" Why Do You Game? " Topic

"Sorry I am jumping ahead. Perhaps you don't game, you just like to collect and paint models. That is fine, glad to have you on board as part of the hobby but you are not who this article is aimed at. My target audience is people who actually use their model collections to play games.

About a year ago and about thirty five years since I started gaming I was struggling to find enjoyment in my gaming. This culminated in a sci fi game against a dear friend where I was beaten without being able to offer any real opposition and I threw a strop. Yes a full on five year olds strop. I apologise again to my opponent who luckily is still a good friend. I was playing with beautiful models using a rule set I liked. Afterwards for the first time in years I sat down and seriously asked myself why did I game. I even contemplated giving up gaming.

The first thing I realised was I certainly did not game just for the sake of winning. Sometimes when demoing a game to a new player I have wanted to crawl under the table as sheer good fortune meant I thrashed my opponent. If you counted all my wins and losses over the thirty five years I am sure the losses would exceed the wins, so it could not be that…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Have you ever gone to one of "THOSE" parties? This is the party where someone invites everyone they know to come over and hang around with no thought as to who will contribute anything or enjoy themselves, and worse, might be a party pooper. So you sit there for four hours or so drinking odd bits of low calorie soda, diet juice, or bad booze. The booze is there as a blessed anesthetic to deaden the pain of the horrible food and even worse excruciating company? "Hi, I'm Jack, what do you do at work?"

Yah, right, don't lie, you've all been there.

The game is the excuse for the craftsmanship and fun of building and painting the toy soldiers and immersing yourself in the hobby, and it is also the filter through which you can have really great parties with people of the same interest. Somehow the bad food diet soda and indifferent booze now is the best I the world. "So what did the A-Hls at your job put you through this week Jack?"

The hobby of war games is the effort and love we put into our figures, armies and collections. The games are irrelevant and exist only to allow us to exhibit our toys and gain the admiration, adulation and perhaps a little envy from those people whose opinions we value. But mostly it's for the toys themselves.

As for Game design? It hasn't improved one bit. It still sucks and the games today are just as silly, stupid, and awful as they always were, only longer and more costly now.

I game to learn. I play to see how people react to situations and to learn history and problem solving. I enjoy panting, but if anything is irrelevant, it's the figures, not the game.

for fun

'cause I like it!

I game because I enjoy the company of my friends and this is one way we get together.
Reading, collecting and painting are thing I would do anyway but it does make the games more enjoyable, at least for me. :)

Thanks,

Pat

I game therefore I am…

I'm a solo gamer…

Amicalement
Armand

To get together and be with friends. Although because of 2 major surgeries, I have not been able to game in a couple of years.

I ditto Space Cowboy.

+1 Rich Bliss. I still like getting the figures out, but for actually learning more about why things turned out the way they did, I tend to play games without them.

Winning a game is nice sometimes too, especially when you've been using tactics that were historically successful and it's a close game. Walkovers are no fun, regardless of what's on the table.

Because I can and because I want to.

Ditto jdpintex, and because my wife lets me.

Because I'm having fun playing the game, and spending quality time with good close friends!

Beats working.

I love the company of good friends who share my interest, and pushing around figures I painted into battle, whether to victory or ignominious defeat!