"The Lack of an American Equivalent to WI or MW/BG" Topic

While I am a frequent reader and less frequent contributor to both UK publications, I have often wondered why about the lack of an equivalent publication in the US. A brief look at the magazine section of TMP indicates that there is a Utah (local?) publication, but other than that . . .
Is this a result of the electronic age and the fact that 1 out of 2 wargamers has a blog? (Not sure of the exact number, but it certainly seems like it.)

Stepping back, I wonder if JAW (Journal of American Wargaming – suggested title) would be able to compete with established magazines.

Chris

Probably not the electronic age.. The Courier in all it's incarnations, and the others usually died more than anything else, due to the lack of a slush pile. (Slush pile is the backlog of submissions used to keep filling a publication.) I was more than willing to purchase last one (Was it Wargamers Digest?) but the publishing was soooooo erratic that you never knew when it would be out. I think it folded after 11 or 12 issues. MW and WI have a dedicated staff of writers, and a much denser concentration of contributors.
When Dick Bryant ran The Courier, he had theme years, and used to publish 6 times a year. Due to lack of promptness from theme contributors he went down to 4 issues, and then I don't know what happened as I was unable to acquire the magazine. When I poked my head out it was gone, and MWAN was out.

q>Stepping back, I wonder if JAW (Journal of American Wargaming – suggested title) would be able to compete with established magazines.

I say yes with a dedicated staff and a good slush pile, the market is there. It just has to be on the stands when due!

It is an interesting question. There has to be more war gamers in the states but the UK mags apear to be available in many countries.

The Courier and MWAN had long runs but they were labors of love--not commercial enterprises.

I agree with the critter in that I think a market is there but it needs to be properly funded and on time. There is a fair amount of gaming eye candy out there but if someone could produce an old style, folksy MWAN style journal six times a year I'd be there.

Depends what you want from a wargames magazine.

Wargame Developments has been publishing a journal/magazine since the 1980s, and back issues 193 to 255 are available free from link

It may not be what you are looking for … but it might be worth looking at anyway.

The journal for solo wargamers (The Lone Warrior) is now published in the US, not from the UK anymore. So there is one.

But no, I do not think it can compete with blogs, electronic magazines, etc. I buy a lot of magazine subscriptions and I am always going through adding them because I see something good and then dropping them when I see they cannot sustain it.

I have had, and dropped, and picked up again, WI, MW, and LW. I was considering dropping BG, but that is dying anyway. I maintain Slingshot, but only because some of the information there is very hard to find on the internet. There are guys that write in there that say they are not on the internet!

All of the subscriptions that are not electronic PDF are up for review this year. I have too much paper in stacks around me. And no, the Exact Editions leasing model is not acceptable.

Dale

Don't forget when Don Perrin bought MWAN and started "Historical Miniatures Wargamer", ran for a few issues.

MW and WI have a dedicated staff of writers

No, they don't, other than in the case of the Battlefront part of WI. All those pople you read are strictly amateurs writing for little money for the love of the hobby in their spare time.

the Exact Editions leasing model is not acceptable.

Which is why it's changing and the new MW will be available in PDF from issue 361.

I was considering dropping BG, but that is dying anyway.

No, it's changing it's name to Miniature Wargames.

See henrys-wargaming.co.uk/?p=1305

Henry
Battlegames – and soon, Miniature Wargames with Battlegames

According to the inside front page Wargames Illustrated is produced in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United States of America.

Printed in the UK.

Tony

Henry,

I love ya' guy, and you can put whatever spin you want on it.

As for Exact Editions, that sounds good on face value, but I await to see exactly what happens, as I have a paper sub to BG and a digital sub to MW through Exact Editions. Again, as you yourself said in the interview, you really could not speak to all the details about how things would change regarding subscriptions.

Dale

Hi Centurion of Caesar,

It is perhaps significant that Wargames Illustrated seem to 'rotate' their editors and thus the presumed balance of the articles that are published. When its the US editor, you can see that there are far more articles from the US, than anywhere else, excepting the F-O-W content, which having said that is a very popular ruleset and game in North America.

