Data from Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy's 2024 Great Wargaming Survey (GWS) are in! Having converted the data file from Excel and recoded many of the variables into more analytics friendly forms, analysis can begin in earnest.
After a quick summarization and cursory glance at the data, one surprise pops up immediately. That is, responses to the 2024 survey saw a significant drop in participation. With 9,282 responses in 2023, the 2024 survey received only 5,995 responses. Still a respectable sample size but why the 2024 survey saw a 35% reduction in responses is, for now, a puzzle. We can speculate on contributing factors but perhaps exploring these data can provide clues? Will this drop in numbers skew or distort the parade of analyses planned for the 2024 survey reporting cycle? As a first entry in this annual procession, I kick off the series of analyses with a look at data reliability and how a handful of select demographic statistics compare from 2023 to 2024.
On Reliability of Data
Even with the non-scientific nature of data collection, the GWS has shown consistency in response results year in and year out. That result, in itself, may surprise some. Past analyses have examined data reliability topic and a topic I return to frequently. With a drop in responses, will these results and trends from past years still hold true for 2024? Some may and some may not. I suppose that we will discover this answer as we work our way through the 2024 survey questions over the next ten months. To start, let us lay the groundwork and begin with a look at the most common attributes, a selection of respondent demographics.
Location
The mix of respondents' home countries remains consistent from 2023 to 2024. A few more respondents originated in USA/Canada and Continental Europe/Scandinavia at the expense of UK/Ireland respondents but no significant change in the overall distribution.
Age Group
When examining age demographics, a shift in age cohort emerges. In 2024, every age group in the 41 and higher groups lost respondents. Every age group in the 40 and under cohorts gained ground. The 2024 survey shows a seven-percentage point shift toward the 40 and under groups. An anomaly due to reduced response rates or a harbinger of things to come?
Education
On the question of highest education level attained, results remain consistent between 2023 and 2024. No significant difference with respect to education.
Primary Interest
With an age group shift to the 40 and under cohorts, one might expect to see a shift to a more fantasy/sci-fi primary wargaming interest. This is exactly the result that the breakdown of primary interest shows. From 2023 to 2024, there is a four-percentage point shift to the Fantasy/Sci-Fi classification. What may be a surprise is that this shift toward fantasy/sci-fi draws from the "Mixed" classification and not the Historical grouping. No shift out of Historicals into Mixed. Historicals grouping remains at 28% in both 2023 and 2024 surveys.
Duration
Finally, when examining responses to how long have a respondent has been wargaming, the results are not surprising given the age and primary interest shifts seen above. The percentage of gamers having been in the hobby for 31 years or more fell by six percentage points from 2023 to 2024. While the 31 years plus group fell in total percentage, the percentage of primarily historical wargamers remains steady at 28%. Are some wargamers shifting from either Mixed or Fantasy/Sci-Fi preferences to Historicals? These data suggest this might be the case.
The main question coming to mind is why the sudden drop off in responses? Where did everyone go? While we may never know any precise answer, I wonder if any of these suggestions could pose contributing factors? - A trend toward disengaging from social media in general.
- Reduced advertising.
- A busy August.
- Survey fatigue.
- IT survey capture glitch losing thousands of responses.
- Graying (and ultimately exiting) of the hobby
- Not enough incentive (freebies) to complete the survey.
I would enjoy seeing your thoughts on why fewer gamers completed the survey and/or the demographic attributes of the GWS Class of 2024.
Having laid the groundwork with a demographics profile, many of the survey’s wargaming specific questions remain to be explored. Along with many of the standard questions, a few new questions appear in the 2024 edition too.
Jonathan, good review as to demographics. There is quite a bit of information on trying new things out in the blogs and you tube channels that had ever been stalwarts of either Games Workshop or D&D. Sometimes historical gaming is mentioned as an opportunity. This may make a difference in a few years if there is actually movement by gamers. I do think that the loss of older players is inevitable for the obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Joe! If new gamers are not coming up through the ranks, then loss is inevitable at the upper end. Is this destined?
