GWS 2025: Wargaming as an escape
By Jon Freitag
Keith Flint, in his Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy 137 essay on wargaming as an escape (see WSS 137 Let's Escape p.62-63) offers an interesting perspective covering several topics. Some of his brief thoughts on this topic can be read on his blog at In Which I Became a Global Influencer.
To briefly summarize the escapism portion of Keith's essay, Keith highlights a quote that he has heard from wargamers that "Wargaming allows me to escape everyday life, and it allows me to be someone else for a while."
Now, I have never heard anyone utter similar words and if they did, I would take such claim in a figurative and not a literal context.
Given this statement's literal weighting, Keith argues that we should reject the notion of hobby escapism that allows one to step away from everyday stresses, work, or reality. Keith posits that this thinking is misguided since one cannot truly escape the real world. The wargaming hobby is an extension of the real world and an extension of who we are. Framing the hobby as an escape tends to discredit both daily life and the hobby. A more wholesome approach is to view hobby time as a constructive shift between different and complementary aspects of life.
How does this tie back to the Great Wargaming Survey?
In an earlier analysis, I examined the question of why we wargame. In Why We Wargame: A Closer Look, survey results show that when the top three choices are aggregated across all respondents that "Fun and escapism" contributes only about 13% of the top choices. "Fun and escapism" comes in at Rank #5 of 7.
Now, "escapism" is lumped in with "fun" so separating the two is impossible from the 2025 survey. If this question is asked again, perhaps, "fun" and "escapism" ought to be separated to identify those seeking escapism solely?
A related question that examines the role of the hobby as an outlet for stress is present in the 2025 survey. That question asks, "Would you agree that wargaming helps you forget about the stresses of daily life?"
The results are overwhelmingly one-sided. Figure 3 illustrates that 62.1% of respondents entirely agree that wargaming helps forget about stresses of daily life. Fully 93% either somewhat agree or entirely agree with this statement.
Rather than looking at the wargaming hobby as a literal escape, perhaps, wargaming ought to be viewed as a relaxing, constructive shift between our different aspects of life? I think Keith would agree. Keith, thank you for offering up some food for thought!
Do you view the hobby as an escape from real life?
2 comments
@John, thank you so much for your interesting post. I agree that the hobby is a terrific distraction from the more mundane (and sometimes stressful) facets of the everyday, working life.
I remember many moons ago as I started work for the first time a construction company magazine interview covered a site manager who collected and painted wargame figures- his line was I am on site all day in the open making constant decisions interacting with people pretty much with no control of time. Painting and collecting allows me to relax and do as I please – he didn’t mention how he gamed. But from my viewpoint I am with him that whether it’s reading a book, playing sport watching a film or doing arts and crafts they are all distractions from the day job and crucially are something you enjoy (hopefully). war gamers happen to enjoy playing and collecting miniatures. That’s the fun bit. Escapism is something else – I never played badminton to escape but I have read books to lose myself for a while. Wargaming happens to offer both fun and escapism in bucketloads if you want, it’s as simple as that- nothing highfalutin’