Who makes up YOUR community?

[daboarder]

Hello all,

I wanted to discuss something that I feel is an interesting point that needs to be mentioned regarding the community that participates in this hobby.

Recently after responding to a typically disparaging comment of the community by another poster, it occurred to me that the people I game and hobby with are a collection of both diverse and extremely highly qualified people. These people aren't the anti-social basement players that you might think, they come from a wide variety of jobs and backgrounds.

My regular gaming mates include 5 chemists, an investment banker, a chemical engineer, a mechanical engineer, two biologists, a lawyer, a nurse and 2 people in post production television.

This is by no means the extent of people I game with, merely the people whose careers I know a bit about.

So what about you, share with us (without giving away personal information of course) WHO makes up YOUR gaming community?

[DarkLink]

The group that I hang out with consists of a civil engineer, a senior manager for state healthcare, a construction manager for building projects, a boxing coach/sushi chef, a software developer, a construction worker turned school teacher, a metalworker, a guy who writes gambling laws and regulations, and a few people who I have no clue what they do. About half of us were in the military in one branch or another.

Outside of the club, after going to so many tournaments, there are far too many people to list. Roughly 2/3 are generally chubby in stereotypical nerdy fashion, but there are plenty of reasonably athletic individuals, and probably 85% of them are socially competent and can carry out intelligent conversation on a wide range of topics that extend to non-nerdy things.

[40kGamer]

My community is highly diverse. We have a mix that includes college students, retail & service industry workers, government managers, police officers, lawyers, CPA's (charter accountants), business owners and corporate CFO's/officers. It's quite amazing how our hobby can bring this group together as we would not normally have reasons to interact. One of the things I enjoy most about our hobby is that we can assemble to debate, argue and play the games we all love as equals. I find it fascinating when people describe our community as composed of socially challenged nerds... They're hanging about but in general that's not what I see at all.

[Cutter]

A lieutenant colonel, a couple of university lecturers, a lot of software engineers, a few retail managers and Mr. X.

Mr X doesn't appear to do anything for a living, a gentleman of leisure, we'd all love to know where the money comes from, but we're too polite to ask.

In a given year Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 probably account for 10% to 20% of what we play, the rest being historical 15 and 28 mm, sci-fi 28 mm, boardgames, roleplaying games and of late X-wing.

As a community we're currently most interested in Dungeon Saga and Kings of War Second Edition, both from Mantic Games.

Several of us also game online together, though no one any expressed much interest in Warhammer Total Warhammer.

++

Additional: none of us game with strangers, none of us play in competitions or tournaments anymore, most of us haven't stepped inside a GW store in years, possibly decades for a couple.

++

Our most vocal GW opponent is the most senior of their ex-staffers we have, former regional manager.

[Lost Vyper]

An unemployed scum (me :)), when i gotta job, it´s in retail (store manager, customer manager etc.). One works in wholesale, and we have a commercial flight pilot and then let´s just say one works for the (shhh...secret....:cool:) government...our guest star (who plays few times a year with us, cos he lives few hundred kilometers from here) is a chef (i think?).

- LV

[Zaonite]

My local community is made up of bar workers, a legal consultant, a local politician, a flgs owner, a software engineer, a database engineer, an industrial chemist (me), retail workers, warehouse workers, a professor of mathematics and an electrician.

Very varied group to be honest.

My old gaming group while I was at uni consisted of teachers, uni students, a call centre worker, a chef, a hotel manager, a chemical engineer, a police officer, two chemists (not pharmacists), office workers, a librarian, an engineer and a supermarket supervisor.

[Chris Handley]

For my part, since the end of my time in uni as a undergrad (since during and before then most people I game with were school/uni aged or working at GW, as I did part time during uni), my gaming group (this includes playing rpgs too) has included;

PhD students (myself being one) in science, office works for various corporations, computer game artists, computer games playtesters, computer game designers, retail managers for non-hobby companies, finance based contract worker, lighting engineer, and soon to include more PhD students, and university lecturers (my field is computational chemistry).

So all in all, quite diverse, with leaning towards players being in the science and tech industry, arts based in some manner, and also a good number being into alternative electronic/goth/industrial music.

[Psychosplodge]

I haven't done any regular serious actual gaming in years, but the people I did play with back in the day went on to become 3x engineers(various disciplines) a marine biologist, and a traditional artist/photographer.
The last people I played games with were a media graduate, a history graduate and an archaeologist.

[Path Walker]

Eccentric Billionaires

[Arkhan Land]

every one I play 40k with is a musician with half of them having jobs in music the other having odd-day jobs carpentry/etc

[Alaric]

One group has 4 guys who all own mans work businesses and a retail employee, the other has a couple of retail workers, a mans worker, a partsman, and one guy currently out of work cuz he thinks a dream job will, yknow, walk up and find him lol. Interesting topic DA.