DeleteAlthough the demographic trends will clearly mean the loss of people at the older end, I suspect this will be a steady trend rather than a sudden one. That suggests one or more of Jon's other factors will be significant.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your response, Anthony. A steady erosion of gamers at the top rungs of the age groups seems a reasonable conclusion if younger gamers are not drawn in. Keep in mind that the many of the today's oldest gamers are part of the Baby Boom and that bulge is passing out of the system.
DeleteYes, and those boomers were probably responsible for the wargames "golden age" of the 70s and 80s. While there were older gamers in the golden age, a lot of it was teens and twenties. Those who've stuck it out are the wave passing through the 31+ group now. It's not just historicals either - Warhammer and games Workshop come from that era too, though I wouldn't know how many fantasy/sci-fi gamers stayed the course.
DeletePast studies suggest that it is the younger cohorts that mostly populate the primarily fantasy/sci-fi grouping. Of course, the largest bulk of gamers fit into the "Mixed" grouping without anyway to single them out.
DeleteSome of those 70's gamers are getting very close to the oldest category.... (no names, no pack drill)
DeleteYes, we are!
DeleteThat is a hefty drop of in participants this year for what ever reason, some interesting things to digest. Hard to pin the dropping of interest or whatever to one thing though, could well be a mixture of all your suggestions.
ReplyDeleteHard to know what triggered the drop in participation this year. Will it bounce back next year? We will see.
DeleteCan I claim to be the extra participant in Europe…and if so is there a prize?
ReplyDeleteYou may claim one spot in the shift from UK to Continental Europe. Prize? How about a game?
DeleteThat’ll do nicely!
DeleteInvitation on the way…
DeleteInteresting, that is a very significant drop though surprisingly the outcomes have not relatively significantly shifted the general spread of responses as much as I though they might and they have most definitely avoided giving a chaotic range of outcomes that would have made 2023 and 2024 look ridiculously different.
ReplyDeleteI have reduced my social media footprint, but did participate in the survey, not that that makes me a typical respondent.
It probably needs the 2025 survey to give us something to hand our collective hats on in terms of where we might be going with all of this and to offer some smoothing out of the 2023 / 24 bump.
I wonder whether the survey transmits pages as they are completed? That would allow us to see how many people started it with good intent, but at some point, backed out, perhaps feeling it was too involved or time consuming - that might at least indicate ‘something’ about the lost participants.
My own sense is that internet participation is divided between creators / sharers and those who only consume. I think that balance may be changing and that while consumers are there in big numbers, gobbling up hours of screen time, fewer people actually want to put energy in at the front end - even for simple tasks like pressing a ‘like’ button! …… who knows!
Doh …. HANG our collective hats on!
DeleteHi Norm. Good question on partial survey completions. I only receive "completed" surveys. I was surprised that the results show little distortion as well over prior years. Perhaps if the balance is tilting heavily toward consumers rather than creators, even completing a survey may be too much for some. Thanks for taking the time to complete the survey and respond here!
DeleteI was recently shown what a Discord server is. That seems to be the media that gamers are using these days.
DeleteWe do seem to be going through a fragmentation/diversification of electronic comms channels. Bluesky is another gaining traction. Is WSS's media strategy adequately covering these bases might be a question to ask about the drop off
DeleteStew, we tried Discord for remote gaming early in the Pandemic. The platform simply did not work for some of the attendees so we moved on to Zoom.
DeleteAnthony, I would be surprised if the WSS publishers were not taking advantage of all comms channels.
DeleteHopefully there wasn’t some big die off.
ReplyDeleteWell, we are dead yet!
DeleteI can't recall if I participated this year.... it seems to me that the survey didn't get mentioned much this year on forums and such.
ReplyDeletePerhaps there was less publicity this year?
DeleteThat's what I was going to say. I nearly missed it. Completed it at the 11th hour after I happened to look at an episode of Little Wars TV that was produced in early August and Greg gave it a plug.
DeleteAt least one person did it after seeing my post about it ('cause he told me).
I usually get a prompt about it in emails from Karwansaray (about Ancient Warfare and other topics), but did not. In fact, the marketing emails from them seem to have dropped off, or perhaps disappeared. I looked at my profile before making this comment and I am still listed as a 'yes' to receiving marketing material. Is it because they have reduced their email marketing? For the Survey are they relying on the magazine and related sites (which I don't get nor look at) to promote the survey, since that is the main aim, as Graham posits below?
