Younger wargamers?

[petercooman]

 

Now seriously, i'm 27, and i am finding out more and more that it's very hard to find fellow wargamers my age. Are we a dying breed? Are we losing the young ones to videogames after all?

[Leon]

Now seriously, i'm 27, and i am finding out more and more that it's very hard to find fellow wargamers my age. Are we a dying breed? Are we losing the young ones to videogames after all?

It's a discussion which comes up very often at shows and elsewhere.  We always see younger folk at the wargames shows though, and there are enough new companies appearing every month, which would indicate that there is (or people believe there is) a viable market for more products?

[petercooman]

Yeah true, but who starts a company? I bet it mostly are people that have worked a few years already, having a bit of cash set aside to start their own line/store.
I have seen many young ones start in the likes of warhammer and 40k, and drop out after a year or 2 because it costs too much, or it starts to bore them.
I could be totally off though, just commenting on my region. Really hoping i am wrong 

I have been in 'the hobby' since '97 now, and in all those years, i think i have played two games against people who were younger than me. So maybe that's what supports my train of thought, i don't know...

[Leon]

There are a few different types of business, and a lot more starting up now with the economic downturn and people going self-employed as there aren't any jobs about. 

There are:
- Those who start up as a part-time / extra cash affair.  These either tick over nicely, or grow and grow until one day you're lucky enough to be able to do it full-time.
- Those who have lost their job / can't find a job, who decide to start a business instead, hoping it will bring in enough to live off.
- Those with full-time day jobs, who can afford to start their own companies as a secondary income. 

[GordonY]

We probably lose them all because just as they give up on the Evil Empire's two games because they are too expensive, because they have been spoon fed all 'the hobby' drivel for all the time they were in the Sith's clutches they are totally unaware that there even exists better & cheaper ways of wargaming.

[Techno]

I think Gordon sums it up fairly well.....
Then there are those who return to the hobby once they realize, or discover, that the EE's systems and models aren't the only products available.
Sometimes it takes a bit (a lot ?) of time though.
Cheers - Phil.

[Matt J]

I had an aweful lot of gw stuff as a kid but like most got distracted by beer women and the real world. Painting used to chill me out so I started again a couple of years ago with 10mm historicals. I'm 36 with 3 kids a big mortgage and stressful job so 10mm as a scale fits in with available time and space and I like painting real looking armies not skirmish actions. Due to geography and life I haven't played a game since coming back to the hobby but would like to at some point!
I would still play gw but only the specialist games. My son is 2 though so I've probably got about 6 years before I have start painting space marines 

Also miffed because like you peter I've 31 years before retirement but I'm nearly 10 years older  I'm in the wrong country 

[Hertsblue]

We probably lose them all because just as they give up on the Evil Empire's two games because they are too expensive, because they have been spoon fed all 'the hobby' drivel for all the time they were in the Sith's clutches they are totally unaware that there even exists better & cheaper ways of wargaming.

I don't think it's as simple as that. We have successfully weaned youngsters off 40K and on to WW2 or even Napoleonics in the past. However, they then hit sixteen or seventeen and discover the opposite sex. The next few years are taken up with relationships and "settling down" and it's usually only in their late thirties/early forties, once the hormones have damped down a bit, that the opportunity to get back to a hobby occurs. OK, I know there are exceptions to this rule - but they are exceptions. This is why the number of young (twenties and thirties) people in the hobby is relatively low.

[Steve J]

I don't think it's as simple as that. We have successfully weaned youngsters off 40K and on to WW2 or even Napoleonics in the past. However, they then hit sixteen or seventeen and discover the opposite sex. The next few years are taken up with relationships and "settling down" and it's usually only in their late thirties/early forties, once the hormones have damped down a bit, that the opportunity to get back to a hobby occurs. OK, I know there are exceptions to this rule - but they are exceptions. This is why the number of young (twenties and thirties) people in the hobby is relatively low.

When I still went to Portbury Knights wargames club, all of the above happened. Chaps moved away to Uni, then got jobs, houses and families. Once all this was sorted we saw them re-appear at the club as time and finances allowed.

[petercooman]

I never took a break actually 

I stopped buying and gtaming for sure, but i never stopped painting. I never had the opposite sex problem for that matter. For me there was only one girl while i was in school, so didn't have that problem. Never got to it unfortunately, but hey we are still friends and i hear from her on a daily basis so it's all good.

