening for the same reasons in other hobbies. Take for example wargaming models. The old plastic airfix tanks and planes used to be everywhere from hobby shops, department stores and discount stores. They sold millions of tiger tanks and spitfire models. I knew kids who had massive collections of these airfix models and the 172 scale soldiers. Today few kids make models for the very reasons about wargames. Also consider the decline of the local hobby shop. I live in a community that had about 500,000 people in it in the 1970s . It had 7 really good hobby stores that had wargames and miniatures as well as plastic models. They typically had all the old avalon hill tittles as well as many SPI. Today the same city is over 1 million and has zero hobby stores selling wargames. Three sell miniatures but specialize in warhammer and fantasy gaming. They illustrate the changing nature of gaming. So in a city of 1 million i have to purchase games from online stores. Now there seems to be thousands of titles available but it is different then seeing the product in a shop. Great topic to discuss.
@@mollytyson1169 Exactly. A reason for lack of appeal of so many wargames might be that they are often puzzles rather than games, that is, there is a "solution" which forces the play to whatever happened in history. I prefer games, which do not have solutions (dominant strategies). But many of the old SPI games were puzzles, so who knows?
Believe it or not but I have been spending the last few days re-working an old wargame my friends and I created for ourselves back in 1985 when we were 14. We actually went from RPGs to Wargames, kind of like the reverse of D&D. I think the defining point was your last one, the AD&D Battlesystem wasn't too complex for us to grasp, but like reading a Sally Forth comic strip it just seemed like far more work than it was worth. What we created was a fun and fast moving mass-combat system. I have since changed a lot about it, and I think that the hard part of designing a wargame is self-restraint. It is so amazingly easy to go over-board and create too much, even moreso than with an RPG. I'm not a wargaming aficionado. I'm really just doing this because I need to do something different from what I have been doing, but from what I have seen so far - as you said - the problem lies in culture, complexity, and a definite lack of immediate gratification.
Went overboard more in a wargame than RPGs? I suppose RPGs are expected to have lots of detail, whereas boardgames are not, so it's easier to go over the line. Wargame afficionados (ghetto-dwellers) are likely to either not see or ignore the limitations of old-time wargames. I once made a mass-combat system for D&D, more than 20K words. Never finished; someday perhaps it will see the light.
I disagree with your analysis...the wargame hobby is more vibrant and alive now than it ever was when I was a kid (I'm 56)..There are more game manufacturers and higher quality games now than there ever was in the 70's and 80's...I think you dont take into account that a lot of wargaming is done virtually.......The whole "Wargaming is dying" schtick has been going on since the 90's...and maybe even earlier...they used to say "Well, when computers are more popular, wargames are gonna disappear cause its easier to play on computer"...and then when the Magic game came out and CCG;s were all over the place...everyone was like "Oh, wargames are dead cause everyone plays CCG's now". The real thing here is that we are a niche hobby...will always be a niche hobby and no matter how popular, it will be a small segment of the hobby base. Wargaming isn't dying...it's just changing like it has been doing since the 70's.
I haven't said it is or isn't vibrant, of course. Nor would I use the number of manufacturers or the quality of games to measure *popularity*. I talked about popularity, the number of people who play, or who are interested in trying wargames. That has plummeted.
@@LewisPulsipher Well, agian, SPI and Avalon hill used to print games on a massive scale...certainly much more than today...but a lot of the games would end up on shelves in book stores, or sitting on shelves in other stores waiting to be bought. SPI and Avalon hill both went out of buisness cause they would print way to many games that werent being bought. I don't know Lewis..not trying to be a jerk, I just think we are in the golden age now...a lot of gamers look back at the 70's and say it was a golden era for wargaming..and yeah, if you like rushed crap that all used the same system (Blue and Grey for an example) with misligned counters....If you are just talking numbers then..yes I guess that they did print and sale more back then...but we didnt have the distractions we have nowadays....PC's/ TV with more than 3 channels/ all sorts of social Apps... In some ways we grew up in more simple times....and if SPI and Avalon hill had the same competition with all the crap kids can do now, they would have never been able to print out the massive numbers they did. I really believe the Wargame Industry is much more healthy now than its ever been..and the games are much better quality. I just hate the whole "Wargaming is Dying Shtick"...which I'm not saying your saying that....not trying to argue...just I think the world has changed significantly and of course, kids can play on an IPAD/ Console/PC...they arent gonna be picking up a 50 page rulebook and play a wargame...It's a hobby for middle aged folks.....
And agian after reading my long ass post, I'm not really adressing your points am I?...LOL.....I did touch on some of it..I think kids are just way too distracted by so much other stuff....PC games are amazing today...and when I was 12 or 13 (When I started to wargame) if I could have played a game like they have now, or sat down and read a 30 page rule book to play a war game...I would have played PC for sure. Also, a lot of Euro games have far less rules...and are more family oriented.....Wargaming is a niche brother...thats just something we are always going to be. :)
@@lonl123 Isn't what you're saying the point? I'm not trying to blame anyone or anything, I just want to understand reality. And even with small print runs, currently produced games end up being drastically discounted in many cases, more than I remember AH and SPI discounts. AH died in great degree because of mismanagement.
@@LewisPulsipher Yeah...discounted in the P500 sense of course..but games are super expensive now....even with inflation games are ridiculusly expensive...back in the spi days, I could buy a mini game or magazine game for like what $5 - $8?, now you are easily going to spend at least 30 or 40 dollars just for a mini game and anywhere from $60-$100+ for a full boxed game. (There are exceptions of course), but yeah...I think thats part of it too, games are expensive as all get out, and cuts off a lot of younger folks from buying them. Though, the argument could be made, Warhammer 40k is stupidly expensive but it sells like hot cakes to 13 or 14 years old (Where the hell do they get there money?).....so, maybe I misunderstood what you were getting at...but I think to market wargames to kids, we need to come out with smaller less expensive starter games...maybe make them sci fi or fantasy with cool art, and I bet we would get some more interested. The problem with that is that simple games mostly are not wanted by "Grognards"..we want the 40+ page ruleboks aith a 1,000 counters...so...It's a difficult subject.
Here is a question: Define Wargame. Was the old Castle Wolfenstein a wargame? Call of Duty? Is X-Wing miniatures a wargame? Does it have to have a paper hex map and cardboard counters with Nato Symbols? CRTs? Depending on how you define a wargame, the answer changes. Maybe it's not so much that wargaming has died but maybe it is morphed into different forms. I mean that changes over time with all products right? Compare pop music in the 50s to pop music in the 70s. Compare that with today. It's still the same industry and product: bands, music, concerts and albums. Very different though.
Historical miniatures war games are dying out as: They never taught real history, we're always cursed with a fatal counterfactual element which has gone to outright fantasy The current published games are throwbacks to miniatures games of thirty and more years ago. I ought to know because I was there at the earliest conventions, rubbed shoulders with Jim Dunnigan, Frank Chadwick, Jean Lochet, Paddy Griffith and others whose work and games are mostly becoming lost as there never has been any archive! And it's also that I, for one,am tired of games that are so badly written as to be works in progress And then there's this. At Pacificon in 1973,I encountered a young African American man dressed in a German WW2 uniform And it hasn't gotten any better
Hi Professor Pulsipher, just wondering what your thoughts are on modern games that are basically wargames with a fantasy flavor like Warhammer, etc. It seems like it's pretty popular, though maybe not as much as the overall genre was years ago.
I get mixed signals about this. Some publishers say fantasy games don't sell, others say they do. Most of the games are much closer to avatar games than the typical historical wargame, and that may be a reason for their relative popularity. They also appeal to video gamers; even most of the supposedly historically-based video games are closer to fantasy than to reality. The ones intended to be "realistic" sell poorly just as the tabletops do. It's an Age where so many people have lost touch with how reality works, believe in magic, want to hide from ugliness of the past, and so forth. Historical games just don't appeal. Warhammer in particular sells lots of miniatures, and fantasy minis can be much more interesting to look at and to paint, with more variety, than any historical minis.
Do you by and chance, have a copy of the two papers by Rex Martin or any contact information? It looks like the papers are available but only directly from the university in paper form: PAPER: Playing to Win: The Business of Videogames" Dissertation: "Cardboard Warriors: A Cultural History of American Wargaming, 1958-1998.
Sorry, Louis, I do not. All doctoral dissertations from US universities are available online (often at a cost). Used to be University Microfilms, but now that we have PDFs and such, I'm not sure who's in charge of it.
