What are the major hobby news portals these days?

[Altius]

These days, I mostly bounce around between here and LAF. My local game club has migrated to FB and Frothers is pretty active there as well, in addition to several of my favorite manufacturers, so it’s good for a lot of eye candy. I have to be honest, I really don’t think to stop by TMP anymore and I haven’t missed it.

Where there is fire, we will carry gasoline

[Ian Marsh]

Phil Dutré wrote:

Grimheart wrote:

I am kind of puzzled by the anti Facebook posts to be honest, and I passed 50 a few years back.

Oh, there are plenty of reasons to stay away from FB, and none of them have to do with age or user-friendliness.

The rule for Facebook of “do not read the comments” is often just as relevant to wargames forums. 🙂

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

[Ian Marsh]

I should also add that I feel the route for businesses to get wargames news out to gamers suffered a setback because some years ago all three major wargames magazines in the UK feebly caved in to other internet wargames sites rather than rise to the challenge of maintaining current wargames news on their own magazine sites. Any one of the three could even now be challenging wargames news sites and providing a daily need to access the magazine site by maintaining a current online news page.

If I were still in the magazine editing game, I’d be striving to run the “go-to” site for wargames news to go with my print publication.

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

[Rhoderic]

Thanks, Darkest Star, for the tip-off about Tabletop Fix. It’s precisely the kind of website I was wanting to find more of. I’ll add it to my daily news tour.

I’d forgotten about Beasts of War also, so thanks to the people who mentioned that. I’ve been lukewarm to BoW in the past as their style is a bit too “flames & metal” for my tastes (it keeps making me want to sing “Macho macho man… I’ve got to be, a macho man!” ). Still, they do have news updates for a segment of the hobby scene/market, and that matters to me.

On TMP: I’m not a member of the community anymore either. The one reason I still visit the place is that there’s still the odd news item that none of the 5+ other websites have caught, so it gets to be part of my patchwork quilt of a news round-up for now. It does seem to be drying up as a news portal as well, however. An admin who literally deletes mentions of certain companies he doesn’t appreciate is hardly a winning ingredient for a trustworthy information platform.

On Facebook: I was going to write a lengthy piece about why I don’t want to be on FB and how difficult FB makes life for people who’d rather opt out, but it would have become too personal because it really does touch a nerve with me. And it’s really not about age – I’m almost a generation younger than Grimheart. If I’m going to summarise my abortive rant in one sentence, it’s that I don’t want to be an object of pity with relatives and RL acquaintances because certain circumstances of birth have left me with rather diminished prospects in terms of being “successful in life”, and Facebook is a problem in that regard because it forcibly lays bare too much, robbing me of the modicum of dignity that comes with privacy. The fact is, there’s a cold cruelty to Facebook, but that cruelty works in dimensions that affect some people more than others.

Anyway…

Ian Marsh wrote:

I should also add that I feel the route for businesses to get wargames news out to gamers suffered a setback because some years ago all three major wargames magazines in the UK feebly caved in to other internet wargames sites rather than rise to the challenge of maintaining current wargames news on their own magazine sites. Any one of the three could even now be challenging wargames news sites and providing a daily need to access the magazine site by maintaining a current online news page. If I were still in the magazine editing game, I’d be striving to run the “go-to” site for wargames news to go with my print publication.

This is a very intriguing observation! I’m inclined to agree (though obviously I can’t speak from publishing expertise).

[Ian Marsh]

Rhoderic wrote:

I’d forgotten about Beasts of War also

I confess that I find BoW so confusing to look at that I’ve stopped bothering. There is a lot to be said for the papyrus and heiroglyphics approach of TMP… 🙂

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

[Ian Marsh]

Rhoderic wrote:

Ian Marsh wrote:

I should also add that I feel the route for businesses to get wargames news out to gamers suffered a setback because some years ago all three major wargames magazines in the UK feebly caved in to other internet wargames sites rather than rise to the challenge of maintaining current wargames news on their own magazine sites. Any one of the three could even now be challenging wargames news sites and providing a daily need to access the magazine site by maintaining a current online news page. If I were still in the magazine editing game, I’d be striving to run the “go-to” site for wargames news to go with my print publication.

