Reply To: "Golden Age of Wargaming"….perhaps not?

[tobymagillMember 1414xp 2]

Playing devils advocate for a second – isn’t this basically coming down to the fact that crunchy, detailed, reenactment style games have not proved to be the most appealing way to attract shoppers and make money? Inherently this style of game it is an important but niche proposition in the hobby.

I drafted a much longer version of this post going into why i thought this might be, but deleted it due to the risk of it derailing the flow of this conversation. Suffice to say there is a well established recruitment path in the industry at the moment with widely available and visible starter sets, with attractive miniatures, easy to find rules that can be learnt relatively quickly and play out in a few hours.

If you accept this premise (and i am aware others won’t), then why would existing 28mm manufacturers invest heavily in a new direction, which risks undermining their current products and revenue? Particularly when some may have made other scales/genres in the past which have proved to be less popular than their 28mm ranges?

Also potentially more contentiously, where is the ongoing financial incentive for major companies to design a rule set for hobbiests who have proven happy to play games from 20+ years ago and who wouldn’t even need to buy your miniatures to play it with (given the number of companies that make historical and present/near future models, if the rules required models at all).

I think the point i am trying to make (potentially in a ham fisted way) is that for hobbiests who like and are willing to invest time/money into more mass market games or new miniatures, then I can’t think of a time when there has been more options for you. For those that hobbiests that don’t want to do this for whatever reason,  then isn’t there a need to look at what would incentivise companies or amateur hobbiests to create what is desired?

A final point from me – all points above are written and should hopefully taken in good faith. I know I am going against the general thinking of the thread so i wanted to say this is done to try and provide a constructive counter-point rather than just trolling.