"How worried are you about the future of the hobby?" Topic

<Q>Calling them "the hobby" doesn't make them one thing.</Q>

You mot liking 3-on-3 doesn't make it not basketball.

… or maybe …

Historicals are not one thing. First, second, third, and fourth generation warfare are fundamentally different things. Wait, maybe that was land, air, and naval combat are fundamentally different things, No, maybe it was massed army, skirmish, and over-the-horizon …

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1. The primary demographic age of tabletop

Already asked about another post, but … data?

1. Speaking as an American in Europe, no, the historical genre is not doing better here than in the states. I have managed, at no small cost, to attend the convention season here and the greying is certainly in your face. Brick & mortor stores are vanishing entirely whereas they once were widespread – it's a desert here compared to the '80's.

2. Historical won't disappear, but these are the twilight years from a human standpoint.

3. Miniatures selection and availability and detail in every scale seems to be enjoying a rennaissance.

4. SF/Fantasy/RPG/Etc is still rolling strong and if GW is any indication, shows zero sign of fall-off.

Not concerned as I don't care about anyone else's hobby but my own and I know, it won't be passed on. It dies with me.

Thanks for the first-hand observations from Europe, Augustus!

That's depressing. My impressions from the magazines coming out of Europe and the UK and the convention reports I've seen were that the historical field was doing well. This may not be an accurate assumption.

The selections now may be great, but that won't hold up if nobody is buying them (because nobody is playing them).

0. It can go today for all I care.

OFM, as someone else who once had to make do with the cheap cuts of stegasaurus, could we please give that "castings are ten times what they were in the Sixties" routine a rest?

Yes, if you'd buried you money in a coffee can instead of buying Wurttemburgers, you could buy fewer Wurttemburgers today with the contents of the said can. But what were you being paid then, and what are those of the same skill level being paid today? Prices for everything--food, clothes, books--are, on average, about ten times what they were in the Kennedy administration. We're not starving, naked and bookless. We are on average better able to afford that CLS 36-casting 30mm French line battalion than we were then (Of course, now we'd have to call them 28mm.)

I'll go further. There are nicely-sculpted castings in smaller scales, Perfectly durable hard plastics are cheaper than those metals were (and a lot less prone to led rot) and if you spend $500 USD for a 3D printer, the price per casting thereafter drops to about five cents.

The kids may not know or care about history. They may lack the room for a 5x9 board, but they're certainly not being kept out of miniature warfare because the price of a 30mm metal has more or less kept up with inflation.

I don't know if that was a good guess or not, robert piepenbrink, but I looked up the relative inflation in the us since 1960, and 10X is pretty much right on the spot.

I think if you consider disposable income having doubled since then and several basics housing, food, maybe healthcare) having inscreased faster than inflation, just keeping pace with inflation makes them relatively cheaper than the 60's in terms of purchasing power.

Thank you, eto, but I wasn't guessing. Several sites, personal experience and a talk with a contractor looking over labor & material estimates from long ago.

Getting more specific opens up all kinds of problems, though--mean vs medium income, for instance, and things which didn't exist or weren't for the masses back then. Think flat-screen TVs, PCs and cable, for instance.

Consensus seems to be a sharper than inflation rise in health care, though a lot of it is paid by tax money, and in post-secondary education--again, not quite so bad if you look at what people pay instead of the sticker price.

Housing I honestly don't know. If you can find a site which compares housing of the same area with the same amenities and in the same type of community, I'd be very interested. Mostly, people are telling me that 3,000 square foot houses with AC, aluminum siding and built-in dishwashers in major urban areas cost more relative to inflation than 1,000 square foot houses with no AC, no dishwashers and plywood siding in medium-size towns did 60 years ago, which is no doubt true. But I just flat can't get an apples to apples comparison.

If it's any use, I live in the same subdivision my father bought a new house in late in the Eisenhower administration, and the county assessor rates it as about 12 times his purchase price. (In Indiana, the assesment is supposed to match the market price.) On the other hand, my house is slightly larger, and has the AC, built-in dishwasher and siding Dad's didn't--not to mention the three-car garage.

If we had 10,000 such comparisons, we could talk knowledgeably about housing costs. But, as I say, no one seems interested in assembling the data.

Oh. Eto. 3 on 3 vs basketball. I'd have to be interested in sports to respond directly, though I'm pretty sure the top 3 on 3 team won't be invited to the NBA quarterfinals this year, nor their scores go to the same Hall of Fame.

But as far as I'm concerned, historical miniatures is juggling one more ball than fantasy and SF. "All" the F&SF rule writers, scenario designer and players have to do is create a fun, good-looking game--which I'll grant you is tricky enough. But their historical miniatures counterparts have to do all that and also include all the options historically available to commanders at the level of the game--and ONLY those options. I make that about an order of magnitude more difficult. Yes, they're related. It's not as though I paint my ratlings with different brushes than my musketeers. But rugby, soccer/association football and (American) football are related too--without being one sport. For that matter, cricket isn't baseball, nor checkers chess.

So I'll stand by my assessment that F&SF miniature wargames have a fairly bright future, and the outlook for historicals is looking less happy. You think I'm wrong?