So its probably as near as anyone in North America will actually get to having their own magazine without someone sitting down and funding it and writing it, which would be a major commitment both financially and in time. And if there was a wargame magazine produced in America, how would it differ from those currently produced in the UK and Europe?

After all, its not as if North America have different wars and campaigns from which to select their interests, compared to the rest of the World. in fact, looking at recent coverage in Wargames Illustrated, there has been coverage of the American Civil War, the French Indian War and War of Independence, or Rebellion, depending on your standpoint. And there was also an article on the War of 1812 recently too I think.

As far as advertisers are concerned, Wargames Illustrated probably has the highest circulation worldwide so presumably an ad placed in there would reach the biggest possible worldwide audience, and most traders in the hobby have internet shops, and I know from personal experience that buying figures or models from America is just as simple as buying 'locally', and occasionally has been quicker!!

As is often said, magazines only publish what we hobbyists and wargamers are able to write, so if your favourite magazine doesn't cater for your particular interest, irrespective of on which side of the North Atlantic you live, then ultimately, its down to the readers to make the difference, to make the existing magazines into the type of magazine you prefer, because ultimately its the contributors who will dictate the content, and if the magazines don't publish what people want, then they will fail, but don't punish the magazines if you don't let them know what you want to read.

Appreciate the thoughts, remarks, comments, and critique of all who responded. On reflection, it appears that some interpreted my question as jingoistic in nature. That wasn't my intent, but I can see how it happened. (I suppose I should wait 24 hours before clicking the submit or send button!)

You raise a number of excellent points Lacey G. With its Battlefront/FOW backing, I imagine WI has more resources to weather trying economic times and well as the vagaries of the general wargaming readership.

With regard to your last paragraph, I have run across wargamers in other forums who are too ready to criticize content of this or that publication. When I politely suggest that they take up a pen or keyboard, they inform me that it's not their responsibility. That's an "interesting" viewpoint. With regard to my original question and suggested title of such a journal, a number of replies talk about wargaming as a universal language. This appears to reinforce your point about contributors dictating content and the necessity of communication from readers.

The current publications are general publications, obviously, excepting the theme issues. Niche interests are probably best addressed via the Internet and specialized blogs.

Thanks again to all who read the post and replied.

Chris

In the UK, the main figure magazines are sold on the shelves of many of our WH Smith shops, not sure how important that is in terms of circulation when considering the US to UK markets. Could the US have a figure wargame mag sold on the high street? (or would direct subscription be equal or greater than the combined UK subscription and news stand copies?).

I believe in France, the Vae Victis mag does appear on news stands.

In the US, I think the boardgame mags (such as the S&T) make it to the news stands but without the game in it and yet the UK does not have anything like that.

Normsmith has it exactly right. The British magazines can be easily found at the chain newsagents every month, whereas no American magazine seller has ever done so – Barnes and Noble carries Ancient Warfare and its medieval brother, but no dedicated wargames mag (except maybe, possibly White Dwarf) can be found.

Which means that no American wargames magazine can expect to be picked up by the chain retailers (who would assume that it would fail for them, and they'd be right).

I think there's much more of a hobby magazine reading culture – or maybe just a habit – in the UK than in the US. I can't prove that, of course.

There have been three or four US 'general' wargames magazines in the last thirty years I have lived in North America, and I wrote articles for all of them. Even in the pre-internet age none showed any signs of reaching the level of commercial success of WI or MW. Each was short of material and advertising revenue. That's even more true today – why would you pay to advertise in a monthly magazine when you can reach your audience the day a new product is released, probably for free?

Actually, Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy is in B&N, just in a smaller selection of stores than AW and MW.

I did a LOT of writing for Purky's "Historical Gamer" and also a LOT for Dick Bryant's "The Courier." Both of them were strictly break even at best from a financial point of view and both of them were always content starved. That's what Dick told me at least.

