"Historicon 2019 turnout, and how much does it matter?" Topic

An observation on the sub-topic of younger people getting started in miniature gaming…..
• The MARX and Heritage playsets have been absent from the major toy catalogs for years. Something needs to replace them to rekindle some young interest.
• It seems to me that the hobby costs a lot more than it used to. A box of Warlord plastic Germans cost $19.95 USD when they were introduced. The same box costs around $34 USD today. The price for a rulebook, two armies, and some suitable terrain is approaching or exceeds the price of a new Playstation. Your favorite system may vary.
• Instead of advertising to us, "preaching to the choir" as it were, an effort should be made to get the story out to some of the major news carriers such as MSN or CNN online, with links to the club page and vendors. This would reach people who don't know we exist.

Snurl's last point is the most relevant. There are whole groups of armchair generals, current military, retired military, amateur historians, board gamers, computers gamers etc who would be blown away coming to any of our three cons. But they don't know it exists.

snurl1:

A kid can't afford to be a kid any more. You can't buy a box of 48 Airfix HO scale British Eighth Army men for .50 cents any more, or a ROCO Minitank model of a Panther or Sherman for .25 cents each!

Comments regarding the cost of getting into the hobby are all true enough. A number of us have had our children follow in our hobby habits. Many of them have used my/our figures their entire gaming lives. I have real peace knowing that my collection will be going to the next generation who will be using them. I have long told my son that he is a key in reaching new gamers; if a younger guy puts on a game he will attract others of similar age. Guys similar to me in age found me long ago in the same manner. Like finds like.

Tumbleweed, you left out

OMG, how much is tuition?

I'm curious how attendance at Fall In and Cold Wars have held up over the same time frame. If both of those cons have held steady in numbers and Historicon hasn't, that raises more questions.

thomalley:

Been there, done that twice.

Thought about this and I think people are misreading a number of things, and thus are trying to increase the hobby by perhaps targeting the wrong demographic.

First misconception, kids don't have the money for an expensive hobby like ours. YES, they do!!! But they aren't spending it on us. It baffles me where they get the coin for this stuff (or smart phones, designer jeans), but a trip to the local gaming cafe shows lots of young people playing WH and WH40K, all with lots of GW models adorned by GW paints (because that's the only way you're army is legal, right?). Jesus, Mary and Joseph, have you seen the cost of those things??? The $$$ is there, but Napoleonic miniatures is simply NEVER going to be as sexy as Ultra-Marines. So maybe count this group as a lost cause . . . for now.

Second misconception, you can't compete with computer games because of the low price point. Yes, but only if you try to play by their rules and play to their strengths. Like cardboard counter wargamers, my graduate degree research for DIA showed PC wargamers (serious wargames, vice Call of Duty, etc)are introverts for the most part and play their games solitaire. The two biggest strengths of our hobby IMHO is that it is first, an art form, and second a group activity, almost like a party. Thus our hobby is far more like model railroading than wargame genres a la Panzerblitz for board, and Prelude to Waterloo for the PC. Play to our strengths and stop trying to match theirs.

Conclusion. Maybe the demographic to really target are creative male extroverts from 25 to 30 something, former WH40K kids who have grown up, have good $$$ careers, whose maturity level pulls them towards more serious gaming. Its sorta the "When I was a child . . . " concept.

Seriously, I think we might be looking in the wrong place for new recruits.

Obviously JMTSW and YMMV.

Colonel Bill

I'd like to argue that there is nothing sexier than a Napoleonic Hussar. Common man, Napoleonic Hussars!!!!!

I been to the last 3 historicons. This one was the best so far.

As far as more attendance i think maybe hitting up the large youtube painting and gaming channels might get some people familiar with it. No one i know in the more sci-fi/fantasy games know of this con. Maybe if you could work with some channels with a following it might get some people in.

Something like doing demo games of some stuff or painting historical minis. Its really easier to see who is popular over on youtube

Just my 2 cents.

-Steve

…creative male extroverts from 25 to 30 something, former WH40K kids who have grown up, have good $$$ careers, whose maturity level pulls them towards more serious gaming. Its sorta the "When I was a child . . . " concept.

I must admit that I have less meaningful insight to this described demographic than I have of quantum entanglement, but I strongly suspect the crowd you describe is either:

a) still playing WH40K
b) just lost $1,700 USD on the last round of fantasy football
C) just won $45 USDk for 147th place in the Fortnite tourney
d) is now involved in bootleg street racing
e) is now playing rugby/semi-pro baseball/handball
f) is working 65 hours a week to pay off student loans

Or, has finally caught on to those not too subtle hints from his sister's BFF that, as a 25-30yo male with $$$, he isn't as socially invisible as he once thought.