I see that my Old Fart credentials are being scoffed at.
Well, " HARRUMPH!" I say to you, you whippersnapper(s)!

Seriously, I recall that back when I was a Youngster paying $.25 USD for a Minifigs casting, there were those bitching about having paid $.20 USD in the past.
At the same time I was paying for Hinchliffe, Garrison and feeling like a madcap drunken sailor, going to Widener College to buy Lamming figures that smelled like pipe tobacco. In fact, I could smell that pipe smoke outside in the parking lot. Ah, the MFCA shows.

I still condemn Heritage Models for putting out blister packs with 6 figures at $1.98 USD! Nothing good came from that, despite me needing those figures. I suppose you could accuse me of enabling that crime against wallets.

Since I brought up the MFCA show, they seem to not have too many youngsters at their shows either.
link

I wonder if that nostalgic aroma of that pipe tobacco is still wafting out to the parking lot?

It's not your age I question, OFM: it's your grasp of economics. But it's a common thing: people who wouldn't for a minute consider working for what they were paid in 1968, and who certainly don't expect to pay 1968 prices for books, houses or gasoline, come to TMP and announce that the end of miniature wargaming is upon us because the 25 cent 30mm miniature has gone the way of the good five cent cigar. We lost that battle somewhere between FDR and Nixon--but so has everyone else. Fiat currency goes that way.

Which still leaves us far from Bill's question. I remain bullish on F&SF, and my pessimism about historical miniatures is moderated only by a near-certainty that they'll outlive me. I'd still like to think of the little fellows marching on future tabletops under someone else's command, but not much I can do to get them there.

It's no wonder that Economics is called "the dismal science ". You can't even joke about it. 🙄

My apolgies, OFM. I must have missed the punchline. I will go paint Command Post figures as pennance. No joke, sadly: I got up from finishing a battalion to check e-mail.

That is the nice thing, you know: unlike cars, friends, relatives and most appliances, castings you bought and painted 50+ years ago are as good as they ever were.

I'm pretty sure the top 3 on 3 team won't be invited to the NBA quarterfinals this year, nor their scores go to the same Hall of Fame.

Well, the 3 on 3 champs are in a different league, however many of the champs are invited to the NBA for the next season. And not only is 3 on 3 enshrined in the HoF, but they are playing the championship there

link

But that's not the point. The point is it is the same sport. It requires the same skills. They have fundamentally the same concept of rules and same compcept of ops. Minor difference in rules would lead to the idea that this year's college seniors in baskeball or football shouldn't be drafted into the NBA or NFL because they play aa different sport (different rules).

So I'll stand by my assessment that F&SF miniature wargames have a fairly bright future, and the outlook for historicals is looking less happy. You think I'm wrong?

Teams and conferences within a sport don't last, so the idea that one sector may or may not do better than another doesn't mean thaty they aren't the same sector is failicous.

Your belief in this matter is your belief. Point to the part where I challenged that?

. If you can find a site which compares housing of the same area with the same amenities

The US Bureat of Labor Statstics CPI does that.

Adjusting for same standard of living is part of their analytical process. It's pretty simple and transparent. There are more cmoplex adjustments that are not so straightforward.

In housing, you actually can get pretty much the same house as you did in the 60's. Better wiring, less lead, no asbestos. But while those things did cost more when the old methods were phased out, they were (1) marginal cost drivers, and (2) are well past the spike caused by changing regulations.

Consensus seems to be a sharper than inflation rise in health care

Not a big fan of everybody knows as a standard. That said the same CPI says healthcare is up about 5x over a shorter period.

3/14/2024. US Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index components, 12/31/1989 – 12/31/2023,
seasonally adjusted.

This comparison (and the text on the analysis of the CPI points this out) is less clear. Point in an example: The eading edge medical care that put my dad's cancer into remission in the 80's was not availble in the 60's. It killed both cancer and patients at a high rate in the 80's. It's much less risky (<1% fatalities) and avalable now.

It's hard to say whether it is affordable since it wasn't avalable in the 60's.

Also, we have different laws in the US right now, like the Affordable Care Act, which requires you to pay for services you don't need (pure coproate profit). That different legal framework skews what affordable means.

Thank you, eto. That was very helpful. Sorry I haven't responded sooner. I'm running on impulse power today. Maybe battery power.

If you could PM me with a link to the housing stuff, I'd appreciate it. At your convenience.

Agree on most of the health care stuff: changing tech makes it hard to measure inflation rates. But government-imposed costs are still costs, and count. I find that "affordable" in politicianspeak, doesn't mean "we'll make this more efficient" but "we'll stick someone else with the bill."

Yeah, siure. Here's a ilnk to the CPI:

bls.gov/cpi

and the latest update:

link

You have to dig through it a bit, but they are very well done and documented. The housing info is in with the rest of the CPI.

I am not a big fan of "Statistics don't lie; staisticians lie." BLS is a good example. If you read the reports and dig through the source material, you find that they do multiple analyses, document their assumptions well, and even tell you when and where you can and can't compare different things.

If, however, you want to make a political statement and vomit one number devoid of its context into a 120 character soundbite, well …