Wargaming and "Mainstream acceptance"

[Tbone3336]

Having seen all of Matrix's games listed for sale on EBgames website and in their stores, it has been forever and ever since I saw so called traditional wargames (non-RTS that is) in or available from a major retailer such as EB or Gamestop, or even Amazon.com. I did read the announcements on Matrix frontpage stating they would start distributing through major retailers awhile ago, I am just curious as to whether wargames such as Matrix puts out or Battlefront.com are being accepted by the mainstream more?

It was not to long ago designers and publishers were closing up with the lament that wargaming was dying and sales were horrible or no shelf space in stores was being provided. So I guess my question is what has changed? Has RTS wargames opened up the market for so-called more traditional wargames and is this a good Idea for matrix to do (if they are not making as much on each sale through a retailer, or is the additional exposure worth the reduced profit)?

Sorry for the long rambled post and questions, I was just curious seeing the turnaround that is taking place. Either way I hope they do very well and continue with the other publishers to make these incredible war and strategy games for a long time to come, and get rich at the same time.

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

There is only one truth, wargaming is not a big money prospect.

That said, the more grognard looking the game, the smaller the niche will get eh.

But that is likely the fate of any niche hobby.

Look at the shelves and what do you see, lots of games, lots of genres and lots of machine options ie PC MAC consoles and hand helds.

The last time I was in an EB the store had a rather nice array of "wargames" ie games that were clearly military action of some sort. A nice array by the way is at least 5 titles.
There were no turn based designs there at that time though.

Now if you ask a wargamer to list their 20 most gotta have wargames, no conditions imposed, you will get titles from early 70s board games right through to the latest Shooters on sale.

There are indeed a lot of ways to end up with an empty wallet. And I can show you several ways to get there, buying board games (new ones even), as well as the latest fad thing.

Some companies sell only online, and think it is the way to go. Some sell mass market friendly items, as they can survive in the dog eat dog world of retail.
Most of my games were gained through aftermarket online retailers though.

The only important thing to remember, is that traditional is not only NOT dead, but it DOES have competition.

[Zakhal]

There is only one truth, wargaming is not a big money prospect. That said, the more grognard looking the game, the smaller the niche will get eh.

But that is likely the fate of any niche hobby.

Just like good music.

[Fred98]

This is a point I have touched on a few times

Wargaming is a small hobby. My view is that to increase sales there needs to be an option to use whiz-bang graphics.

We wargamers would choose to turn the option off.

This will attract the mainstream gamers and increase sales.

If they take an interst in history, they might to choose off the whiz-bang graphics and laugh at the unrealistic results.

And then we might turn them into proper wargamers.

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

Just so ya know Joe, I am going to take a pass on this opportunity heheh (wink nudge say no more, well that is the plan at least hehe).

[riverbravo]

The only thing that ever came close to TT IMO was CC.

I dont think you will ever see a real "wargame" hit the level of sales as GTA3.

It just goes to show that with the current state of gaming people want eye candy and a quick destruction fix.

It seems people just dont want to think anymore and are so fixed on the future that the past is out of question.

I would love to see a mass market for historical wargames of everykind but I just dont see it.

The only thing that can come from wargames IMO is good things.Its not only a history lesson but a small insite to what went on in the theatre youre playing.

We are the keepers of the flame so lets not let that flame be put out.

[Klinkenhoffen]

I play SPWAW now but before that I played Squad Leader (original series as I couldn't afford ASL at the time) and Europa series War in the Desert, Balkans, First to fight (Poland) plus I have but never played Fire in the East/Scorched Earth.

The trouble is I find it hard to find a player who wants to play these now and also put in the time.

All of the above are great games. I think that Cross of Iron is going to be a great game when its released.

Long live wargamming in all forms.

[Fred98]

What is "TT" ?

What is "GTA3"?

Are they 2D top down wargames?

[STEELER13]

Yo All,
Just a guess, but TT is TOP 10, and GTA3 is Grand Theft Auto 3, put out by Take Two and the top selling video game. Take Two bought out the great Talonsoft, if I recall correctly. At the time, nobody thought TakeTwo would amount to anything, and Talonsoft was THE company in all the software stores, with BattleGround series(for Civil War and Napoleon battles) and with East Front/West Front for us WWII buffs, and Hidden and Dangerous(an easier version of the Tom Clancy Ghost and Rogue Speare). Now I haven't seen a Talonsoft game in the stores in over two years.

