by Brant Guillory, 26 January 2024
Back in December, we asked you about your 2023 wargaming and this series has been looking at the results.
Today, we’ve got one more dive into some tabular data, where we’re taking a look at a couple of different questions where we break out the results based on how long people have been playing wargames.
In our first set of crosstabs, we looked at how long folks have been wargaming vs how much of their wargaming is played solo, and how long folks have been wargaming vs their favorite kind of wargaming media.
Today we’re going to dig a little more into those “how long folks have been wargaming” comparisons.
Years as a wargamer? (Across)
by
How did your opponents compare to last year? (Down)
| Years as a wargamer ➡️
⬇️ New opponents in 2023 |
0-3 years | 3-10 years | 10-25 years | 25-40 years | More than 40 years | Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A whole lot of new people | 6 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 10 | 25 |
| Some of my prior opponents, but more new ones than the previous year | 4 | 5 | 4 | 7 | 16 | 36 |
| Mostly my same gaming buddies, with a few new faces | 7 | 8 | 11 | 16 | 35 | 77 |
| The usual suspects | 2 | 8 | 5 | 15 | 30 | 60 |
| Primarily a solo gamer | 9 | 12 | 3 | 17 | 30 | 71 |
| Grand Total | 28 | 35 | 26 | 59 | 121 | 269 |
Looks like most folks stuck with their usual gaming grounds, regardless of their years in the hobby. Once we take out the solo players, whose primary opponent seems to be a mirror, over half of who is left reported playing with “Mostly my same gaming buddies, with a few new faces” or “The usual suspects”
Folks, bring a new friend to the table!
Years as a wargamer? (Across)
by
Did you play more in 2023 than the previous year? (Down)
| Years as a wargamer ➡️
⬇️ How much you played in 2023 |
0-3 years | 3-10 years | 10-25 years | 25-40 years | More than 40 years | Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No, I didn’t play nearly as much as last year | 3 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 15 | 28 |
| No, didn’t play as much, but it was close | 4 | 5 | 10 | 16 | 24 | 59 |
| Yes, played more, but not a lot | 6 | 18 | 7 | 31 | 58 | 120 |
| Yes, played a lot more | 15 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 24 | 62 |
| Grand Total | 28 | 35 | 26 | 59 | 121 | 269 |
Over half of the respondents did play more, and some by a lot. It’s good that we’re getting more time to play.
Years as a wargamer? (Across)
by
Overall, did you buy more games than last year? (Down)
| Years as a wargamer ➡️
⬇️ Buy more games in 2023 |
0-3 years | 3-10 years | 10-25 years | 25-40 years | More than 40 years | Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A lot more than 2022 | 13 | 6 | 5 | 11 | 17 | 52 |
| More, but not by a lot | 7 | 13 | 13 | 22 | 43 | 98 |
| Not quite as many as last year | 8 | 13 | 5 | 21 | 42 | 89 |
| Way fewer games than in 2022 | – | 3 | 3 | 5 | 19 | 30 |
| Grand Total | 28 | 35 | 26 | 59 | 121 | 269 |
The preponderance of folks bought around the same amount as last year, but of the buying “a lot more” vs “way fewer” we see the respondents who are newer in the hobby more likely to buy “a lot more” whereas the 40+ veterans are about evenly split there.
So it looks like among our respondents, the newer members of the hobby are the ones that binged a bit to fill out their collections.
Years as a wargamer? (Across)
by
Where are you usually playing? (Down)
| Years as a wargamer ➡️
⬇️ Where are you playing? |
0-3 years | 3-10 years | 10-25 years | 25-40 years | More than 40 years | Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| At a convention or other scheduled gathering | 1 | 2 | – | 2 | 5 | 10 |
| At a friend’s house | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 14 | 25 |
| At a game store or other cafe | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 11 |
| At a local club | 2 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 10 | 22 |
| At my house | 14 | 21 | 10 | 32 | 61 | 138 |
| At school | – | 1 | – | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Online using tools like VASSAL or TTS | 7 | 5 | 11 | 10 | 27 | 60 |
| Grand Total | 28 | 35 | 26 | 59 | 121 | 269 |
So there’s only a few people playing at school, which might seem a little odd to those folks who grew up with wargaming clubs in school.
It’s interesting that even accounting for a lot of solo gamers in the survey, there’s still more of you playing at your own house than at a friend’s house. So either, none of your friends replied to this survey, or your friends are playing at your house, but they’re playing more somewhere else.
As we mentioned before, the stats you’re going to see here are not trying to describe “the wargaming population” but rather “these are the people that replied to the survey”.
You can see from the navigation below that we’ve got 2 more articles coming up in this series, on the favorite games that people chose, and on the open text answers we got back from respondents.
We’re happy to have your thoughts either below in the comments, or in the 2023 year-end research thread in our forums
2023 YEAR-END WARGAMING SURVEY
THE ORIGINAL SURVEY ~ DESCRIPTIVE STATS ~ CROSSTABS PART 1 ~ CONVENTIONEERS ~ CROSSTABS PART 2 ~ FAVE GAMES ~ OPEN RESPONSES
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