Dr. Pulsipher, Thank you so much for posting this. It is a fascinating question. One wargamers should spend more time pondering and discussing. You raise many great points and issues. I agree with you. I see all those trends too. On the other hand, I start seeing exceptions…. Finding 1 exception out of 100 trials does not disprove a theory. I have 3 millennial sons. I’ve been talking with them about this. The more we talk and think about this, the more exceptions we find. Here me out. :) 1. Too complicated. I see fantasy, rpg and euro games growing in complexity, just like Wargaming did. There are many examples where millennials play very complicated rules. Also, as pointed out here, there are now many simple wargames available to play now. They still don’t play them. 2. Too long. How many hours do they spend playing video games? Look at the attention span required to finally get through a difficult level! They don’t seem to have a problem with this. There are also many fast playing wargames out now too. 3. Too violent. They want to play peace games not war. Have you seen the level of violence in most video games? This doesn’t seem to be an issue for them. 4. Somebody raised a good point here. They don’t want to play the ‘Nazi’ or ‘Confederate’. That’s evil. I get the sentiment. I’m sure some might feel a twinge of awkwardness but still, I see many millennials that have no problem with this. They play Nazis in video games with no problem. They fight for an evil emperor of the dark side in Star Wars games. They play as evil wizards commanding armies of undead monsters to slaughter all the good people. They play GTA. A drug dealing, pimp that robs, steals and kills people for fun. No problem with playing ‘evil’. 5. Too much direct competition. I do see that millennials tend to prefer cooperation over competition in zero sum games. True, but I also see them playing lots of other games with direct competition. Also, there are many wargames now that are more cooperative based. They still don’t play them. 6. Proximity. I really like the thoughts and arguments posed here for this. Boomers grew up watching war movies on TV. There were lots of Hobby Stores with models of tanks, planes, ships and soldiers. Later games with all that stuff. It was around and seen a lot. Lots of exposure. Familiarity. I see lots of strength and merit in this argument. What have millenials seen in movies? Pirates. Superheros. Horror movies. Fantasy battles with magic. Gangsters and thugs. Ok, well that fits. I see lots of games on these topics. There is no local, neighborhood hobby store anymore. Sure but there is the internet and the kids know how to use it. There are hundreds of virtual ‘hobby stores’ at their finger tips every minute of the day. People just shop differently now. They can easily search for and find wargames to buy online if and when they want. It is out there. It is in front of them. They still don’t buy. Why not?
GStates yes on schools with chess clubs, no with people playing on the street. but i suppose arizona isnt exactly known for its nice "streetgoing" weather
@@LewisPulsipher Roger that. But to keep it going, to pass it on, it needs to adapt. I'm a hunter and we are having the same thing. In fact the average age of the bowhunter here in NC is 49-50.
I think the popularity of Fantasy and scifi wargaming is something you're overlooking. Especially in youth and the skirmish wargaming scene the hobby is really expanding among youth. I'll also note I think sometimes people mistake disillusion with history for disinterest in history. By and large the historical content presented in my millennial primary schooling education as largely pro nationalist and largely omitted or misrepresented American atrocities from native American genocide to rationalizing slavery to omitting things like the Decimation of Tulsa and and so on. Myself and many others have a deep fascination and knowledge base of history but for me it's not a fun beer and pretzels game. I have difficulty laughing and enjoying my time throwing away Somali lives during a black hawk down game knowing the sociopolitical and humanitarian context of those events. I think for many like myself. it's easier to engage for some of us younger wargamers when there is a degree of separation from the horror of war. In scifi or fantasy setting one can pull from historical context or inspiration but without giving me the stomach churn I sometimes get in some historical games. This isnt to say historical gaming is wrong in any way, I just personally don't get the enjoyment from it others really seem to. Though I think perhaps that Degree of seperation can sometimes be achieved from larger scale or more abstracted games. Im speaking from one experience of course but In many of my peers there's a jaded distaste for the military indutrial complex that makes it difficult to make real world conflict as an afternoon hobby enjoyable. Hence the raising interest in Scifi, fantasy, and alt history settings.
While I personally really like fantasy and SF wargames, and like to design them, typical wargamers often do not care for them. They aren't put off by the history, they are more or less energized by it. Perhaps because my PhD is in military history, I find historical commercial wargames to have little to do with actual history, except at very grand strategic levels. So it may be that interest in wargames will gradually become disconnected from interest in history. Hasn't happened yet, though.
@@LewisPulsipher I think you’d also do well to look at the pipelines for how people get into wargaming in general. Juggernauts like Games workshop and other fantasy and Sci-fi manufacturers actively work to present a model wherein one is identifying with a chosen faction and telling the story of “your” plastic soldiers and the like. A common difference I see in historical gaming is there’s less emphasis on identifying with the ideology/theme of a given force necessarily. I.E. someone may need to play as the Nazis or confederates though no one (hopefully) is actively identifying with these historical ideologies. It’s not everyone obviously but I think beyond just generally blaming youth for being less interested in the way the hobby was done in the 70s, I think you’d do well to consider who is getting youth into wargaming and how they are framing how one identifies with and interacts with the context the game pieces represent. The video does come off as a rad preachy about the youth just having inferior interests but I really think looking at those pipelines for hetttkng into historicals is important to this conversation. Say you’re 10 years old, outside of a parent, who’s actually getting wargaming in front of you and teaching you how to engage in it? Local game shops are a crucial hub in many areas and I think looking at how or why that’s different today than ~40 years ago is an important point that’s left unexplored
@@flacateracotta4553 Certainly, we've gone from wargames being a common hobby for many teens, to wargames being more or less a ghetto. So people have much less exposure to wargames. Yes, historical gamers don't much identify with a particular faction (many exceptions); I'm not sure what difference that makes. I think identifying with a avatar is a much stronger desire of younger players, than it was 40 years ago. "The natural" games for Millennials are avatar games (such as RPGs and many video games).
Thank you for your perspective and input here. What would you think of a wargame that is cooperative? So you and your friends say, each control a military force that lands on the beaches of Normandy. Your goal is to take out the evil Nazis, run by the game system. So like instead of Zombicide, you're killing Nazis. Does that sound like a game that would play well amongst you and your friends?
@@LewisPulsipher Good point. I'm an old wargamer like you. I don't like fantasy or sci fi. It's all just a bunch of made up junk. ?? What have I learned at the end of the game? How best to use elves and magic to kill an orc army? Ha ha ha! It's what students always love to throw at Algebra teachers: When will I ever use this in real life? What I like about 'real' games from history, is that I feel like I've learned some things that could be applicable in the real world someday. I learned a little something about what it takes to remove an evil police state from power. If nothing else, I've learned a little something from history. Some new insights.
A very good observation. One comment though: There are people who might not like luck in their games, and war games have more of it than the average Euro.
Depends on the game. Chess-Go-Checkers have no luck. But they are puzzles, and of course, many non-wargames amount to puzzles. Historically, it's true, there's a great deal of chance in war, much less than we see typically in wargames. And you need some uncertainty in games to avoid them being puzzles. There is (at least technically) no luck in the game Diplomacy. I have a space wargame prototype where the only luck is in Event Cards, and in the fact that it's for more than two players. More than two players introduces a great deal of uncertainty.
@@LewisPulsipher My favourite game is Starcraft : The Board game - Combat is card driven and it has some luck, but it's minimal. The only problem is that the battles take longer than the average roll a die see what happens. :) PS. That space themed game sounds interesting.
Kids are not taught to avoid competition, they are taught to cooperate to achieve a goal, that is not exactly the same thing. They still play many competitive computer or tabletop games, but they also like games including cooperation and competition at the same time. The survival of the fittest paradigm (inspired by Darwin work) has lost many feathers in the last decades. Researches have shown that in nature cooperation is often the way to survival. So teaching cooperation is not a bad thing.
Yes, co-operation is ideal; in practice I rarely play a game against someone else. Yet there are so many cases where students are not allowed to excel, where everyone gets a reward for participation, not for doing well, that competition is suppressed in many areas. Obviously those playing team sports (say) are still competing against the opponent.
I find it annoying when people blame younger generations, I think dwindling interest is mainly based on how good a game actually is look at warhammer a very popular wargame
Mate, Warhammer is the epitome of a miniatures hobby intended to exclude all else. GW even calls it "the Warhammer hobby" People play for the minis and the baroque storylines. They rarely play for the game itself (the game's not very good). And often they realize how much money they're wasting, and quit. It's not a suitable example of wargame popularity.
