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or is it pretty balanced? I've just been reading 40k fluff and novels and haven't really gotten to know any players.

Apparently were all fascists. But uh..

I've seen all the shades on the spectrum. Centrists, a few left leaning. One time a very far right leaning.

But I like to think Wargaming can be a refuge away from this gak. It's everywhere else anyways.

It varies wildly, its hard to ascribe any one bend to gamers as a whole. We have everything from wild flaming tumblerista SJW's to Neofascists and everything in between, above, and below here, with mostly variants of various centrist ideologies.

^This.

It's an interesting broad spectrum.

'Tis why OT Politics is interesting on a world-wide toy soldier website. We're all connected by virtue of our plastic crack addiction, but we're all come from different walks of life.

This website is the only place I really talk politics, here and my local media's fb page. The myriad of different political leanings make for interesting discussion you won't get in the various echo chambers, where all the ridiculous nonsense about the "other guys" gets snowballed into a monster.

crimsondave wrote:
or is it pretty balanced? I've just been reading 40k fluff and novels and haven't really gotten to know any players.

Read this thread from start to finish just to see the broad spectrum here on Dakka. https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/712806.page

Multiply that by a million more spectrums!

Well, my friends and I are pretty much universally lefties - no card carrying communists, mark you. But definitely of a socialist bent.

Others? Quite different.

other than here and europeans, I have really never seen any leftist gamers in person, even here in blue colorado.

My old gaming group was almost universally left leaning and the folks I have met at the LGS seem to be as well. But that is Southern California for you.


I've noticed a trend in certain gaming forums which I frequent and it seems that those communities are more homogeneous politically. Those communities are also only built around one game, and lack the diversity that communities like Dakka have. It has made me wonder if certain types of games tend to appeal to groups with a similar political bend. Historical war game communities skew to the right from my experience, and they tend to have older members and a lot of ex-military types (both groups that lean conservative).

I would agree that the spectrum is huge.
I am of the opinion that being a tabletop gamer is little indication on your political leaning.

My views are... conflicted.
- I believe strongly in capitalism for prosperity.
- I believe that low environmental impact is just sensible for being "efficient".
- I believe anyone who made a bad choice but taking steps to improve is deserving of a "safety net" both in Medicare and welfare.
- I believe religious extremism of any kind should not be enforced by the law of the land (a few religions do not differentiate religion and law)
- I dislike large governing bodies (inefficient and not terribly productive).
- Distrust and guard against any one person holding the majority of decision making power.
- I like guns, they are great at the gun club, but I believe they have no place in "polite" society unless you are out hunting game... to eat.
- I believe in a more inclusive society, more exposure to many cultures, rather than an insular same-same. Different viewpoints lend flexible thinking and tolerance.
- Don't get hung up with gender roles. They are changing fast and is proving that sometimes people don't end up the bodies they think they should be in or cannot agree on the behaviors expected of them.
- There are some people in the world that just are plain evil. They need to be removed permanently from polite society. The problem is, many do not believe it exists: I know. To do something about it is the hardest challenge for those who want to be fair and just. There is also always that little doubt of how do you know for sure that person is not innocent?

You could label it center-right.
Just want to have a happy life and make sure my kids live well and do not accidently off themselves, or someone else.

Well dakka mostly has one of widest range I've seen.

You get everyone from right to left, in America and Europe.
Ita interesting.

To address you subject line, no I don't think there's a correlation.

 feeder wrote:
This website is the only place I really talk politics, here and my local media's fb page. The myriad of different political leanings make for interesting discussion you won't get in the various echo chambers, where all the ridiculous nonsense about the "other guys" gets snowballed into a monster.

I don't know why you would bother with all that 'reading other people's opinions' nonsense. A way more accurate method of understanding others is to get an article explaining the other group's proposals or philosophies written by someone who shares your political beliefs and then discuss it with people who also share your worldview. That way you can accurately reverse engineer that other group's true beliefs, psychological motivations and hidden agendas without all the confusing obfuscations of them directly telling you what they think.

