GWS 2017 12/31 questions – We love History!
After yesterday's look at SciFant-setting lovers among the respondents, it's inevitable we look at the 1747 respondents who consider themselves strongly historical gamers. Incidentally, that means that 4458 respondents (51.5%) put themselves somewhere in the middle of the scale. That in itself is interesting. It means, after all, that the strong divide between historical and SciFant gamers may not exist.
The history lovers
When the SciFant fanatics - I'm just trying to vary words here - are clearly younger than the average, it stands to reason another section of the respondents is on average older. We already established (sort of) that the urge for historical wargaming seems to kick in around age 42, and that is reflected in the results. No surprise that a very substantial number of these respondents have enjoyed their hobby for a long time.
Perhaps that was to be expected, but historical wargamers also seem to gather in different concentrations (Strong history fans left, overall right, click to enlarge). Clearly the UK has a stronger contingent of historical wargamers and Germany, overall in third place, drops back to sixth, after Australia and Canada which both clearly get a bigger slice of the pie as well. The US, in contrast, drops about 1 percent.
What do these historical wargamers like to play? It appears first of all that these gamers very much enjoy the background research (and who wouldn't?), which they clearly then bring into their games. Compare the overall ranking of game-types (left) and the results for this group of respondents (right). Skirmish-style games are less popular, while scenario-driven and big battle games are much more so.
Finally, when they do play, what does the top ten of favourite settings look like? (Place your bets before peeking!)
Contribute to our 31 Questions challenge
Have any questions about the results of the Great Wargaming Survey 2017? Feel free to submit them here, but try to keep in mind what we can and cannot answer based on the questions and possible answers to the survey. To refresh your memory, check out a preview of last year's questions and possible answers.