I came from video games, first RTS (Age of Empires, Starcraft), after that TBS (see Battle of Polytopia), now I tried to search their equivalent in boardgames. I know that equivalent of RTS is not possible in board games, but the equivalent of TBS is possible. The board game the most close of a TBS board game I found is Space Empires 4x made by GMT. I intend from now to spend more time playing a paper or cardboard based TBS (turn based strategy) than a computer based one, because I want to protect my eyes from retroeclaired screens while I play and while not working on computers, because I think I already spend too much time in front of the computer screens at job.
Sorry but I think most of this is largely unfounded and irrelevant. Almost all older forms of entertainment have declined in popularity due to the competition from newer forms. Books became less popular due to the advent of the theatre, which then became less popular because of competition from cinema movies, which might now be becoming less popular due to Netflix shows and UA-cam. Similarly, wargames have become less popular due to competition from video games. Video games offer more excitement for most people in a more accessible way. If RTSes had been around in the 70s, tabletop wargaming would not have been as popular back then as it was (as you also concur). Nothing to do with generations, culture, values in education, etc. If people nowadays would avoid 1vs1 confrontational games because it might threaten their ego if they lose, then why are games such as League of Legends massively popular, where competitive pressure is extremely high and you get flamed by your entire team (rather than just yourself) if you die? Why are roguelike games, where death is permanent, making a big comeback, if people are so loss-averse? Why are you calling this the age of simplification and the "easy button" when extremely hard games like Dark Souls are so popular and when heavy games like Frosthaven are grossing record sums on Kickstarter? Why do so many of my young friends play the Game of Thrones board game (a tough 6-hour affair full of battles and losses) if people nowadays "prefer 30 minute games"? By the way, I'm 27, and I got into tabletop wargames through the gateway of digital Twilight Struggle and online resources.
Wargames compared with other tabletop games are much less popular than in the past. That part has nothing to do with other forms of entertainment. Even in LoL, no one really loses, everyone gets more stuff. Some get it faster than others because they win more matches. Rogue-likes are not permanent death, if you know how to find the game file and save it. When the computer frequently aims your gun for you, the games have been simplified. One (or several) examples (Dark Souls) do not invalidate a generalization. Generalizations are about a large body of something, "no generalization is always true". There are almost always exceptions. Yes. you're 27, and like many people that age have no clue about the history of things, about how things were 25 or 40 or 50 years ago. And you assume that's all unfounded and irrelevant because you don't have a clue about it. I'm sure we won't agree.
@Lewis Pulsipher well the eurogame didn't really exist 40 years ago. So there is increased competition from eurogames i.e. another alternative form of entertainment, same point. There is the simple fact that many (most) people of my age haven't even seen a tabletop wargame in their lives. So why would, for instance, the fact that you lose things during these games be a reason why people don't play them, when they don't even know that, since they haven't even had the opportunity to try them? Seems much more likely that the fact that there are more accessible and (to most people) more exciting alternatives available, makes it so that people don't look further. The simplest explanation is usually the best by default. (Also as a sidenote, RTSes end quite literally with the destruction of the base you built up during the game, whenever you lose...) Theatres at some point were considered to be for the masses who were too daft to read books and wanted a 'simplified', more accessible form of entertainment. As someone with insight into history, you probably know that the sentiment of "we used to be more sophisticated and now everything is being dumbed down" is one that people have had at all times, and is caused by bias. Hesiod was complaining in 700BC that the 'frivolous youth of today' was way too 'impatient of restraint', I'm sure he would have agreed that they preferred only 30 minute games and didn't have the patience that his generation had... You as an older person also don't know directly how it was in the 1930s. Perhaps your generation was already much more conflict-avoidant and impatient than people back then, and that explains why the majority of people in your time didn't play wargames. Just to illustrate that whether you can say something about this has nothing to do with one's own age, but everything with robust socio-historical analysis.
Why did you have to bring my age and weight into the discussion??? I mean their age and weight, those other gamers you're talking about. Not my age and weight.
I disagree in all regards. Not only do I disagree as to "why" they are less popular; I put forth they are SUBSTANCIALLY MORE popular than they have EVER been in the past. If you want to use any for of measure by % or by shear volume I would put forth there are more "gamers" and more wargamers today than at any time in the past. Full disclosure, I started with miniatures and "Tractics" in 1971 and Avalon Hill's Panzer Leader a year later and just spent over $400 on hex games, most for resale.
This comment is astounding. I'm afraid we have no grounds for agreement, because to me you don't have a clue about the state of things. Though there are certainly more gamers, there are far fewer wargamers. Have you been to a convention that is traditionally for wargamers lately? The wargamers are mostly old folks, and more people are playing the non-wargames now than the wargames - even at those traditionally wargame cons. (Wargames = board games, not minis, though I suspect the situation is similar.)
@@LewisPulsipher You fail to consider the conventions are insanely larger and until COVID more frequent thus the total "number of wargamers" is larger. Sales of "historical games" would be a clear measure. Are you seriously going to tell me Avalon Hill and SPI sold more in (real) $$ back in 1975 than Decision Games, Conflict Games and the other 2 dozen companies I can name?
@@GrumblingGrognard Have you been to GenCon, say? Wargames simply aren't present in any significant way. Many wargame manufacturers don't even exhibit, if they attend at all. I suspect Spiel in Germany is the same. Or have you been to cons with roots in board wargames, such as PrezCon and WBC? They have not grown significantly in ages. And the majority of tournament participants are now in non-wargames. I'd prefer units to dollars, as buyers now are late in life and often have lots of disposable income. Wargames now have print runs of 500, 750, 1000, rarely more. Avalon Hill sold 75k to six figures of most titles (though even their best seller was a non-wargame).
@@LewisPulsipher LOL ...and did you go to GENCON back in the 70s and 80s when the ENTIRE crowd was tiny fraction of what it is today? For God's sake people: DO THE MATH. If the conventions are larger (and they are so, SO much larger today then they were back in the 70s-80s!) and are happening twice as often (or more when COVID is not around -- plus the shitloads of regionals that did not exist beyond the local VFW halls gatherings "back in the day")... Then by ANY measure we have substantially more people playing historical war games in the 21st century then we EVER had prior...and with the internet it is infinitely easier to find each other (and I was one who REALLY HAD an ad in the back of Avalon Hill's General magazine back in the 80s and can prove it). AGAIN, just count the number of games SOLD. Show me any year where they sold more historical games. ...or how about just the number of "game companies" that are producing real product??? Again, more today on all accounts.
@@GrumblingGrognard Do you actually have any figures? Evidently not. I certainly don't know total sales of wargames. Number of titles doesn't matter. Moreover, you're conflating wargames with games of all kinds. Conventions today aren't about wargames (excepting PrezCon and WBC, and even there they are the minority). In the 60s and 70s they were about wargames. GenCon was small, because the entire idea of going to a game convention was brand new. Surely you've noticed that GenCon today is about story games, such as RPGs, and about non-games, such as SF writing and film, not about wargames.
One person's cynicism is another person's honest observations. In my case, from a retired teacher (who LIKED teaching and LIKED the students) of college and a few high school aged.
I'm also gonna note you managed to go that entire video without stopping to look at how or why Wargaming (through both sociatal means and cultural trends in wargaming clubs and shops) laregely rejected women from the hobby over the last 50 years or so. Even today it's still an issue that (some) people get very upset about acknowledging. While Im happy to hve a great community locally, I have yet to meet a single woman in wargaming that has not experienced a not insignificant degree of harassment or push away from the hobby. Not everyone is like that but it is a significant issue that's largely unaddressed when this topic comes up for discussion.
I think it’s a a dominantly male hobby, so having a women there is strange for them. They just like to play with their buddies in a game. I noticed a lot of women war gamers are more into the miniatures than the game itself. It’s like action figures and dolls for boys and girls, they’re both interested in “dolls”, just different types.
I see all these as influences and trends but I don’t see a smoking gun here. Ok, so then what i it? I’m not sure…. But pondering it this morning, it reminded me of something. As a kid, I remember the old folks (GI and Silent generations) playing Bridge, Canasta, Euchre and Bowling. Those were real popular back in the day. The Boomers came next. I don’t remember them doing that at all. How many Boomers joined a Bridge club? How many GenXers joined Bowling Leagues? ?? Why not? Because it’s not cool!! That’s what the old people played. You don’t want to be like your parents!! Kids want something new. Something exciting. Something fresh. GenX didn’t want to go bowling or play Bridge. They wanted to play Space Invaders, Asteroids and D&D! Just a thought and theory here. Maybe this more about generational trends. Millenials don’t want to play wargames because that’s what the old folks do. They want to play their games. Maybe they do play wargames. They just look so different now that we don’t recognize them as such. Warhammer & X-Wing miniatures look a lot like wargames to me. Two players, fighting against each other for domination. They have different ‘forces’ with different capabilities. They have to manipulate these things to achieve the best advantage -controlled by a detailed set of rules. That goes back to: definition of a wargame. Maybe our hobby hasn’t died. Maybe it’s just evolving.
You obviously haven't looked on social media where hundreds of thousands of people are talking about games with miniatures. If you just discuss boring, old fashioned old men twaddle like this, then yes it's dying. But no, the miniatures gaming hobby is bigger than ever.
Wargames died because Warhammer 40K and Magic The Gathering killed the distribution network that held the entire industry up. Dungeons & Dragons, Star Fleet Battles, and Avalon Hill games were the pillars that held up the industry. These games alone took up most of the store with their expansions or Avalon Hill's 40-year line of products. I was working in the board game industry when it collapsed, this is why wargames died. After 20 years of propping up the entire industry "The Big Three" of the hobbyist game industry were dethroned and the industry could not survive without them. Computer games didn't kill the hobbyist game industry, Warhammer & MtG did. Wargames didn't move into the computer game industry because they weren't interested in hiring the real game designers when they came along. They were certain that they were game designers, and they weren't. So the end result today is that the computer game industry makes games that are like Candyland compared to the generations who came before them. They have "lost the knowledge" of game design and started over. They are about 250 years behind us now. Signed, Kavik Kang - Inventor of "The Matrix"
I'm leery of reasoning based on distribution networks. While they are important, what really matters is what the buying public wants. If they want something bad enough, distribution will be arranged. So I have to think that the public wanted WH40K and especially MtG more than ghetto wargames. The computer industry produces resource management games and calls them wargames, because there's fighting involved. You may be right that they didn't hire wargame designers, but always keep in mind, losing is part of tabletop wargames, but rarely part of video "wargames".
I have drafted a lengthy article discussing this (now up to ten reasons), but as I'm likely to submit to a magazine, it will be a long time before it comes to light. Sigh.
"Dying" is much closer to reality than "thriving". As I said, you seem to be in cloud-cuckoo-land about this. I don't set the font on the website, the browser does. So it uses a different font on my Mozilla than on Chrome and Opera. Looks perfectly readable. Perhaps the problem is on your computer.
May I offer my two penneth. I was born in 1959, UK. Growing up I constantly heard stories from people who had participated in WW2. My Grandfather was evacuated at Dunkirk, you can imagine stories he told at Christmas. Near my school there was a junk shop filled with old gas masks, steel helmets, military clothing. On beach holidays next to the North Sea we played in concrete bunkers and ran around tank traps. You could even take a trip from the beach out to sea in a genuine DUKW amphibious vehicle. My weekly comic was Hotspur which had WW2 heroic stories. And Airfix were producing very cheap 1/72 scale military figures and kits of WW2 vehicles. All of this fed into a young boys imagination of war. But how did this turn to gaming. For me it was watching the film Red Badge of Courage and other big war films, but I think RBC was probably the most influential. Airfix produced a good range of ACW figures and I started playing with the figures and I copied the war scenes from the film. As I got older this turned into proper wargaming which I still do today. I have 2 sons and neither play TT wargames and they were brought up around wargames and wargaming.
I was born two years later, my brother a year and a half after that. We didn't have to paraphernalia of war around in Michigan, but war movies were common, veterans, etc. So we played TT wargames. No children to refer to; I think many of the younger TT wargamers are children of TT wargamers.
I think the overall number of tabletop war games, board games, role playing games and most of all - computer games has grown massively since the 1980s. As the number of ‘channels’ increase however, the viewer numbers for any individual channel decreases.
Agreed! How many copies did Hearts of Iron sell?? That's a wargame, even if a lot of the elements are out of wack - conquer Eurasia starting off as Bulgaria? I don't think that would be possible. (sarcasm) But computer games have a immediate gratification element that boardgames don't. My first wargame was AH's 1914 - which, when I look back at it, was a dreadful slog of a game.
@@bertilliozephyrsgate6196 Hearts of Iron is a resource management game. If you succeed in that, the war becomes trivial.
I think the one key factor not mentioned, is the lack of appreciation for history in younger generations. Wargaming and history go hand in hand. I've never met a wargamer who had little or no interest in history. A deep interest in history is something all wargamers have in common.
I didn't Mention that? I certainly agree.
In the 60' and 70' there was many westerns and war movies and TV series. And Vietnam was the "living room war", televised every day to the whole family gathered around the familial only TV. Also, we had relatives who were veterans of WW2 or Korea. That may have contributed to the awareness and interest in history. History courses where centered around battles whose heroes where kings and generals. Nowadays history courses are more comprehensive, including the evolution of societies, ideas, techniques, economy.
@@nicolasi1844 You make some good points. I'm also thinking, there's so much more competition for our time now a days with what is available on internet vs what the "wargaming generation" had when we were growing up. The same can be said about the plastic modeling hobby. Kids of today choose to have instant gratification rather than spending hours on playing a wargame or building a plastic model.
Absolutely spot on
Schools don't even teach history anymore. Indoctrination happens.
Well, if by 'wargames' we mean here several sheets of small counters which need to be clipped, a hex map and 40+ pages rulebook, then I would ask how on Earth were they popular in the first place? And would bet, the reason was, there was really nothing else available, for I remember playing them too. Nowadays, we've sold more copies of Hannibal & Hamilcar than two earlier editions of Hannibal combined and sold the print run in a year. I expect the Successors to follow suit. Ah, yes, and U-boot is 'not a wargame' because it is a worker placement. The very idea that the wargame must be hex and counter (or wargame is defined by hex and counter) makes wargames popularity plummeting.
Yes, hex and counter is "the wargames ghetto" to me. And ruins perceptions.
Well I would say now video games are more competitive than ever, so I don't see how competiton does not sell. I would say you are focusing on a wargamers perspective, ratcher than a person who is looking to spend some quality time. First of all- wargames take a whole day and you can have only two people playing. So you cannot play them in a group of frinds like you can a role play game or euro board game. Second- most wargames did not addapt and are uninviting. If someonwe will want to get into tabletop gaming for the first time and you put a euro board game with colorful artwork that instantly give you the theme and help you to read what is happening and then you show him a wargame that is just a black and white map with tons of counters that just have NATO unit symbols on them, you think somebody will decide to go with the wargame? That's why transition games are popular- more people play Commands and Colors than SPQR. That's because it is accesible. But at some point a person who got hooked on Commands and Colors would want more realism and deep mechanics and then they could be persuaded to pick up SPQR. So the reason why wargame boardgames are a niche hobby is because they are deaigned to be a niche hobby. Nothing wrong with that, but blaming the zeitgeist or someones ego that they don't want to play is missing the point in my opinion.
Im 62. I had at least 30 or more Avalon Hill wargames. It has been sad to watch this decline, and very close to total demise of this genre. Lately, I decided to get back into table top games, and noticed how difficult it is to find military history type wargames. Even when you think you find one, lo and behold, it has some fantasy or mythical element injected into it. Since then, I have undertaken to designing a couple of my own, using parts of other games, miniatures, rule sets and images to create my board...anything I can find. This has been a challenge, but the process of doing this has been very gratifying, and interesting!. I surely regret getting rid of my old collection, but glad to see some embers of a great fire still burning
Some companies specialize in military history board games" Worthington, Compass, to a lesser extent GMT.
History has become something people wish rather than reality.
@@LewisPulsipher have some of those now!
@@LewisPulsipher Hey, Thanks! I never heard of Worthington....just ordered a game from them. Basically, I don"t want to go back to the cardboard counter days. Too old! But I am looking at anything with miniatures, (and begrudgingly, wooden blocks). I have heard of Compass games. Also..did'nt you design a game? I have it.."Doomstar"?
@@gowensbach2998 Yes, I designed Doomstar. Originally a board game. Cardboard counters are OK if they're an inch or more in size, but I prefer blocks most of the time, for the hidden info.
@@LewisPulsipher Doomstar kind of a stratego in space game, but with a bit more maneuvering and planning. In the later years of Avalon Hill, they had those bigger counters Ioved, like in Storm over Arnhem, and stand up counters like n Hannibal vs Rome. I loved Rommel in the Desert with the wood blocks. Ive been searching for some generic plastic minis of ancient/classical warfare without success. I someone could just make some like they did with Risk Europe, that would be great. Sadly, ancient warfare is not popular enough, so the best I have are wood bits for troops (sigh)
As an ex wargames manufacturer, i retired 5 years ago, it is a shock at what has happened to my hobby, a hobby i first came across in the early 1970's while in the army. The reason i would give for the UK is manufacturing greed. I can see it so easily, the wargames punter is being ripped off something cronic, but the few that are still in the hobby seem to be happy to be ripped off, maybe they do not know they are being ripped off.
I thought miniatures were expensive years ago; now the prices look astronomical to me.
@@ColonelHoganStalag13 yes, GW is a major culprit. I suspect they rely heavily on teenagers.
Your market is dominated by a company that is/has been one of the worst at shitting on their customers: "Games Workshop" but do not judge the entire state of the hobby by this one organization (that does not/barely produces "board games" at all btw).
I wish I had the time to explain why I disagree with this opinion, particularly the "fragile ego" of our youth. Perhaps later I will elaborate, but I believe it is illustrative to examine the sales figures of such highly competitive games like Magic the Gathering, Star Wars X-Wing & Warhammer 40K; and perhaps the continued presence of competitive sports in schools.
Le sigh...it wouldn't be worth your effort -- anyone willing to take the time to string together this many senseless tropes wouldn't listen to you in any case...
We'd assume that "Dr. P" would have some direct sources to back his claims besides passing mention of a dissertation. To me, this seems more like an old man resenting younger generations for showing less interest in his hobby.
@@TheLimenyo The typical reaction of young people, who didn't live through an era and have no clue about it, to something they don't like is "old man complaining". I hope that comforts you.
Subject-matter has been exhausted. For example, how many Bulge games do you need? If you were to design one, how would you make it appeal to people, when there are over a dozen Bulge games out there?
Also, I agree on the generational issue. Younger people don't have the attention span. Computer games don't usually require as much attention to learn a game. The computer does all of the "management", so you don't have to figure out how to move, it is highlighted on the computer screen.
Not sure how much exhaustion of subject matter applies, as long as someone finds a new way to model the subject. But saturation is a problem throughout the game hobby, with so many titles being published.
Even older folks are less likely to play long games than in the distant past. There are certainly people who won't start a game that's expected to last more than an hour, but there are lots of short wargames now.
Have you been to a wargame show in Britain lately, lots of young people, lots of women, lots of visitors, lots of fun......
Semantic difference here: "wargame" usually refers to a boardgame in the USA, and to a miniatures game in the UK. I forget this sometimes. I talked here about boardgames, not minis.
Yes, sorry amigo, 👍🏼.
On the bright side, due to the publication industry opening up, we have more to choose from than ever. Although Avalon Hill, SPI, GDW, TSR and others are long gone, we now have GMT, Compass, MMP, Decision, and many many more. One thing that NEVER changes is that we have people predicting the end of wargaming all the time. Not gonna happen. Not until it is as easy to program a computer as it is to produce a wargame. In the meantime, I enjoy both. Blood Reef Tarawa is on the table, and Steam's Lunar New Years sale just started...
Never heard anyone predict the end of it. There will always be people interested in games and in history. But as the title says, wargame have plummeted in popularity.
Take note, with Unity it has become a lot easier to program a game than it was even 10 years ago.
Have been a wargamer since 1977. There was less games in the 1970s and 80s. Half a dozen titles put out each year. Most were solid playable games. Today there are hundreds of titles on a multitude of subjects. Overall the wargaming consumer has a far greater number of options and topics to game. Some of my favorite games are on specific titles such as the Taipei rebellion and the seven years war. They are far superior to the generic titles were 100, 000 titles were sold.
And yet, they and board wargames are much less popular, which is the question I addressed.
@@LewisPulsipher Very true. Wargaming used to be a casual hobby that appealed to a much wider audience. The old Stalingrad game and Alexander the Great game appealed to people had a general interest in historical gaming. They were easy games to learn but one could get to be an expert player after numerous game plays. Today there are some games like this but many that are very complex and not very appealing or inviting. Wargaming has become a niche very specific hobby. I do agree with your reasons why wargaming is in decline and the same thing is happening for the same reasons in other hobbies. Take for example wargaming models. The old plastic airfix tanks and planes used to be everywhere from hobby shops, department stores and discount stores. They sold millions of tiger tanks and spitfire models. I knew kids who had massive collections of these airfix models and the 172 scale soldiers. Today few kids make models for the very reasons about wargames. Also consider the decline of the local hobby shop. I live in a community that had about 500,000 people in it in the 1970s . It had 7 really good hobby stores that had wargames and miniatures as well as plastic models. They typically had all the old avalon hill tittles as well as many SPI. Today the same city is over 1 million and has zero hobby stores selling wargames. Three sell miniatures but specialize in warhammer and fantasy gaming. They illustrate the changing nature of gaming. So in a city of 1 million i have to purchase games from online stores. Now there seems to be thousands of titles available but it is different then seeing the product in a shop. Great topic to discuss.
@@mollytyson1169 Exactly. A reason for lack of appeal of so many wargames might be that they are often puzzles rather than games, that is, there is a "solution" which forces the play to whatever happened in history. I prefer games, which do not have solutions (dominant strategies). But many of the old SPI games were puzzles, so who knows?
Believe it or not but I have been spending the last few days re-working an old wargame my friends and I created for ourselves back in 1985 when we were 14. We actually went from RPGs to Wargames, kind of like the reverse of D&D.
I think the defining point was your last one, the AD&D Battlesystem wasn't too complex for us to grasp, but like reading a Sally Forth comic strip it just seemed like far more work than it was worth. What we created was a fun and fast moving mass-combat system. I have since changed a lot about it, and I think that the hard part of designing a wargame is self-restraint. It is so amazingly easy to go over-board and create too much, even moreso than with an RPG.
I'm not a wargaming aficionado. I'm really just doing this because I need to do something different from what I have been doing, but from what I have seen so far - as you said - the problem lies in culture, complexity, and a definite lack of immediate gratification.
Went overboard more in a wargame than RPGs? I suppose RPGs are expected to have lots of detail, whereas boardgames are not, so it's easier to go over the line.
Wargame afficionados (ghetto-dwellers) are likely to either not see or ignore the limitations of old-time wargames.
I once made a mass-combat system for D&D, more than 20K words. Never finished; someday perhaps it will see the light.
I disagree with your analysis...the wargame hobby is more vibrant and alive now than it ever was when I was a kid (I'm 56)..There are more game manufacturers and higher quality games now than there ever was in the 70's and 80's...I think you dont take into account that a lot of wargaming is done virtually.......The whole "Wargaming is dying" schtick has been going on since the 90's...and maybe even earlier...they used to say "Well, when computers are more popular, wargames are gonna disappear cause its easier to play on computer"...and then when the Magic game came out and CCG;s were all over the place...everyone was like "Oh, wargames are dead cause everyone plays CCG's now". The real thing here is that we are a niche hobby...will always be a niche hobby and no matter how popular, it will be a small segment of the hobby base. Wargaming isn't dying...it's just changing like it has been doing since the 70's.
I haven't said it is or isn't vibrant, of course. Nor would I use the number of manufacturers or the quality of games to measure *popularity*. I talked about popularity, the number of people who play, or who are interested in trying wargames. That has plummeted.
@@LewisPulsipher Well, agian, SPI and Avalon hill used to print games on a massive scale...certainly much more than today...but a lot of the games would end up on shelves in book stores, or sitting on shelves in other stores waiting to be bought. SPI and Avalon hill both went out of buisness cause they would print way to many games that werent being bought. I don't know Lewis..not trying to be a jerk, I just think we are in the golden age now...a lot of gamers look back at the 70's and say it was a golden era for wargaming..and yeah, if you like rushed crap that all used the same system (Blue and Grey for an example) with misligned counters....If you are just talking numbers then..yes I guess that they did print and sale more back then...but we didnt have the distractions we have nowadays....PC's/ TV with more than 3 channels/ all sorts of social Apps...
In some ways we grew up in more simple times....and if SPI and Avalon hill had the same competition with all the crap kids can do now, they would have never been able to print out the massive numbers they did. I really believe the Wargame Industry is much more healthy now than its ever been..and the games are much better quality. I just hate the whole "Wargaming is Dying Shtick"...which I'm not saying your saying that....not trying to argue...just I think the world has changed significantly and of course, kids can play on an IPAD/ Console/PC...they arent gonna be picking up a 50 page rulebook and play a wargame...It's a hobby for middle aged folks.....
