Wargaming ASKEW: The Day after Wargaming
It is one of those rare Saturday mornings– you wake up to the sun taunting you to get out of bed while the blanket is curled up making you warm and toasty. Grudgingly you get up and begin your day.
As you look outside you see a gorgeous day; the birds are singing, the sky is clear, and the S.O. is with their parents for the day. It is the perfect day. Sure you could go to the beach. Sure you could go hiking. Sure you could read a book in a park, but that is not you. You are a wargamer! You have no greater responsibility, but to head straight to the nearest poorly lit, overcrowded, and caffeinated game store!
So you decide to pack up your plastic men and head down to the local store. First you decide to stop by the local Games Workshop/FLGS store to pick up some stuff your primary shop doesn’t carry. You park and head into the strip mall. As you make your way, you start to plan your strategy to avoid employee sale pitches and hold back from a prepubescent boy killing spree. Suddenly you realize you must have missed the store. You could have sworn it was next to Sanrio with that super cute Hello Kitty Portable Travel Pillow with rainbow hearts…that your girlfriend wanted. Instead, next to the Sanrio Store is the AsSeenOnTV Store which you don’t remember being in this mall. So after picking up a Bark Buster you head over to check the directory.
You look at the directory and see no listing for your beloved store. You don’t remember them saying they were going out of business. Oh well, this is not the first time a game store has just upped and left. So with your neck pillow and Bark Buster you head out of the mall. You drive to your next FLGS just in time for some afternoon wargaming. As you pull up you notice black vans pulled up to the store. Strange men are loading boxes of merchandise on to the vehicles, the owner of the store standing outside shaking his head.
You carefully approach the store owner to ask, “What’s going on?” He says: “Your favorite game company is no more”. Everything they made is getting liquidated and like the video game crash of 1983 it will be buried in some unnamed Mexican desert. Now what? Your favorite wargame is no longer supported. That favorite outdated army of yours will never see a new rules book. Those early metal models from last edition will never see the light of plastic. The epic fluff novels you’ve been waiting for will never be finished. Somehow you have to figure out how to go on with your life?
I am pretty sure that Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith won’t pull up and take our toys away, but if the end were to come how would it happen? Here are a few ways it all could end…
- They move on up, gets big off video game licenses, TV, and movie deals leaving the wargaming portion to wither away.
- They get bought out by a mega-company like Hasbro, which decides that your favorite tabletop miniatures game should be collectible.
- They make bad business desicions, go belly up and are broken into many pieces. As licenses are sold off, companies like Bandai buy IPs and mangaphile them to death.
- It is 2012 and planet X hits the earth killing off 90% of all life and resulting in the rise of flamingos as the dominant species on Earth.
The bigger question to ask yourself is what would you do after the end had past. How long would the games would live on? Would you be addicted enough (like fans of Firefly) and create whole new universes to please your bruised souls? What would rise to the challenge and fill our need for new miniatures? Would the Internet and enthusiasts develop new rules and new histories to fill the gaps left by your favorite company’s demise?
