GWS 2024: Looking to media for inspiration

By Jon Freitag

Wargamers take inspiration from a variety of sources. Media can play a big role in driving motivation toward a new project, a new game, or even hitting the painting desk. While friends provide some of this spark, media grabs attention with the ability to direct and multiply efforts in somewhat of a herding instinct. That is how trends develop. Wherever this inspiration is found, new, or renewed, life can be brought to a project.

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.

Respondents could select up to three choices of media influencers. Results were aggregated to the top responses. Final counts are shown in Figure 1.

YouTube and other online video take the top spot as media source, garnering over 25% of total responses. Printed media takes the second spot in the ranking. These top 2 sources claim over 46% of total responses. Looking at the graphic below in Figure 2, three main tiers of interest appear. Video and printed material make up the first tier, Film/TV and social media comprise the second tier, while blogs, podcasts and other digital media make up the third tier.

I last examined media sources in the 2021 survey. Have preferences changed in the intervening three years? Yes! Figure 3 illustrates that video leaped over 2021's top choice of printed material to capture the top spot. Will online video continue to grab more of the "media as a source" market? Digitial books/magazines and audio books continue to see loss of influence. Will this tendency continue?

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.

Turning Figure 4 on its head by transposing the axes produces the graphic presented in Figure 5. Now we look at Media Source by Age Group. Two distinctive patterns of media consumption surface when the data are examined with this spin.

Looking at Figure 5, YouTube and online video consumption declines monotonically as age increases while printed media (books and magazine) usage increases directly as age increases. Highlighting generational differences in a sign of the times, this result is not surprising. While intuition suggests that this tendency would pan out, to see these results graphically confirmed in analysis is comforting, well, at least to the analyst.

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,

1. A Blog
2. Printed book or magazine
3. Digital book or magazine

I derive much more inspiration from blogs than the aggregated survey statistics suggest. Perhaps my perspective is biased since blogging is my main form of broadcasting my hobby activities?

How about you? What are your Top 3 media sources for wargaming inspiration and do these results mirror your age cohort?