This is a very intriguing observation! I’m inclined to agree (though obviously I can’t speak from publishing expertise).

That’s 25 years of experience of print journalism on professional magazines speaking. 🙂

Ian
Fighting 15s
www.fighting15s.com

[Deleted User]

Mike wrote:

When I mail companies, quite a few if not the majority of people, are not aware of us.

I wonder if Mike is surprised at this?

Of all the news portals mentioned in this thread, apart from TMP, I’d heard of none. Today I spent a bit of time checking out the ones cited (none actually float my boat, however). We are a pretty balkanised hobby & ignorance is the norm. I feel lucky I “found” TWW.

 

donald

[Mike]

Deleted User wrote:

I wonder if Mike is surprised at this?

Someone said earlier that some companies think there is only one site to be on.
If they only frequent one site, and that site has an unusual editing policy around content, then no, not really.

[Otto Schmidt]

I think it depends on what you want to hear.

Here I admit it is my fault.

Been in the hobby now since 1962 , that’s 56 years.  Back then the hobby was much smaller and largely confined to historical miniatures or Imagi-Nations. Since then the advent of sci-fi, role playing, and the proliferation of periods beyond simple ancient, musket, and modern, has shattered the hobby like a piece of safety glass when you try and cut it.

Where I and many other gamers are at fault is that we try a lot of things and gradually settle into one or two of those little shards and decide that we like that, or a few of the shards and that is all and the rest we don’t care about. If you don’t care about it then you’re not interested in what the “hottest” thing is. I go to several conventions in the US , including the three big HMGS cons, with a huge dealer area. I know what I’m interested in and of the 100 plus dealers there I’ll walk right by 98% of them and not even stop to look. I go to those who sell stuff I want and like.  Then it’s “Hi Dave, whachagot for me?  Dave shows me,  and it’s “OOOOhhhh Shiny!”  Several hundred bucks later I’m done.  That’s for the minis. I don’t buy rule books as I write them all myself.

What I mean in all this is that I think most people have their interests and aren’t really interested in buying new things, or going into the latest craze. Wargames is a strange hobby where not everyone has to have everything and deep and abiding interest shows up in selected and often very narrow ranges.

As for information myself I get almost nothing from the forums. I go there to talk about war games and I like to talk about projects, swap stories and have the sociability.  I used to like the magazines but with the demise of the Courier and Historical Gamer a long time ago there has been no American War Games Magazines and I don’t really care for the three remaining ones which seem long on fluff and adds and very low on content. As for Facebook I simply don’t do social media.  Of the electronic forums far to many now are toxic and unpleasant. TWW is nice as are a few others, but even there it’s not going to be a place to get me interested in new stuff. I have about three periods/scales I’m interested in and that’s it, and there is NEVER anything new and interesting in those periods (28-33 mm Chariot Ancients, Renaissance, 17th and 18th century, and between the World Wars in 20mm, and a complete antipathy to skirmish gaming). I think a lot of gamers are like that.  For the latest and greatest in my interest areas, Dave keeps me up to date. In fact I’ve even taken to commissioning figures from sculptors and making them in the 18th century.

 

 

 

 

[Guy Farrish]

I don’t think there is a ‘fault’ here at all Otto.

I wouldn’t attach any blame to you for how you enjoy your hobby, or how the hobby is now, there’s nothing to be blamed for, it seems pretty robust to me.

I’ve only been wargaming for c46 years, so I am a mere lad in comparison to you, but I recognise the attraction of the familiar. (I am also terminally nosy and do like to have a scan around at what is new – actually its mostly reiterations of previous things now – but that is the old fogey in me talking). That’s not a dig at our (?) older generation – its just a fact that our capacity to experiment is attenuated and filtered through experience and the tendency of humans to categorise things within our experience and established frames of reference (sometimes correctly, sometimes wrongly).