[TheyStoleMyName!]

I think the majority are either students or military, though the Forces guys range wildly in rank and specialization. That only makes sense given that there are 3 post-Secondary schools and a large Military base in my town though. We also have a couple software developers (myself included), a couple people working in Social Services and at least one chef. There are a few others who I honestly have no idea about despite playing with them for years - work stuff rarely comes up for us.

[Jewelfox]

Almost everyone in my local gaming group is a white guy in their late 20's to 40's. There's one black man who plays Space Wolves and won our last league, and there's one white girl (me).

There are no children or teenagers. There is one other newb, who got started with inexpensive Dark Vengeance minis. He later added in a Relic Knights model in powered armour and some Dreamforge models, to have a squad of female Space Marines and a female sergeant.

I think most of the 40k'ers besides me work in technology? I'm pretty sure the Space Wolves player does. They frequently bring or wear tech company swag. One of them owns and operates a Games Workshop store, but plays 40k with the rest of us at an independent store once a week.

I know of at least one person there who also plays Warhammer Fantasy.

[daboarder]

Interesting topic DA.


Cheers, I thought so too.

I had been wondering if it was possible to draw a conclusion about peoples attitudes based on who they gamed with, but I dont think thats possible (which is a good thing as it reinforces how diverse the community is)
Its also nice to see people answering in ways I had never even thought of by mentioning other demographics or how long they have been gaming with one particular group or another. and its also interesting to see who is and isn't willing to participate.

[Captain Bubonicus]

Ours is mostly male, with a few women who play some of the collectible "click" games and WHFB. Older crowd plays mostly historicals (Bolt Action, etc.), younger guys play WHFB, 40K & X-Wing. Good core group, with assorted "guest" gamers who come in from out of town to get a game in now and then. Don't really have a problem with TFG - everybody is pretty good natured. TFG figures out that people aren't gonna put up with him and either changes his tune or goes elsewhere.

Work-wise? A lot of the older gamers are either retired or on disability. We've got one or two firefighters, a couple of lawyers, and the usual assortment of white-collar nine-to-fivers. We've got some blue-collar guys that work at BMW and really make bank (Germans pay quite well, especially for overtime), and they seem to like to spend their extra cash on miniatures.

Good, diverse group. Some of the older guys were real ground-breakers in war-gaming back in the 70's. We've lost a few of them to age and infirmity, though. :(

[KommisarKeen]

Lessee..we've got a former-tig-welder-now-ag-major, an E5 with a classics degree, a sociology grad student, a ukulele player, a few English majors and grad students, a law student and amatuer brewer, a continuing education program developer, an introverted warehouse worker, and an auto insurance guy who's a bit of a beer snob, and overall a pretty good and diverse mix of gender and orientations.

[Denzark]

Cheers, I thought so too.

I had been wondering if it was possible to draw a conclusion about peoples attitudes based on who they gamed with, but I dont think thats possible (which is a good thing as it reinforces how diverse the community is)
Its also nice to see people answering in ways I had never even thought of by mentioning other demographics or how long they have been gaming with one particular group or another. and its also interesting to see who is and isn't willing to participate.

I think you can draw conclusions - although I am not sure how much is subjective versus objective. Without a baseline you cannot come up with any percentage based conclusions - other than 'x% of respondents'.

As to conclusions about who is willing to participate, my dear chap, from your sig block and your interactions various, you may consider that some people won't participate because they don't wan't to interact with you (no offence) and thus you can't automatically conclude their non-participation is because they don't want any of their pre-drawn conclusions burst!

[daboarder]

I think you can draw conclusions - although I am not sure how much is subjective versus objective. Without a baseline you cannot come up with any percentage based conclusions - other than 'x% of respondents'.

As to conclusions about who is willing to participate, my dear chap, from your sig block and your interactions various, you may consider that some people won't participate because they don't wan't to interact with you (no offence) and thus you can't automatically conclude their non-participation is because they don't want any of their pre-drawn conclusions burst!

Hmm Id still dont think any conclusions drawn from this would be overly accurate, we dont know total sample size or anything like that, far to many variables not included. as to people not commenting, sure I guess, I mean this topic has some really good contributions and no one has been what I would could overly aggressive (or would be, unless you came along attacking people for who they game with or something) but to each their own. Furthermore no one should be judging or feeling judged, the point isnt to say X group is better than Y group its just to show that X and Y have things in common that might not be readily expected.

What about you Den, care to add some contribution to the picture of our community? No pressure of course.