And agian after reading my long ass post, I'm not really adressing your points am I?...LOL.....I did touch on some of it..I think kids are just way too distracted by so much other stuff....PC games are amazing today...and when I was 12 or 13 (When I started to wargame) if I could have played a game like they have now, or sat down and read a 30 page rule book to play a war game...I would have played PC for sure. Also, a lot of Euro games have far less rules...and are more family oriented.....Wargaming is a niche brother...thats just something we are always going to be. :)
@@lonl123 Isn't what you're saying the point? I'm not trying to blame anyone or anything, I just want to understand reality.
And even with small print runs, currently produced games end up being drastically discounted in many cases, more than I remember AH and SPI discounts.
AH died in great degree because of mismanagement.
@@LewisPulsipher Yeah...discounted in the P500 sense of course..but games are super expensive now....even with inflation games are ridiculusly expensive...back in the spi days, I could buy a mini game or magazine game for like what $5 - $8?, now you are easily going to spend at least 30 or 40 dollars just for a mini game and anywhere from $60-$100+ for a full boxed game. (There are exceptions of course), but yeah...I think thats part of it too, games are expensive as all get out, and cuts off a lot of younger folks from buying them. Though, the argument could be made, Warhammer 40k is stupidly expensive but it sells like hot cakes to 13 or 14 years old (Where the hell do they get there money?).....so, maybe I misunderstood what you were getting at...but I think to market wargames to kids, we need to come out with smaller less expensive starter games...maybe make them sci fi or fantasy with cool art, and I bet we would get some more interested. The problem with that is that simple games mostly are not wanted by "Grognards"..we want the 40+ page ruleboks aith a 1,000 counters...so...It's a difficult subject.
Here is a question: Define Wargame.
Was the old Castle Wolfenstein a wargame? Call of Duty?
Is X-Wing miniatures a wargame?
Does it have to have a paper hex map and cardboard counters with Nato Symbols? CRTs?
Depending on how you define a wargame, the answer changes. Maybe it's not so much that wargaming has died but maybe it is morphed into different forms.
I mean that changes over time with all products right? Compare pop music in the 50s to pop music in the 70s. Compare that with today. It's still the same industry and product: bands, music, concerts and albums. Very different though.
Historical miniatures war games are dying out as:
They never taught real history, we're always cursed with a fatal counterfactual element which has gone to outright fantasy
The current published games are throwbacks to miniatures games of thirty and more years ago. I ought to know because I was there at the earliest conventions, rubbed shoulders with Jim Dunnigan, Frank Chadwick, Jean Lochet, Paddy Griffith and others whose work and games are mostly becoming lost as there never has been any archive!
And it's also that I, for one,am tired of games that are so badly written as to be works in progress
And then there's this. At Pacificon in 1973,I encountered a young African American man dressed in a German WW2 uniform
And it hasn't gotten any better
Hi Professor Pulsipher, just wondering what your thoughts are on modern games that are basically wargames with a fantasy flavor like Warhammer, etc. It seems like it's pretty popular, though maybe not as much as the overall genre was years ago.
I get mixed signals about this. Some publishers say fantasy games don't sell, others say they do. Most of the games are much closer to avatar games than the typical historical wargame, and that may be a reason for their relative popularity. They also appeal to video gamers; even most of the supposedly historically-based video games are closer to fantasy than to reality. The ones intended to be "realistic" sell poorly just as the tabletops do.
It's an Age where so many people have lost touch with how reality works, believe in magic, want to hide from ugliness of the past, and so forth. Historical games just don't appeal.
Warhammer in particular sells lots of miniatures, and fantasy minis can be much more interesting to look at and to paint, with more variety, than any historical minis.
Do you by and chance, have a copy of the two papers by Rex Martin or any contact information?
It looks like the papers are available but only directly from the university in paper form:
PAPER: Playing to Win: The Business of Videogames"
Dissertation: "Cardboard Warriors: A Cultural History of American Wargaming, 1958-1998.
Sorry, Louis, I do not. All doctoral dissertations from US universities are
available online (often at a cost). Used to be University Microfilms, but now that we have PDFs and such, I'm not sure who's in charge of it.
Dr. Pulsipher,
Thank you so much for posting this. It is a fascinating question. One wargamers should spend more time pondering and discussing. You raise many great points and issues. I agree with you. I see all those trends too.
On the other hand, I start seeing exceptions…. Finding 1 exception out of 100 trials does not disprove a theory. I have 3 millennial sons. I’ve been talking with them about this. The more we talk and think about this, the more exceptions we find. Here me out. :)
1. Too complicated. I see fantasy, rpg and euro games growing in complexity, just like Wargaming did. There are many examples where millennials play very complicated rules. Also, as pointed out here, there are now many simple wargames available to play now. They still don’t play them.
2. Too long. How many hours do they spend playing video games? Look at the attention span required to finally get through a difficult level! They don’t seem to have a problem with this. There are also many fast playing wargames out now too.
3. Too violent. They want to play peace games not war. Have you seen the level of violence in most video games? This doesn’t seem to be an issue for them.
4. Somebody raised a good point here. They don’t want to play the ‘Nazi’ or ‘Confederate’. That’s evil. I get the sentiment. I’m sure some might feel a twinge of awkwardness but still, I see many millennials that have no problem with this. They play Nazis in video games with no problem. They fight for an evil emperor of the dark side in Star Wars games. They play as evil wizards commanding armies of undead monsters to slaughter all the good people. They play GTA. A drug dealing, pimp that robs, steals and kills people for fun. No problem with playing ‘evil’.
5. Too much direct competition. I do see that millennials tend to prefer cooperation over competition in zero sum games. True, but I also see them playing lots of other games with direct competition. Also, there are many wargames now that are more cooperative based. They still don’t play them.
6. Proximity. I really like the thoughts and arguments posed here for this. Boomers grew up watching war movies on TV. There were lots of Hobby Stores with models of tanks, planes, ships and soldiers. Later games with all that stuff. It was around and seen a lot. Lots of exposure. Familiarity.
I see lots of strength and merit in this argument. What have millenials seen in movies? Pirates. Superheros. Horror movies. Fantasy battles with magic. Gangsters and thugs. Ok, well that fits. I see lots of games on these topics.
There is no local, neighborhood hobby store anymore. Sure but there is the internet and the kids know how to use it. There are hundreds of virtual ‘hobby stores’ at their finger tips every minute of the day. People just shop differently now. They can easily search for and find wargames to buy online if and when they want. It is out there. It is in front of them. They still don’t buy.
Why not?
3 06...wow so true...i had opponants who gave up when they were winning !!! one didnt want me to draw...just flat out lose
I liked wargames since i was 11 and team games are my fav due to the socal side of the team work
Are other direct-competition thinking games like Chess or Go also declining in popularity?
Good question, and one I cannot answer. I will say that if they were first released today, I think they'd sell poorly.
GStates yes on schools with chess clubs, no with people playing on the street. but i suppose arizona isnt exactly known for its nice "streetgoing" weather
Then wargaming must adapt. Even militarizes adapt.
I agree, but many others my age (Baby Booomer) are content to go on much the same way as in the past.
@@LewisPulsipher Roger that. But to keep it going, to pass it on, it needs to adapt. I'm a hunter and we are having the same thing. In fact the average age of the bowhunter here in NC is 49-50.
I think the popularity of Fantasy and scifi wargaming is something you're overlooking. Especially in youth and the skirmish wargaming scene the hobby is really expanding among youth. I'll also note I think sometimes people mistake disillusion with history for disinterest in history. By and large the historical content presented in my millennial primary schooling education as largely pro nationalist and largely omitted or misrepresented American atrocities from native American genocide to rationalizing slavery to omitting things like the Decimation of Tulsa and and so on. Myself and many others have a deep fascination and knowledge base of history but for me it's not a fun beer and pretzels game. I have difficulty laughing and enjoying my time throwing away Somali lives during a black hawk down game knowing the sociopolitical and humanitarian context of those events. I think for many like myself. it's easier to engage for some of us younger wargamers when there is a degree of separation from the horror of war. In scifi or fantasy setting one can pull from historical context or inspiration but without giving me the stomach churn I sometimes get in some historical games. This isnt to say historical gaming is wrong in any way, I just personally don't get the enjoyment from it others really seem to. Though I think perhaps that Degree of seperation can sometimes be achieved from larger scale or more abstracted games. Im speaking from one experience of course but In many of my peers there's a jaded distaste for the military indutrial complex that makes it difficult to make real world conflict as an afternoon hobby enjoyable. Hence the raising interest in Scifi, fantasy, and alt history settings.
