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I heard this comment, out of context, while in my local GW recently, from some visitors from the US. They didn't stick around very long, so I didn't get to delve further into what they meant. I feel slightly offended to being generalised in such a way, even though I don't know what about. I felt almost like an animal in a cage. I'm also normally a very outgoing person, and this comment was said half to a friend of the commenter, and half to me (as I happened to be looking in the direction at the time), but due to my confusion and being busy playing a game I accidentally did my best shy gamer introvert impression (which is absolutely not me at all).

Anyway, so I suppose I'm asking, is there a difference between the European gaming community and the US one? What stereotypes do you guys have about us that you think they could have been referring to?

I also firmly object to Ireland being bundled in with Europe. We're an island in the middle of the Atlantic, with really only political and economical connections to the mainland.

Are you sure they weren't referring to the politico-economic European Community, and not the European wargaming community?

Someone that Eire is very much part of, like it or not.

He is probably just referencing the wargaming commuinity, which is more likely to thrive due to population density in most of europe, particularly england.

I'm not sure what they were talking about, hence why I asked the question, but I'm assuming given the context of being in a gaming shop, and talking about and watching games, that they were referring to the gaming community.

It's possible that I'm wrong, but the question still stands. I'll never see these people again, as given their behaviour and demeanour I am assuming they were tourists (not in the derogatory sense, but as a former hospitality worker I am very good at identifying tourists), so the question of their meaning and intent then becomes purely hypothetical, and as such I'm asking if it was relevant to us, in what way could it be relevant.

Speaking very generally, the biggest differences is that the UK, at least, has a very big Gaming Club focus. Most games are played in a local gaming club on a specific night.

As opposed to in the USA, where most games are played in the same store you bought the models in, which are usually generic gaming stores (or Friendly Local Gaming Stores), whereas in the UK, you would find a Games Workshop that only sells Games Workshop models and only plays Games Workshop games, in almost every major town centre. You then have relatively few FLGS. - Most of which, you barely have the room to swing a cat, nevermind host a 30 person gaming night inside it.

So, I'd guess, they weren't meaning anything too mean, just, "it's a tiny 1 man Games Workshop, no wonder they don't play most of their games here."

It wasn't a tiny one man GW, they hire three full time staff and one part timer. This was on a Thursday night, on which they stay open late, so it has become the adults gaming night, whereas the kids more frequently come in on weekends. It's normally quite busy, but on this Thursday it wasn't particularly busy, and I think there was at least two staff present at the time, but the other two were also there, "off-duty."

To be honest, Ireland is hardly in the middle of the Atlantic is it?

Ah, in that case, I've got nothing.

Still, on the Geek&Sundry tabletop feed last year, there was skype links of lots of gaming stores from the USA and, to be honest, Tabletop Nation seemed only *slightly* bigger than most of them.

 Compel wrote:
Speaking very generally, the biggest differences is that the UK, at least, has a very big Gaming Club focus. Most games are played in a local gaming club on a specific night.

As opposed to in the USA, where most games are played in the same store you bought the models in, which are usually generic gaming stores (or Friendly Local Gaming Stores), whereas in the UK, you would find a Games Workshop that only sells Games Workshop models and only plays Games Workshop games, in almost every major town centre. You then have relatively few FLGS. - Most of which, you barely have the room to swing a cat, nevermind host a 30 person gaming night inside it.

So, I'd guess, they weren't meaning anything too mean, just, "it's a tiny 1 man Games Workshop, no wonder they don't play most of their games here."

That is what i'd take from this as well.

Could it be because you had quite a few people in the store on a Thursday night? Here in the US, weekdays are generally a slow time for an FLGS. GW stores are mostly nonexistent. The closest FLGS to me personally is 50miles away. They cater mostly to cards games. The closest wargaming store is 110 miles. Here in the US, most gamers are spread out, and groups are usually just 3-5 friends who meet in somebody's dining room/man cave. The advantage of plentiful wargaming stores is not something the states have. Like I said, it was probably because you had a crowd on a weekday.
Being spread out is probably why US gamers like tournaments so much. A big tournament is sure to draw a large amount of players from miles around to play against.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:


Anyway, so I suppose I'm asking, is there a difference between the European gaming community and the US one? What stereotypes do you guys have about us that you think they could have been referring to?

I'd take it as a compliment that you're all laid back, gentlemanly players with attractive mates and well painted armies!

