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Other designers confirm that there is no pot of gold in computer wargames. Military-themed video games sell; witness the popularity of first-person-shooters like Battlefield 2 or real-time-strategy games like Rome: Total War. But the hard-core computer wargames do well to sell a few thousand copies. Modern wargaming – the classic kriegspiel – began as a 19th Century technique to train Prussian staff officers. Hobby wargaming hasn’t had much to do with the military as of late (something the U.S. military needs to change), but it’s amusing to see how many computer wargame designers, such as Panzer Campaigns designer John Tiller, are gravitating toward Pentagon contracts. A $100,000 Air Force research project is chump change for a defense giant like Northrop Grumman, but it’s payday for most game designers.

It’s computer wargames that the hobby should be worried about. Paper games aren’t doing well, but at least they have the excuse that they’ve always been a niche market. Numbers are vague, but Jim Dunnigan estimates there were less than 100,000 board wargamers by the early 1990s. John Kranz, owner of Consimworld.com – the best site for paper wargames – estimates there are now only about 10,000 to 15,000 gamers who buy at least one paper game each year. Anyone who goes to conventions and hobby shops can see that it’s a hobby of graying baby boomers who increasingly find it difficult to find opponents for face-to-face play.

But computer games don’t face those handicaps. Lots of people play some kind of computer game. The games can be played solitaire or over the Internet, so that a gamer in Chicago can find opponents in Hamburg or Melbourne. Computer wargames aren’t going to sell as many copies as The Sims, but they should be able to sell a lot more than some cardboard title on the Thirty Years’ War. And if they’re not, then this proves that they have had no more success than paper wargames in appealing to the mass market.

Is this because computer wargames are too time-consuming? Too complex? Probably. But there may be another reason. Perhaps the most successful computer wargame is Battlefront’s Combat Mission. A highly detailed World War II tactical combat game that combines the realism of a grognard game with the 3-D graphics of a mainstream video game, the game has sold well over one hundred thousand copies, according to Battlefront. That provides enough revenue to fund a six-person development team and at least $2 million in costs for the modern warfare version of Combat Mission.

The aging but venerable Combat Mission.

I suspect that it’s the 3-D graphics that gives Combat Mission crossover appeal to a mainstream audience accustomed to the flash and sizzle of first-person-shooters. Combat Mission’s graphics may appear clunky and dull compared to the latest shooter, but they’re more likely to lure a new gamer than a bunch of hexagons. And if graphics are the key to revitalizing the hobby, then it’s the end of wargaming as we know it. Paper games can’t compete, and nor can the traditional 2-D presentation of most computer wargames. It’s tempting to say that replacing all those hoary old NATO unit symbols with glitzy artwork will solve the problem. But most wargames – especially paper games – are operational or strategic. They use 2-D graphics and military-style maps because that’s what a real brigade or army commander would use. Animated tanks make sense for a tactical sim, but they’re as useful as wings on a whale for higher-level games.

Trying to compete with mainstream games is economic suicide. Graphics are why developing a mainstream video game devours tens of millions of dollars. It used to be that amateur designers could produce a wargame on their Commodore or IBM XT. They still can, but any game with mainstream-quality graphics is going to require a design team and a fair chunk of capital. Pat Proctor, designer of the Armored Task Force series and one of several current or former military officers working on computer wargames, believes that the cost of developing a game will only increase as technology advances, especially in graphics. More money spent on graphics means less money to experiment with innovative designs that just might appeal to the mainstream audience.

It’s a harbinger of the end times when the optimists see signs and portents everywhere. With the fervor of bird watchers glimpsing a species thought extinct, wargamers twitter over every report of how a friend of a friend saw a teenager playing Advanced Squad Leader at a hobby shop, or how somebody’s five-year-old son picked up his father’s lead miniatures. Miniatures might indeed offer some hope. Hard-core military minis are probably in the same state of decline as paper wargames, but young gamers have flocked to Warhammer 40K, and perhaps Axis & Allies miniatures will prove a hit. But there’s quite a leap between these simple, visually appealing games and the time and effort required to play hobby wargames. It will also take more than a few precocious or socially challenged teens to revitalize a hobby.

As I surveyed the state of wargaming, one thought struck me above all: the health of the hobby rests upon the most fragile base. Visit the websites of publishers, and you’ll see that most are either one-man shops, or three or four people at most (who tend to share the same last name). Some are lone designers laboring in their basements late at night. Others are like Matrix Games, which publishes designs from a plethora of small shops, or relies on volunteers to update older games. Either way, wargames are made by talented people who devote their lives to designing products that earn meager financial rewards. These are businesses without deep pockets, run by aging baby boomers. It won’t take much in the way of illness or divorce or even eventual mortality for these companies to fold. Will there be anyone to replace them? Will the next generation of designers try their hand at historical simulations, or will they opt for the more lucrative eye-candy games? Ironically, paper wargaming may have a better chance of survival. It doesn’t require much capital to produce a DTP design that a gamer can download and print off his home printer.

If all this sounds depressing, it is. The truth is ugly, but ignoring it will prove uglier still. At a time of decline, there is always a tendency to look for a panacea, and to pin blame on those who allegedly allowed the decline to happen. Wargaming made mistakes. It could have done a better job of appealing to new gamers, and it needs to do a better job of appealing to them. But I do not believe for a moment that there is any game that the hobby could have produced that would have changed the outcome. Societies change. What was popular in 1976 may not be popular now. It’s not logical. It’s not fair. But it’s life.

If there is any consolation, it’s that wargaming will not die. The allure of recreating and understanding military history is strong. Games may change, and many of us will lament those changes. But wargaming will endure.

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Author Information

Michael Peck is a writer and defense journalist who covers military use of entertainment games. His work has appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, Training & Simulation Journal, National Defense Magazine, and The Military Channel.

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