In terms of mainstream, though, SSI had it best, I think. Panzer General as a beer and pretzels game to draw in mainstream, and then Steel Panthers(original) for those who wanted more. Both games were right mix of graphics, history and fun---something for the mainstream and for the hardcore grognards who needed a break from the serious 24hour a turn games.

Quite frankly I think SPWAW would have done very well if it had been sold in stores, but that is my own personal opinion. In terms of sheer economics, Matrix might want to push forward development of its wargames so they can be in stores by Labor day through Christmas. Cross of Iron looks like a winner, and I know I will buy it! Napoleon in Arms looks great, too. Not to sound crass, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did spur a public interest in all things military. Camoflauge is in again at stores like Rave and Clair and some of the other stores my preteen daughter shops in, so that gives some idea right there. The dearth of wargames means opportunity! Go for it guys!

[Ian Packham]

Originally posted by riverbravo
The only thing that ever came close to TT IMO was CC.

I dont think you will ever see a real "wargame" hit the level of sales as GTA3.

It just goes to show that with the current state of gaming people want eye candy and a quick destruction fix.

It seems people just dont want to think anymore and are so fixed on the future that the past is out of question.

I would love to see a mass market for historical wargames of everykind but I just dont see it.

The only thing that can come from wargames IMO is good things.Its not only a history lesson but a small insite to what went on in the theatre youre playing.

We are the keepers of the flame so lets not let that flame be put out.

CC2 was a big seller with about 400,000 units sold which back in 1997 was considered a hit. CC3-CC5 had lower sales partly due to the fact that 3D games had arrived and the 2D display made CC look dated. Grand Theft Auto 3 has sold millions so action games like it are now in a different league to wargames.

I think the first game that could bridge the gap between serious tactical warfare and eye candy graphics is Battlefield Command. If 1C match the quality work they put into IL2 then this could be the title that makes the major breakthrough. If so, we can expect copycat titles to follow.

But you can only put so much detail and tactical awareness into a 3D eye candy game and still make it appeal to the mass market. So there is still compromise to be had but I have high hopes for this game. This could be the ONE.

[Fred98]

My view is that there needs to be 2 sets of graphics - the eye candy and the wargaming.

You would choose which set to use.

The children would prefer the eye-candy.

The sales would be better than otherwise and some would grow into proper wargamers. Creating more sales in years to come.

[Marc von Martial]

The children would prefer the eye-candy.

:rolleyes:

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

One problem most don't see, because they get caught up in the old vs new debate, is the re invent the wheel problem and the don't fix it if it isn't broke notion.

Lets see.

If I have Steel Panthers, and like it, I might be inclined to say thanks, and not come back. After all I have Steel Panthers, and well it works, works fine even, does all the things I want, so I am happy.

Steel Panthers is in many ways, a perfectly good wheel that needs no replacing to many.
It also isn't broke for the most part, so it is hard to justify "fixing it".

In order to get me to buy your "new wheel" you need to make me need your new wheel.

CC is another perfectly good wheel.
PG is a perfectly good wheel.
CM is a perfectly good wheel.
TOAW is a perfectly good wheel.
Strategic Command is a recently made wheel, and will be hard to replace now.

We are rapidly running out of types of wheels eh.

WWII Online when first released was a badly made wheel. But it appears they might have fixed it. Might be rapidly turning into a decent enough wheel.

There are soooo many FPS type wheels out there, it amazes me they can still make more.
And RTS in 3d, talk about too many wheels with not enough difference in between them.

To make a good selling wargame today, you have to have one awefully danged awesome wheel eh.
Just making a decent enough wheel is not going to cut it much any more.

Well not if a lot of us already have a good stash of wheels eh

[Marc von Martial]

In order to get me to buy your "new wheel" you need to make me need your new wheel.

If everybody would only buy what they need our economic system would plain collapse. That argument might fit you, but you´re pretty much alone there IMHO . If I really judge hard then maybe 1 out of 10 items I recently bought were things I needed really badly. The rest, well call it "luxury" or whatever.

There are soooo many FPS type wheels out there, it amazes me they can still make more.

There are sooooo many board games out there it also amazes me that they still make them. Everybody should be fine with SL, you don´t even "need" ASL .

You know, the FPS have different stories, plots, graphics, difficulty, gameplay etc. etc. etc. Playing Quake2 and then saying, "Hey I have a FPS I don´t "need" more" doesn´t really work. I have not really played much FPS where I sayed "Man, that was really the same stuff like the last one".