You know what they say, better a good friend than a bad relationship....   

[Rob]

Now seriously, i'm 27, and i am finding out more and more that it's very hard to find fellow wargamers my age. Are we a dying breed? Are we losing the young ones to videogames after all?

I agree that there are fewer younger historical gamers now. Personally I think this is because we are a different country now and the views of what children can consume for entertainment is very different from in the past. This coupled with the greater technical possibilities for film makers and computer game makers fires the imagination of kids in different directions.

Violence in the form of historical stories has been forbidden to young audiences for many years now only to be replaced with even more violent 'fantasy/zombie/super power/super hero/science fiction' subjects. I get the impression from my boys that battles are no longer part of history teaching at school (is this true teachers?). So the insight gained into the technicalities of fighting battles is denied to the kids.

The result I think is the imagination of kids is fired up by different things these days, and unfortunately it is easier to satisfy this with the latest greatest video game rather than spend 3 or 4 times as much on rules and figures and have to paint and base them.

I am fighting back though!  The rules I am currently working on are a skirmish set. They are primarily for the 20th century. I intend to get them working in the "real world (?)" environments and then build in zombies and weird WW2 type add-ons. I also intend to put in xbox type scenarios with characters regenerating back into the game in "secure the flag/objective" type contests. I'll make these available freely to anyone that wants to use them. My target is to put historical or modern style war gaming into the same package as (silly?) zombie/space marine games to allow my kids to convert in their own time, or not, as they see fit.

Cheers, Rob 

[barbarian]

Don't bother and buy The Battlefield - Miniature modern warfare. It's all already made.

[howayman]

I have a 17 year old who has played G W games and has moved on to warmachine. does a lot of card type games but has no real interest in historical gaming at all. It was the old airfix models that got me interested in military history then in to using the figures for games. The military toy seems to have vanished from modern kids toy boxes and video games need no real grasp of history.

[J.S.]

Hmm..interesting topic. I just turned 25 and would call myself a big hobby-enthusiast (and I'm definitely not the only "young" gamer here). But I also have to say that I've returned to the hobby only a few years ago after a break of ~10 years  

->

but like most got distracted by beer women and the real world.

Actually an ex-girlfriend gave me the final impulse to reenter the world of miniatures. About 4 years ago we were standing in a toy-store to buy a present for her little sister when she noticed that I kept starring at all those 20mm stuff by revell, zvezda ec. and said "Gosh, then buy one of those boxes if your inner child demands it". And that was the start of my journey on the road to perdition  

edit: and I defintely have to say that the hobby is not considered "cool" and on the nerd-scale even above excessive computer-gaming..I still pack away all my stuff before I go out on the weekends..guess most ladies would immediately turn around when the first thing they see in my appartement is a table full of lead  

[petercooman]

Same with me, my grandfather used to work for the belgian railroad system, and had a model train set at home, wich we could use when we were there. This led me to building houses for them wich he got for me.

One day we went to a hobby'con' in our town, as the flyer said there were also train dioramas on display.

I bought my first model kits there, wich was a model of the apollo landing on the moon, and a snap togheter revell kit cointaining a tie figther, x wing and b wing. Having much fun with these, i asked another kit for my birthday 2 months later (i became 9), and got a model of a Hind helicopter. I never looked back ever since. Everything from then on had something to do with military.

Untill that dreaded day, where i stepped into a local hobby shop at the age of 12 and started the GW madness. I must admitt that unlike others, i didn't start with WF or 40k, but went immediately to the small scale of epic 40k.

Off course this didn't last long as nobody played it   ,years later i restarted epic though, and have nice and big armies for it.
Then i started fantasy and 40k and went of and on, always trying other (more affordable)stuff.I had dozens of revell 1/72 kits and still have them today because they were dead cheap at the time. I also started with warzone, the mutant chronicles, wich in my opinion was a better game than 40K, but sadly target games went bankrupt very fast. I also remember asking for risk for my birthday, as i wanted the napoleonic models  

Now all that aside, last year the local store closed, and having nowhre to play the GW games anymore, it was normal that I choose another thing, and with my collegue already having 2 pendraken armies for BKC, the coice wasn't that hard!(i wish i had known sooner that my collegue was a wargamer too! )

So that's it, as you see i was aware that there were other things around then GW, but most of the time the problem was finding someone else who wanted to play something else!