Home › Forums › News, Rumours & General Discussion › "Golden Age of Wargaming"….perhaps not? › Reply To: "Golden Age of Wargaming"….perhaps not?
I do feel your pain. This is much the same lament we have heard about the really granular, hundreds of fiddly little cardboard square-pieces type board games such as advanced squad leader and the like. I think this is in a very real sense a generational thing, and that those that have grown up with computers and internet simply are not interested in spending the nessecary time to get into such games any more. Hence the simplistic approach to lure them in, so to speak. I think it was really telling that even Warhammer Fantasy Battles in practice turned out to be too much of a barrier to enter the hobby.
Another question that might need to be addressed is if this really is a null-sum game?, in the sense that if 28/35mm/GW-scale and simplistic rulesets have increased in availablilty to the point that it is all you can see around you, does this mean that the other scales are suffering an equivalent decline or is it more that the market for the 28mms has grown far beyond and left the other scales behind? Are the other scales truly dissappearing, or is that more of a perception issue and they are still there, only not in the public eye or in the big shops? Then again: were they really ever in the public eye or in the big shops?
In other words; are there really that much less of the other scales available, or is it more that they are being overshadowed but still have an availablility (but not maybe so much in the “new” online market)?
In other other words: is the niche market they represent not still there? and the 28mm scale just busted out and made itself a larger niche?
And, given the generational thing, if the “big” companies did not take the simplistic approach and thereby getting new blood into the hobby, would not the entire hobby run the risk of extinction with the generation that played it?