Regards, James
Thanks,, James. I recall receiving a marketing email from Guy in addition to the Karwansaray Publishing. I advertised the survey here too. The publisher says advertising was similar to past years.
DeleteI didn't bother this year.
ReplyDeleteOK. Why not?
DeleteA number of reasons. I have been busy doing other things, but after doing it for quite a few years I'm not sure what I really get out of it. The world in which it operates seems to me to have very different priorities to mine when it comes to wargaming, and I don't know what use my input is. I think the major people interested in the outcomes are figure manufacturers and magazine publishers, driving production development and advertising. It's been a long time since I last bought a wargame magazine, and my figure/terrain etc purchases aren't driven by advertising but by need. I can't think of the the last time I started a new period because I saw an advert for a new range of figures or a new set of rules. I tend to be the other way round. I find a subject I'm interested in and then go out to seek figures and so on (assuming, of course, that how I'm going to game it is with figures).
DeleteBut who will put in a vote to champion 1/72 plastics?
DeleteThing is most wargamers don't take them seriously, and the magazines don't either. 1/72 plastic is a hobby in itself, driven by collecting and a specific type of diorama style. Wargaming is peripheral to it all, I think.
DeleteIn the "Old Days" that may have been true. With today's 1/72 plastics, I see more and more poses perfectly suited to building out large, wargaming-type units. I have been eyeing a box of Strelets' WSS French dragoons that I am tempted to push into the painting queue just for the fun of it.
DeleteI think you painting and showcasing a box from the Strelets WSS range will do more to promote 1/72 plastics than me voting in the survey!
DeleteI doubt I would move any needle but I will put them into the queue.
DeleteThanks Jon as always your analysis over the year will provide some interesting discussions. As to the numbers I have no idea….apathy perhaps with the nature of electronic communication may be a factor. We are all bombarded more and more with, blogs, podcasts, Facebook etc etc if I am anything to go by there is just too much info/data which I am increasingly wanting to avoid, others may be the same. Ps I can’t remember if I responded, I think I did ?
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your encouragement, Matt! We all have a lot of electronic demands for our time and attention. Scaling back on social media is the correct choice for some. I hope you remembered to submit your survey!
DeleteWasn't the incentive a 3D print file (or was that last year?).
ReplyDeleteAlthough I suspect the incentive isn't the main motivator for participating.
Neil
There was a 3D print file offered this year as well. I vaguely recall some years having much more widespread prize drawings. Of course, I may be misremembering too!
DeleteUnless I'm so old as to be a bit confused, I was one of the drop-off this year, but only did the survey for the first time last year. This year, I remember seeing that the survey was open, but it wasn't a great time for me (other things going on) and actually the only difference from last year's input would be that I'm a year older.
ReplyDeletePompey Dave, answers may have remained the same from last year but there were a few new questions in this year’s survey.
DeletePerhaps they just joined my camp and realised it's quite pointless?š
ReplyDeletePerhaps, they did! You are a Mighty Influencer.
DeleteI remember you mentioning the numbers had dropped off, and that is quite a drop although still a good number of respondents. Even though there were a few new questions I wonder if some just thought that because their interests and answers were going to be the same as the last year and the year before, why bother?
ReplyDeleteYes, still a respectable sample size that offers the possibility of producing useful insights in upcoming analyses. Encouraging that the demographics remain (mostly) stable. "Why bother" is a defensible decision but I hate to lose some of the value in a multi-year, longitudinal study due to apathy.
DeleteIntriguing. That’s a massive drop off in respondents. 35%. My feeling is that the posited reasons would only account for smallish numbers.
ReplyDeleteYou wouldn’t be surprised if increased mortality accounted for a big drop from 2020 to 21 or 22. But not now, unless ‘long Covid’ has just knocked the stuffing out of a lot of people.
People being ‘fed up with it’ would surely only be a few people, unless there was a lot of discussion on various media about being ‘fed up’ that I’ve missed. I don’t do Facebook or Yahoo chat groups (SM favoured by older folk so I’ve been told) so may have missed it.
Is there some technical querk that inflated numbers in prior years somehow, or lost responses this year? I’m minded of talk about numbers of ‘followers’ dropping off the Twitter since the US election (partly migration to a new platform and partly the disappearance of bots. Not saying that bots were pretending to be 70year old wargamers previously š. But you know something technical happening.