As was mentioned before, the wargaming culture in USA evolved from the existing nerd culture, such as Magic and other CCG's, DnD and other RPG's, and Comics/literature. This means your 'average' wargaming store is the USA is more than likely a multifaceted operation with many different revenue sources competing for shelf space and table time. So as a new customer you are immediately introduced to a wide gamut of gaming options, of which you can pick and choose the ones that appeal to you. This also means that the store becomes a live forum of all the different facets of nerd culture, so that you can say "hey there warmachine pressganger, can we play a sample game?" just as easily as you can say, "hey there 40k guy, can we play a sample game?" Having those options makes people more inclined to try out their options, and very few of them consider 40k as 'the best' game once they have a sufficient sample size of different games under their belt. (DMZ, infinity, FoW, WarmaHoardes to name a few)

In USA the "GW" stores tend to popup near those existing shoppes with the goal of muscling in on those successful stores' business. What has happened again and again is that GW corporate will make it increasingly harder for your Friendly Local Gaming Store to stock up on, and discount their product, in the hopes that the clientele will go to the GW store. What tends to happen is that the GW store WILL steal some die-hard customers from the FLGS, but there isnt enough of a GW population density to support GW only stores in america, so the stores inevitably close.

So, year after year, all they have really done is offend the FLGS owners with their bully tactics, set up a series of ever opening and closing 1 man GW stores, and slowly isolated themselves from the 'culture' of american wargaming. This isnt even factoring in the Price Increase hate, the Rules Balance/Wording hate, the "gw only conversion" hate, and the "lack of social media" hate. The average consensus in USA is "If you dont have a GW army already, you probably shouldnt even bother."

This is different from Europe (and especially the United Kingdom) where your average young kid walks into a GW store, sees only GW, and instantly believes that it is the end all be all of wargaming.

All in one humble international travelers opinion.

jeez.. does every thread on this board devolve into a GW bitchfest??

There has been a club wargaming culture in the USA and many famous wargamers like Fletcher Pratt and Jack Scruby were part of it from the 40s onwards.

It is the modern young GW generation who seem to have taken to playing in shops rather than clubs, I don't know for why.

All I know is, as an American, I am jealous of the things I hear about the "European Wargaming Community" because it is, well, a community. Here in the US we're too damned spread out, and can mostly only get a game in one day a week by making the 30+ minute drive to the local FLGS or friend's house to play.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There has been a club wargaming culture in the USA and many famous wargamers like Fletcher Pratt and Jack Scruby were part of it from the 40s onwards.

It is the modern young GW generation who seem to have taken to playing in shops rather than clubs, I don't know for why.

Probably because actual clubs are too expensive these days? After the previous thread talking about game clubs and where they meet to play, I looked up all the local community centers in my area, and the cheapest rents out rooms at $25 per hour, and their opening hours on the weekends are usually short.

dereksatkinson wrote:
jeez.. does every thread on this board devolve into a GW bitchfest??

Only where GW have taken some sort of action to upset some part of the player base.

So, yes.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
All I know is, as an American, I am jealous of the things I hear about the "European Wargaming Community" because it is, well, a community. Here in the US we're too damned spread out, and can mostly only get a game in one day a week by making the 30+ minute drive to the local FLGS or friend's house to play.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There has been a club wargaming culture in the USA and many famous wargamers like Fletcher Pratt and Jack Scruby were part of it from the 40s onwards.

It is the modern young GW generation who seem to have taken to playing in shops rather than clubs, I don't know for why.

Probably because actual clubs are too expensive these days? After the previous thread talking about game clubs and where they meet to play, I looked up all the local community centers in my area, and the cheapest rents out rooms at $25 per hour, and their opening hours on the weekends are usually short.

Maybe it is the cost. Logically if people can congregate at a shop they can congregate at a parish hall or community centre or somewhere like that.

The action here being.....?

Is $25 an hour so massively bad, though? Although, in saying that, I'd hope some permanent storage would be provided

Doing some rough maths, my gaming clubs charge around the equivalent of $4 to $5 per person for a night. - Usually around 3.5 hours.

I think the clubs have around 15-30 people in them, depending on what's going on.

It takes me about thirty minutes to drive into town, at least five minutes to park because my car is huge and the spaces are tiny and I have to do that back and forth thing about twenty times, while traffic moves around me, and then another five minutes, so the shops aren't exactly on our doorsteps here in Ireland either.