As long as the author includes many direct quotes it's just as good as getting it straight from the horse's mouth. I mean, I only really need the quotes to be partial sentences. I trust the author to select the important bits and then condense the other side's arguments down into something I can read during my lunch break. You and I both know that when those other guys go on and on they're not trying to make nuanced arguments or explain complicated ideas, they're just trying to hide their moral and intellectual bankruptcy inside a torrent of BS. If they believe something different than I do they're probably stupid and stupid ideas can always be expressed as bullet points.

I'm sure the author would only quote people from the other group who actually represent the majority of that group's opinion on the subject. There's no way the author would pull partial quotes from many different statements on topics that are only sort-of related to what the author is talking about and then weave them into a narrative that doesn't accurately portray what the other group actually wants and believes.

My friends and I all speak the same language, so as long as the article is quoting other people who are conversing in the same language as us there's no opportunity for confusion. I don't think it's plausible that the other group is using different definitions of terms than I'm used to or using abstractions and shorthand for complicated ideas that they have been exploring for a long time.

Overall I think it's a pretty foolproof method. Using it my friends and I have determined that pretty much everyone who disagrees with us is literally Hitler. I'm not sure how the Nazis have kept a facility capable of producing billions of clones a secret, but it's the only plausible explanation I can think of.

(The above is all sarcasm, just in case it's not obvious.)

Even thinking of my gaming club, there's probably just as many VERY right wing (well, as far right wing as UK politics goes) as there are those very left (as far as left wing UK politics goes).

I think there probably is a kind of skew right of center in general at the club. Probably outnumbered by those who just going care about politics at all.

Seeing how I have conservative views in some directions and liberal in others...I'm politically broken.

Imperial Guard - all militarists, right wing or centrists, or communists
Spice marine - monarchists, centrists, conservative
Inquisition - police supporters?
Chaos - democracy some dark subculture dudes
Ork - anarchists
Eldar - liberals
Tyranids - something anti-human?

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Seeing how I have conservative views in some directions and liberal in others...I'm politically broken.

It means, you can make your own decicions, nut just following what others says

Gaming is diverse, and so are the politics of its players.

There's probably some broad generalisation that could be made about individual games. More militaristic games attract a more right wing audience, while more freeform games attract more liberal types, but even that only works at the most general level. The most right wing gamer I know will turn up to play anything, anytime, and the most left wing has been running D&D for 20 years like a fantasy version of Vietnam.

I guess the way it works is that our beliefs and values influence the kind of entertainment we like, but they only define our entertainment if we happen to be very boring people. And fortunately most of us aren't boring.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
Seeing how I have conservative views in some directions and liberal in others...I'm politically broken.

This is most people. Left and right are general descriptors, and while there are broad philosophies underpinning each group, many of the individual causes within each camp is there largely by historical accident.

Right now lots of people are identifying as liberal or conservative because partisanship is high and people like to self-identify. But each person remains diverse and likely has many areas where they differ from their party's political views.

People here on Dakka seem to be pretty diverse in political opinions, which is what makes the OT such an interesting place imo. Left or right, conservative or progressive, Dakka brings us all together

IMO gamers* skew somewhat leftward. We tend to be younger, better educated and better off financially (can't afford GW otherwise!) on average, three things that correlate with a leftward bias in politics. And the right-wing Christianity that is prominent in modern US conservative politics is a pretty strong culture clash with the community. If you're obsessing about sexual purity and the sin of the modern world you're probably going to leave voluntarily if you aren't kicked out first, so "conservatives" in a gaming context tend to be more of the centrist-libertarian types than the republican party average. Since a similar effect doesn't exist from the left (no, some tumblr poster with single-digit readers doesn't count) that amplifies the demographic bias and gives a fairly strong leftward average.

And of course this is using the US political scale. Judge the community by a broader scale and I'm not sure that leftward bias still exists, since the center-left becomes the right and the "ABOLISH GOVERNMENT GAY MARRIAGE BURNS IN HELL" types are a fringe minority. In that context there's probably a lot of center-left and center-right players, a smaller number of libertarians and leftists, and an average probably somewhere within "centrist".


*The serious geeky tabletop gamer types, just playing the latest Call of Battlefield or Sportsball 2017 on your console doesn't really count.

The American left is everyone elses right.

