The last time we dove into the Great Wargaming Survey results (see: What Inspires You?), the analysis focused on dissecting primary wargaming inspiration to see what sparks motivation. Today's analysis examines a related survey question. That question asks about media sources of inspiration.
The earlier, primary inspiration question allowed for a respondent to select the top three primary inspiration sources. Today's media source question is no different. This question also allowed for up to three choices for media sources of wargaming inspiration. Those results were aggregated, and the final counts are shown in Figure 1.
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| Figure 1 |
- Printed book or magazine
- Online video
- Social media
- Film or TV
Given the seeming current shift to emphasizing digital media, seeing the appearance of physical books or magazines coming out on top may be somewhat of a surprise. Or is it? The top choice is no surprise to me but then I came into the hobby when print books and magazines were almost the only media source for information and inspiration.
Media Source by Age Group
One theme consistent throughout many of these deeper dives into the survey results is that respondent age matters. Looking at the choices of media, it may not be much of a leap of faith to imagine that age may play a role in choice here as well.
When examining the results as a percentage of Age Group by Media Source, we see that digital media is favored by the 40-and-under groups. For audio book listeners, almost 40% (37.4%) of all responses to this preferred media source fall into the 31-40 age group. Similarly, wargamers in the 31-40 age group are the largest consumers of all digital media. See Figure 2 for details.
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| Figure 2 |
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| Figure 3 |
- Printed book or magazine
- A Blog
- Digital book or magazine.
I tend to derive much more inspiration from blogs than the aggregated survey statistics suggest. Perhaps my perspective is biased since I am communicating these results via a blog post?
How about you?
Do your media sources for wargaming inspiration correspond with the survey results as detailed for your age group? If not, how does your choices differ?
What are your Top 3 media sources for wargaming inspiration?
I derive inspiration from Printed Books & Magazines, Blogs and Film & TV. I would say Blog articles play the major part, which leads to explore a new area via Printed Books. None of this digital reading malarkey for me;)! The same can happen with a TV documentary and sometimes a film.
ReplyDeleteSo I sort of fit into my age category, but not quite. Thinking about former younger colleagues and certainly my daughter, she would fit into the Digital Realm lock, stock & barrel, although she does love to read a physical book for pleasure.
As always thanks for taking the time to do this Jon, plus I now have to go and look up what 'monotonically' means! Always good to learn a new word:).
Steve, thanks for the detailed insight into your own sources of inspiration.
DeleteGood to see you continue enjoying these looks behind the survey data and that you learned something along the way!
Similar media to you Jon - Printed book, Blogs, and Digital magazines.
ReplyDeleteI am not surprised!
DeleteExcellent analysis Jonathan. I'm very much of my age and the printed book is really important. It may be that I enjoy the tactile sensation of the page and the ease of flicking backwards and forwards. Plus, I have a tendency to want to highlight and write margin notes. Magazines are less of a source as I purchase them only when they reach a "critical mass" of material that I want to consume. It is really interesting to see confirmed what we could all recognise intuitively.
ReplyDeleteFor my top 3 it has to be:
1. Printed books and magazines
2. Films and TV
3. Blogs
Thanks, Richard!
DeleteYes, always good to get a bit of validation on our perceptions, isn't it? I prefer the tactile experience with the printed word too. I have stacks of wargaming magazines going back to the early '70s still providing inspiration.
As for ma
Being a blogger myself, I'd say I take most of my inspiration from other blogs first, followed by books and mags, then films.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a reasonable ordering to me!
DeleteDoesn't line up for me. I almost never use audio books, preferring print, and while I watch youtube etc. while painting, it rarely inspires a project. Usually I'm hunting for material on something i'm already doing.
ReplyDeleteMarkus, you march to the beat of a different drummer. Either that, or you are an old soul trapped in a younger body!
Delete(creeeak) I fit my group well enough:
ReplyDelete1st: Printed books (Should I confess that many, possibly most, of the armies I have painted over the decades reflect a favourite Classics Illustrated? Mind you I eventually read all of the original books that I could get my hands on. ),
2nd: Movies & TV: (Zulu anyone? The tv series "Iberville" (Don't worry a Quebec production in the early 60's) ),
3rd: ummh......can't think of any of the rest that I can claim inspiration from. Would probably be different if most of my inspirations hadn't been found in the 60's & 70's and haven't worn out yet.
Thanks, Ross! Yes, I wager many of us were inspired by the movie Zulu. I know I was.