 Compel wrote:
Is $25 an hour so massively bad, though? Although, in saying that, I'd hope some permanent storage would be provided

Doing some rough maths, my gaming clubs charge around the equivalent of $4 to $5 per person for a night. - Usually around 3.5 hours.

I think the clubs have around 15-30 people in them, depending on what's going on.

That's a hundred bucks for a game of 40k. Maybe two games if you don't have any new players or horde armies. With ten people that's $10/person. It's hard to find ten people in rural areas. Heck, it's hard enough to find ten in a metropolitan area to even meet on the same night.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
It takes me about thirty minutes to drive into town, at least five minutes to park because my car is huge and the spaces are tiny and I have to do that back and forth thing about twenty times, while traffic moves around me, and then another five minutes, so the shops aren't exactly on our doorsteps here in Ireland either.

The closest wargaming shop is two hours away before considering parking and traffic hoss. It might as well be right on your doorstep comparatively.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
All I know is, as an American, I am jealous of the things I hear about the "European Wargaming Community" because it is, well, a community. Here in the US we're too damned spread out, and can mostly only get a game in one day a week by making the 30+ minute drive to the local FLGS or friend's house to play.

Amen to this. I have never traveled abroad but generally in the US you have a game shop (that sells anything from miniatures to card games to comics to board games, or often all of them) that has a designated "miniatures night" for anything non-card game (specifically MtG) related. For example the two stores near me have Wednesday and Thursday respectively as "minis night" where you can randomly find Warhammer, Warmachine or other gamers, but generally you don't know beforehand - it's very much a "Head on down and see who's there" culture; for instance if I go to the store on Thursday to play Warmachine, there's a slim chance there will actually be a Warmachine player there to get a game in; on the flipside there might be 5 Warhammer players, or zero. It depends on the time and store's local preference, and many stores tend to cater to just one thing e.g. the only miniatures gaming that goes on is 40k, and everything else is card game events. Also with random schedules, even if the store has a night designated to gaming you'll likely find different people there each week so its hard to have regular opponents. There's been more than one occasion where I've headed down to a game store only to end up not getting a game in at all because nobody else showed up; fine if I just want to chat but not fine when I have limited playtime and intended to have a game.

This seems in stark contrast to the UK and surrounding areas where you have a local gaming club that meets independently of any one store, often at a club or church hall or whatnot and organizes their own events and in general has more organization than "Go to the store on Thursday and hope for a game", and generally are more willing to dabble in various games, for instance a wargames club might be more receptive to someone suggesting that they pick up Infinity, or X-Wing, or maybe two guys are interested in Napoleonics and collect forces and then one night have a game to show it to everybody else, or even the notion of having a "club army" that others can use. That rarely if ever happens in the US pickup game/FLGS culture; if I wanted to start playing Napoleonics, for example, it's highly unlikely that anyone at the FLGS cares enough to get interested in it (and even so they are more than likely strangers or acquaintances) and I'd be on my own for finding any opponents; showing up to the game store with a new game is likely to result in my having a night just sitting there watching others play.

That's my observations anyways.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
It wasn't a tiny one man GW, they hire three full time staff and one part timer. This was on a Thursday night, on which they stay open late, so it has become the adults gaming night, whereas the kids more frequently come in on weekends. It's normally quite busy, but on this Thursday it wasn't particularly busy, and I think there was at least two staff present at the time, but the other two were also there, "off-duty."

Where was it? Was it by any chsnce other realms in cork or gamers world in dublin? Or was it the gw?

Man, I miss cork!

I have no idea what on earth they could mean, not without seeing the context in which they made the statement.

I also firmly object to Ireland being bundled in with Europe. We're an island in the middle of the Atlantic, with really only political and economical connections to the mainland.

You and I have very different definitions of 'middle'.

 azreal13 wrote:
Are you sure they weren't referring to the politico-economic European Community, and not the European wargaming community?

Someone that Eire is very much part of, like it or not.

Thats how I understood it.

According to Wikipedia the urbanisation rate of the USA is over 80% and is in fact slightly higher than the UK, so I am not convinced that wide rural spaces are the reason for the game in shop culture.

It's not really a rural issue. The term "Urban Sprawl" is quite apt. I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth (Texas) metropolitan area. It is pretty much almost 80 miles in diameter, with an almost two hour drive time to get from one side to the other. And that's when the traffic and road construction gods are smiling upon me. I don't even want to imagine what it's like in the coastal cites where one side is blocked by water so everything spreads out in only one direction.