I've lived in GA and NC the past several years, near big military bases (Ft Gordon, Ft Stewart and now Ft Bragg). Many/most folks I've gamed with have some military background and tend to be conservative but often with libertarian leanings.

Unlike Peregrine's experience, they tend to be conservative even though they are educated and well off financially, and some also being young (late teens/early 20s).

 Crazyterran wrote:
The American left is everyone elses right.

There's some truth to this. For example here in the UK you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't believe free healthcare funded through taxation is a fundamental right (apart from a very small minority of tory politicians with financial interests in the health industry). To an american that's bordering on communism.

pgmason wrote:

 Crazyterran wrote:
The American left is everyone elses right.

There's some truth to this. For example here in the UK you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't believe free healthcare funded through taxation is a fundamental right (apart from a very small minority of tory politicians with financial interests in the health industry). To an american that's bordering on communism.

Pretty much every American that comes here on a business trip has their head implode when it is pointed out we do not pay a penny for a hospital visit in Canada.
Not exactly free when you look at the taxes we pay but that is the price we pay for a "safety net" they seem to take no issue to insurance, I fail to see the difference other than the poor take less of a hit here.

So in gaming, any points that you say in the rules MUST be allocated somewhere will get the right wingers all upset?

I spend a silly amount of time in the morass of the OT forum, particularly the US Politics thread*shudder*, and it's clear to me that gaming is just a hobby and not a contributing factor to political bias in the way environment, experience and upbringing are for the general population, gamers included.

 BigWaaagh wrote:
I spend a silly amount of time in the morass of the OT forum, particularly the US Politics thread*shudder*, and it's clear to me that gaming is just a hobby and not a contributing factor to political bias in the way environment, experience and upbringing are for the general population, gamers included.

One thing that I DO notice as a possible common behavior is we are more than happy to discuss minutia out of interest because arguing for your interpretation of a rule is a survival trait!

I find it tends to be a lot more think the word in the states is lefties. People with too much time I heir hands and tend to want more rather then working for more.

Like Facebook in general more time on their hands then brains.

OgreChubbs wrote:
I find it tends to be a lot more think the word in the states is lefties. People with too much time I heir hands and tend to want more rather then working for more.

Like Facebook in general more time on their hands then brains.

Too busy working to worry about things like sentence structure, spelling or even basic clarity of thought, eh?

Keep trying, though. We need all kinds.

 feeder wrote:

OgreChubbs wrote:
I find it tends to be a lot more think the word in the states is lefties. People with too much time I heir hands and tend to want more rather then working for more.

Like Facebook in general more time on their hands then brains.

Too busy working to worry about things like sentence structure, spelling or even basic clarity of thought, eh?

Keep trying, though. We need all kinds.

my fingers are bigger then the buttons and I forgot my dialing wand. Also grammar on the internets? Seriously lol ocd much.

Also if anyone knows how to turn off auto correct on a Samsung 7 do tell. A added letter become a new word it gets annoying.

Not at all, buds. I thought it amusing that you piped up to have a bit of a whine about the lazy, stupid lefties, but you couldn't be arsed to express yourself in an intelligent, concise manner.

That's ok, buds. We have a big country and we need to fill 'er up!

 CptJake wrote:
I've lived in GA and NC the past several years, near big military bases (Ft Gordon, Ft Stewart and now Ft Bragg). Many/most folks I've gamed with have some military background and tend to be conservative but often with libertarian leanings.

Unlike Peregrine's experience, they tend to be conservative even though they are educated and well off financially, and some also being young (late teens/early 20s).

I agree with this for the most part.


Most of the people I personally know that engage in hobbies such as ours are right-leaning, mostly libertarian or conservative, with a sprinkling of civic nationalist mixed in. The education level and social classes tend to vary greatly, ranging from those with tight budgets to the well-off with good jobs. But I've encountered more than a few 20-30 something leftists, mostly in the larger towns and cities.


I suppose the "typical" political leanings of gamers depends more on where they come from, rather than dictated by social class, financial status, or education level. The age of the gamers I know, or have encountered, also tend/tended to vary widely. However, it seems that the old grognards (like me) are becoming rarer as time passes, with the 20 through 30 age group being the apparent majority in a lot of places.