Even with wargames it´s the same, if you have 5 games that resemble the battle of Kursk (for example) you will most possibly have 5 games that resemble it in 5 different ways (let alone for their rules) . A lot of people are more curious then you and want to play it in those 5 different ways.

To make a good selling wargame today, you have to have one awefully danged awesome wheel eh.

The reality is different.

[VicKevlar]

Originally posted by Ian Packham
CC2 was a big seller with about 400,000 units sold which back in 1997 was considered a hit. CC3-CC5 had lower sales partly due to the fact that 3D games had arrived and the 2D display made CC look dated. Grand Theft Auto 3 has sold millions so action games like it are now in a different league to wargames.

I think the first game that could bridge the gap between serious tactical warfare and eye candy graphics is Battlefield Command. If 1C match the quality work they put into IL2 then this could be the title that makes the major breakthrough. If so, we can expect copycat titles to follow.

But you can only put so much detail and tactical awareness into a 3D eye candy game and still make it appeal to the mass market. So there is still compromise to be had but I have high hopes for this game. This could be the ONE.

CC3 had over one million units "sold".......but of course that included bundling by Microsoft.

[Von Rom]

Is wargaming dying?

Personally, I see it entering a new era.

Let me explain.

I got into wargaming basically because of my love of history. All my life I have been a voracious reader. Mostly it has been history books and biographies of historical figures. My favourite movies have been historical films, etc. . .

When wargames came to the PC I was in seventh heaven: now I could game all those battles about which I had spent my whole life reading. How would I perform at the Battle of Thermopylae? As Napoleon, could I win at Waterloo? As Rommel, could I stop the Allies on the beaches of Normandy? How would I perform at Midway? As MacArthur, could I duplicate his brilliant invasion at Inchon?

Wargaming (and strategy games such as Imperialism, Civilization 2, etc) was a way to re-live some of the most important moments in history.

Over the past two decades we have seen the virtual elimination of history from the classrooms of our high schools (and now our colleges). In recent interviews, some students thought Hitler was the leader of Great Britain in WWII, and that George Washington was President of the USA during the Great Depression. . . :rolleyes:

So it is a pleasure to see that history is making a comeback via the mass media through TV (the History Channel, Biography, etc) and through the movies (Spartacus, Bravehart, Last of the Mohicans, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, etc). Recently, the TV movie "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" actually was a topic of discussion on a popular radio program.

And it is making a comeback through the gaming community: Not only are Matrix and Battlefront bringing this genre back with a vengeance, but other games devoted to history have drawn huge followers, such as Shogun Total War, Medieval Total War (and a soon to be released Rome Total War), the Age of Empires series (the manual alone devoted space detailing the history of ancient civilizations), SM's Gettysburg, the Close Combat franchise, EU2, and of course the FPS devoted to WWII.

Personally, I think there will always be a place for the "wargame". The younger people will prefer the "faster" type RTS of Sudden Strike, while the older folks will gravitate to the turn-based "thinking" strategy-type game/wargame.

I think if you make history exciting; if you spark an interest; and if you make it a living thing that brings it alive to the viewer, then that person may very well gravitate to the wargame (especially if it is well done).

Personally, in reading history, I want to play wargames; and in playing wargames, I want to read history. . .

History and wargames both can be entertaining and informative . .

Cheers!

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

Marc you are a fine example of the mindless consumer hehe

Possibly also a good example of why our economy is in the trap it is.
People deluded that their job is important, merely because they need one.
Producing merely to produce. It doesn't have to be that way.
Well I guess if the only point is to produce just to produce.

I must confess, I have more models than I need. I am fairly confident I will die before I get more than 50% of them done.
So the obvious question is, why did I buy them?

Well I do know this, I didn't buy them, so that my dollars would allow some unknown schmuck somewhere to make his bills that month.

I really could care less about that schmuck.

I hope no one is losing sleep worrying over me hehe

Some things we need daily influx of (bread and milk being my two most popular favourites). Clothes, well not till I wear them out. A car, well cars don't last forever. A book, well it's only good until I finish reading it. Well some books are worth reading again. Informational tomes are of course not read just once necessarily.
Movies, if it is good enough, I might buy it to watch several times.
I hope to play all my wargames someday as much as my ASL and A3R games.

But if I had just those two games, life would not end.
If I was a new consumer, I would need a copy perhaps. There is always room to sell to the new fan.