Chris/Nundanket
Good points, Chris. My suggestions are just that suggestions and guesses as to why we saw a significant drop in participation. Perhaps all contribute a little bit to sum to a 35% drop. No inflated numbers in years past. Each record has a unique ID and I check for duplicates in the responses. As for this year's numbers, I have heard no mention of any technical glitches driving the numbers down. Another interesting point is your comment about bots. Over the last week, I have seen a drop in pageviews. Election related? I cannot imagine why since I never mention politics.
DeleteI think bots would mainly feature in any "failed completion" numbers. It would take a pretty fancy bit of programming that could complete a survey of this complexity. I don't see what would be in it for the bot creator.
DeleteI am not sure what is in it for the bot creator to hit our blogs either! My hunch is that some of these bot hits are driven by AI searches.
DeleteWell it is odd but we can only guess at the reason behind the lower participation rates, as many commentators have done above.
ReplyDeleteI recall mentioning previously that I thought it was strange when total numbers remained pretty constant, but something like 10% said they were doing the survey for the first time....why do so many seem to do it once then not bother again...probably good old apathy, I would imagine!
Unless older gamers dying off outnumber new ones joining, that would not be a cause...and it seemed like age group percentages stayed pretty stable, so it seems like new blood is still entering in the 10 to 20 age group, or whatever the first one is....
Anyway, will be interesting to see your analysis of those who could be bothered to spend five minutes doing it, Jon, which includes me š
Unless we can qualify why gamers failed to participate this year, we must rely on speculation. From memory, I think it was more like 40% are first time responders. Apathy may be in play. I have yet to check the numbers for this year. Glad you took the five minutes to complete the survey!
DeleteI think I didn't do it this year, for the first time in several years. Three reasons that occur to me, although these come with the caveats that this may be post hoc rationalization: 1 - I have been really, really busy over the last year and I have consistently engaged less with all kinds of stuff; 2 - I think I saw less prompts/links to it this year, I need to be reminded of things a few times; 3 - I don't think I have done anything with any code that WSS has sent me for a couple of years
ReplyDeleteThanks! I appreciate seeing your reasons for not participating. Do you recall where you usually see prompts/links to completing the survey? I recall seeing emails from WSS as reminders.
DeleteI think - and forgive me if I am confabulating this - I would usually fill it in after seeing links on Twitter (which I don't now go to very often for gaming things) or links in blog posts or direct emails. What happened in prior years was that eventually I would be reading something with a link at a moment where I had the time and inclination to follow it up, and for some reason that didn't happen this year.
DeleteMakes sense. Perhaps some more effort on outreach is needed?
DeleteThank you Jonathan for taking the time to compile this analysis. Interesting. I did participate but it only happened after the third reminder from various sources. I recall that I felt that it came out at an inconvenient time and that I felt less than inspired to repeat the answers from the previous survey. Maybe, therefore, some survey fatigue from me. However, the drop off is undoubtedly multi-causal and I would only be speculating about other people's motivation etc.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback, Richard! Survey fatigue is understandable. Is there a month that would likely be better for boosting participation? I know that the publisher mentioned that August was picked specifically due to the slowdown of the hobby in August.
DeleteThanks for completing the analysis Jonathan.
ReplyDeletePity about the drop off in responses. It seems a lot for year on year. Hopefully next year is better
The percentage of responses from Australia/NZ seems very high. A combined population of 30 million would suggest 3 or 4% based on the percentage of responders for the USA and Europe. Maybe we are just gold medal survey responders š
You are welcome! Perhaps you ARE gold medal survey responders. When you consider that the UK has only slightly fewer responses than the USA from a country with a population more than five times its size, I reckon that Wargaming is simply more popular in the UK and Australia/NZ.
DeleteRe blog / media engagement, I have not posted on my B&W blog since May, so 6 months have passed. My views were typically 12 - 14k when posting, last month (i.e. 5 months after my last post) they were 8k and as of todays date for this month, I am at 5k.
ReplyDeletethis seems remarkably high for a non-active blog.
