Monday 4 June 2018

Wargaming and UK culture

Wargaming used to be an obscure hobby, but now the UK's population has some awareness of wargaming.
The evidence for this:

The BBC mentions wargames once a month- in the context of cyber wargames e.g. in City of London, military wargames e.g. gaming threat to Baltic Republics.
Over 90% of the 24 to 38 years olds (so called Millennials, Generation Y, Gen Next, were aware of role-playing e.g. Dungeons and Dragons). Sales of Dungeons and Dragons are seeing resurgence.

Practically all large business  run business wargames (i.e. business continuity exercises).

Many UK bookshops sell Euro type board games that are certainly in the wargaming space.

The UK Health Service, local government and public utilities, run wargames in the form of emergency planning exercises at least annually.

Games Workshop and Warhammer are a high street brand image- currently valued at £962 million.
A local wargaming show at Devizes (which is a rural area of Wiltshire, UK) had attendence of 1,100 people.

Wargaming seems to be established in the UK as a cultural norm. Who could have predicted that ten years ago?

3 comments:

  1. John,

    An interesting perspective, and one that bears greater investigation. I recently watched a newspaper review section on BBC News, and the reviewers must have used the term 'wargame' at least a dozen times with reference to one news item ... and it was used in a non-disparaging way.

    All the best,

    Bob

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think your observation means the case has closed. Wargaming is part of our culture.

      Delete
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