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Post by crinklechips on Dec 23, 2019 23:27:09 GMT
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Post by Ed the Two Hour Wargames Guy on Dec 24, 2019 21:19:13 GMT
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Post by stryderg on Dec 25, 2019 3:44:57 GMT
I think you can add laziness and ease of use to the list. People (myself included) are lazy. It takes planning, work, attention to detail, dedication and patience to get to the point where you can play a tabletop wargame. Coming up with the army list, ordering minis, prepping and painting...you know what's involved. Most younger folks don't have those skills and don't think they are important. Their phones are not helping, either. Instead of looking at a map and learning how to navigate with it, I'll just punch in an address and my phone will tell me when to turn.
Ease of use fits with some of the above, it's much easier to open a browser, go to a website and start playing than to pull out a table, minis and terrain, setup then play and tear it all down again. Of course that also prevents people from using their imaginations.
I read somewhere that the generation designing the first MMO games were mostly D&D players, so lots of wild and weird stories, locations and monsters. Now, it you look around at these games, they are pretty much just rehashing the same old stuff.
I think THW is doing table top gaming right (or at least catering to what users want). I'm just not sure how you advertise that and convince new players to come over to the dark side.
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Post by Ed the Two Hour Wargames Guy on Dec 25, 2019 21:06:08 GMT
Yes, as a game designer, you have to listen to what people want and the 4x6 table has disappeared except for rare occasions. Fast play, easy mechanics but realistic results,
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Post by Shon Maxx on Dec 25, 2019 21:54:46 GMT
That’s why I like the Battle Board. Easy to set up and just about anything can become a board.
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Post by atomicfloozy on Dec 25, 2019 22:15:57 GMT
For regular game play, I can agree that outside of competitive games such as 40K, Warmachine, etc. the large tabletop games are largely gone. However, at a convention, if someone is playing Gettysburg, Leuthen, Austerlitz, Omaha Beach, then the big table with lots of players is the way to go. Games where players control corps or divisions.
At the other end of the spectrum, games focusing on platoons or squads greatly benefit from a much smaller table.
What I really like about THW games is that most of the mechanics are scalable. I can use a very small table such as the battle boards or the 2' X 2' board I like to use for the bulk of my gaming, but when convention time comes, it isn't hard at all to scale up to a 4' X 4' table to run a game at a convention and not have to learn a new set of rules.
As regards to the video, yeah, I've seen it before. Old white guys trying to figure out why no one is still playing WRG 3rd edition or AH Napoleon's Battles. They also wring their hands at the lack of women and minorities their games attract. Having my feet in both worlds, I can also tell you that there are old white women who worry about getting younger women interested in knitting or tatting - tatting, you know, making lace out of string. Of course the knitters do offer wine at their gatherings....
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Post by crinklechips on Dec 26, 2019 20:07:20 GMT
Its all very interesting. I think I’m a bit upside down. I started out in roleplaying and have moved towards wargames via euro games. I started out wishing for simplicity in my games. In some aspects I still do, but increasingly I am looking for more crunch. Particularly outside of my 2 hour games. I’m talking about “N: The Napoleonic Wars” and my new game “Don’t Tread On Me” a solitaire American Revolution game. They are very abstract where battalions are 1 counter and for me they are very long & complicated, but hugely compelling. My 2 hour games involve battle boards and paper mini’s because I just don’t have the space for anything else! Thats another factor entirely.
It seems like the younger generation favour tactics over strategy. That’s why they go for first person shooters over long, thinky, wargames. My wife made an interesting comment. I don’t know what its like in America but over here in Britain kids are being hammered more and more to pass relentless tests at school. It may be the case that when they come home their brains are fried so thats why they go for less demanding games? Also my wife is a textile crafter so she certainly knows about the older ladies worrying about passing the knowledge down...
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Post by blacksmith on Jan 3, 2020 11:33:57 GMT
Even my usual wargaming buddies are becoming lazier with age. We play less and less, and when we rarely play it's easy games as Zomibicide, or a bit more complicated but still easy as SAGA or Dragon Rampant, but without them reading the rules. They are also more into computer for strategic games.
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Post by weateallthepies on Jan 7, 2020 22:00:32 GMT
It's weird, I hear how they are less popular and then I go along to the big convention here in the UK "Saulte" and it seems to be busier and busier each year.
Though I'd tend to disagree a little with some of the points. Board games are growing and growing in popularity in the UK. The main convention for that is the UK Games Expo here. I spoke to one of the staff a few years back and they said it had pretty much doubled in attendance every year at that point, and has moved several times to now take place in a huge exhibition centre compared to the pokey little hotel it was in when I first went. This can't be entirly explained if more and more people just want to play quick video games since boardgames are increasingly more complex and time consuming in a similar way to wargames.
Certainly the hobby is a niche, and I'm not sure it will ever hit the kind of mainstream sales it did when Avalon Hill were selling into shops all over. Tabletop gaming is a niche in itself but it's a pretty huge niche that seems to be growing. Wargaming is a niche within a niche and I definitely think some of that is the effort involved. People seem to like boardgames since they are a self contained experience which comes with everything you need. Perhaps people in the wargames industry need to think more and more about creating similar self contained experiences and accept that not everyone will want the painting, crafting and DIY side of the hobby.
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Post by crinklechips on Jan 8, 2020 21:12:09 GMT
It's weird, I hear how they are less popular and then I go along to the big convention here in the UK "Saulte" and it seems to be busier and busier each year. Though I'd tend to disagree a little with some of the points. Board games are growing and growing in popularity in the UK. The main convention for that is the UK Games Expo here. I spoke to one of the staff a few years back and they said it had pretty much doubled in attendance every year at that point, and has moved several times to now take place in a huge exhibition centre compared to the pokey little hotel it was in when I first went. This can't be entirly explained if more and more people just want to play quick video games since boardgames are increasingly more complex and time consuming in a similar way to wargames. Certainly the hobby is a niche, and I'm not sure it will ever hit the kind of mainstream sales it did when Avalon Hill were selling into shops all over. Tabletop gaming is a niche in itself but it's a pretty huge niche that seems to be growing. Wargaming is a niche within a niche and I definitely think some of that is the effort involved. People seem to like boardgames since they are a self contained experience which comes with everything you need. Perhaps people in the wargames industry need to think more and more about creating similar self contained experiences and accept that not everyone will want the painting, crafting and DIY side of the hobby. I would underline that this is a discussion about wargaming as opposed to euro or ameritrash hobby boardgames. Certainly the UK Games Expo has gone stratospheric but it caters mostly to hobby boardgames and RPG’s (which I love). As you say wargaming is a niche within a niche. War boardgames are still very much alive but they never have the sex appeal of modern hobby boardgames, I find them more expensive (for less), they take longer and they are invariably more complicated. Never the less I now tend to favour their deep strategy over other styles of boardgame. Haven’t been to Salute. I will go sooner or later... |
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