I can only draw two things from that 1. My back posts are heavily article based, so may prove to be a pool of resource that people continue to visit. and / or 2. I am heavily visited by bots.
I suspect the bot thing is the main cause of hits, which makes sense due to the sort of militaristic language that we all use.
So the open question that falls out of that is whether we are all really as well visited as we think? And that participation starts from a low point anyway.
So one might turn to comments to better gauge the size of a viewing audience, but I think most of us would accept that comment numbers and viewing numbers are very different beasts with a wide disparity.
My point is that my sense is that internet traffic might be high and actually growing, but that participation is generally low by comparison and the very visible reduction in participation of the ‘lengthy’ survey may well just be a visible example of that general lethargy on the participation side of things and that ‘free’ internet and an over facing of digital content is resulting in all content being taken for granted more than ever before.
Norm, this is a sobering and somewhat depressing analysis on the state of our reach and popularity. On the blogging front, I keep this interaction (or lack thereof) in perspective within the context of why I started blogging in the first place. If these posts are not read or do not resonate with an audience, that is OK. I always hold out hope that someone with find something of interest sometime. If not, this exercise is still of use to me. For now…
DeleteMy experience agrees with Norm's conclusion.
DeleteI hope this apathy is fleeting.
DeleteYes, I would agree, writing for its own sake has a value of its own anyway. In print magazines are certainly under pressure as a result of copious internet goodness, the difference there, is that lack of participation for them will ultimately see them off, whilst bloggers can blog forever … if Google lets them :-)
ReplyDeleteWe need a new survey called ‘why have you stopped answering surveys’ :-)
One of the interesting questions that falls from your post is that whilst we assume one year can be measured against another to show trend, it would appear that in any one year a fair number of people are dropping out and a respectable number are describing themselves as first timers …. What kind of variable does that throw into the equation in terms of stable continuity of responses? I.e. is year against year comparison as valuable as we may have supposed if different parts of the community are responding at different times?
Norm, this is an interesting question and one I have touched on before and think about often. See my posts discussing On Reliability of Data for details. With turn-over often in the 40% range (new vs repeat respondents), the survey design is one of repeated cross-sectional data analysis. Since results seem stable year in and year out (often surprisingly!), this design approach seems to fit by drawing similar cross-sections of the wargaming population each year.
DeleteWell, we could suggest that, if a different group replies each time, but the demographic remains similar, what we see is a reasonably representative of the whole of the whole. If it changed wildly as the participants changed, we can't make such a claim. This is, of course, an oversimplification but I'm sure can explain the statistics behind it.
ReplyDeleteExactly, Anthony! See my reply to Norm straight above.
DeleteI was one who didn't participate this time, it wasn't a conscious decision I just failed to fit it in with everything else going on at the time. I wonder if others were the same?
ReplyDeleteThat could be! I will publish more reminders next time.
DeleteI did fill out the survey this year but I seem to recall a discussion about if you had done the survey before and nothing had changed with your gaming do you need to fill it out again.
ReplyDeleteI recommend filling out the survey every year. Each submission is useful.
DeleteI think there was less advertising for the survey this year; if I recall I completed mine fairly 11th hour!
ReplyDeleteGlad you got your entry in just under the wire!
DeleteSame for me, I nearly missed it. Not sure why.
DeleteYou should stay tuned here…
DeleteIt is a bit of a strange one. It's a lot less. To be honest, if you hadn't posted the link, I probably wouldn't have filled the survey in. I didn't see it advertised anywhere else?
ReplyDeletePerhaps improvements on promotion are in order?
DeleteHow much and *where* the survey is promoted can obviously influence both the response rate, and the make up of the respondents... similar to the problems that polls face!
DeleteQuite right although sampling (here) has shown consistent results over the years.
DeleteThat's a rather dramatic drop - how alarming it is probably depends on how important the survey results are to your livelihood. If you're a manufacturer, reseller, publisher, etc. it probably is at least a little concerning. As a hobbyist blogger, I'm not terribly worried about a drop off in respondents.
ReplyDeleteEven if everyone else stopped playing with toy soldiers, stopped making them, stopped writing about them, I would still be pushing them around my table (handmade out of clay if I had to), rolling dice, and making gunfire sounds with my mouth.