DeletePerhaps many of us stick to the sources of inspiration that attracted us into the hobby?
or sources that were available?
DeleteWhen I started, Books/Magazines & TV/Movies were the only options from that list!
However, I just realized that there was another source of inspiration that existed then and still does now: store displays of toy soldiers and models, possibly as important or more so than the rest! (as ooh I want some of those, now what can I do with them?)
When I was a youngster, I wish I lived in a town large enough to have a hobby store with toy soldiers in the window! Luckily, the local 5&Dime carried plastic models for inspiration.
DeleteInteresting analysis: appreciate the work that went into it. Thanks for sharing! However (you knew it was coming), I find that the activity (reading, watching, or listening) might be better categories than the form--for instance, I read 17th and 18th century texts scanned and digitized that are available in places like the Internet Archive. I would not put that activity into the "digital" category, however: the experience is textual (for me). The other difficult question is the mode. There is a "new" category called "multi-modal" which is something that combines text, image, and perhaps other (video, audio). Most blogs are multi-modal, for instance. I would categorize them as reading (text) and viewing (image). The last point is defining "inspiration." I would say inspiration is relatively rare (an "aha!" moment). Engagement, however, is how I would think of it. Having provided all of my nits and picks, I would say books, blogs, and vlogs :)
ReplyDeleteGlad you find these analyses interesting, Ed!
DeleteYou make an interesting point (actually, you make many good points!) about how information is collected and absorbed.
Seeing both podcasts and audiobooks at the bottom of the ranking and print at the top, I had similar thoughts to you. Perhaps a better classification is by sense? Your suggestion of Reading, Watching, Listening makes a lot of sense in that context.
I take alot of my inspiration from blogs, wargames magazines and historical booksand films in the main. Even now if El Cid is on I watch it and then add to the collection
ReplyDeleteThank you, Neil, for your feedback. If I put El Cid on for a viewing, maybe my Reconquista collection would see some renewed energy?
DeleteVery interesting Jonathan!
ReplyDeleteMy is very similar.
Books, magazines.
All I need to do is read the article about the Crusaders or the War of the French against the Indians and I want to buy and paint some minis :-)
It is the same with movies or documents.
I'm already afraid to watch historical movies :-)).
Best regards
Thanks, Michal! Many of us may be a little reluctant to watch a historical movie in fear that it might launch a new project. C'est guerre!
DeleteThanks for the analysis, Jon. Yes, much the same for me; books first (and films from way back) and blogs second these days. If I had not discovered Christopher Duffy's books back in the 1970s I doubt the SYW would have been very appealing and it was books back in the 1960s and also films (plus TV like the BBC War and Peace) that inspired my interest in the Napoleonic period. Those are my two "core" periods and I find many a blog continues the inspiration these days. The English Civil War is another period that interests me, initially again started by books (particularly Peter Young's Edgehill and Marston Moor volumes in the early 1970s but also the children's novels For The King by Ronald Welch and Rosemary Sutcliff's Simon) and now I live in close proximity to 3 ECW battlefields that helps keep the interest going. I wonder where actual battlefields come in as a "media" source! ;-)
ReplyDeleteCheers,
David.
You are welcome! Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
DeleteBBC's War & Peace series was a great inspiration to a young boy in the early '70s. You have done very well to stick to your core interests rather than branching out hither and yon.
With your proximity to three ECW battlefields, a visit to you could easily qualify as a source of inspiration.
Talk of ECW reminds me that my ECW figures have not been out for battle since last summer.
:-) Sticking with those periods is possibly more a case of not having enough energy and time to diverge into other periods! I've certainly been tempted often enough... That BBC War and Peace was an amazing piece of TV for the time, although now it does perhaps look a bit studio bound for the indoor scenes. We'll have to think about doing an ECW battle sometime; an unusual one like Cropredy Bridge (not far from here! ;-)) would make an interesting game, I think, not being anything like the rather too common amd hackneyed stand up bash with foot in the centre and horse on the wings.
DeleteCheers,
David.
OK! We can add ECW to the list of possible conflicts to fight. Oh, and I enjoy a good bash with infantry in the center flanked by cavalry wings!
DeleteHey! You climbed into the Top 10 Commenters Wall of Fame too!
DeleteGreat; thanks! ECW for later, then. And good to see I'm in the Commenters Wall of Fame too. :-)
DeleteCheers,
David.
Hmm, I guess my age will show. Movies got my interest early on. 55 Days at Peking was inspirational, even though I never got enough troops to run the legations.