As George would say, "Oh, my!…"

The trick is prying the introverts away from their devices into a setting where they can rub elbows with similar personae, who they won't find overwhelming, and can see things that capture their imagination.

Did anyone ever do a "300" figure line?

I think Bill may be onto something, although I suspect he is aiming just a little low on the age range. Perhaps 35 to 40 would fit his theory better.

The preponderance of historical gamers in the older age brackets shown in surveys, which is often interpreted as "the graying of the hobby" as die-hard historical gamers age and are not replaced, can be just as readily interpreted as the drifting of gamers of other genres into historical gaming as they mature. Anecdotal evidence tends to support this idea. (As an aside, although I would be reluctant to project my personal experience onto the gaming population at large, I designed and played games of all genres equally until my mid-thirties, by which time anything unhistorical simply became uninteresting.)

I would add that any attempt to swell the ranks of historical wargamers would benefit just as much from reaching out to those who have a love of history but hadn't considered gaming as a medium for exploring it as it would from reaching out to those who love gaming but hadn't developed an appreciation of history.

Forcing individuals to do something that they are genetically predisposed to avoid ("prying the introverts away from their devices into a setting where they can rub elbows with similar personae") doesn't seem like a winning strategy.

My son is 30 years old and has played miniature games for about 20 years. He started with historicals but moved to Warhammer. He still plays historicals at conventions, but Warhammer otherwise. The reason is availability of places to play. In our area of Florida there aren't any historical gaming stores. The stores that are in existence market warhammer and card games. If there is any historical gaming it is with Flames of War, which to me is a Warhammer knockoff. I was lured to historical gaming 39 years ago when I walked into a store and saw a game of Column, Line and Square going on. I was hooked. Today kids walk into stores and see warhammer with its fantasy or sci-fi figures. Its what draws them.

Warhammer may be expensive but armies are small so not as expensive as building a massive Napoleonic Army with all its essential parts. The smaller army means the games take less time and have less to control and know about. As a retired teacher who has seen kids change for 28 years I can tell you that many of today's kids have limited attention spans. Playing a long game with lots of units is not for them. Playing a short game with fewer units is.

I personally don't care for Warhammer, but my son tells me that the new rules have streamlined the game and made it faster. Our gamers need to go to the stores and put on games that may attract young people to historicals. A group of us meet at a store in Orlando that is basically a fantasy and Sci-fi store and put on Command and Colors games in miniature. These games are relatively short affairs. Some people have walked up, watched the game and ask questions. This is the way to attract kids to our hobby.

Anecdotally, I think Col. Bill is correct about the most fruitful area of recruitment: current to ex-GW players clearly have money, like spending that money on toy soldiers, and enjoy either gaming with miniatures or the art of the hobby, or both. The only things lacking are an introduction to the historical wing of the hobby, a place to play, and of course SOME interest in history. The Warhammer Historical Battles flash-in-the-pan was mostly GW gamers who tried out historicals. That was a very large group of players there for a while—I remember the tournament room at the Host in the 2000s would have dozens of these guys playing with beautifully-painted 28mm armies, many of which have since gone into storage or perhaps onto EBay.

My local DBx crew plays about once a month at a strong local game store (store front for a thriving mail order business). We are approached every single time by a couple of people, and they are almost always GW players who either had or have a passing interest in historicals (just this last Sunday a 30-year Old Warhammer player talked to us and mentioned he used to have a pair of Warhammer Historical armies he has since sold). The Bolt Action players we see gaming there are often ones who at other times we see playing 40k. GW has a massive investment in gamestores where people play, a large fan base, and to me is the place to look for recruits. Similarly the Warmachine, etc., similar fantasy/sci-fi miniatures games.

But we have to play where they play and get the word out of the greater hobby if we want to do that. GW stores are off-limits to non-GW games, but most local gamestores have thriving GW-game nights, and players of such games on "open" days. I have thought of basing up some of my Warhammer fantasy figures for HoTT and playing "Romans against Dark Elves" silly fights as a way to interest bystanders. I personally think throwing a little money at advertising by the historical wing would be a worthy investment.

It's all in the marketing.

The Warhammer Historical Battles flash-in-the-pan was mostly GW gamers who tried out historicals. That was a very large group of players there for a while—I remember the tournament room at the Host in the 2000s would have dozens of these guys playing with beautifully-painted 28mm armies, many of which have since gone into storage or perhaps onto EBay.

Speaking as one of those "dozens of guys playing with beautiful figures", your basic assumption is just plain wrong. Why do you suppose we are out of historical gaming just because the WAB tournaments are defunct?