This is a perennial question. I was talking about it with a number of other old-timers at the show, and the number that was mentioned (I believe by Bill Krieg of HMGS-Midwest) was 30,000. I've heard this number from other sources as well, and I think it's a fairly widely-accepted number. But I can't figure out where it comes from, and the more I look at it the less I believe it. Consider the following:

Barry Geipel has about 300+ subscribers on his Command Decision mailing list. Nice list. But if the total for the hobby is 30,000, then that means he has 1% of the total hobby membership on that one mailing list. Impossible.

Avalon Hill sold over 20,000 copies of Napoleon's Battles. If there are only 30,000 players out there, two out of every three of them bought a copy of the rules. That's not two out of three Napoleonics players, that's two out of three Napoleonics players, microarmor players, Mustangs and Messerschmidt players, etc. Think about how many Napoleonics players you know and ask yourself how many of them have a copy of those rules. One in five? If so, that suggest something like 100,000 Napoleonics players alone. And I think one in five might be high.

And how big a chunk of the market is Napoleonics? Pretty big, but not a majority, in my opinion. I'd say ACW is nearly as big, if not bigger, and the 30th Century crowd is awfully big as well.

Bottom line: I don't really know how big the hobby is, but I'd guess that 30,000 may be off by as much as an order of magnitude.

What do you think?

Your Editor will chime in: The former Avalon Hill Game Company published a list of titles that had sold over 100,000 copies. It was not a short list. Those buyers are not all in the hobby any more. In the last 6 years we have had pushing 300 people belong to the SGS. I rarely encounter a gamer who has heard of us, and we have been around since 1973. There are several hundred gaming cons a year. What's a typical attendance? 100? 300? And many gamers do not go to cons, while few go to many. I'd guess the hobby is several hundred thousand people. The real question is-how can we get them more in touch with the rest of the hobby? How can we get them word about the SGS?