ReplyDeleteThe early '70's provided Waterloo and Cromwell, both of which clicked enough to spawn armies. Colonials soon were added.
Books about historical periods and magazines specific to wargaming kept the interest going, but I don't think added any new periods.
Audio books never appealed, which is interesting for having a two hour commute for over 15 years. I do know most 60's, 70's and early '80's pop songs by heart. If only I could sing!
Blogs have been my mainstay the last 10 years, both to focus my projects and introducce me to varying approaches, pet projects of others , and some truly creative AAR reports.
Thanks for all the effort you put into the analysis.
Hey, Joe, thanks for your feedback!
DeleteYou may be showing your age but since I am nodding my head in agreement, you are among peers.
I have actually never listened to an audio book but my long commutes passed by listening to Great Courses' lectures.
I have had quite a long think about this question before putting finger to keypad Jon. I guess both books and films/TV would be part of my inspiration, but gaming friends/group would be first and foremost for me I think. The GNW project I did was 100% inspired by my mate Nick suggesting it...prior to that, I had no interest in it and had hardly heard of it. Even now, with boxes ful of completed troops, my knowledge of the actual conflict is wafer thin! The Pulp project I would have said just popped into my head one day and I started buying figures, although probably some inspiration came from blogs ....... The slight resurgence in 20mm WWII seen recently came from playing a couple of games of Iron Cross at Julian's....and many of my collections are started in a similar way....it's periods that my gaming group get interested in that I join in with, in most cases!
ReplyDeleteHi Keith!
DeleteLooking at your wargaming inspirations, media seem not to be a big source of inspiration. Your inspiration sources fit in more closely to the previous analysis that examined primary sources of inspiration where friends were cataloged.
Rather than succumbing to 'mass' media, you seem inspired by 'local' sources, mainly friends.
I recall struggling with this category. Certainly books are more important to me than digital media, whilst magazines are totally irrelevant. So many of my projects have interests that go back decades, before I went to the trouble of buying the figures. The Taiping waited 30 years at least before I was ready to start it, and the ECW similar.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Graham! Yes, books are more important to me than digital media too. Looking at the graphic summaries, this tendency sure looks age-cohort driven.
DeleteGiven our long time in the hobby, it is not surprising that we can have projects simmering away under a low flame on the backburner for decades. You are not alone! My problem is that new interests keep popping up almost constantly to distract from thoughts of these longer-term projects.
Interesting read Jonathan. I have been playing organised wargames (that is playing with rules rather than just playing) for 54 years. That history makes it hard in many cases to determine what inspired me now because often new inspiration is building on older ideas. I can trace back the spark that ignited the obsession in the first place and that was as a very young boy being taken to see a performance by the band of the Scots Guards and then shortly afterwards being given some Britains toys soldiers of guardsmen. My transition to my lifelong love obsession with the American Civil War came from a movie “Custer of the West” the opening scenes of which showed Custer charging about in Civil War, and the transition to organised gaming came from an article in a Boy Scout annual that has a very rudimentary set of rules.
ReplyDeleteBut as to how interests in new eras are sparked is not always easy to track. Often the trigger is a one of those mentioned in your analysis. Sometimes it is just an expansion of an existing collection - maybe it’s adding another nation to the Napoleonic collection. Other times it is to participate in a group project - “if you build up the French, I’ll do the Russians” sort of thing. Then again, as we have discussed before, travel has a been a trigger for me - I recall ten years ago on a trip to Tanzania driving across plains the with a slight knowledge of the East African Campaign in WWI and thinking this would be great terrain for a wargame. That prompted further reading and eventually a WWI East African collection. Similarly I recall on a trip to Switzerland loving the terrain and thinking what battles could be fought in alpine meadows with Swiss chalets…the answer to which is Suvarov’s Italian and Swiss expedition of 1799.
These days I rarely launch directly into a project - gone are the days of rushing out to buy figures only to abandon the project because I have lost interest. Once the idea is planted I have to research it. I need to understand the subject. This usually starts with a brief Wikipedia search and then if the interest is still there it will involve deeper research, perhaps with the purchase of some books, into not only the history of the conflict, but they way armies fought and the army structures. By this stage I am usually committed and I will find the figures I like the look of and will jump in boots and all.
Mark, great response! I enjoyed reading about your wargaming provenance very much.
DeleteLike you, I find travel provides opportunities for inspiration. More than once a trip has either spawned interest in a period or reinforced an existing project. I had similar experiences to your Switzerland travels. I should add in Austria, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy into that mix as well.