The closest model to something like what you are talking about would be the Model Railroading magazines like "Model Railroader" and "Railroad Model Craftsman," (which I subscribe to, and which my wife forked for the latter for about three years). These DO have paid staffs and writiers, and photographers, but all Game magazines for miniatures have been labors of love and non-professional writiers. Content is a problem for us. The fact is the demographic of gamers in the US just isn't big enough to float even one of these, on a comparable level to Model Railroader and RMC. If you don't have the demographic behind you, you can forget about newstand sales. It might be different in England which has a much more concentrated environment, but only because there are fewer newsstands. The problem of distribution of a magazine on a conintental wide scale means you would have to have subscription base of 30-100,000. I don't think there's more than 10,000 gamers on the whole planet.

The other problem is that gamers are notoriously cheap. They'll pass around a "Courier" at a club meeting or make copies for their friends. I also don't think blogs and electronic stuff would make that many inroads.

The other problem as I see it is that the British magazines have usually been little more than "pewter porn." Pretty pictures of other peoples figured in staged dioramas that really have nothing to do with gaming, and the content has been pretty vapid. The Historical Gamer, MWAN, and the Courier were low on graphics but high on content. This may appeal to English gamers, but low content high art leaves American gamers flat for the most part. Many of the articles in English mags I have seen are simply rehashed, trivialized synopsis of some history book with little about gaming in it, or the applications to gaming excepr for broad generalizations. Jim Purky and Dick Bryant were always adament that was not the articles they wanted- they wanted hard stuff on gaming.

That's a problem for an American clientele. Americans want hard gaming content, but that's hard to write and takes a long time to do- a rewirite or gloss of Dupuy and Dupuy is easy. Battlegames with Henry Hyde at the helm seemed to be trying to edge away from this model and put more content in, but I don't know how successful it was. I know that he is now the editor of WI or MW or one of the other alphabet soup zines, but I don't know if he can carry it himself.

It's hard getting content. Even for my little dinky 8 page fanzine for Imagi-Nations, "Saxe N'Violets" sometimes I have to throttle myself, friends and acquaintences for stuff.

As with so many things- it all comes down to money, and there is virtually NO money in this hobby. If you don't believe me, ask the guys who publish rules.

It's an interesting thread. Speaking as editor of Slingshot, my preference is for some variety within the magazine, with a combination of interesting historical and gaming content, and variety within each. The content is written for free by the members, so I don't have the luxury of being able to commission stuff, but I'm generally happy with a lot of the submissions (though the supply of deep history articles tends to exceed that of deep gaming articles, so I do have to go and beg for the latter somewhat). There's nothing these days to stop the Slingshot editor being American.

No idea why the US can't generate commercially viable games magazines. I'm not sure it matters these days – in Slingshot's case the magazine is the same price worldwide, including postage, and US subscribers get their copies within a few days of those in the UK. SoA membership is currently 60/40 UK/Rest of the World. The ratio of North American members sending in articles is probably lower than that for the UK, continental Europe and Australia/NZ though.

It is my understanding that over 50% of sales for British magazines are on news stands or stores.

In the US it is almost impossible to get a new magazine with comparatively little financial backing on news stands or in Barnes and Noble and even if you can the financial terms and conditions are overly burdensome.

This is because, in the US, the magazine business is a closed market controlled by a very few companies and as long as it is so there will be no historical miniatures magazine. Because of this, the ad rates for magazines which are carried by news agents, such as Military History Magazine, are outrageously high.

In short, European magazines can count on large news stand sales to supplement subscriptions while US magazines cannot. Thus, no comparable US historical miniatures magazines.

Bob Coggins

I did a LOT of writing for Purky's "Historical Gamer"

Correction Otto, it was not my magazine. Bill Biles was the editor/publisher and a good friend of mine. I wrote a lot of articles for free to help Bill out.

I have run across wargamers in other forums who are too ready to criticize content of this or that publication. When I politely suggest that they take up a pen or keyboard, they inform me that it's not their responsibility.

You know, I've never given second thought to what anyone thinks about my articles. The one exception would be if I had something factually incorrect, in which case I would want the feedback.

If they don't like my writing, it doesn't bother me one bit. I'm not saying this to be fiesty, it is simply the way I feel about it. I write because I like to write and it is something that I do well.