While I personally really like fantasy and SF wargames, and like to design them, typical wargamers often do not care for them. They aren't put off by the history, they are more or less energized by it. Perhaps because my PhD is in military history, I find historical commercial wargames to have little to do with actual history, except at very grand strategic levels.
So it may be that interest in wargames will gradually become disconnected from interest in history. Hasn't happened yet, though.
@@LewisPulsipher I think you’d also do well to look at the pipelines for how people get into wargaming in general. Juggernauts like Games workshop and other fantasy and Sci-fi manufacturers actively work to present a model wherein one is identifying with a chosen faction and telling the story of “your” plastic soldiers and the like. A common difference I see in historical gaming is there’s less emphasis on identifying with the ideology/theme of a given force necessarily. I.E. someone may need to play as the Nazis or confederates though no one (hopefully) is actively identifying with these historical ideologies. It’s not everyone obviously but I think beyond just generally blaming youth for being less interested in the way the hobby was done in the 70s, I think you’d do well to consider who is getting youth into wargaming and how they are framing how one identifies with and interacts with the context the game pieces represent.
The video does come off as a rad preachy about the youth just having inferior interests but I really think looking at those pipelines for hetttkng into historicals is important to this conversation. Say you’re 10 years old, outside of a parent, who’s actually getting wargaming in front of you and teaching you how to engage in it? Local game shops are a crucial hub in many areas and I think looking at how or why that’s different today than ~40 years ago is an important point that’s left unexplored
@@flacateracotta4553 Certainly, we've gone from wargames being a common hobby for many teens, to wargames being more or less a ghetto. So people have much less exposure to wargames.
Yes, historical gamers don't much identify with a particular faction (many exceptions); I'm not sure what difference that makes.
I think identifying with a avatar is a much stronger desire of younger players, than it was 40 years ago. "The natural" games for Millennials are avatar games (such as RPGs and many video games).
Thank you for your perspective and input here.
What would you think of a wargame that is cooperative? So you and your friends say, each control a military force that lands on the beaches of Normandy. Your goal is to take out the evil Nazis, run by the game system.
So like instead of Zombicide, you're killing Nazis. Does that sound like a game that would play well amongst you and your friends?
@@LewisPulsipher Good point. I'm an old wargamer like you. I don't like fantasy or sci fi. It's all just a bunch of made up junk. ?? What have I learned at the end of the game? How best to use elves and magic to kill an orc army?
Ha ha ha! It's what students always love to throw at Algebra teachers: When will I ever use this in real life?
What I like about 'real' games from history, is that I feel like I've learned some things that could be applicable in the real world someday. I learned a little something about what it takes to remove an evil police state from power. If nothing else, I've learned a little something from history. Some new insights.
A very good observation. One comment though: There are people who might not like luck in their games, and war games have more of it than the average Euro.
Depends on the game. Chess-Go-Checkers have no luck. But they are puzzles, and of course, many non-wargames amount to puzzles. Historically, it's true, there's a great deal of chance in war, much less than we see typically in wargames. And you need some uncertainty in games to avoid them being puzzles.
There is (at least technically) no luck in the game Diplomacy. I have a space wargame prototype where the only luck is in Event Cards, and in the fact that it's for more than two players. More than two players introduces a great deal of uncertainty.
@@LewisPulsipher My favourite game is Starcraft : The Board game - Combat is card driven and it has some luck, but it's minimal. The only problem is that the battles take longer than the average roll a die see what happens. :)
PS. That space themed game sounds interesting.
You should try civilizationVI
Kids are not taught to avoid competition, they are taught to cooperate to achieve a goal, that is not exactly the same thing. They still play many competitive computer or tabletop games, but they also like games including cooperation and competition at the same time.
The survival of the fittest paradigm (inspired by Darwin work) has lost many feathers in the last decades. Researches have shown that in nature cooperation is often the way to survival. So teaching cooperation is not a bad thing.
Yes, co-operation is ideal; in practice I rarely play a game against someone else. Yet there are so many cases where students are not allowed to excel, where everyone gets a reward for participation, not for doing well, that competition is suppressed in many areas. Obviously those playing team sports (say) are still competing against the opponent.
Brilliant.
Lol, this video doesn't start at Mozilla.
I find it annoying when people blame younger generations, I think dwindling interest is mainly based on how good a game actually is look at warhammer a very popular wargame
Mate, Warhammer is the epitome of a miniatures hobby intended to exclude all else. GW even calls it "the Warhammer hobby" People play for the minis and the baroque storylines. They rarely play for the game itself (the game's not very good). And often they realize how much money they're wasting, and quit. It's not a suitable example of wargame popularity.
Nice breakdown
Seems an awful lot of folks have been watching this recently. Can anyone tell me why? Some publicity somewhere?
I came across it on the COIN series players club
@@charliesmith5783 Thanks.
I was searching wargaming design.
@@joecooper8527 Thanks.
I came from video games, first RTS (Age of Empires, Starcraft), after that TBS (see Battle of Polytopia), now I tried to search their equivalent in boardgames. I know that equivalent of RTS is not possible in board games, but the equivalent of TBS is possible. The board game the most close of a TBS board game I found is Space Empires 4x made by GMT.
I intend from now to spend more time playing a paper or cardboard based TBS (turn based strategy) than a computer based one, because I want to protect my eyes from retroeclaired screens while I play and while not working on computers, because I think I already spend too much time in front of the computer screens at job.
Sorry but I think most of this is largely unfounded and irrelevant. Almost all older forms of entertainment have declined in popularity due to the competition from newer forms. Books became less popular due to the advent of the theatre, which then became less popular because of competition from cinema movies, which might now be becoming less popular due to Netflix shows and UA-cam.
Similarly, wargames have become less popular due to competition from video games. Video games offer more excitement for most people in a more accessible way. If RTSes had been around in the 70s, tabletop wargaming would not have been as popular back then as it was (as you also concur). Nothing to do with generations, culture, values in education, etc.
If people nowadays would avoid 1vs1 confrontational games because it might threaten their ego if they lose, then why are games such as League of Legends massively popular, where competitive pressure is extremely high and you get flamed by your entire team (rather than just yourself) if you die?
Why are roguelike games, where death is permanent, making a big comeback, if people are so loss-averse? Why are you calling this the age of simplification and the "easy button" when extremely hard games like Dark Souls are so popular and when heavy games like Frosthaven are grossing record sums on Kickstarter?
Why do so many of my young friends play the Game of Thrones board game (a tough 6-hour affair full of battles and losses) if people nowadays "prefer 30 minute games"?
By the way, I'm 27, and I got into tabletop wargames through the gateway of digital Twilight Struggle and online resources.
Wargames compared with other tabletop games are much less popular than in the past. That part has nothing to do with other forms of entertainment.
Even in LoL, no one really loses, everyone gets more stuff. Some get it faster than others because they win more matches.
Rogue-likes are not permanent death, if you know how to find the game file and save it.
When the computer frequently aims your gun for you, the games have been simplified. One (or several) examples (Dark Souls) do not invalidate a generalization. Generalizations are about a large body of something, "no generalization is always true". There are almost always exceptions.
Yes. you're 27, and like many people that age have no clue about the history of things, about how things were 25 or 40 or 50 years ago. And you assume that's all unfounded and irrelevant because you don't have a clue about it.
I'm sure we won't agree.
@Lewis Pulsipher well the eurogame didn't really exist 40 years ago. So there is increased competition from eurogames i.e. another alternative form of entertainment, same point.
There is the simple fact that many (most) people of my age haven't even seen a tabletop wargame in their lives. So why would, for instance, the fact that you lose things during these games be a reason why people don't play them, when they don't even know that, since they haven't even had the opportunity to try them? Seems much more likely that the fact that there are more accessible and (to most people) more exciting alternatives available, makes it so that people don't look further. The simplest explanation is usually the best by default. (Also as a sidenote, RTSes end quite literally with the destruction of the base you built up during the game, whenever you lose...)
Theatres at some point were considered to be for the masses who were too daft to read books and wanted a 'simplified', more accessible form of entertainment. As someone with insight into history, you probably know that the sentiment of "we used to be more sophisticated and now everything is being dumbed down" is one that people have had at all times, and is caused by bias.
