I was just reading a thread on a site I know to be almost ground zero for wargaming grognards.
My feelings after reading the thread, fuck em, fuck em and fuck the hobby if all it can ever expect to get from them is the lack of interest in ever budging.
Clearly, they think only a desk top will do. Not sure why, wargames take less muscle than any form or gaming in existence. It sure as hell isn't the graphics.
They think a large screen is a must, even though they seem incapable of comprehending the console generation has been playing on large HD tvs now for several years.
I happen to know you can wargame, and do it well easily off the desk top, but ooooooh no, they insist it has to be a desk top.
Fucking old farts are really just hiding the truth, the grumpy old bastards just don't mind being stuck in their fucking man cave in an office chair at a desk.
Fine keep your goddamned man cave.
But these rut loving old coots are committing game tech suicide. The desktop's days of being THE means to game, have been rapidly slipping away.
Sure a desktop will always rule as a work tool, but gaming is about having fun.
The last time I looked though, most wargames had forgotten actually what fun actually was.
Slitherine is trying hard to put wargames on tablets, kudos to them. They have a future.
But technology is always moving forward. It will NOT be long before a tablet is every bit as powerful as today's best most maxed out desktop.
I was looking at tablets the other day and my friend mentioned a laptop next to us 'this laptop actually has a more powerful video card than my desktop' he mentioned to me. That's radical, as my friend's desktop is a very strack gamer rig. And a lousy 500 dollar laptop can run circles around it already. Hell I think he just bought those parts last year too.
So the idea a tablet won't have the muscle for long is just dumb. Just a matter of time.
Screen size was mentioned too. We fuck, I suppose it might be hard to play a monster game on a tablet. It's hard to set up monster board game wargames in large rooms too though. Those size wargames have always been 50% ew wow factor and 50% too big to be realistically playable to begin with. I know, I have some. One of my most loved games, has a foot print of 5.5'x5'. That's a very big table. So yeah, I guess it would be a lot of scrolling as a computer wargame too. So yeah, I suppose it would be hard to play on my damned 40" Sony as well.
Maybe if they made more wargames, more fucking realistic in terms of functionally playable too, then we could play them under reasonable circumstances.
But ooooooohh no, we can't ask wargamers to make wargames of modest size and modest parameters.
Ya know, it's an interesting paradox, to be a wargamer, you need to be very smart very educated in most cases. Thing is, most wargamers are yet still inherently stupid when it comes to making the games it would seem. A sort of contradiction of sorts.
The key to making ANY form of game sell and sell well, is to make it a must have, and make it so everyone CAN play it.
Wargames seem to be about making the most intimidating, difficult, complex, tedious, lengthy and dull experiences possible.
Are wargamers mostly a weird form of entertainment masochist?
Can I ever expect to see a day when I can run Gary Grigsby's War in the East on a tablet? Probably not, the thing would run out of charge before you finished a turn.
But I HAVE some wargames that have small size, small scale, small program footprint, small demands on the hardware that are fun to play, and fast to play.
They just need to be stolen from the stick in the mud grognards and put on a tablet, and made available to those that don't wish to stay in the past.
Man I am sooo in the mood to kick old men right now.
My feelings after reading the thread, fuck em, fuck em and fuck the hobby if all it can ever expect to get from them is the lack of interest in ever budging.
Clearly, they think only a desk top will do. Not sure why, wargames take less muscle than any form or gaming in existence. It sure as hell isn't the graphics.
They think a large screen is a must, even though they seem incapable of comprehending the console generation has been playing on large HD tvs now for several years.
I happen to know you can wargame, and do it well easily off the desk top, but ooooooh no, they insist it has to be a desk top.
Fucking old farts are really just hiding the truth, the grumpy old bastards just don't mind being stuck in their fucking man cave in an office chair at a desk.
Fine keep your goddamned man cave.
But these rut loving old coots are committing game tech suicide. The desktop's days of being THE means to game, have been rapidly slipping away.
Sure a desktop will always rule as a work tool, but gaming is about having fun.
The last time I looked though, most wargames had forgotten actually what fun actually was.
Slitherine is trying hard to put wargames on tablets, kudos to them. They have a future.
But technology is always moving forward. It will NOT be long before a tablet is every bit as powerful as today's best most maxed out desktop.
I was looking at tablets the other day and my friend mentioned a laptop next to us 'this laptop actually has a more powerful video card than my desktop' he mentioned to me. That's radical, as my friend's desktop is a very strack gamer rig. And a lousy 500 dollar laptop can run circles around it already. Hell I think he just bought those parts last year too.
So the idea a tablet won't have the muscle for long is just dumb. Just a matter of time.
Screen size was mentioned too. We fuck, I suppose it might be hard to play a monster game on a tablet. It's hard to set up monster board game wargames in large rooms too though. Those size wargames have always been 50% ew wow factor and 50% too big to be realistically playable to begin with. I know, I have some. One of my most loved games, has a foot print of 5.5'x5'. That's a very big table. So yeah, I guess it would be a lot of scrolling as a computer wargame too. So yeah, I suppose it would be hard to play on my damned 40" Sony as well.
Maybe if they made more wargames, more fucking realistic in terms of functionally playable too, then we could play them under reasonable circumstances.
But ooooooohh no, we can't ask wargamers to make wargames of modest size and modest parameters.
Ya know, it's an interesting paradox, to be a wargamer, you need to be very smart very educated in most cases. Thing is, most wargamers are yet still inherently stupid when it comes to making the games it would seem. A sort of contradiction of sorts.
The key to making ANY form of game sell and sell well, is to make it a must have, and make it so everyone CAN play it.
Wargames seem to be about making the most intimidating, difficult, complex, tedious, lengthy and dull experiences possible.
Are wargamers mostly a weird form of entertainment masochist?
Can I ever expect to see a day when I can run Gary Grigsby's War in the East on a tablet? Probably not, the thing would run out of charge before you finished a turn.
But I HAVE some wargames that have small size, small scale, small program footprint, small demands on the hardware that are fun to play, and fast to play.
They just need to be stolen from the stick in the mud grognards and put on a tablet, and made available to those that don't wish to stay in the past.
Man I am sooo in the mood to kick old men right now.
