Welcome back, wargamer. Thanks for taking the time to come back for this follow-up visit. I have some interesting results to share about the “typical” wargamer based on your survey as well as the results of over 640 of your friends (Wargaming Survey Part I: Understanding Your Local Grognard). Let’s take a look at the data and get right into it.

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I’m sure you are interested to learn about my initial hypothesis when I put this little experiment together. This is what I thought I would find:

Hypothesis: I believe we will find a strong correlation between rational thinkers who are also wargamers. This would suggest a field of respondents who are part of the "Rationals" sub-group of personality types (ENTJ/INTJ/ENTP/INTP). Despite the extroverted rationals, I expect to find an overall trend toward introversion within the wargaming community, perhaps explaining in part why it is so hard for the community to grow beyond niche status. Combined with the three functional requirements noted in the original article (interest in military history, detail-oriented behavior, and the intellectual factors), the actual percentage of the population predisposed to wargaming is miniscule. Taken in total, there are many restrictions which will always condemn wargaming to a tiny enclave of players, at least until someone changes the definition of wargaming, or until there are breakthroughs in how wargames themselves are developed and played.

Control Set: The control set for this experiment will be the 1000’s of people who have already taken this type of personality survey. The results will allow us to compare "wargamers" with the rest of society. This should draw out any leanings wargamers may exhibit.

There is a clear spike of the INTJ personality type among wargamers

Before laying out the specific and entire survey results, I would like to expand upon my hypothesis just a bit and explain my thoughts on just how the results supported or did not support that hypothesis. First and foremost, the data seems to absolutely support my theory that the majority of wargamers are indeed an introverted lot. An astounding 36.97% (237 people) of respondents put themselves in the INTJ personality type. Perhaps it is no coincidence that I myself am part of this INTJ sub-group, given the INTJ penchant for gathering and processing information. (some links on what it means to be INTJ – link link link link) The truly interesting facet of this particular survey result is that of the population at large, between 1 and 3% fall into the INTJ category. Statistically speaking, this shows a very significant part of our community is drawn from a very tiny subset of the entire population. While we all seem to know this to be inherently true (we are an odd lot, and have always known it!), this illustrates it in a more concise manner.

To complete my hypothesis about the Rationals sub-group, it turns out that the combination of ENTJ/INTJ/ENTP/INTP personality types accounted for 53.04% of the total number of wargamers. The vast majority were from the previously noted INTJ group, followed by the ENTJ and INTP groups, with ENTP far in the back with only 2% of the total. Indeed the Rationals sub-group constitutes the majority of the wargamer community who took part in this survey. (more about “Rationals” and other temperaments – link link) Again, this is greatly disproportional to the amount of Rationals present in the population at large.

These huge spikes in the personality types were very much in line with what I expected to find given my anecdotal experience in working and playing against other wargamers for the past 20 years. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see this hypothesis emerge with the incoming data. Yet, the deeper mystery to solve here is whether wargamers are born or bred into this hobby. Why do INTJ’s get brought into wargaming in such prolific numbers, relative to other personality types? To explore this, I asked a few questions about how gamers got into wargaming in the first place, as well as how long each person has been wargaming. Once again, there were some pretty amazing numbers.

Most Grognards of today would immediately recognize a bookcase wargame. Will the wargamers
of tomorrow know them as well, or are PC wargames destined to dominate the genre?

Of our sample set of over 640 wargamers, 85% said their first true wargame was a board game, although 69% went on to say they now only play PC wargames. This makes sense when you consider that almost 80% of us have been gaming for 16+ years! Not surprisingly, fully 70% began wargaming before the age of 16 – suggesting that a lot of folks grew up in the Avalon Hill era of board gaming before the PC came to the forefront of the wargaming scene. Furthermore, 66% of respondents indicated that they “discovered” wargaming through their own exploration rather than have anyone introduce them to the gaming world. This mirrors my own discovery of the hobby, and suggests my “revelation” of finding my first wargame was actually pretty typical. So much for being unique! Perhaps the inquisitive nature of the INTJs led them into book and hobby stores where they then discovered board games.

Yet, it is perhaps far more important to understand where "new" wargamers are going to come from, knowing that book and hobby stores will probably not have the same cache of board games that were present 16+ years ago when many of us got our start… If we can agree that most current wargamers first got into the hobby before the age of 16, it stands to reason that inquisitive 16-year olds of today are playing computer and console games which may be THEIR gateway into more serious wargaming. There are any number of first person shooters, real time strategy games, and grand strategy games on the market with aspects that could provoke interest in taking the next step. For example, playing Call of Duty or Hearts of Iron could easily get a young gamer to ask questions about World War II. Coupled with an interest in military history, it is easy to see a pathway developing towards the wargaming destination… I believe this is an area worthy of further study using more refined survey questions than what I created here. For now, this remains merely an educated guess. [Note there are HUNDREDS of anecdotal stories attached to this survey, and I invite you to peruse them and make your own judgments about how and why people get into this hobby! Discuss the results here.]

As graphics and AI technology improve, the distinction between casual strategy and
true "wargames" will be more and more difficult to define.

[continued on next page]

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