[Mr Mystery]

We have....Adjudicator (moi), Civil Engineer, Teachers, Council Officer, Secondary School kids, Uni students, shop workers....and a bunch of people that I don't know their employment.

Fairly decent slice of society, if white male dominated.

Local club has about 60 members, and local GW has plenty of regulars.

Some do tournaments, some game exclusively at home, some little column A, little column B.

Really nice group to be honest - something to cater for any tastes.

[Denzark]

Yeah, I was wondering the best way to answer. My 'community' is split into 3 I guess.

Firstly, at home with friends. I have 1 main best friend I play with at home, he is management level in business continuity.

Next, my (current) local wargames club. I would describe this as what I think of as 'typical' in that all are quite nice people, mix of games systems, don't really know what people do as it is a matter of pick up games on the forum, play and leave. That said they look like typical gamers - by which I think of as mixture of sci-fi/geek t-shirts, few tats here and there, the odd long coat, dark/goth clothes/accessories. Prevailing body type is that which would benefit from more time in gym and less time painting. The older members - 50+ y.o. seem to gravitate towards historics/complex games systems.

Last, and what makes me hesitate as to how to describe it, is my 'tournament' group. A whole lot of us met at a GW Throne of Skulls back in 2012 and keep touch ever since, with a facebook group and occasionally meeting at each others for tournaments locally. We regularly go back and meet up at ToS, mainly concerned with the beer. This group has a strange mix of bank manager, unemployed, military, 'professional' painter. This last group is what I would think of as 'unusual' because of how social it is - whereas some of the ToS crowd clearly fit in the 'stinky autistic* gamer' stereotype.

What is true about ToS though, is that with 100% painted, 100% GW parts and winning based on things other than VP/MP (at the last one I went to, the person with most favourite game votes won, tie-broken with VP) - you get a slightly skewed demographic. Everyone there is absolutely high end 'GW hobbyist' and whilst people swear about GW in the bar - they're not stupid and see where GW is being a nob, the sheer £££ invested in those armies (I played against the dude with the hovering elder jet bike) means most people are almost above it - 'let the little people complain about GW I am too busy having fun' (no one has actually said it its an impression I get).

So yes, whilst I see a lot of the stereotypes, socially shy all-black wearing soap and salad dodgers - because I probably have done 4-5 tournaments a year for 3 years solid, I think I have been exposed to the mix - my personal community is quite different.

As to myself, 36, male, RAF officer, played for 25 years and do it because the hobby is cheaper than a mistress.

I have not commented on ethnicity because if we're all equal, it is irrelevant. However, if I have played around 50 opponents in the last 3 years at tournaments, only 1 has been female.

*I don't mean to denigrate people on the spectrum - I use the term 'gamer autism' to mean socially inept/shy people who don't understand there is a requirement to interact and have a social contract when you play.

[Alaric]

As to myself, 36, male, RAF officer, played for 25 years and do it because the hobby is cheaper than a mistress.

Awesome. Also, you dont gotta hide its midnight texts to you ;)

[Erik Setzer]

I don't know all of their professions, because a lot of us don't really talk about work much during our gaming time. But I can provide other general info/comments.

Obviously not using names.

There's one guy who was in the Navy, but I'm not sure if he is still (and if he is, it has to be a desk job or something). He was a tournament player, brought the same mentality to the table, but the parts of his personality that irked were worked out by talking to him (mainly, he wanted to advise people on what they should do with their army, without them asking). Friendly guy, though. Had some gorgeous armies, a High Elf army that looked amazing and a Slaanesh-themed Chaos Warriors army that looked like a pastel factory exploded all over a Tron set (it's hard to describe). Sadly, his hand don't hold steady enough to paint any more, so he has to rely on someone else to do that. (And when I say "tournament player," I mean he went to out-of-state tourneys with intent to win.)

We have a Marine AmTrac engineer, friendly overall but tends to power game while denying it. (Also not someone to get drunk.)

There's one guy who is relatively young and yet retired or just between jobs with an insane severance package, he drives a car filled with board and card games that I swear are collectively worth more than the car. Constantly buys new armies to try cheeky combos. If you read Knights of the Dinner Table, he's a Brian type.

There's a kid who was annoying at first but learned his attitude turned people off and people genuinely wanted to help. He learned the hobby fast (which is good, because his mom treats the GW store as a day care), and while he might not be "amazing" (because, you know, he's only been at it a few months), he does pretty good conversions and decent paint jobs, probably will do some crazy good stuff once he's got about five years experience.

Got another guy in the Navy, big fella, quiet talker, plays for fun, and drinks like the sailor he is.

