Quote from: SJBenoist;574479Die? Wargames are bigger now than they have ever been.

Fascinating. Tell me about the multiple wargames each year selling 50,000+ copies. Point me in the direction of the dedicated magazine with 30,000+ subscriptions.

Quote from: SJBenoistDie? Wargames are bigger now than they have ever been.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;574753Fascinating. Tell me about the multiple wargames each year selling 50,000+ copies. Point me in the direction of the dedicated magazine with 30,000+ subscriptions.

These statements aren't necessarily incompatible.  Has a wargame magazine every had that many subscribers?  I know that Dragon Magazine had a peak of a little over 30k subscribers back in 1984-1985, but hasn't come close to that since then.  I don't think that any of the wargame magazines were ever that popular.  

So maybe by Justin's definition wargames have always been "dead" - but SJBenoist's claim could also be true that they are bigger now than they have ever been.  Wargames were never particularly mainstream, and they didn't have a peak fad like D&D did in the early 80s.

Quote from: jhkim;574849These statements aren't necessarily incompatible.  Has a wargame magazine every had that many subscribers?

Strategy & Tactics.

I said wargaming died because it died. Admittedly, it died right around the time I was being born. But I'm assuming that people like Jim Dunnigan, Greg Cotsikyan, and Lou Zocchi aren't just lying to us all about what wargaming was like in the '70s.

Your reasoning is faulty, and you should never assume   The perceptions of those men are not facts, and while their contributions are to be respected, if they claimed what you write, they are absolutely mistaken.

The number of magazine subscribers to S&T is not proof the market was larger.
That said, even with the amazing decline of magazines in the 21st century, I think you'll find White Dwarf well exceeding those numbers by about 300%.  And that magazine only covers a single company's products.

Nor are sales of any single title, which are currently unavailable as companies no longer release data like that.  
However, when the number of companies has grown over 10-fold, and a single company has 32 titles currently in production for release, another 14 shipping, it's a lot harder to sell as many copies of one title as it used to be when your market had only one or two choices.

If you are not a wargamer, I understand you may very well be completely ignorant of what has occurred in the last decade, how many wargame companies have emerged, and what kind of business companies like GMT are doing.  


Just for a quick example, consider the options for squad-level, hex-based, WWII:

1960's and earlier:
(nothing)

1970's:
Squad Leader
Tobruk

1980's:
Advanced Squad Leader

1990's:
(nothing)

2002 and onward:
Advanced Tobruk System
Band of Heroes
Conflict of Heroes
Combat Commander
Valor & Victory
Retro
Band of Brothers
(Fringe cases for Memoir '44 & Tide of Iron)

That's more than twice as many titles as the whole hobby had ever seen, and this list is ignoring expansions, as the 2002 onward category would be absurd and on the order of 100's ... though there would be less than 4 for the 1970's in total.

And this is cardboard chit, hex-based tactical only, the "deadest" of all wargame types (or so I read, lol).

You'll find this repeated even more severely for most types of wargames, and at all levels of wargame (simple, moderate, complex).  You'll find the same for solo games, for miniatures games, for strategic games, for operational games, for probably any type of wargame you can think of.

Does that sound "dead"?  When was this "death" supposed to have happened?
(Zombie Wargamers!? ... hmmm.)

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;574404One anecdotal difference in board game popularity is...I bought HeroQuest at Wal-Mart. That was my first "GM" experience. Much like how RPGs used to be found at Toys'R'Us, I haven't seen any of the cool "gateway" games outside of specialty shops.

Yeah I noticed this in our local Toys 'R' Us in the UK.   They no longer stock any of the various boardgames they used to, it's all monopoly and generally all the mainstream stuff.
It was quite disappointing actually, I used to (many years ago) love to goto Toys 'R' Us and explore the large range of boardgames.

Still, it does mean we goto the smaller specialist RPG/boardgame stores like "Forbidden planet" and independent RPG stores to browse and actually for boardgames which are a much more visual affair (meaning I want to physically see it before buying), I DO tend to go into a shop to buy rather than buying online.

Quote from: SJBenoist;575022Your reasoning is faulty, and you should never assume   The perceptions of those men are not facts, and while their contributions are to be respected, if they claimed what you write, they are absolutely mistaken.

You're claiming that Jim Dunnigan's perception of how many subscribers S&T had isn't a fact?

Oh, fuck off.

If you want one reason why now is a pretty good time to be a wargamer, it's because the wargame companies are healthier than they've been in a long while.

GMT is the flagship here, because of the P500 they print only when they've got enough commitments for a print run to at least break even.  With companies following the GMT model, they can afford to print wargames that they know will be supported.

The wargame model itself has been hybridized into newer boardgames, such as Twilight Imperium III.  (TI 1 was a lot closer to the standard wargame than III, but if you look you can still see some of the wargame elements in III.)

