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Author Topic: Collected "Cyrano on a Rant" thread  (Read 26574 times)

BanzaiCat

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panzerde

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Well, I finally took a few minutes to watch Marco's review.

What's ever more clear to me is that there are two diverging groups that are trying to lay claim to wargaming. Marco is firmly in the "gamer" camp. Gamers are more concerned with mechanics and aesthetics than history.  They want games that are quick, easy to play, and provide the "feel" of a period. The historical accuracy of the game, and what it can teach you about the period are entirely secondary...or tertiary...or just not even something to be considered.

The second camp are amateur historians who use games as a means of learning about the specifics of a period. They want their games to teach and illustrate - they want simulation. To this crowd, a game that is complicated, difficult to play, and even ugly is just fine, as long as it reflects the history being depicted accurately.

Of course, no one is really one of these or the other; think of this as a spectrum with the two points above reflecting the end points.

Now, I tend toward the second group, pretty far along that end of the spectrum. I'm personally not at all interested in games like what Marco just reviewed. I wouldn't play it. But I don't have any problem with someone else enjoying it, and think, like Marco, that it might be a "gateway" game for other people to learn about and enjoy wargames.

Unfortunately a lot of people in the first camp - which Marco has always been, if you've been paying any attention to what he reviews and what he emphasizes in his reviews - seem to feel a need to declare that the other end of the spectrum is "dead," "too complicated," "full of complexity for complexity's sake" and seem to rejoice in that. They really, really, hate the "traditional" wargame. They'll make statements about how no traditional games ever get played. Just go look at the comments on Marco's review. All of the above are in there. Marco declares that anyone that like ASL or Starfleet Battles should enjoy those games, but realize that they are the "last generation" that will ever play them. He goes so far to declare that a "fact."

You can, of course, find articles going back to the 1970s about how wargaming is dying. I'm not going to rehash that argument here, but what I will propose is that there are a lot of people, mostly involved in playing other kinds of boardgames, who really wish wargames would die.  They really don't like the subject. They don't want to be reminded about the unpleasantness of much of the history. They don't care for the racial aspects of some of it. They may well have encountered a less than well socially adjusted player sporting some sort of offensive dress and more offensive attitudes. They have a bunch of reasons, and they may not even really be aware of it, but they really, really would like to see an end to what those of us toward the other end of this spectrum call "wargames." Increasingly we see this attitude crop up in diatribes against wargaming thinly veiled as reviews. In an age where everyone thinks their opinion is worthy of being widely shared, and everyone is perpetually outraged, I guess this isn't surprising. This too shall pass.

It's unfortunate that there are people like this, but I don't think they really represent the majority of players. It's unfortunate that there are wargamers that use certain games to feed their racist, misogynistic fantasies, but they don't represent the majority of players, either.  I think there's little doubt that "the hobby" is gravitating in a couple different directions. Frankly, I don't think that means much.  I'm not sure there ever was a monolithic "hobby" to begin with.

Stop. Go play. Less yapping, more gaming. A bunch of us are routinely playing 1824 Kriegsspiel 195 years after it was first conceived. Osprey will no doubt sell a bunch of copies of Undaunted. Everyone is wrong, shut up, go play.




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bbmike

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mirth

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Another trend is that "traditional wargamers" age, many no longer want to play big, complex games that take hours to set up and weeks/months/years to play. I know many folks in my own group who want things quick to setup/breakdown and able to be played to completion in a few hours. There are any number of reasons for the trend, availability of free time being number one.
As many of us have noted, the hobby has been "dying" for decades. Now, I think some aspects of it are waning for a variety of reasons. As it broadens, the idea of what is a wargame has broadened. I'm not overly concerned. This has always been such a niche hobby. I suspect the games I like to play will now become a niche within a broader hobby. I'm not worried the types of games I enjoy playing are going away (lord knows I have a life times worth already).

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Cyrano

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There was a lovely comment in one of the Twitter feeds prompted by the original rant.

It pointed out that years after a great many PC games have been binned, lost, or no longer run on contemporary PCs,  it's pretty easy to take "Napoleon's Last Battles" down from the shelf and have a go.

I like yapping, probably too much, but, yeah, moar gaming!


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panzerde

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Perhaps I should say "more yapping about games, less yapping about gaming."


I actually don't really like games.

Castellan -  La Fraternite des Boutons Carres


panzerde

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Another trend is that "traditional wargamers" age, many no longer want to play big, complex games that take hours to set up and weeks/months/years to play. I know many folks in my own group who want things quick to setup/breakdown and able to be played to completion in a few hours. There are any number of reasons for the trend, availability of free time being number one.

I completely agree with you Mirth. Marco even suggests that aging is behind his turn to simpler games. Deciding that you are to the point where you no longer find complex games compelling doesn't mean everyone else has to make that same decision.

It also seems that many people think wargaming was invented in the 1950's and 1960's, and wargames have always been generally available to a broad audience. I doubt many Medieval peasants had chess sets, and I know that even middle-class citizens weren't playing Kriegsspiel in the 19th century. Except for a brief era wargaming has always been a niche activity practiced by a very narrow range of people (and really it still was in the glory days of SPI and AH). I'm glad that boardgaming and RPGs are more broadly egalitarian than ever, but wargaming will never be.

I actually don't really like games.

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mirth

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Perhaps I should say "more yapping about games, less yapping about gaming."

Wargamers are traditionally a bunch of old hens. We'll yap about anything and everything.

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mirth

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I'm glad that boardgaming and RPGs are more broadly egalitarian than ever, but wargaming will never be.

Certainly not wargaming the way you and I think of it. You have to be at least part history nut or a staff officer to enjoy the hardcore stuff. ZoCs, CRTs, Supply Lines...it's not stuff that most people get jazzed about.

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mirth

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To be honest, I rarely watch Marco's review videos. I know he's hugely popular and a lot of people swear by his reviews. I generally don't find video reviews all that compelling to watch and I'm also not a huge fan of Marco's style of review. I appreciate what he does, but I don't rely on him for a source of information nor do I particularly care what is his opinions are on the hobby.

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Silent Disapproval Robot

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Lost interest in Marco's opinions after his review of DVG's 1500 when he went off on the topic of the game and how horrible it was to make a game about colonization.  He then went on to say it would have been better to make it a sci-fi theme because then it would be OK.  My take away from it was that, according to him, colonization is OK as long as you don't reference actual history.  Other distasteful bits of history like the Eastern Front, area bombing of German cities are OK but colonial expansion into the New World is too much. 

Also, he churns out the videos at a very high rate and that makes me question how little time he puts into each title before forming an opinion and posting a review.



Cyrano

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I'm fonder of his voice than some here about, but I think he desperately wants to be relevant and part of a conversation in which I have a level of interest that would be hard to measure with currently-available technology.

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mirth

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a conversation in which I have a level of interest that would be hard to measure with currently-available technology.





Being able to Google shit better than your clients is a legit career skill.


Cyrano

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You rang?

In other news, SDR made me look at the "1500" review.

Yes, made me.

He's a much poorer thinker than I gave him credit for and should stop.


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mirth

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"in truth you are getting there, slaughtering people, and taking their stuff"

he's not exactly wrong about that. I didn't bother with the rest of the review though. It's another game that I would never bother playing in the first place. Do people actually enjoy these colonization type games? I get bored just thinking about them. Cards, tokens, resource gathering! All my favorites.

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