Did SPI Kill Wargaming?
In Panzerschreck 15 Art Lupinacci interviewed Don Greenwood and I found the following segment particularly interesting:
Panzerschreck: How do you rate the importance of the Fall of SPI in 1982?
Don Greenwood: Throughout the heyday of wargaming I gained a reputation as the “Boy who cried wolf” bemoaning the game glut that SPI was generating by churning out so many games. I argued that the market was being saturated and it would soon come back to haunt everyone. It did, but it took longer than I expected. AH thrived with a ready market for its products when it released two a year. But we soon joined SPI in a race to turn out product with what to me were predictable results. The quality of the games declined as did the sales. As each succeeding title sold less and less, more and more titles had to be produced to make up the difference in volume. It was a vicious downward spiral from which the company never emerged.
So I was not sorry to see SPI go. To be sure, nature and markets abhor a vacuum and if it was not SPI it would have been someone else. Success spawns competition. The wargame gravy train would have ended eventually but SPI’s prodigious output certainly hastened the end.
The entire interview is a fascinating read so be sure to find a copy of the ish. I believe it may still be the most current issue, even though it’s about a year old.
I can understand what he’s saying about oversaturation of the market, that seems to be a common problem in the world of gaming. Second edition AD&D was plagued by dozens of splatbooks near the end which probably hastened TSR’s financial woes, scores of CCGs erupted after Magic: The Gathering became so popular (with their publishers soon crashing and burning), and in the computer world there was the flood of RTS and MMORPG titles. While too many choices sounds like a gamer’s dream, ultimately you only have so much time and so many dollars to spend, forcing gamers to pick and choose. For those publishers unlucky enough to not be the producers of product being chosen, well, better luck next time, unless you’ve banked everything on that one product line…
Here’s the thing, though, where did the gamers go? When there were an endless parade of RTS clones trying to mimic Blizzard’s or Westwood’s successes, and everyone had enough of them, it wasn’t like the bottom dropped out on computer games. Likewise, role-players who felt burned by TSR typically either switched systems, or continued to play but without purchasing every single terrible book that was being put out. Yet that’s not what happened in the world of wargaming.
You know the rest of the story. Wargames went from print runs of 30,000 copies—with possible multiple print runs—to pre-order buy-ins of 500 today, and it’s not unusual to see it take nearly a year for even that to be reached! Even assuming an aging population that can’t find time to game anymore, that’s a terrible bleed rate.
Was the decline in quality in the ‘80s what drove folks away en masse? Or was it simply time for something else? I have yet to hear a truly good explanation for this, and probably never will. I have a feeling no one really knows. We all just woke up one day and realized, crap, the party’s over. Sure, we still get together once in a while, but the venue keeps getting smaller and smaller, and the music isn’t quite as loud as it used to be. I’m not leaving though.
I keep hearing about these legendary print runs of thousands of copies of games, but how many of these were actually sold– and played? Our local store had huge sales on AH games and were obviously overstocked. Now I wish I had bought more of them, they go for a fortune on eBay.
At least in my area (Seattle) it feels like we are in a golden age of board games. It is easy to find other players through the Internet, and we have several gaming conventions each year to play. I think the lamenting the demise of board gaming is premature, there are plenty of good games and players to play them, thanks to quality producers like GMT.
Comment by D. Owsen — 8/29/2007 @ 11:18 pm
According to the same interview the top sales leaders at AH sold 250,000 units, so someone was buying them.
“I think the lamenting the demise of board gaming is premature, there are plenty of good games and players to play them, thanks to quality producers like GMT.”
There are, but again, look at how many games GMT does in a print run. Also, factor in that fact that the number of wargame designers who aren’t eligible for AARP membership is a very small number. There’s no new blood. So yeah, we have great game choices now, but the pool keeps shrinking overall.
Comment by Scott — 8/30/2007 @ 11:10 pm
What happened was computers and Dungeons and Dragons.
Board wargaming, even in the heyday was a 95% solitary activity. Oh, sure there were clubs and PBM games and all that, but the typical wargamer played solitary games.
Computer wargames offered an opponent. A crappy one for sure, but still.
Ok, I can hear your next objection that computer wargames today are lucky to reach the 10K sold mark. That’s because of how we define wargames today. RTS games like Blitzkrieg or FPS/RTS games like World in Conflict are not considered “wargames” by the purists, yet sell by the bucketload and certainly have as much wargame in them than Tactics II or Panzer Blitz
Another thing to consider is that boardgames produced today are staggeringly better than the crap produced in the early eighties. Same goes for computer wargames. So never mind the sales volumes, the quality of what’s on offer makes *today* the Golden Age of Wargaming
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Comment by Eddy Sterckx — 8/31/2007 @ 4:00 am
I know that D&D is often thrown around but personally I’ve always disagreed with that, because the sales figures that Greenwood tossed around were from the same period as D&D. Likewise, D&D’s appeal is to a slightly different crowd. Sure, there is crossover appeal, but you’ll find more pure RPGers than RPG/grognards.
