Do Game Magazines Still Have Value?

Do magazines like Wargames Illustrated, Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy, and Miniature Wargames still offer anything worth buying in the Internet age?
Splendor of Fire: SplendorOfFire.xyz
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Bookmarks
My Magazine - Splendor of Fire: 0:15
The Value of Physical Print: 4:32
Avoiding Censorship & The Algorithm: 5:40
The Decline of 'Medieval World': 9:00
Comparing the Big 3: 11:30
The Value of Text for Attention Span: 18:40
The Value of Varied Viewpoints: 22:40
The Value of Relevant Advertisements: 27:22
Written for Hobbyists or Activists?: 33:36
Game with Me at Fall In!: 36:38
What's on the Table: 40:20

[@thomaswilliams5005]

Of course we care what you have to say. That is why we still watch this channel as opposed to the garbage ones

[@juddgoswick2024]

The biggest advantage of magazines was you might pick up a copy to read an article about a favorite game and get drawn into a new game by another article.

[@attentionspanlabs]

Indeed! I literally bought Doomed three days ago based on reading the article in Wargames Illustrated.

[@JZStudios2]

Excellent video, it's why I tend to gravitate towards the old White Dwarfs a little more. I flip through them and I still get people wanting to get creative with a setting of either 40k or WHFB as well as having just these large painted armies that inspire the mind. As opposed to current year that doesn't have anything insightful just an errata for a broken game with even more broken rules. And while I am never interested in picking up a subscription I do agree that a physical book is better as man is everyone's attention span just shot out in the back corner. Mine included, despite how much I do try to resist such fast paced content. Heck it's why I've been forcing myself to buy physical books and have them in my desk to remind me I must get to them eventually.

[@username12120]

You get your usual spread of magazines down here is Aus, but I have always been a man more looking toward sci-fi and fantasy than historicals, so these magazines never had a lot of what I wanted to see from them. And while I grew up loving the worlds and games from GW, White Dwarf was always too light on the cool hobby content I wanted as well. Very few wargaming mags that would focus on sci-fi and fantasy and also run a lot of hobbyist content(terrain workshops, painting tutorials, formatting and organising a world to game in, etc.) that wasn't heavily RPG flavoured. I like the idea of them, but I am often not served by them. Hope to have such an article to submit for Splendor of Fire soon, though. Got a handful of ideas to narrow down and decide on.

[@adamfox1669]

I like the wide range of topics/digressions in your videos. It’s nice to listen to while I paint. Thanks & be safe

[@attentionspanlabs]

That's nice to hear. Those digressions come natural to me, it feels like I'm having a conversation with someone instead of talking at a camera.

[@attentionspanlabs]

Bizarre autocorrect error fixed.

[@adamfox1669]

Definitely more like having a conversation. I’m gonna date myself, but I remember magazines like practical wargaming & the courier!

[@attentionspanlabs]

@@adamfox1669 Do you recommend them? My wife buys me 40 year old copies of Ares magazine that are quite excellent

[@adamfox1669]

I think you’d definitely like the Courier and Ares. There used to be Practical Wargaming too. Maybe late 80’s to about 1994 or so. I have to go to my parents house soon, I’ll check in the cellar , maybe I still have some. I’ll mail them to you if I do!

[@DjigitDaniel]

Great video, as always. I do not subscribe to anything anymore as I don't trust anything anymore. Splendor of Fire has been a nice breath of fresh air. I hope you all have fun at the convention. This is yet another one of those public things that gives me shivers nowadays. I've become a hermit and a recluse. I like the ideas you have with the heraldry, but I try to avoid using spiritual themes in my miniature gaming: wouldn't it be upsetting if a unit displaying the Theotokos was destroyed? In any case, good stuff and a great trip down memory lane. Reminded me of the very first wargaming website I ever discovered as a boy in middle school - "Major General Tremorden Rederring's Colonial-era Wargames". Great times. Again, thanks for sharing, brother. God bless.

[@attentionspanlabs]

The Major General's Colonial Wargames page is and probably will remain the greatest wargaming webpage ever! I hope you will reconsider your engagement with the public world, especially wargaming conventions. We are still in the overwhelming majority and I could use more folks like you who are ready to take a stand and resist the incursion of political activists and subversives. If we cede this ground unfought to the enemy, the future conflict will be all the harder. Except for one small exception which hasn't amounted to anything, the HMGS cons have been a haven from this kind of macabre spectacle. If a unit with the banner of the Theotokos was lost in battle, it would be no worse than the many valiant men who died bearing relics, icons, and crosses in desperate battles throughout the ages. God conquers even if men fall.

