I had an epiphany recently, but unfortunately a sad one. Something that I thought was natural is evidently something that most gamers don’t do. It seems that outside of traveling to their local hobby shop, gamers aren’t all that interested in traveling elsewhere to meet with new people and game.
So, let me give you a little background. I was into historical miniatures before getting into Warmachine and although there are enough of us out there, it’s still a shadow hobby. That’s changing a bit with the popularity of Flames of War, but nonetheless. So it was nothing for me to travel a lot to get to a game. In fact, the biggest things to do are to travel to the 3 local HMGS conventions held per year, which are anywhere from 3-4 hours away from my home.
So when I found a group of people playing Warmachine at my local hobby shop, just 30 minutes away, I was in heaven. But wanting to learn more about the game quickly, I started to troll the PP forums for notices of other tournaments nearby and planning on traveling to them. I easily went to the Pennsylvania tournaments, which were 2 hours away from New Jersey. Same for the Brooklyn tournaments about 1.5 hours away. After that it was a short leap to travel up to MA a few times (5 hours) and Templecon (4 hours). I just loved meeting new people and getting a feel for new strategies and tactics that they brought to the table, so I wouldn’t get stuck in a rut.
So now I’m helping running more tournaments at my LGS and I’ve been doing the best I can to let the other 3 stores in the area know about them so they can come and hopefully start fostering some friendly rivalries. Alas, to no avail. No ones comes outside of the nice crowd we get from the regulars at my store.
This epiphany was reinforced from a podcast where I heard folks in CO won’t travel 50 minutes, to go to another store’s tournament. I really couldn’t believe it.
C’mon guys, we are such a small hobby that we can’t stay so disconnected. Let’s get together and start fostering larger regional communities and get interconnected. There are lots of synergistic benefits to doing this and in some cases, it only means a little farther to travel.
So why don’t gamers do this? What new social media tools could we use to help bring gamers together and weave them into a greater gaming community?
–Norbert
5 comments
Comment by CerealJohn on June 6, 2009 at 1:06 am
I totally agree. I have had such good times going to other games stores and playing. It has been really fun meeting new people and learning new local meta. I learn something new every time.
:-)
Comment by IA Dave on June 8, 2009 at 8:30 pm
From a Devil’s Advocate position, I wonder if this is a result of the gamer population growing and as a result gamers not needing to travel to find people to play with. At least it’s been my experience that when a gamer is a part of a large gaming group they don’t really feel the need to travel when they can get their fix in their own back yard so to speak. Not that I think that staying in a local community is the way to go, just that the desire to get the most out of the least amount of work is a strong instinct to fight.
I really don’t know what the best answer is. It seems like for every player who enjoys going to meet new communities, there’s a handful more that are happy where they are. I suppose the only real way to get those people to travel is to have travelling offer them something they can’t get locally other than just more games of Warmachine/Hordes.
Unique events, unique prizes, and/or social events tied to the tournament (ala bar-be-que or the like) seem to be bigger draws than Yet Another Steamroller. But even those can’t entice everyone.
I hate to say it because I don’t like the way it sounds, but between larger gaming groups and online communities allowing us to talk to fellow gamers from across the globe instantly, is the Traveling Gamer just becoming obsolete?
Comment by Iskandar on June 9, 2009 at 6:05 am
Good points Dave. I didn’t take into account the online gaming community because I thought miniature gamers didn’t fall into that category. In my experience there isn’t too much cross-over between genres. Still I think you are right. There are so many tools now to play long distance that travel is more of a hassle than anything else.
Doing a social event might be a nice draw. We usually always go out to dinner after the event, but that’s not advertised, so maybe we should do that. Something going on for free (like a BBQ at someone’s house) might be even better.
I have to disagree with you about the size of the gaming community. Surely you guys are blessed with a fabulously strong one, but out here (in a very population dense area no less) groups are lucky to achieve 10 regulars. It’s all basement gaming out here and it limits growth of the hobby. Having stores close up doesn’t help either! My post was driven by this aspect. Most of all I just want to see our community grow and remain strong. We’re in a very niche hobby after all!
–Norbert
Comment by Al on June 9, 2009 at 9:35 am
We also have to examine the demographics of the wargaming communities and how information is transmitted from one group to another. We assume falsely that every person reads the Big Boards and lurks around in the Events forum. That is not the case I assume nor would assume.
Think about this – we (you and I) are only a few miles away from NYC and the Compleat Strategist, where Nick’s group wargames. Why is it then, that we rarely make it out there or anyone besides Nick makes it out to our SR format? It’s the hassle of travel & traffic. Nick’s group is well informed, but that’s because Nick pays attention to what we do. Likewise, the fella’s over in Conshohocken, PA are only an hour away too. Yet they don’t make it up all the time either. The gamers down by Gamer’s Realm of NJ surely don’t make it up besides one gentleman, are they informed? I have no idea.
50 min is a small amount of time, but it’s 50 min to an hour of commuting – 2 hours total of the day. How many people do that during the week to get to work or school?
Simply put, we’re basing on assumptions that people aren’t lazy and people are well informed about tournaments in an hour to two hour radius of travel. There are exceptions (You, Henry, and I for example) where people don’t mind traveling to show they have a pair. But I think if I could spend a weekend lazing around, I’d take that up too.
Comment by Iskandar on June 9, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I totally agree with you Alex about people not always being informed. I try to mitigate this by posting notices up on their local boards, and also asking whatever cross-players we get at our store during the week, but it has limited success. So far, one person from PA showed up because of the notice on his local board. The three communities in NJ have not shown up yet. Any ideas about how else we can get the word out where people will see it?
You made me think a bit when you mentioned NYC. It’s true I don’t get out there any more. The problem is (for me) that we now are running events more often at our local store (be design – I’ve been one of the instigators of it in fact). I can only allot time for 1 tournament a month and so I’ve opted to spend it at my local store, mainly to make sure they are supported and stay open. I think that once this becomes more routine, I will end up opting to go elsewhere now and again to get some variety. But still the point is that before when I had less options at home that I traveled more. This suggests that people are all satisfied where they are at. But are they really? Perhaps they just don’t know what they are missing? Or that they gave up Warmachine because they didn’t realize how much activity was going on around them?
Maybe I’m crazy, but I want to get people motivated to play and to share experiences with each other. The Geek Nation is getting a lot of time in the sun these days (bad for our blanched flesh) and I want to keep it going! :)
–Norbert