I see to many computer games though, getting a bit to similar, not enough freshness. Yes you can say the same about some board games too, not saying it can't be said.

Given a choice though, of the number one game, or the game that occupies the number 10 spot, I am inclined to not really care for the 10th slot game that much.

And the industry has certainly given us a lot of brand new 10th slot wargames lately.
Sure some might have tried a new slant. But in a lot of cases, the guy was just copying someone else's idea, and not thinking for themselves.
Some ideas, have only been the designer presuming you can take one software engine, and make it do anything.

[Boar]

Originally posted by Von Rom
Is wargaming dying?

Personally, I see it entering a new era.

Let me explain.

I got into wargaming basically because of my love of history. All my life I have been a voracious reader. Mostly it has been history books and biographies of historical figures. My favourite movies have been historical films, etc. . .
***

I think if you make history exciting; if you spark an interest; and if you make it a living thing that brings it alive to the viewer, then that person may very well gravitate to the wargame (especially if it is well done).

Personally, in reading history, I want to play wargames; and in playing wargames, I want to read history. . .

History and wargames both can be entertaining and informative . .

Cheers!

I think you bring up a very important concept here -- wargaming indeed needs to take advantage of the latest technology to keep up the interest of those who would play wargames. I am an old school boardgamer -- started out with the original Gettysburg with large rectangular counters. Played my Dad and was thrilled, even though he took the evil tactic of utilizing hidden movement to mass his Union army behind a ridge and slaughter me. Fast forward (from .. about 1972) to the present. My son saw some of my stacked up wargames and expressed an interest in "Caesar at Alesia." I remember this as a well designed, but rather challenging, wargame. We set it up and he played the Gauls. When the Gauls hit the foss (the ditch lined with sharpened sticks and other deterents), we had to roll for EACH unit in Roman ZOC to see if it survived. We designed a system -- I called out "top" for the top unit and he rolled. Then "bottom" and he rolled for the bottom unit, and so on. We had a great time and he learned a bit about the efficiency of the Roman war machine due to this game. He is very up on his Roman history. But the fact is it was a major challenge to play -- we had to carefully guard the maps and pieces from the marauding wife and a couple of dangerous cats, not to mention the fact that our big fingers have a hard time grasping a stack of two units surrounded by 6 other stacks of units.

It's a beautiful game, and I have many more even larger and more beautiful. Terrible Swift Sword, Wellington's Victory, and La Bataille de la Moskowa, are amongst the "monster games" that were the height of wargaming back in 1979 or so. But today there is an opportunity to use computer graphics and technology to make wargames just as good and engrossing. I don't think we're there yet, but I think that time will come. In the meantime I'll hang on to my old board games, but it sure is nice to have a computer to do the number crunching that became such a problem in the bigger wargames.

Happy gaming, everyone.

[axrael]

The thing is that you all say games are just about graphics however...

take the new "Enter the Matrix" Game it sold fast at first but now it isn't doing so well. People who wanted it bought it but very few follow on sales via word of mouth or mags. Reason being it might look pretty but the gameplay is pants. Compare and contrast it to GTA:VC which has sold over 143million copies on all formats. It isn't sold just on graphics it is sold on gameplay. Surely that number of people can't be wrong. A succesful game commercially these days is one with good gameplay. Yet it also has to have up to a point decent graphics. When combined that is when you see ridiculous sales figures.

The BC game from Codemasters/1C/Maddox looks to have the graphics but it remains to see whether it has the gameplay. Graphics aren't everything but then again nor is gameplay everything except maybe to fans of a set genre.

[Fred98]

Can we get back to the topic?

In the PC gaming world there are 3 groups

Us – we are the wargamers. We enjoy applying correct strategic and tactical solutions to the strategic and tactical problems. And we look forward to the next game and we can hardly wait to give our money to Matrix.

Them- the PC gamers who don’t play wargames. They play all types of PC games. Some are colourful and some are not.

And the Maybes. The Maybes started their PC life as Them but they look at the screen shots of Uncomon Valour, Combat Leader and they wonder – Maybe I will or Maybe I won’t.

In my view a PC wargame must target Us and the Maybes.

The way to do this is to have an option. Perhaps a “realism” option. Wargamers will always have realism “on” but the Maybes are likely to turn realism “off”.

Some of the Maybes will do some reading. Then turn realism “on”. Then they will become one of Us

Firstly it will increase sales and secondly as some of the Maybes become one of Us we increase the number of wargamers.

And of course I am talking about PC gaming – not board gaming