Wargaming Survey Part I: Understanding Your Local Grognard

Brian King | March 31, 2005  | 0 comments  | Print  | E-mail

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The Survey

The goals of this survey are not to provide a comprehensive description of the wargamer. This has been attempted elsewhere (see learn more below). Additionally, because I am not a scientist (I’m a Geographer by education!), I don’t want to bother everyone with a pages-long survey only to be told it lacks any scientific integrity. Instead, this is a short survey designed to illustrate a few simple points using a broad stroke of the brush;

• Learn about the personality types of wargamers, looking for trends.
• Learn about the age of introduction and length time people have been playing their wargames.
• Learn about how wargamers have interacted with non-wargamers and other gamers.
• Learn about the connection between education and knowledge of military history.
• Learn about our background, hobbies, and personal accounts of our introduction to the hobby.

To participate in this experiment, you simply need to take a short personality test (step 1 below) and then answer a few questions (step 2 below). It should take about 15 minutes or so to complete the whole routine. It can all done anonymously, so you don’t have to worry about privacy. We will summarize the results in a month or two, once we have a significant number of responses. Your answers will help us create a picture of the "average" wargamer - that is to say, someone just like us!

1. Use this simple and quick Personality Test to arrive at a pre-defined personality type. Make sure you save your result percentages!

2. The main wargamer-specific survey is here. You MUST have your personality type from step 1 so you can start the survey. Please don’t randomly pick one.

3. Done!

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Definition of a wargame: For the purpose of this study, we are talking about two facets of wargaming. The classic "boardgame," which typically consists of a map covered with a hex grid, and uses a series of cardboard counters (or sometimes miniatures) to represent historical fighting units of various scales. These could be the old Avalon Hill/SPI era bookcase games or any number from current manufacturers. The classic "PC wargame" shares a similar heritage, although the computer allows many variations of the board beyond the hex grid system. Despite the fact hexes are no longer an absolute requirement, they often remain in contemporary PC wargames. Almost all of them use historically accurate Orders of Battle (OOB) and Tables of Organization and Equipment (TOE) as well as historical scenarios. In this survey, we are NOT including Real Time Strategy or First Person Shooter games in the category of "wargame."

Boxes and boxes of wargames!

To learn more: Web-Grognards (grognard.com) has a nice primer on how to tell if you are a Grognard, as well as a few links to additional surveys and articles regarding the past and future of wargaming. The Wargamer (wargamer.com) often has articles exploring these themes, mostly as they relate to the PC side of wargaming. You can also discuss the above article in more depth at the Armchair General forums. Also on those forums, you will find many relevant topics being discussed about the future of wargaming and problems with the genre today.

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