Gringogamer

It’s Carnaval in Brazil. Still? Yes, still! It seems to last forever. As you can tell, I’m not a big fan of Carnaval. But there’s one aspect that I do find fascinating. There must be a myriad of festivities and parties all over the country, usually each one with its own motto or topic. And there are some events that address really bleak social situations. And in many cases, this is the only mouthpiece for people to call attention to them.

So inspired by that, today I don’t want to talk about a particular game. As a matter of fact, today’s post is not even purely wargame focused. But I thought, heck, why not?!

Recently I said something to the effect of,

Wargaming is a luxury!

And I would like to expand on what I meant when I said that.

First of all, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean this in a bad way. Nor do I think this is something particular about wargames or boardgames. I could make the same argument about reading, surfing, collecting stamps crocheting, or what have you.

And I also don’t mean it in the financial sense. At least not primarily. Of course, wargames have a price tag that usually reflects the production and the work that went into the design. And while there are certainly outliers I do think that wargames are fairly priced. Especially when I look at the ratio money spent over time entertained, I could do much worse.

But there’s another benchmark that determines for me how luxurious wargames are. And that benchmark is time. Having the time to play wargames is a luxury. I don’t necessarily think about people with a ‘busy lifestyle’, because in most cases they still have the luxury of being able to make time.

(And yes, even with all the time in the world, with no distractions, with none of the curveballs that life tends to throw at you, you still wouldn’t have enough time to play all the games you would like to play. That’s also not what I’m talking about.)

But what about people that can’t make time? I live in a country where for a large fraction of the population money and time are so tightly coupled that it’s basically one and the same for them. They don’t have time to spare for anything but trying to survive. And in that sense, wargaming is a luxury. It’s not a particular issue of this country. You find people in similar situations everywhere.

I don’t think you have to be rich to play wargames. But you need to be able to afford the time doing so. And that’s what I mean when I say wargaming is a luxury.

As I have mentioned before the same can be said for any other hobby. And I know it sounds so obvious, but sometimes I tend to forget about the obvious things and I need to remind myself.

Apologies for a rather somber post, back to regular more cheering wargaming notes soon.

Abraços,

Carsten