Good stuff. I think I fell into the category of players who tried picking up super complicated wargames and got blown away. When I was in high school my cousin introduced me to some, and several years later after I had graduated college I tried getting into it by picking up a copy of Advanced Squad Leader. It was a combo pack with the Eastern Front (I think) expansion. Well, after studying those rules hard, I couldn't crack them. Around the same time I did pick up a West End game called St. Lo. That was a good one, and I managed to play that with a couple of other brainiac fellow computer programmer friends of mine. But that was definitely well into the waning days of the genre, late 80s. In my case computer games did start to grab me more. Being a computer geek it was a natural.
One interesting company that actually got started in that era of the late seventies and has grown and still thrives should be noted. Games Workshop, with their Warhammer and Warhammer 40k and other games have bucked not just the wargame trend, but also the model building trend. There's loads of GW critics, and I've been one, but you have to hand it to them for carving out a successful business in the face of the complete opposite trend. Try finding a kid who builds plastic models these days, or try finding a kit on the shelf of a store. Kudos to Hobby Lobby, BTW, for still stocking plastic model kits!!!
Kind of funny about D&D too. Despite the low tech pen and paper thing i the face of video/computer games, they've managed to hang in there too. Interesting that the author tags TSR for the demise of wargames. I never knew that. Of course, that was TSR under the original regime, I suppose.
Fun stuff...
Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 4:43 am
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