Hesiod was complaining in 700BC that the 'frivolous youth of today' was way too 'impatient of restraint', I'm sure he would have agreed that they preferred only 30 minute games and didn't have the patience that his generation had...
You as an older person also don't know directly how it was in the 1930s. Perhaps your generation was already much more conflict-avoidant and impatient than people back then, and that explains why the majority of people in your time didn't play wargames. Just to illustrate that whether you can say something about this has nothing to do with one's own age, but everything with robust socio-historical analysis.
Why did you have to bring my age and weight into the discussion??? I mean their age and weight, those other gamers you're talking about. Not my age and weight.
I disagree in all regards. Not only do I disagree as to "why" they are less popular; I put forth they are SUBSTANCIALLY MORE popular than they have EVER been in the past. If you want to use any for of measure by % or by shear volume I would put forth there are more "gamers" and more wargamers today than at any time in the past. Full disclosure, I started with miniatures and "Tractics" in 1971 and Avalon Hill's Panzer Leader a year later and just spent over $400 on hex games, most for resale.
This comment is astounding. I'm afraid we have no grounds for agreement, because to me you don't have a clue about the state of things. Though there are certainly more gamers, there are far fewer wargamers. Have you been to a convention that is traditionally for wargamers lately? The wargamers are mostly old folks, and more people are playing the non-wargames now than the wargames - even at those traditionally wargame cons. (Wargames = board games, not minis, though I suspect the situation is similar.)
@@LewisPulsipher You fail to consider the conventions are insanely larger and until COVID more frequent thus the total "number of wargamers" is larger. Sales of "historical games" would be a clear measure. Are you seriously going to tell me Avalon Hill and SPI sold more in (real) $$ back in 1975 than Decision Games, Conflict Games and the other 2 dozen companies I can name?
@@GrumblingGrognard Have you been to GenCon, say? Wargames simply aren't present in any significant way. Many wargame manufacturers don't even exhibit, if they attend at all. I suspect Spiel in Germany is the same.
Or have you been to cons with roots in board wargames, such as PrezCon and WBC? They have not grown significantly in ages. And the majority of tournament participants are now in non-wargames.
I'd prefer units to dollars, as buyers now are late in life and often have lots of disposable income. Wargames now have print runs of 500, 750, 1000, rarely more. Avalon Hill sold 75k to six figures of most titles (though even their best seller was a non-wargame).
@@LewisPulsipher LOL ...and did you go to GENCON back in the 70s and 80s when the ENTIRE crowd was tiny fraction of what it is today? For God's sake people: DO THE MATH.
If the conventions are larger (and they are so, SO much larger today then they were back in the 70s-80s!) and are happening twice as often (or more when COVID is not around -- plus the shitloads of regionals that did not exist beyond the local VFW halls gatherings "back in the day")...
Then by ANY measure we have substantially more people playing historical war games in the 21st century then we EVER had prior...and with the internet it is infinitely easier to find each other (and I was one who REALLY HAD an ad in the back of Avalon Hill's General magazine back in the 80s and can prove it).
AGAIN, just count the number of games SOLD. Show me any year where they sold more historical games. ...or how about just the number of "game companies" that are producing real product??? Again, more today on all accounts.
@@GrumblingGrognard Do you actually have any figures? Evidently not. I certainly don't know total sales of wargames. Number of titles doesn't matter. Moreover, you're conflating wargames with games of all kinds. Conventions today aren't about wargames (excepting PrezCon and WBC, and even there they are the minority). In the 60s and 70s they were about wargames.
GenCon was small, because the entire idea of going to a game convention was brand new.
Surely you've noticed that GenCon today is about story games, such as RPGs, and about non-games, such as SF writing and film, not about wargames.
Incredibly cynical take on young people and popular culture.
One person's cynicism is another person's honest observations. In my case, from a retired teacher (who LIKED teaching and LIKED the students) of college and a few high school aged.
I'm also gonna note you managed to go that entire video without stopping to look at how or why Wargaming (through both sociatal means and cultural trends in wargaming clubs and shops) laregely rejected women from the hobby over the last 50 years or so. Even today it's still an issue that (some) people get very upset about acknowledging. While Im happy to hve a great community locally, I have yet to meet a single woman in wargaming that has not experienced a not insignificant degree of harassment or push away from the hobby. Not everyone is like that but it is a significant issue that's largely unaddressed when this topic comes up for discussion.
I think it’s a a dominantly male hobby, so having a women there is strange for them. They just like to play with their buddies in a game. I noticed a lot of women war gamers are more into the miniatures than the game itself. It’s like action figures and dolls for boys and girls, they’re both interested in “dolls”, just different types.
I see all these as influences and trends but I don’t see a smoking gun here. Ok, so then what i it? I’m not sure…. But pondering it this morning, it reminded me of something.
As a kid, I remember the old folks (GI and Silent generations) playing Bridge, Canasta, Euchre and Bowling. Those were real popular back in the day. The Boomers came next. I don’t remember them doing that at all.
How many Boomers joined a Bridge club? How many GenXers joined Bowling Leagues? ?? Why not?
Because it’s not cool!! That’s what the old people played. You don’t want to be like your parents!! Kids want something new. Something exciting. Something fresh.
GenX didn’t want to go bowling or play Bridge. They wanted to play Space Invaders, Asteroids and D&D!
Just a thought and theory here. Maybe this more about generational trends. Millenials don’t want to play wargames because that’s what the old folks do. They want to play their games.
Maybe they do play wargames. They just look so different now that we don’t recognize them as such. Warhammer & X-Wing miniatures look a lot like wargames to me. Two players, fighting against each other for domination. They have different ‘forces’ with different capabilities. They have to manipulate these things to achieve the best advantage -controlled by a detailed set of rules. That goes back to: definition of a wargame. Maybe our hobby hasn’t died. Maybe it’s just evolving.
You obviously haven't looked on social media where hundreds of thousands of people are talking about games with miniatures. If you just discuss boring, old fashioned old men twaddle like this, then yes it's dying. But no, the miniatures gaming hobby is bigger than ever.
He wasn't talking about miniatures but board games. He explains that in another comment.
You'll be twaddlin' soon, as well, by the look of ya'. That 'tude won't age well, either.
I see it's a year on. How you holding up, sonny?
Seems valid! But there are some - significant - numbers of younger gamers active...
Of course, it's a generalization. In board wargaming, though, many of those younger folks are children of older wargamers.
Wargames died because Warhammer 40K and Magic The Gathering killed the distribution network that held the entire industry up. Dungeons & Dragons, Star Fleet Battles, and Avalon Hill games were the pillars that held up the industry. These games alone took up most of the store with their expansions or Avalon Hill's 40-year line of products. I was working in the board game industry when it collapsed, this is why wargames died. After 20 years of propping up the entire industry "The Big Three" of the hobbyist game industry were dethroned and the industry could not survive without them. Computer games didn't kill the hobbyist game industry, Warhammer & MtG did. Wargames didn't move into the computer game industry because they weren't interested in hiring the real game designers when they came along. They were certain that they were game designers, and they weren't. So the end result today is that the computer game industry makes games that are like Candyland compared to the generations who came before them. They have "lost the knowledge" of game design and started over. They are about 250 years behind us now. Signed, Kavik Kang - Inventor of "The Matrix"
I'm leery of reasoning based on distribution networks. While they are important, what really matters is what the buying public wants. If they want something bad enough, distribution will be arranged. So I have to think that the public wanted WH40K and especially MtG more than ghetto wargames.
The computer industry produces resource management games and calls them wargames, because there's fighting involved. You may be right that they didn't hire wargame designers, but always keep in mind, losing is part of tabletop wargames, but rarely part of video "wargames".
I have drafted a lengthy article discussing this (now up to ten reasons), but as I'm likely to submit to a magazine, it will be a long time before it comes to light. Sigh.
Mine too, after all.
Was published in *War Diary* magazine.
Except then as now the hobby is not dying but thriving...Oh and for God sake fix the bloody font on your website. Its an unreadable mess.
"Dying" is much closer to reality than "thriving". As I said, you seem to be in cloud-cuckoo-land about this.
I don't set the font on the website, the browser does. So it uses a different font on my Mozilla than on Chrome and Opera. Looks perfectly readable. Perhaps the problem is on your computer.
@@Joey--- Doesn't sound like any behavior I've observed. Keep in mind I'm talking board wargaming, not miniatures or video.
ok boomer