Welcome wargamer. If you can spare 20 minutes of your time, I’d like to request your help in learning more about our collective community using a few simple tools in this article. Specifically, I want to know more about the thought processes behind your passion for wargaming. What created them? What sustains them? What makes them unique? Can the mindset driving the "typical" wargamer be used to extrapolate something about the wargaming genre as a whole, along with some of its quirks? We live in a time where wargame developers are striving to unlock the perfect marketing solution for their fan base, while wargamers themselves are paradoxically seeing fewer and fewer board and PC wargames in mainstream outlets. Perhaps as a result, some of us wonder whether wargaming as a hobby is waxing or waning…and few will agree on the exact dates or definition or existence of wargaming’s "Golden Age." Some won’t even agree on what constitutes a "war" game! Yet, surely we can all agree wargaming remains a niche industry (ever see a wargame advertised during the Super Bowl?). What exactly is it about us and our hobby which keeps it locked in this relative obscurity?

Subscribe Today

• Subscribe to Armchair General Magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!
 

Any wargames here?

The purpose of this grand survey is to analyze the people who play wargames, and try to discover if there is anything inherently "unique" about the personality types of those most drawn to them (both digital and paper). Is there such thing as an "archetypical" wargamer, and if so, are there many more of them out there waiting to be "brought in" to the gaming world? Or, can we safely say that wargaming will always be a tiny subset of the larger genre of table-top gaming (cards, poker, euro-games, family games, etc.) and "war-themed" PC games, because there are so few people who are predisposed to the art of pushing counters across a map?

This origin of this inquiry came about as I thought back to my own introduction to the wargaming hobby 20 years ago. Part of my personal "gateway" into gaming was through military model building, mostly ships and tanks at the time. After many trips to the hobby store to buy paints, tools, and more models, I finally noticed they had a large selection of boxed wargames, and after some evaluation I decided to buy Avalon Hill’s Panzer Leader because it had a German Panther tank pictured on the back (yes, it was that simple!). As a long-time Dungeons and Dragons player, I wasn’t intimidated in the least by the rule book or the mass of counters I punched out. As a young veteran of Risk, I was familiar with some of the concepts of warfare that were so important in enjoying my first hex-based purchase. I can’t explain the exact process I underwent with that first wargame, but looking back it just felt natural to be sitting there, pouring all over the rules and maps. But was there more to it?

Finding a formula to create a wargamer

Can a wargamer be created out of thin air, simply by increasing his/her exposure to the hobby through graduating levels of casual gaming (despite the similarities in terms, we are NOT really talking about drugs here!)? Can a person start off playing Risk, move on to Axis and Allies (possibly the PC version), and finally make the leap to "Grognard" (wargamer slang for "serious") wargames? Surely lots of kids grow up playing those casual games, but only a fraction endure the final transition to the real, classic "wargames." My theory, based on anecdotal experience, is that it takes a certain type of person to make that final leap – and because of the characteristics of this "archetypical" wargamer, almost no amount of advertising or gateway gaming will bring any greater percentage of the population into the hobby than we have typically seen over the years.

Help Armchair General by bookmarking to