While the sheer number of players isn't as big as found in the 70s and 80s, the wargame industry still survives on a decent financial footing.

Wargames have moved to the computer interface.

War games are ideally suited for this and the number of people playing wargames on their PCs/consoles is much bigger than the number that ever played hex and chit or minis based wargames.

You can argue the same is true of RPGs. A lot og people get their RPG kicks from WOW and other online games or even first person shooters that are a migrate from RPGs in effect.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;575110You're claiming that Jim Dunnigan's perception of how many subscribers S&T had isn't a fact?

Oh, fuck off.

Wait .... what? :/  
I'll take this as conceding the point while trying to save face




I commented that anyone who tries to tell you wargames are dead is mistaken, regardless of who it is.

I answered your subscription question, and I didn't even bother to note that there are more wargaming magazines lines printed today.

I'd imagine the biggest wargame company right now is probably Games Workshop.

I would also say total number of players is probably as high (or higher) than it has ever been.  The difference is the number of options available have spread the population over hundreds (maybe over a thousand) different games, whereas the 70's saw pretty much everyone playing the same stuff.

People tend to exclude whole categories of wargames when assessing size, which is odd as most wargamers I've ever met have played wargames of every type (or most types).  Hex & Chit, Miniatures, Pre-Painted Models, (true) Solo, Card Games, Computer games, Historic, Fantasy, and so on.
 
Sometimes one of the subtypes will experience a boom, then cycle back to normal.  This recently happened with some "clix" style wargames, though right now pre-painted wargames are on the rise.  

Everytime the subtype normalizes (IOW, the "boom" ends), people declare it "dead", whilst totally ignoring the other 95% of wargaming.

Quote from: SJBenoist;575196I'd imagine the biggest wargame company right now is probably Games Workshop.

That kind of begs the question whether GW is a wargame producer, or a "paint and collect minis" producer.

Yes, I think there's a terminology problem here.  While I agree that things like WH/40K are certainly wargames of a type, the people in this thread using the word "wargame" seem to be using it to exclusively mean "hex and chit board wargames".

I've seen people do that, but it seems to be mostly non-wargamers.  I've actually seen definitions of "wargame" that seem to be "Exclusively Avalon Hill, SPI, and maybe Yaquinto", which to me is like defining RPG's as "TSR with Gygax, and nothing else".  It's particularly odd as the heyday of the 70's, you would not have been able to find someone who did not label miniature games as "wargames".
The distinction seems to come from the 1990's.

The first generally recognized hobby wargame (as opposed to military tool) is H.G. Wells Little Wars, which is a miniatures game.  

Chainmail, universally described as RPG's "wargame roots", is a miniatures game.

Advanced Squad Leader, the standard for chit & hex for 20 years, is also a miniatures game (ASL Deluxe, 1/285 scale).

Many games use hexes, chits, & minis all at once, like BattleTech & Tide of Iron.

To add to the problem of trying to separate the two are games like Battleground and Wings of War (now Wings of Glory), which don't actually require miniatures at all, but use miniature rule-sets.

Quote from: SJBenoist;575303I've seen people do that, but it seems to be mostly non-wargamers.  I've actually seen definitions of "wargame" that seem to be "Exclusively Avalon Hill, SPI, and maybe Yaquinto", which to me is like defining RPG's as "TSR with Gygax, and nothing else".  It's particularly odd as the heyday of the 70's, you would not have been able to find someone who did not label miniature games as "wargames".
The distinction seems to come from the 1990's.

The first generally recognized hobby wargame (as opposed to military tool) is H.G. Wells Little Wars, which is a miniatures game.  

Chainmail, universally described as RPG's "wargame roots", is a miniatures game.

Advanced Squad Leader, the standard for chit & hex for 20 years, is also a miniatures game (ASL Deluxe, 1/285 scale).

Many games use hexes, chits, & minis all at once, like BattleTech & Tide of Iron.

To add to the problem of trying to separate the two are games like Battleground and Wings of War (now Wings of Glory), which don't actually require miniatures at all, but use miniature rule-sets.

I agree that 40k is a wargame just like the tin soldier battles like came before it.  My point was that GW's business model isn't focused around that, but the collect and paint portion of their catalog.

Right, I agree about GW's wanting to sell paints, (though lately they are returning to wargame productions that still require painting, but do not offer any further model sales, such as Dreadfleet, Space Hulk, possibly the upcoming LOTR game).  I don't see that as making them a different hobby though.  Painting was always big.  See Osprey books and their abundance of full-color uniform pictures in every wargame shop 30 years ago.  
They were for making sure you painted your 1692 Cuirassiers to spec.
(BTW, historically accurate paint schemes and OOB were the common table argument of the day, moreso than any rules debates)

To put it another way, GW is both.  They sell paints, models, and wargames.


The point I was making is "wargames are dead" is hyperbole, and that they are doing better than ever, even the 8-year period the modern generation is fixated upon for some reason (1977-1985).