There's a guy who works at a pet clinic, fun guy, slightly insane acting (pretty much just an act, but it translates into games, i.e. during a D&D session he decided to cone-of-fire a room while my rogue was in the middle). In addition to his Chaos, he has a Dark Angels army that hates itself (Samael is always engaging in "slap fights" and he once rolled five 1's on 5D6 to save for his Deathwing Terminators against some heavy bolters).

There's a doctor, not sure what kind, who plays Eldar (Craftworld, Dark, and Harlequins), fun guy, good player, feels a bit bad because he bought the Ghost Warriors box as a way to get into 40K before he knew how good it was (much less how good it'd become).

Got a kid who just finished high school, has a job at Publix to get hobby money, was a wide receiver in high school (American football position, for those who don't know the term), kind of a strange "jock"/"nerd" mix. Slipped a bit into beat-face lists in Warhammer, but he learned a lot from the tournament player.

Have a guy who works at Lowe's, mid-20s, does very basic armies based on the fluff, but they're effective.

Another guy, works for Home Depot, mostly gets Forge World stuff (figures if you're paying premium price anyway, might as well get the really good stuff). Fun guy, twisted mind.

Another Publix employee (for now), aiming to get to college with a view toward working in the video game industry, prefers playing fluffy armies and games, one of the few who not only wants to use scenarios, but is eager to do so (or make up new ones).

That's the group at one store. At the other store, among the guys I've played against longer...

Guy with health issues who still has some decent money and owns a LOT of stuff. Massive Imperial Guard and Dark Elf armies. I'm not talking 5,000 points or something like that, likely closer to 25,000 points.

Young guy who plays Orks and has them done as Freebooterz, gets into the act with pirate speak and all. Mercifully no longer clumps his Orks up (about 15 years ago, I was teaching him as a really young kid not to position them too close together, lest someone drop battlecannons on them). Loves to convert everything.

There's another guy, convert-a-holic. Practically everything he has ends up getting modified somehow. Not the best painter, but definitely a great converter. Sold his Iron Warriors a few years ago for a nice price, I bought them because the conversions were awesome, and he gave me tips on how to repaint them, knowing I would (and not being offended by it). When people see the converted Vindicator in my army, I always make sure to tell them I did the paint job but this guy did the conversion work.

There's one guy who is, frankly, rather annoying, ends up jumping around jobs with pizza delivery, and just... grates. He earned a nickname that he didn't realize was an insult and will actually quit a game after one or two turns because it's going against him.

There's a player from just north of town, fun player, into the fluff and all. He's very stubborn and opinionated like I am, which has led to some "skirmishes" over the years (much to the amusement of onlookers), but we respect each other as players and he even sent me an invite to the local 30K Facebook group (while admitting to being worried about facing my Iron Warriors).

One player is a former store owner, now managed the local GW club (which still retains part of its original name that was based on his store). He loves to run events with unconventional rules or scenarios, meaning you can't just show up and expect to beat someone's face in and win. When he gets a chance to play himself, he's mostly interested in both parties having fun, and is the kind of guy who will actually remind you to do something while playing against you in a tourney.

One player has Imperial Fists and is seriously into them. Not just a nice sized army, he also has yellow dice, yellow shirt, IF banner, the works.

There's other people, too, but it's hard to remember or list all of them.

Generally most of the gamers are in decent shape (I am a serious exception, but I hope to rectify that soon). Many of them also dabble in multiple games. Not many people with retail jobs and stuff like that, and the ones who do have such jobs tend to live with family, so don't have much in the way of bills to pay. The group that's been around longer tends to be a lot more into narrative battles, treating the games as something done for enjoyment.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh... and myself... At 33, I'm older than most of the people in the newer group, but about average for the older group. Played the games since I was about 8. My dad played in the back of a local store, and I watched and loved the games, especially Space Marine/Adeptus Titanicus. He was always wanting me to share his hobbies, so he ended up getting me an army before long, with Blood Angels right after 40K2 came out, then Orks and also Orcs for Warhammer. In addition to playing at stores, we'd set up a pair of folding tables in the living room and play games overnight while the rest of the family slept (later built an 8x4 wooden table to play on). The games provided some good social interaction and allowed me to meet new people with similar interests, and I spend about as much on gaming as I did on going out to eat and drink often when I was in a political group (with much less stressful interactions). I also enjoy painting and converting models. Love a variety of games, which might also be because of something like ADD. I'm a web designer at a major B2B company, which pays well enough to enjoy my hobbies (maybe better if I can finagle a promotion soon), and lets me do the kind of work I enjoy most.

Also, I tend to be more descriptive and talkative than other people, which means most people probably didn't reach this point. :p