Ancients as the Missing Link?

In a recent post on cluster analysis using wargaming periods as the grouping variable (see Games of a Feather...), one reader's response triggered some additional thought and a return to the data.

In the commentary from that post, Milton.Soong asked,

I have a comment in the ancient/medieval vs other historical period break: I wonder if this is rather a “competition gamers vs non-competition gamer” rather than a preference for period.  Only other big competition set in historical is Bolt Action/FoW. I bet a look at comp vs others would give some interesting insight.

Interesting observation Milton.  Is the separate and distinct clustering of Ancients from more "Modern" historical periods explained by an unobserved "competition" attribute?

Recall from the earlier cluster analysis referenced above that the three-cluster solution produced three distinct groupings.  They are Modern Historical Periods, Ancients Historical Periods, and Non-Historical Periods as shown in Figure 1.  These clusters were formed only from using wargaming period preference as an input variable.

Figure 1

Notice how the Ancients branch only merges to the Modern branch in the step immediately preceding the joining of Non-Historicals to Historicals.  While the cluster analysis shows Ancients Historical merging into Modern Historical at the last branch, this last-minute merge suggests that Ancients may have attributes in common with non-historicals too.  When considering the bifurcation between historical and non-historical periods and Ancients late arrival into the Historical grouping, should Ancients historical periods compose a viable third rail to the Big Two wargaming categories?  If so, on what basis?

Returning to Milton's suggestion of searching for an unobserved "competition" component possibly driving these clustering results, let's see what the data suggest.

Figure 2

To begin, the list of all gaming periods included in the survey are reduced down to the Top 10 periods.  These Top 10 periods include four non-historical periods and six historical periods.  All three of the periods making up the Ancients group are included.

For the competition component, we examine preferred Game_Type responses.  The possible responses to game type include:

• Campaign-driven game
• Cooperative game
• Pick-up game
• Role-playing game
• Scenario-driven game
• Tournament game

Game_Type of "Tournament" will be the response used for measuring competition.  Figure 3 illustrates the Top 10 periods with each period's percent distribution for each Game_Type.  Figure 3 shows periods grouped by Non-Historical periods and Historical periods.

Figure 3

From Figure 3, Non-Historicals tend to fall below Historicals with respect to percentages for Pick-up and Scenario-driven games and surpass Historicals in percentages of Cooperative, Role-playing and Tournament games.  These results are likely not too surprising or unexpected.

When Historicals are divided into Ancients and Modern periods as clustering suggests, something interesting comes to the surface.

Figure 4

When Ancients historical are singled out from Modern historical (see Figure 4), the graphic illustrates that, as a group, Ancients historical gamers are more likely to prefer tournament play and less likely to prefer scenario-driven games than Modern historical gamers.  Gamers in the Ancients Era (up to AD500) are less likely to participate in campaigns than other historical periods.  In these measures, Ancients have tendencies that lie somewhere between non-historicals and modern historicals.

Competition or tournament gaming appears more likely within the three Ancients gaming periods than within the three modern historical gaming periods.  Milton suggested the presence of competition gaming may be a contributing factor in gravitating toward Ancients.  Is it, though?  Remember that these are correlations and tendencies, not causations.  These tendencies draw from game type responses only and World War II sees a similar game type profile.  As for Ancients as a missing link in the competition/non-competition divide, perhaps through Ancients wargaming, non-historical gamers with an interest in competition may move toward modern historicals or vice versa with Ancients acting as a possible conduit between the two?  Whatever the route, Ancients wargaming seems a possible place to either land or pass through.