Palouse Wargaming Journal
Marching Through History in Miniature
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
A Preview of Mortimer's Cross
Sunday, June 15, 2025
Wargaming Inspiration
In a promised second half to the Looking to Media for Inspiration post, today I examination the more general survey question, of What Inspires You the Most?
WSS' 2024 Great Wargaming Survey included two questions on gaming motivation and inspiration. One question asked about a
gamer’s primary source for inspiration.
The other question focused on media and its influence. The previous post linked to above addressed the second question. Today, I examine primary source of wargaming inspiration.
Primary Wargaming Inspiration
Figure 2 |
Does this picture change if the Top 3 choices from each response are aggregated? No. Well, not much.
Figure 3 |
Figure 4 |
Figure 5 |
Does Figure 5 bring forward any age-related tendences with respect to inspiration?
Yes, it does.
As demonstrated in a number of past analyses, younger gamers tend toward fantasy and sci-fi gaming while older gamers gravitate toward historicals. For the younger cohorts, that result still holds in this survey question. These younger cohorts find inspiration in reading about fictional events more so than do the older cohorts. Interestingly, these same younger cohorts find inspiration in reading about historical events as well. Another interesting result of looking at the question by age group is that watching movies or TV shows offers consistently less wargaming inspiration as one advances in years.
Confirming the finding from primary inspiration analysis, manufacturers’ advertisements and well-presented kickstarters provide little inspiration for the masses regardless of age group. An interesting twist to manufacturers' efforts to connect with wargamers is that a manufacturers' website or newsletter offers a small but increasing inspiration as age increases.
Looking at the graphics above, do any of these results stand out to you? Do these results reflect your tendencies for wargaming inspiration? From which of these sources do you draw inspiration? Are there sources of inspiration not included in the current survey?
From where do I draw inspiration for wargaming? While inspiration for my wargaming projects and activities continues to evolve, my Top 3
today are:
- My gaming friends
- Getting in a game or painting
- Following others' gaming activities through their blogs
Thursday, June 12, 2025
The Dirty Dozen
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
A Little Bump in the Road
Friday, June 6, 2025
Looking to Media for Inspiration
The 2024 Great Wargaming Survey offered two questions related to wargaming inspiration. One question asked about a gamer’s primary source for inspiration. The second question focused on media and its influence. This post takes a look at the latter question by examining which media provides the biggest draw of inspiration.
Today's question asked,
Through which medium do you get your inspiration?
Figure 1 |
Figure 2 |
As each analysis rolls out from my keyboard, a consistent theme suggests that a respondent's age really does matter in how the hobby is experienced. Does age play a role in choice of preferred media apply here too?
When examining the results as a percentage of Age Group by Media Source, books and magazines (whether digital or print) are favored by the 51-and-over groups. For the 40-and-under age groups, they prefer to either watch or listen to their media content. Interesting that the 31-40 age group is the most likely to prefer audio books with audio books capturing over 35% of this group's media content. See Figure 4 for details.
Figure 4 |
Figure 5 |
Do these media source and age group tendencies hold for my preferences? Close but not quite. My top 3 media sources for wargaming inspiration are,
- A Blog
- Printed book or magazine
- Digital book or magazine
How about you?
What are your Top 3 media sources for wargaming inspiration and do these results mirror your age cohort?