I vaguely recall you planning a trip out west to Montana to fuel interest in the Indian Wars. Did you ever make that pilgrimage?
Thank you!
That trip around the Indian Wars sites of the Fetterman fight and Little Big Horn is still on the cards. The problem is when to fit it in. By the time travel opens up properly we will have lost three travel years and there is a backlog of destinations!
DeleteWanting to make up for lost travel time I know oh so well. If you do plan a visit, let me know. I am about a day’s drove away and would enjoy another visit to LBH.
DeleteI can "Tag" Mark as one of my main "inspirations" - I have small numbers of Crimean War Brits, Carlist War and E Africa WWI units that all owe their existence to his lead - not to mention the more significant War of 12 that I more or less "took over" after Mark mentioned he might put a force together!
DeleteThats War of 1812, needless to say - dont know what happened to the date in my original reply.....!
DeleteMany of us have friends like Mark who “inspire” us to take on new projects.
DeleteFor me I gather inspiration from reading/ listening to audio books (bc I got no time to read) mainly. But it’s not so much inspiration to tart a new genre as I rarely do that these days (in the last 6 years I’ve started 2), but to paint the stuff I have. When working on ACW I’ll listen to something about the ACW. While painting dark ages stuff I’ll do some historical fiction with Vikings and you get the idea. 😀
ReplyDeleteI do get the idea. While I typically listen to something during painting sessions, the topic is almost never related to what I am painting. It is usually a history topic, though.
DeleteInteresting post, as I remember it,I put down reference books(my pretence at being a wargamer is just to cover my book addiction, if I'm honest!)followed by blogs( which has become more useful as we enage more and develop a dialogue I find)and then periods generated by my regular gaming partners,in addition I know that in the past my interest in the English civil war was helped by the BBC "By the sword divided ", the dark ages by Rosemary Sutcliffe books from my childhood and the Russian civil war by a BBC adaptation of Bulgakovs "Day of the Turbins".
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Wargaming as a cover for book addiction? That is a good one, Iain!
DeleteBooks and blogs for me and the odd film. I rarely see a wargames magazine these days.
ReplyDeleteGiven this info, could we guess your age???
DeleteI too am surprised that blogs don't rate higher, as that is usually where I find most of my inspiration. It used to be wargaming forums with their product announcements from manufacturers and reviews from various contributors and, without naming names there was one forum in particular that used to be very good for this. The editor's rather strange policy of not allowing mention of any product unless they are a paying advertiser (alongside the general unpleasantness about the place since most regular contributors have been locked out or driven off) means I don't pay much attention to that particular source any longer.
ReplyDeleteI find Facebook groups to be too scattered, even though I am a member of for or five, as I am not one to sit there endlessly scrolling down trying to find something of interest. Few films do it for me, and unfortunately I find many modern adaptations are equally as likely to snuff out any glimmer of interest than ignite it. As Mark says, I find travel to be an inspiration and living in England for a few years and walking ECW battlefields has cemented that as an interest. So I suppose it is blogs and travel for me.
Thanks for your thoughts, Lawrence!
DeleteNot being on FB nor the unnamed wargaming forum, I find blogs a terrific source of inspiration. Often a blog post can find me heading to the library or internet for a deeper dive and exploration.
Perhaps "Travel" ought to be included as a source for inspiration? I know we are not alone in enjoying travel for this purpose.
Great compilation of data again, Jonathan. It seems the older age group - like me, growing up before the internet, still enjoy having a hard copy source for reference and enjoyment. That is, this older group grew up with books and likely enjoy collecting books as a hobby in itself. My two sons, in their mid to late-20's, have never owned a collection of books - in fact, they've gotten much of their education online.
ReplyDeleteHi Dean. These survey data back this up in that media choice seems to be a generational choice.
DeleteThanks Jon and as always an interesting topic, given the response it has sparked a lot of thoughts. It has certainly made me think about why I choose new periods. A couple of people have already mentioned that having been interested for a long time I can trace my original inspiration quite easily to certain key books and pictures. I have blogged about these in the past. What then makes me develop into new or different genres and periods. I think now a days that spark is most likely to come from a magazine or blog. Closest example to hand is the SYW which I think I picked up from your good self 😀
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mark! Glad you enjoyed the topic, results, and dialog.
DeleteHappy to provide inspiration for your SYW project. I suspect I was only a small catalyst and that you already were leaning in that direction.
Print first, blogs second, everything else a distant third!
ReplyDeleteWe have much in common!
Delete