Earlier this week, the Great Wargaming Survey 2015 ended after 35 days. All in all we got 8173 responses [WOW! Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to respond and thank you very much to all those who helped spread the news!], some 5% more than last year and, from first impressions, they’re a slightly different group than last year. There is definitely an overlap however, if only in the 30% that took the survey last year as well. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be picking my way through the even larger pile of information that came out of this survey, mostly in a fairly random order, while I try to figure out all that’s there.

After last year’s survey, we decided to change a few things to improve this new edition. One suggestion was to remove some questions that might be returned to the survey in a year or so, but didn’t necessarily need asking every year. Next, quite a few questions had the options phrased a bit better to remove ambiguity or an overstated option. One example of the latter was the hobby aspect of “painting your miniatures”. Last year the option was “I paint my minis to the highest standards”, but what we meant to ask was “how important is painting to you as an aspect of wargaming?” Undoubtedly, that awkward phrasing caused some respondents to give a different answer than what it could (or should) have been, and that may be borne out by the fact that this year 63.6% indicated that painting the miniatures was “definitely” an important aspect of this hobby, versus only 33% last year. The final change was the inclusion of comment boxes, two open questions and “other” options with many questions, and I’m very glad we did so. Browsing through all the extra comments is not just very interesting, but especially the 6,164 answers to “What do you like best about being a wargamer?” just make me happy about this hobby. It’s great to see so many people enjoying what they do! Therefore, today I decided to take a closer look at the answers to that question.

Obviously, analyzing answers to an open question is a bit more complicated than for multiple-choice questions. So I copied all the answers (17,886 words) into a text analysis tool.

There a few words that, in a few varieties (e.g. Painting, Painted, etc) occur very often, other words occur less often by themselves, but are all varieties of a similar concept. For instance Friends, Meeting, Mates, Camaraderie, Community, etc, all indicate the ‘social’ aspects of wargaming, while Research, Reading, History, etc, all point to an interest in the actual, or imagined, background to the hobby. Here’s what that gave me.

Painting: 463 times, and was the most mentioned word by itself.
Playing the game (play, tactics, competition, challenge, etc): 696 times
Background research (reading, research, history, etc): 533 times
Army collecting (collect, miniatures, figures, armies): 438 times
Creativity (creative, building, modelling): 247 times
Social aspects (friends, social, meeting, comrades, etc): 772 times!
In other words, if you read it from the answers to this question only, wargaming is a creative hobby in which you collect and paint an army for a certain background or setting, and then you play a game with your friends. Have we learned something new from that? No, not really, but it does make me want to do it some more! How about you?

Stay tuned for more ‘meaty’ results of this year’s survey!

Playing the game (play, tactics, competition, challenge, etc): 696 times
Army collecting (collect, miniatures, figures, armies): 438 times

If you took part in this year’s Great Wargaming Survey, you’ll have noticed the list of prizes at the end that we promised to raffle out amongst those of you who left their email addresses. I can tell you that 6912 respondees did so and with 12 prizes, there was a .17% chance of winning something. Not great perhaps, but considerably better than the lottery!

So I asked a random number generator (this one if you’re curious) to spit out 12 numbers between 1 and 6912. Below is the list of winners. I’ll be contacting everyone today, but this is an obvious target for anti-spam measures, so feel free to check if your email address corresponds with a pattern below (three stars = three characters) and contact me at j.oorthuys *AT* karwansaraypublishers.com. Congrats if you won, sorry if you didn’t, but I still really appreciate your taking the time to fill out the survey!

a***j***er69@hotmail.com: A Warlord starter set of your choice for Hail Caesar, Black Powder or Bolt Action
b***e***9@hotmail.com: A Warlord starter set for Gates of Antares
C***r***ge@gmail.com: A Victrix boxed set of the winner’s choice
d***c***d@hotmail.com: A Valiant Miniatures set of 3 x 20mm plastic buildings
j***a***aker@onsbrabantnet.nl: A Plastic Soldier Company The Great War boxed set
d***ole.***ter@gmail.com: A Gripping Beast box of Light Arab Horse and a box of Heavy Arab Horse
k***v***@yahoo.com: A copy of Frostgrave and a copy of Age of Sail, both from Osprey Publishing
j***jks@hotmail.com: One copy each of The Roman Wars in Spain; Images of War: the Fall of Malaysia and Singapore; Battlefields in Miniatures, all from Pen & Sword
L***p***lip3@gmail.com: The 4Ground Parish Church
A finally three two-year subscriptions of to either Ancient Warfare, Medieval Warfare or Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy for:

c***onp@telus.net
k***i***st@aol.com
C***s.s***le***232@gmail.com

 reds8n wrote:


For a moment or two one wondered if there were just loads of people with really, really rude or offensive email addys.


.. anyway best of luck to all those who took part.

Praefectusclassis wrote:
And there I was, thinking I'd protect people from spambots... No good deed and all...

Anyway, we'll publish results both on our website and in the magazine. Here's all the bits and pieces from last year: http://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/pw/wss/blog/coming-soon-the-great-wargaming-survey-2015/

Or at least, a chance to answer some questions… Yes, it’ll be here soon! From next Tuesday, July 19th, we’ll run the 2016 edition of the Great Wargaming Survey. We’re hoping for an even larger number of responses than in 2014 and 2015 and will be trying to draw your interest everywhere you go on the internet.

This year’s survey will be largely comparable to that of 2014 and 2015, though you’ll find a few new ones, and we’ll rotate sections in and out. After all, it doesn’t seem necessary to ask the exact same set every year. Most things in this hobby don’t change that quickly for one, and we are very conscious of the fact that the survey shouldn’t take too long.

There will be a slight change in our thank-you though. Like before, every participant will be able to put his name in the virtual hat to have a shot at winning some of the prizes our generous sponsors are making available (more about those later!). Previous years we also gave everyone a ten-percent discount code as our own ‘thank-you’. This year, we’ll do it slightly differently, in a way we think you’ll appreciate.

Finally, if you’re curious about all the stuff we’ve written about the surveys in previous years: here’s where to go: