I've been a war gamer for almost twenty five years and recently I've found myself losing interest in both war and toy soldiers. How could this be?!? I've been thinking about just that. When I started gaming back in 1976, everything was new and exciting. All was possibility and I had time to play. Then life came along and slowly but surely ate away all this free time. But my interest was sustained by a steady diet of new lead soldiers to spark my interest. At the same time I was developing the Matrix Game project and had a perticular game in mind that I wanted to play in. Anyway, I developed into a pretty decent miniatures gamer. I make nice terrain and paint up average (but well based) armies. My convention games allowed me to run (if not play in) that mythical game I was after. My rules got simpler and my props got better - so why the decline in interest? Hummmmm....I think it has something to do with a crazy fantasy that I had that Matrix Games would some how hit it big. It hasn't happened. And I'm not aching to spend more money professionally printing games that will not sell. (There is no more room under the dining room table!) Anyway, my small attempts at business used up a lot more energy than they were worth. Which leaves me wondering how to get out of this quandry. In comes the internet! I still love to write. I love to play in games. I like to read what other people are doing and I like to be social. By divorcing games from figures (which makes them a lot less expensive) many people have been able to run them (so I get to play). Email and web pages take away the cost of printing and postage - which were always a limiting factor in the pre-web days of the early 90's. So I don't have to do a business to make it work. Hallelujah! Which brings me to war. Why would war be boring? Well...I've been thinking that it has something to do with not being 17 anymore. Add twenty years and life concerns shift. I've noticed that battles look a lot more like dances than I used to think. Sure lots of people die. Sure there is the psychological drama of fear. But this is not really different from fear in other parts of life. It is only when it is in a good scenario that I like war anymore - And I really do need to stop buying all those little soldiers! I still like gaming. But what I like is being able to socialize with interesting people, play a game that allows me to do interesting things and to not have to spend a ton of money doing it. I am hopeful that the future will bring a lot of what I am looking for. Back to Table of Contents -- Matrix Gamer #16 To Matrix Gamer List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Chris Engle. 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