What I'd like to know is how many people who bought SL and PB through those outlets actually played them--and how often. If they didn't play them (or at least treasure them), they didn't contribute to the survival or growth of the hobby.

I admit I'm a dunce when it comes to business, but I'll tell you what was on my mind all those years while AH and SPI were selling games to a dwindling market. I was thinking it's ridiculous to presume there's a certain group of people out there who'll buy wargames, then put all your time, money, & effort into finding and reaching those particular people. Ridiculous because if there was such a group, by my estimation it had to be a pretty small group, and after you reached it you'd still saturate your market in no time flat.

The answer that seemed obvious to me is that you have to *create* an ever-expanding group of wargamers. You have to grow a market for wargames by relentlessly educating/hyping people on how great wargaming is. Those who are already hooked on wargaming need to spread the word to all their friends, so that before long "everybody" is playing wargames--just as everybody was wearing peace-symbol medallions and digging the Beatles a few years earlier. Wargaming had to become a craze, a movement. It had to be hawked the way Eli Culbertson talked up talked up contract bridge until the whole country was playing it and was sure that it was *the* game to be playing.

Back then, I actually thought that would work, and I wrote letters to AH encouraging them to do it. Today, I doubt that it would have worked because as Jim Dunnigan said, "Wargaming always was a hobby for the overeducated." It's a whole lot easier to wear a peace symbol or listen to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds than it is to figure out how to play PanzerBlitz--and then train yourself to *en oy* playing Panzer Blitz. So, though I managed to turn a few friends on to wargaming, I have to admit they were the "mentally gifted" from high-school honors classes. And even they played only once or twice, said it was cool, then went back to cruising, smoking dope, and trying to get laid.

But even if my scheme wouldn't have worked, I still think it's the only thing that *could* have worked. I think it makes more sense than just oversaturating the hardcore wargamers like SPI did, then disappearing. Or trying to sneak wargames into familygame outlets like AH did, to con unsuspecting folks into buying them, being overwhelmed by them, and tossing them aside to gather dust. Those strategies might have made money for SPI or AH, but they did nothing, IMO, for the wargaming hobby.