"Defining Stages of Failure" Topic

You were asked – TMP link

As a follow-up to the previous poll on why wargame projects fail, perhaps it's appropriate to decide what constitutes either success or failure. I would suggest:

1. that a wargame project is a success if you assemble at least two armies, suitable terrain and rules and fight battles. (How many battles? Good question.)
2. I'd say it's a failure if you buy or build some of the necessary elements, but throw them out, give them away or sell them off without ever having what you need for a game.
3. You can tell yourself the verdict is still out as long as you have pieces of the incomplete project, but after a time, you're just lying to yourself. (How much time? Good question.)
4. You built it, but no one came. Is it a failure if the completed project attracts no gamers?
5. You cannibalized the project. Is it a failure if the troops, terrain or whatever were folded into another project? (For example, my 28mm Tudor English condensed scale DBA project never played, but was rebased for Lion/Dragon Rampant.)

Which of those five states do you regard as a failure?

Stage 1 – 4% of the votes
Stage 2 – 34% of the votes
Stage 3 – 19% of the votes
Stage 4 – 11% of the votes
Stage 5 – 8% of the votes

…

Is a project a failure if you learn from it and/or enjoy the project, even if you never play it?

I say no.

Good answer, mildbill, but you must not be wrapped as tightly as I am. For me, there have been failures precisely because I couldn't learn enough, and finally concluded the information just wasn't there, or the enjoyment was conditional on a pair of completed armies, and the manufacturer let me down.

Anyway, not much point in asking why wargame projects fail unless we more or less agree on what constitutes failure.

I consider all my wargaming projects to be failures just like post-it notes, velcro, teflon, pacemakers, superglue, and safety glass.

Not sure I have ever "failed" a project. One have been dropped for good reasons. I did do the preliminary work for an English longbow army "Agincourt" and all that, but dropped it. Reading more history the English victory's owed as much to gross French stupidity as English expertise. riding down your own troops, stupidity in the extreme. So playing the French would be no fun, you would have to model stupidity, even if successful it would make a dire game for the French General so the project was dropped well before figures.

Is that a failure, probably not, like any research some lines may not be productive to pursue but you have to do some work to see if it is a viable approach. This one was really not a sensible approach. Very late on the French started to get it together but then the armies were not the same. Knights advancing with a Pavice has less appeal tactically even if it actually lets the knights fight effectively.

Is it possible to fail at a hobby? It's a hobby, not a job. A lot of the time I see people, myself included, consider something a failure because it was never finished/fully used.

My brother and I had a really successful free ancients rules that we played and that were played (potentially even copied…) by others. We ported them over to a wide range of other genres. I would call that a success, but in the last 10 years we have gamed…maybe twice? Awful. But that infrequent use does not equal failure necessarily.

Damned interesting question to ponder that goes to the heart of the hobby and considers the drive necessary to make it fulfilling for the beholder.

I think you can fail at a hobby endeavor.

I just think that the reasons you parrticipate in the hobby are so personal and contextual that you can't define failure for others, or necessarily define it a priori for yourself.

Any of the five conditions listed in the OP could be the observable phenomenology of a failure (including #1), or of a success. The time criterion is the worst.

I re-read the criteria and perhaps I had close to a failure of sorts. I bought a few minis from a manufacturer supposed to be wonderful just as a check and threw them away (poor judgement on my part to have too much faith in some reviewers, that was probably my failure.) Utterly unusable. However the cost was not high and the project terminated, you have to test the water and sometimes its just fetid so of no use. Learned to look harder at reviewers credentials so not a total failure.