I have to admit, the only reason I fill out the survey is your analysis. I like knowing my data points are represented somewhere in your charts, tables, and conclusions.
That probably says more about me than my survey responses!
It is a big drop but the data seems to remain stable. We will see if this holds true as analyses roll out. Keep filling out and submitting the survey, John!
DeleteIt's a big drop, it's been a bit of a tough year all round I think, I filled it in ,probably at your prompting or the publisher emailing me? I used the voucher and got some physical back orders before they were discontinued, worth doing I always think?
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Iain, good to see that you submitted the survey AND used the voucher!
DeleteThat is a big drop, but I very much doubt we will ever be able to find out the reason why. A few thoughts though, even if they are a bit late:
ReplyDeleteI didn't see any where near as much 'advertising' as in previous years, just a few comments on the Pendraken forum and Blogs. I think if I hadn't seen it on yours Jon, I would probably have missed it completely.
Given each year there is quite a large 'new influx' people completing the survey, maybe we have simply 'exhausted' the pool of gamers and there are no new ones coming in at the bottom so to speak?
Survery fatigue. I've been doing this since it first started, but frankly have wondered what use it is, given that my focus is mainly on solo 10mm historical gaming. Given that 28mm sooooo dominates the market, my input would seem to make little difference as things move forward. Will I do it again next year? I'm not sure if I'm brutally honest.
When it first started there were some pretty damned good prizes up for grabs, which must have really driven uptake in the responses. Last year you got a free 5 Euro voucher, so could just about get a free pdf copy of WSS magazine. This year you need to spend 10 Euros before you can claim it, or something like that. Now I was never driven by the prizes, but maybe this stark difference might account for the drop off?
To finish off, it would be interesting to know what manufacturers and the magazines (and anyone else) actually do with the data and how much it influences their decisions, if at all?
Thanks for your feedback, Steve! Always much appreciated and all good points. Even if the "market" tends to cater toward skirmishing gaming in 28mm, I think it important to capture everyone's interests. One thing that analyzing the survey shows is that the hobby is diverse despite what manufacturers, publishers, and marketers might envision. I agree that the quality of prizes has dropped off. I have yet to use this year's voucher. I know that some in the industry look at the results and ask questions.
DeleteInteresting stuff. I would guess perhaps the drop in participation might well be down to reduced advertising. I used the 5 Euros voucher to get a small discount on a subscription to 'WSS' magazine, which I was happy with for a few minutes of my time..
ReplyDeleteI was really interested by the 'education level' stat. It looks like 2 out 3 respondents have Bachelor's degree level or higher, I find that pretty amazing! Over here in the UK I gather we now have almost 50% of young people attending University, but that is only in the past 15 years or so - that cohort would still be under 40 years of age. 'In my day' it was probably only 5-10% , so that would likely be the background for your older respondents. So we are a highly-educated section of society, it seems!
I asked the publisher the question of reduced advertising and he said that they have not reduced advertising across the regular platforms. I have yet to use my voucher for this year.
DeleteIn general, I think wargamers are an educated lot. You would be surprised at the number who claim to work in IT or scientific fields. It might be interesting to run a cross-tabulation on Education and Primary Interest. Are historical wargamers more or less educated than the sample respondents?
As a former computer programmer I guess I fit the bill! I think we are saying that IT and gaming may both tend to attract the more, what can I say but 'nerdy', type? š
DeleteGuilty as charged! You are in good company, my friend.
DeleteApologies for being late catching up with this. I actually took part for the first time this year having seen your analysis of last year. I don't buy WSS (or any of the three mainstream mags, I find far more interest on blogs) or see that much social media so I'd remained only vaguely aware of the survey until I saw your blog. I could wonder whether the results of the survey influence anyone in terms of what they buy or periods they game. I'd guess that's much more the result of the commercialisation of the hobby (in terms of the vast amount of advertising / promotional 'articles' in the magazines). A friend recently kindly brought me a copy of WI and it was pretty much wall to wall advertising.
ReplyDeleteNo need for apologies, Brian! Never too late to add in your thoughts.
DeleteThe only hobby 'zine I subscribe to is WSS and that in digital form only. You are right, advertising often dominates meaningful content. Does the survey influence purchases? I don't know but I think it may influence what manufacturers may consider offering.