[@weirdwwii8775]

I always liked the idea of a hobby magazine but so much of it is not what I am interested in and I just never found it was worth the money. I pretty much just run my various locals and talk about what I am into but you are right, being Weird WWII and often not in sync with mosts tastes, I am often hit with the un-PC content police or algorithm bs, but screw it. I do what I want to do and those who want to see it and hear it know how to find me so... I would suggest everyone do what we've done, do it YOUR way no matter who says otherwise.

[@h.s.lafever3277]

i still buy them occasionally, depends on the article and art... hit and miss really

[@attentionspanlabs]

What kind of articles make you decide to purchase?

[@elijahherstal776]

I'm not big into historicals, so most Hobby magazines aren't really my thing. I'd really like to see some that catch my interest- the old White Dwarf magazines from ancient times were so much more awesome.

[@attentionspanlabs]

I must say I am surprised by the number of comments saying that they don't play historicals so the mags don't interest them. I rarely play historicals but I am very interested in military history and enjoy applying historical themes and scenarios to a fantastic context.

[@elijahherstal776]

@@attentionspanlabs I haven't seen any that tickle my itch. Maybe I need to look a bit harder.

[@attentionspanlabs]

@@elijahherstal776 If it's not your thing, then it's not your thing. But I am always on the lookout for exciting historical clashes to translate into fantasy or sci-fi settings. Our War for Xiandao is based on the Boxer Rebellion, for instance.

[@elijahherstal776]

@@attentionspanlabs Boxer Rebellion, you say? Dan Daly is OP. No way one guy can take out 200 Chinese on his own!

[@chikhai]

I think the practical aspect of physical media for wargaming can never be understated. Even during the "multimedia" craze of the 90s it was obvious that electronic media would never surpass the convenience and impact of a physical book, no matter how much embedded video, audio and gaudy crap you throw in. I'm not sure whether its a generational thing, but if something is electronic I always look upon it as ephemeral and ultimately disposable. Sure you can back it up to multiple devices or even print it out if you were so inclined, but its just not the same as having a physical book in front of you. For my sins, I'll still buy copies of White Dwarf. Sure, its just a glorified GW catalogue these days and can't hold a candle to it's older incarnation where it would cover every aspect of the hobby and not just GW/Citadel Miniatures, but it still has some decent editorial and artistic inspiration in there. The hobby aspect is relegated to young Johnny buying his first box of Space Marines for the most part. You'll never see a tutorial for something that can't be bought from a GW store or from their website (even when you can see obvious oil washes/weathering etc on the models they put to print), but there is still some value to them. They're way more inspirational than the slew of YT painting tutorials that are just a celebration of mediocrity (sorry content creators, but a model that has been painted in an hour looks like it has been painted in an hour, there is no magic wand). Wargames Illustrated is a solid magazine and isn't afraid to fight its corner when the tourists appear with their hot takes, but Miniature Wargames lost me a while ago with one of their pieces. Its been a few years now so I can't remember verbatim, but it was along the lines of your typical "women in gaming" piece. It wasn't even the content itself, but when you see an article like that shoehorned between a couple of historical articles the contrivance was enough for me to can the magazine. Best of luck with Splendor of Fire. It seems like solid work from what I've read so far 👍

[@attentionspanlabs]

Thank you for the compliments and the thoughtful comment. I had excluded contemporary White Dwarf because of my general antipathy toward Current Year Games Workshop, but even by the late '90s they were becoming a rather humdrum marketing exercise for the company with less and less usable material for the creative wargamer or crafter. I'm glad they still occasionally put out something of value. We really must kill this "women in gaming" nonsense, not to mention the "XYZ in gaming" stuff that it implies. My wife, who happens to be a woman (imagine! in this day and age!) thinks it is absolutely pathetic and is sure it is driven as much by desperately thirsty nerds as by political activists, and I'm sure she is right. At any rate, the success of the latter wouldn't be possible without large number of the former. She is a very unusual sort of woman that likes war movies, loves big robots, sci-fi, fantasy, and monsters, reads and illustrates comics, etc... She even enjoys making miniature terrain and looking at miniature soldiers, but she has very little interest in actually playing the game. So if she doesn't, I know that the percentage of women who would be must be vanishingly small, a real chimera.