However there are new(er) members of the hobby, and it’s how they are introduced to those fragmented pieces of glass that establishes their likes and dislikes and favourites. I feel no ‘obligation’ to do this – it’s a hobby not a vocation – but I am aware that it is probably more difficult for a newcomer to be exposed to the myriad variants of the wargame in a Balkanised information environment.

When I started there was Military Modelling and Wargamers Newsletter that I knew of, and that was it for ‘news’ (and pretty much everything else). Now – well I’d be hard pushed to start to know where to go. Google ‘Wargames’ and when you have got through the film references there are hundreds of things that bear no relation to my experience of, or interest in, wargaming. But they are all, even the computer games, card games and rpgs, variants of wargaming. I have a look at some of them every now and again just to see what I am missing.

They rarely seduce me into new paths – but occasionally. And that’s the thing – this question is, I suspect, not really aimed at old hands so much (except for what we can perhaps put out there as experience) as at those still exploring the many halls of the wargaming mansion.

Good luck to them- much more choice than when we started, and they will, with luck, find their own way of enjoying those choices, with a little help now and again.

[Otto Schmidt]

Dear Guy

Maybe so but  it’s a human tendency to become narrowed in focus. One has to make the effort. It used to be easy but  then there was less to war games back then. I chose to express it as a “fault” on my part simply because a component of being involved in a hobby  is you simply can’t do EVERYTHING, though I fully admit there was a time when I really tried.  As proof of that I offer my 750 man Ral Partha Zulu Army which I acquired once in great excitement, and which I painted and which has sat on the shelf for over twenty years and NEVER… never been in battle. My Mongol Army of 550 keeps them company. It to has never been in battle, both witness to interests once eager and now well past dead.  Similarly I was introduced recently to several board games by friends that came and went simply because I was not looking for them.

That’s the great thing about this hobby. It is so varied, and so multifaceted and so intriguing that the choices we have are wide  but it’s gone beyond the ability of anyone to know everything.  Two stories to relate on this.

I was at a convention with  a friend who had brought his young, 12 year old with him who was let loose in the dealers area with his hard-saved up Chirstmas money. He came up to us after an hour and said “DAD DAD look, I found these really neat figures, aren’t they beautiful!!!” It was a bubble pack of Some Ral Partha Figures.  I said that they were and we had many packs of them back home. He was astounded to know we knew them, he thought they were brand new. “You know they went out of business over a decade ago!” his father said, and his son looked immediately crestfallen- nay crushed!

We go through life and at one point we give up any thought of trying to keep abreast of things.  I think we substitute depth and intensity in fewer things.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guy Farrish]

Otto Schmidt wrote:

Maybe so but  it’s a human tendency to become narrowed in focus.

Yep, 

Guy Farrish wrote:

its just a fact that our capacity to experiment is attenuated and filtered through experience

Seems like we might agree on this.

 

[Patrice]

For French language forums I visit An Argader (…as I’m its main admin) and Jeu d’Histoire.

In English, most often TWW and LAF (it depends on what I’m looking for, I like to visit them both, although for different reasons).
I’m also a member of FU!UK which has interesting posts (including wargaming!)
I’m no longer a member of TMP for some well-known reasons; but I sometimes look up for old posts in there, which had been written before many knowledgeable people left it.

For many years I had been reluctant to use FB. Then I had to open a FB personal page because it was needed to open a FB business page for my B&B activity …and soon later I found myself very active on my personal FB page (although not much about miniature gaming) and then we created another page linked to our wargaming forum, which we mostly use to advertise our next gaming events and our participation in gaming festivals etc.

Also have opened a Google+ page, but not very active, only maintained because some foreign contacts visit it.

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[Author]

Posts