The response to our survey from the last issue was most interesting. More than 20% of the paying readership sent back their opinions, no doubt prompted by the prospect of a free issue. That's a rather nice rate of return, giving us a good sampling to look at. The first topic was how important people viewed certain areas in terms of what prompted them to buy, or not to buy, a given game. The overwhelming "winner" here was Subject Matter. To show just how overwhelming that margin was, Subject Matter garnered a rating of 8.7, on a 1-10 basis. The nearest level of interest was a Game Review, at 6.5, followed closely by Visual Presentation, which came in at 6.4. Of least importance was the size of the game and how much space it took up, with a rating of 4.5. Everything else was bunched right around 6.0, although the number of players needed was somewhat lower. Although I wish we had asked more definitive questions concerning "presence of (or fear of presence of) errata", I think that the mid-level rating of company reputation included that. In essence, the voting pretty much coincided with my views as to why people buy games: they like what the game covers. Everything else is secondary. So where do you folks buy your games? 36% buy through a mail order house, while 33 % of games are obtained directly from the company. And, revealing the change in this industry over the past decade that most of us have realized, only 31% of games were purchased from a retail outlet. Your playing habits produced very little that was shocking. Most everyone played what we would call "regularly", or more than once a month. The biggest block of games were played solitaire, which garnered a 6.3 rating, as compared to the next-best status, two-player, which came in at 4.9. Ratings for multi-player get-togethers and e-mail were far below these two. Very few of you played e-mail. That brings us to the games themselves. I asked a sort of generic question about types of games, mostly to get a comparative rating. What was mostly interesting was that no one (and I use that phrase generally) felt very strongly about any of the four categories. Whatever, the highest rating, a 5.6, went to "Multi-Player overall strategy games". Right behind them, in a virtual tie at 5.3, came both "XTR-style magazine games" and "Labor intensive gargantuas". Out of the running - and this was a bit of a surprise - was the "AH-style 'cross-over' multis" at 4.4. Of course, the latter flies in the face of actual sales figures, as games like History of the World, Civilization, et al., sell far more than, say, Hube's Pocket or anything similar. I think what we're seeing here is that the BROG audience is not the AH audience, although there is certainly some cross-over. That can be seen in the ratings for specific systems … and I apologize for leaving out one or two, such as The Gamers' SCS. Aside from the various high-low ratings, what was most enlightening was comparing those ratings to how many people have never played a game in that series. Ratings are on a 1-10 basis. Series Rating Never Played Europa 3.5 24% ASL 3.7 18% GBoH 7.0 16% Gamers TCS 5.9 23% Gamers OCS 6.5 22% We Peo/Hannibal 6.1 24% GBACW 6.6 20% La Bataille 4.2 27% Joe Miranda's Ancient Op 4.2 42% AH's ACW Campaigns 6.5 23% First off, when reading these numbers you have to remember what sort of group you are in … much the same as you do when perusing the ratings in The Gamers' "Operations". Granted, this is a somewhat more eclectic bunch, but it is not false to assume that most, if not all, of you subscribed to BROG because of the name on the masthead. That would tend to color any insights gleaned herefrom. Whatever, it is obvious, from the above, that both "Europa" and ASL are, shall we say, acquired tastes, and that taste has been difficult to acquire. And it isn't from lack of trying. ASL, for example, is the second most played system (behind "GBoH"). What is somewhat surprising is the low ratings of Clash's La Bataille system, far lower than I ever would have imagined. And it is also interesting that one of the most available systems - you can get it from a magazine - Joe Miranda's campaigns of the Ancient World, has the highest level of non-involvement. (Must be those maps, Joe.) Other than that, one can see that the above systems are more or less grouped into an almost distinct Like-Dislike pattern. Not quite sure what that says. And that brings us to the Popularity Contest portion of the survey. 23 games received at least one vote for Best Game of the year, although it's not quite sure how you folks interpreted "best": whether it was 'favorite" or "most creative" or whatever, is not easy to discern. Anyway, of those 23, only six garnered 5 or more votes. In order of popularity, these were Glory (12); Hube's Pocket (10); Hannibal (9); Krieg (9); Great War at Sea (8); and Samurai (5) Of these, four appear on the Origins ballot. (You can always vote for any of the other two … and I urge you to do the "write-in" if so inspired.) Two games that got no votes as "best" (and one vote each as worst) do appear on the Origins ballot: Age of Renaissance and Air Baron. What this reveals, more than anything else, is that AH employees are members of GAMA; many of those of other companies are not. Good reason to join if you want to change that. (You get a similar weighted read-out for The Charlies, based on what publication the ballot appeared in.) As to your favorite Worst Game, that brought in 25 nominees, the results of which can be seen when we handed out The Burnside trophy in the Little Mac Awards. Only one game received votes in both Best and Worst category: Great War at Sea. As for suggestions for computer games, only one topic stood out clearly: an operational level game covering the 18th-19th century. I have forwarded that information to the proper authorities. And thank you, all of you who took the time to tell us how you feel. I, for one, read this information carefully, as it tells me much. I think, though, that more than anything, it shows the incredible breadth and width of this fascinating hobby. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #25 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com