And yeah, computers had an impact but during the ’80s they were still a hobbyist pursuit. I would assume for most folks it wasn’t an either/or proposition, but a both. It would be interesting to see a yearly data chart showing both board and computer wargame sales, and see how they stack up.
I still don’t think you’ll find that hundreds of thousands of folks shifted from board games to computer games. That’s the mystery.
And you’re right, from the perspective of the quality and choice of today’s games this is the Golden Age. But, as I’ve talked about before this is also the Age of Extinction. The circle keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Where are all those folks who made wargaming so popular in the ’70s and ’80s? Even if they put gaming on hiatus shouldn’t we be seeing all these folks come back? Where are they?
Comment by Scott — 9/1/2007 @ 2:41 pm
At the bottom of the mystery I wouldn’t be surprised to find the “bowling alone” phenemenon at work. The idea that peoples’ social networks have shrunk. While finding like-minded gamers may be easier with the internet, people generally get with others less often.
The book “Bowling Alone” that discusses America’s vanishing social capital and says: “In 1975, the average American invited friends over more than 14 times yearly. By 1998 that had dropped 60 percent to only eight times a year.”
Add what Eddy is saying and you could see that a combination of factors may be at work?
Comment by Dan — 9/2/2007 @ 8:53 am
> Where are all those folks who made wargaming so popular in the ’70s and ’80s?
> Even if they put gaming on hiatus shouldn’t we be seeing all these folks come back? Where are they?
Back in the eighties if you wanted to play a boardgame that wasn’t just good dice-rolling and had a bit more strategy than Risk or Stratego, your options were kinda limited to wargames only. So there was a demand and wargames could still be found at retail outlets so sold well. Today that demand for “strategy” boardgames is still there. If you go into a toy-store today there’s an overwhelming choice of “strategy” games compared to when I was a kid. But because competition for the youngster’s free time has heated up games today need to be fast & furious and look like 2007, not 1957. Cardboard counters were and are nothing more than a cheap replacement for real toy soldiers, so when manufacturing made producing 3D models an economically viable option out go counters and say hello to plastic figs.
So what if you can’t find Tactics II in a store any more, kids are buying Axis & Allies minis by the thousands. Wargaming has not disappeared, it has evolved. Just take one look at those Axis & Allies minis and you’ll see it’s really Squad Leader 2007.
Another point : as you’re the publisher of Dominions I’m pretty sure you realize the attraction of the fantasy angle. It’s huge – it’s mega-huge in the case of World of Warcraft or Warhammer. Though not “wargames” in the strictest sense they also teach and require sound battlefield tactics. Elven archers or English longbow men – they require the same employment on the battlefield. While I prefer to fight historical battles I’ve on more than one occasion just squinted and pretended that fireball throwing wizard is just a trebuchet.
So, there’s no single reason why the traditional board wargames fell out of favour, but multiple reasons from evolving taste to computer alternatives to D&D etc. Where you see a (slow) decay of the traditional type of wargames, I see a healthy, evolved, different type of wargaming doing extremely well.
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Comment by Eddy Sterckx — 9/3/2007 @ 4:11 am
Dan: I definitely agree with you that social networks are shrinking, and I’m sure that’s part of the problem.
Eddy: I think Tide of Iron is more Squad Leader 2007 than A&A minis.
I have to disagree with your statement that “Cardboard counters were and are nothing more than a cheap replacement for real toy soliders…” Counters have always provided designers with the ability to put massive amounts of information at the player’s fingertips, something a plastic figure can never do.
Comment by Scott — 9/4/2007 @ 4:58 pm
> I think Tide of Iron is more Squad Leader 2007 than A&A minis
Kinda partial to Lock ‘n Load for the title of SL 2007 replacment, but I think you got my point
> Counters : There sure are advantages to using counters over figs but I read an interview once with one of the original AH guys - might have been Charles Roberts himself - who stated that it was simply economics which made them use cardboard counters - don’t forget that AH was a regular printing business too.
> Social networks : Can’t comment on this as it seems the situation on this side of the Atlantic is somewhat different, which explains the popularity of so-called EuroGames
Greetz,
Eddy Sterckx
Comment by Eddy Sterckx — 9/5/2007 @ 2:45 am