2023 Year-End Wargaming Survey

Armchair Dragoons PAO, 14 December 2023

Starting this year, we’re cranking up a couple of research initiatives.  You’ve already seen the joint one we launched with Beyond Solitaire to ask about respondents’ favorite solo wargames.  We also asked about your favorite ways to engage with wargaming content online.  There’s a few larger things brewing for next year, too.

One thing we intend to do going forward is a year-end survey from the wargaming world.  We want to know how your year in wargaming went – did you play more or less compared to last year?  Buy more, or buy less?  New opponents, or the usual suspects?  Favorite game?  Most played game?  Make it to any conventions?

So here is the 2023 Year-End Wargaming Survey

It’s broken up into several sections, and lets you know your progress along the way.  We do ask you to paste a couple of URLs over from BGG, like we did over the Summer in the solo wargaming survey, which helps keep the data consistent and cut down on variations in spelling, or exact wording, of the titles.

If you have any trouble scrolling through the survey on our page here (especially if you’re on a mobile device) you can go directly to it at this link.  The survey closes on 31 December, and we’ll go through the results in January and share what we found.

The survey closed on 31 December 2023, but these are the questions we asked¹

1. Where did you find out about this survey?
2. Overall, did you play more in 2023 than the previous year?
3. Thinking about how many different games you played compared to last year, as well as the overall time spent wargaming…
4. Overall, did you buy more games than last year?
5. What’s your favorite game released in 2023?
6. What game did you play the most in 2023?  (even if it wasn’t released this past year)
7. What’s a game you bought in 2023 and immediately got to the table?
8. What’s a 2023 release you haven’t gotten to yet?
9. Overall, how did your opponents compare to last year? (even if you were playing online, like TTS/Vassal)
10. Where are you usually playing?
11. Did you attend any conventions this year? (if yes, then given the following 4 questions; if no, skipped to #12)
    • Which conventions did you attend?
    • What was the PRIMARY deciding factor in which conventions you attend
    • What is your average cost of attendance for a game convention? Include your travel & food/accommodation costs, but not your game purchases
    • What is your average game (and accessory) shopping budget for a game convention?
12. How long have you been wargaming?
13. What’s your favorite type of wargaming media content?
14. How much of your wargaming is played solo?
15. What do you think the biggest story in wargaming was in 2023?
16. What should we have asked you, if we’d know what to ask you?

2023 YEAR-END WARGAMING SURVEY
THE ORIGINAL SURVEY ~ DESCRIPTIVE STATS ~ CROSSTABS PART 1 ~ CONVENTIONEERS ~ CROSSTABS PART 2 ~ FAVE GAMES ~ OPEN RESPONSES

Thank you for visiting The Armchair Dragoons and mounting up with the Regiment of Strategy Gaming.
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There once were Dragoons in their chairs,
Wargaming expertise beyond compares.
With passion they’d play,
Strategizing all day,
The Armchair champions, nobody dares.
In the hobby, they stand proud and tall,
Wargaming prowess, they enthrall.
In each tabletop fight,
They prove their might,
Armchair Dragoons, the best of them all!

1. we did not list all of the drop-down options here