As with virtually every other hobby and industry, 2020 has been a disruptive year in wargaming, to say the least. Conventions have been cancelled, schedules altered, games delayed, time dilated. Perhaps the most lasting of this year’s legacies, however, will be that it has brought to the surface a conversation that the community has been putting off for decades: why has the hobby struggled so much with diversity and inclusion and how to fix it?
If 2020 has shown anything, it is that while the hobby still has a lot of ground to cover in terms of making wargaming a truly welcoming place, there have been some very hopeful, concrete steps towards diversity, inclusion, and experimentation this year.
This should be an issue of paramount importance to all wargamers. If you would like to see wargaming become a robust, successful, thriving hobby then you should be deeply invested in ensuring that the community is one that welcomes and encourages diverse voices.
In our second retrospective for the year, we’re looking at how that process has started in 2020; but there is a hell of a lot more work to be done.
Demographics in Context
Let’s get something squared away right out of the gate: as a hobby, wargaming has not been a welcoming place for many marginalized groups.
Demographic data on just who is playing wargaming is difficult to nail down, but the information we do have is not promising. According to this year’s Great Wargaming Survey from Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine, one of the largest surveys of the community, 98% of respondents were middle-aged men.
Granted, the datasets WSS are working with are relatively small and probably skew towards the miniatures community, which can involve larger costs in time & money vs. other areas of wargaming, but this is a data point that we can see borne out across the few other demographic surveys we have available. It’s likely that somewhere around 95% of the community is male, with a significant portion of that leaning towards the older side of the spectrum. This continues to reinforce the growing problem we’re facing: The hobby is homogenous and graying.
We can also confidently say that the vast majority of designers and creators in the wargaming and historical board gaming space fit into this narrow demographic category as well. This should not come as too much of a surprise considering there have long been undercurrents of racism, eurocentrism, and antisemitism lingering in the dark corners of the hobby. Even today, wargame-oriented message boards, Facebook groups, and other online communities often remain dens of unrepentant reactionary toxicity, homophobia, and misogyny. Many games still traffic in ahistorical tropes or various species of Lost Cause-ism, while others ham-handedly fumble with issues that require nuance.
Diversity and Inclusion
With that said, there have been a few very promising signs of improvement this year. Things are changing and it appears as though the community is coming to terms with some of the lingering issues around diversity and inclusion.
Encouragingly, several publishers have signed on to the Derby House Principals. Named after the headquarters of the Western Approaches Tactical Unit, a WWII-era team of naval wargamers staffed by women of the WRNS, the Derby House Principals is a statement of values that emphasize a commitment to promoting inclusion in wargaming and opposing bigotry in all forms.
While ostensibly directed at the world of professional gaming, several commercial publishers have signed on in support of the Principles, with some positive results so far. At the same time, following the events of this summer in the United States, other publishers have independently issued statements advocating for inclusion and diversity in the industry and wider community, including GMT Games, Multi-Man Publishing, and Hollandspiele.
Others have chosen to stay silent and avoid the ire of complacent fans. Of course, words alone can only go so far, but such widespread acknowledgment of the problem is more progress than has seen in a decade.
Probably the most promising and important step forward has been the launch of the Zenobia Award. A design contest and mentorship program for up-and-coming designers of war and historical games, the Zenobia Award is trying to create a concrete path to publication for marginalized and underrepresented groups in the community.
Contestants can enter for the chance to receive a cash prize – $4000 for the first-place winner – from a panel of diverse judges from across the gaming community. But, more importantly, the award also offers critiques for contestants and mentorship for finalists, something that can help to break down a significant barrier for underrepresented groups trying to gain a toehold.
With a bunch of publishing partners already signed on, this could be an excellent stepping stone to broadening the wargaming community, pushing genre boundaries, and telling new kinds of stories.
New Kinds of Stories
Alongside some of these steps towards making the community a more welcoming place, 2020 has also seen a general trend towards new kinds of play, eliminating traditional gatekeepers, and exploring under examined topics in the genre.
This year saw the first CONSIM Game Jam, a (virtual) get-together where designers, both amateur and professional, seek to create a counterinsurgency wargame in just three days using an existing game from the GMT COIN series as a model. While not explicitly targeted at underrepresented groups, this is an excellent way for fresh voices to stake a claim in the community.
We’ve also seen designs from this year that have been moving towards either examining new kinds of conflict or old conflict in new and interesting ways. This broadening of scope has been happening over the past few years and it is encouraging to see it continue. For example, two separate games (Hollandspiele’s The Vote: Suffrage and Suppression in America and Fort Circle’s Votes for Women) are trying to tackle the struggle for women’s suffrage. Others are continuing the trend of taking a wargamer’s approach to non-traditional or non-kinetic conflict.
2020 has also shown that virtual tools like Vassal, Tabletop Simulator, and Steam have enormous potential to upend the old dynamics of creation and play in the industry. Tabletop Simulator especially has seen a boomtime in usage, obviously coinciding with the pandemic, but importantly these tools offer the potential for breaking down some of the financial barriers to game creation and community.
Some of my favorite digital wargames of this year have been Steam ports of existing titles, such as Labyrinth: The War on Terror and Root. Hopefully, this will be a trend that continues. I’d love to see some of the meatier titles that are difficult to get on the table find their way over to Steam, where solo play and save features can smooth out the rougher edges.
A Roadmap for 2021?
So, we’ve made some progress in 2020 and we’re beginning to have some of the conversations we need to have. What else can be done to help make even more progress in 2021?
The first – and probably most important – step is to raise up non-traditional voices when we find them. Second, we can support those publishers that are trying to diversify subject matter and tackle more difficult topics with care.
Part of that may well mean moving away from some of the hardware fetishization that has become so deeply ingrained in wargaming. There will always be room for hexes and counters, but it is increasingly necessary to embrace titles that might be on the margin of the wargaming space.
We must make our gaming spaces feel like safe spaces for marginalized groups. Part of that requires rejecting the worst aspects of the community and calling out bigotry wherever we see it. Toss out the exclusionary grog mentality that envisions wargames as some monolithic thing. Instead, embrace innovative approaches, new designs, and weirder topics. Wargaming will be a better hobby for it.