Game stores and people's houses are pretty much the only options. Community centers? Too expensive when it will be at least $100 (and that's only for four hours), so that price adds up a lot over time. Churches with activity rooms? I'm in Texas, so I don't think the Baptists are too keen on cries of "Blood for the Blood God!"

Maybe there are just less wargamers per capita in US compared to the UK, making it harder to congregate?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
According to Wikipedia the urbanisation rate of the USA is over 80% and is in fact slightly higher than the UK, so I am not convinced that wide rural spaces are the reason for the game in shop culture.

But exactly how much of the gaming community live in or next to large urban areas? And not all cities support wargaming. The two largest urban centers within an hour of me: Jackson, TN(population 70,000) and Florence, AL(40,000) have one card gaming shop between them. Memphis, TN(655,000) has at most two wargaming shops. Maybe five total if you add in card and comic book shops. Of course, this is just my personal experience; things may be different outside the Southeastern US.

Deadnight wrote:

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
It wasn't a tiny one man GW, they hire three full time staff and one part timer. This was on a Thursday night, on which they stay open late, so it has become the adults gaming night, whereas the kids more frequently come in on weekends. It's normally quite busy, but on this Thursday it wasn't particularly busy, and I think there was at least two staff present at the time, but the other two were also there, "off-duty."

Where was it? Was it by any chsnce other realms in cork or gamers world in dublin? Or was it the gw?

Man, I miss cork!

It was the GW on Liffey St. The staff in there are very cool, and while they do act like salesmen sometimes, they're never too pushy like people here always complain about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also I was being slightly tongue in cheek re: the Ireland not being in Europe remark. We don't usually refer to ourselves as European, but I think it's just an issue of language, or maybe it's an island mentality thing, I don't know.

Do you think we, generally speaking, will have any real idea what they meant? It was just a few people, don't treat them like ambassadors.

Also, continents are distinguished by many factors, not just geological. You're even part of the European Union. It is a fact Irish are European.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
It's not really a rural issue. The term "Urban Sprawl" is quite apt. I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth (Texas) metropolitan area. It is pretty much almost 80 miles in diameter, with an almost two hour drive time to get from one side to the other. And that's when the traffic and road construction gods are smiling upon me. I don't even want to imagine what it's like in the coastal cites where one side is blocked by water so everything spreads out in only one direction.

Game stores and people's houses are pretty much the only options. Community centers? Too expensive when it will be at least $100 (and that's only for four hours), so that price adds up a lot over time. Churches with activity rooms? I'm in Texas, so I don't think the Baptists are too keen on cries of "Blood for the Blood God!"

Maybe there are just less wargamers per capita in US compared to the UK, making it harder to congregate?

I think Urban Sprawl is relevant too. I live in Los Angeles and we have game shops sprinkled throughout the greater Los Angeles area, but with public transit being what it is (gak), unless you are local to one of those stores it becomes quite an effort to get to one on a week night. With evening traffic and snarled highways, a trip of 12-15 miles could take you an hour or more depending on which highways you need to travel to reach your destination. And if you bypass the highways, well, "good luck" because city streets are even more of a gamble than the highways. An "hour each way" commute is still and hour each way whether you are driving through fields of cows or gridlock on the 405 freeway.

Now, take a ride on DT777's crazy train as a thought just occurred to me.

I wonder if Americans aren't just a little bit suspicious of clubs because there are plenty of negative associations with the term "club". I have no data to back this up other than my own limited experience, but clubs, and the people who were part of clubs, carried a stigma for much of my life. As far as I knew clubs involved bikers, or street racing groups who would conduct illegal activities or were full of the elderly doing charitable work (such as the Kiwanis Club). None of which were activities I wanted to be a part of. Perhaps it is the term itself that puts Americans off? At best clubs seem quaint and boring and at worse they appear dangerous and illicit, conjuring up images of secret societies with complicated handshakes and bizarre initiation rituals.

It is much easier and less questionable to announce to friends and family that you are going down to the local shop for a few hours than it is to admit that you are part of a gaming club--which is a shame. Given the choice between haunting an LGS and hoping for a pick up game with a stranger, or being a member of a gaming group that meets regularly and shares the costs of gaming, I'd pick the second option every time. Every time. If I am not alone in sharing this stigma with the term club, then perhaps us Yanks need to come up with an alternate term to avoid funny looks from our non-gaming associates.