An Opponent Desert

Today, we consider a follow-up question in Wargame, Soldiers, and Strategy's The Great Wargaming Survey (GWS), 2025 edition.  In a previous installment, I examined the question of opponent availability at a high level (see Do You Have Enough Opponents?).  From that analysis, I concluded that wargamers, often, find themselves isolated from available opponents mainly by disconnects in discovery and compatibility.  Plenty of opponents may be out there, but these barriers can prevent or frustrate meaningful gaming connections.

Can any other insights into gamer behavior be deduced by examining a handful of respondent attributes?  For this exercise, I single out five attributes from the survey for further study.  The selected attributes are Group Size, Game Venue, Population Density, Travel Time, and Location.  Each of these attributes will be compared in two settings.  One, for those saying that they have enough opponents (Opponents are Plentiful).  The other, for those gamers stating that they did not have enough opponents (Opponents are Few).  For those with few opponents, I give them the label of living in an "Opponent Desert."  Let's see what the survey says.

Group Size: Few

Group Size: Plentiful

When respondents state opponents are few, nearly 80% report a Group Size of four or fewer (25.1% for solo and 52.3% for groups of between one and four).  Comparing the "Plentiful" group, solo gaming drops to 8% while groups larger than four players increases markedly.  Not surprisingly, gamers with larger existing groups tend to be more likely to feel they have enough opponents.

Survey results on group size may suggest that once a player becomes part of an established gaming group, opponent scarcity diminishes.  Gaming isolation can be a self-reinforcing deterrent, though.  As smaller groups struggle to grow, there are fewer introductions, fewer games, and less scheduling flexibility.  In this case, group discovery and compatibility is more important than raw population numbers.

Game Venue

Gaming Venue: Few

Gaming Venue: Plentiful

Players reporting plentiful opponents appear more likely to play in clubs, stores, conventions, or organized venues.  Isolated players rely more on solo or private gaming either at home or at a friend's house.  As mentioned in the introduction, public venues may act as discovery engines to help bring wargamers together.  Having regular meeting places helps overcome the friction of finding compatible players.  Visibility through association matters.  That is, gamers often cannot find nearby gamers until a dedicated venue or group connects with them.  The survey supports the notion that opponent deserts are often networking failures rather than demographic failures.

Population Density

Population Density: Few

Population Density: Plentiful

Urban and suburban gamers are more likely to report plentiful opponents than do rural gamers.  More densely populated areas naturally create more overlap between potential members of a niche hobby like wargaming.  Geography still matters.  The gap between urban and rural gamers, however, is not absolute.  Some players in urban areas still feel isolated.  Proximity alone does not create gaming communities.

Travel Time

Travel Time: Few

Travel Time: Plentiful

Not surprisingly, gamers with plentiful opponents generally report shorter travel times.  With the exception of solo gamers, gamers reporting fewer opponents tend to tolerate longer trips.  Results suggest that there is a limit to the number of minutes spent in travel, though.  A travel time of between 30 and 60 minutes seems a common limit to both groups.  Even when a wargaming group exists nearby, a long drive and frequent participation become unrealistic.  Travel cost (in time, effort, and cost) increases with age, family obligations, and scheduling.  This result may help explain wargamers fracturing into small regional or local clusters.

Location

Location: Few

Location: Plentiful

The pair of gamer location charts suggests that outside of the UK/Ireland and US/Canada, there is not significant variation by geographic region between the "haves" and the "have nots."  For the UK/Ireland and US/Canada, the former seems more likely to have plentiful opponents while the latter tends toward more isolation.  The problem appears broadly structural rather than tied to one country or region.

Conclusion

Survey results suggest that “Opponent deserts” often present as discovery, compatibility, logistical, and social challenges rather than true population shortages.  In other words, many gamers are not alone geographically.  They are disconnected socially.  Wargaming communities may fail more from fragmentation than from scarcity.  How to overcome a fragmentation into small disconnected "tribes?"  Survey Results hint at a networking effect.  That is, once a wargaming group reaches a certain size and game regularity, the group becomes self-sustaining.  Failure to attain that threshold often results in the group struggling to gain momentum. 

These results present a useful insight not only for the wargaming community, but for many niche hobbies and local-interest groups.  Is tabletop wargaming more akin to a social network rather than a consumer market.  I reckon that it may be.  "Opponent deserts” may actually be "Coordination deserts."