There’s a lot to catch up during the past weeks with a surge of new content being posted in the various platforms, mainly in video format but also the more readily available blog post, adequate for those five minutes break at the office.
The biggest has been this last weekend with too many events happening in the two main hubs of wargaming, US and UK, with Historicon and Salute and all the other smaller ones happening all across the globe. It has been an avalanche of photo reports, video walk around, articles about specific participation games and even more concerning new board wargames in the pipeline.
Personally I like to see the creations and try my best to stay immune to the colossal bombardment of marketing, mainly from the big players in the market that invariably suffocate every budget.
In a typical scenario of disposable income there’s a “wargaming hobby budget”. This can be spent in many forms, from cardboard games and rulesets to miniatures and effects related, like paints, accessories, terrain pieces and all the storage paraphernalia for counters and cardboard pieces.
One of the most important things any content maker can do is to actually serve as the marketing tool for the underdog – because the big publisher already has that marketing in place on its own. I mean… unless the content maker objective isn’t necessarily the hobby but its own personal projection within the hobby, with the latter always coming second.
This is an odd one and came in a small discussion I had. What is more important, the game being recorded or the channel that recorded it.
How may channels do the same game unboxing ?
How many channels actually do present products that under the radar ?
I absolutely enjoy those and is very easy to explain – I know everything about product A ( mainstream ) already ! I received like a hundred newsletters explaining the product and now i’m bombarded with a hundred channels doing the same unboxing…But product B has barely any marketing. I know it exists because I like the publisher, rather small but it is on my radar, but then I find no content at all.
The channels creators will say – it will get no views – and it is fair to say so, but it is a bigger service to the hobby to show us the rare rather than the common.
A wargamer is an intelligent person by definition.
Peace.
wargamer.coffee.break 
Definitely agree that there are too many unboxing videos of the same game, and those are usually the mainstream titles. I’d be more interested in unboxing of the titles of smaller companies, but honestly I don’t like unboxing, period. I can understand why others like them, so I’m not disparaging them in general. It’s just that I get more out of the game seeing it played in a session report (which usually does a great job showing me how usable the components are in any case). So I guess I’m pleading for playthroughs of the lesser-known/obscure wargame titles!
Eric, you are most welcome and especially here in the blog.
I always try to see beyond the noise created by the lights. There are true gems that are probably much better games that are seldom showcased. I would like to think that the hobbyist that also tries to provide others with information, via blog or video or podcast, do so in honest commitment to showing what is beyond the marketing machine.
Such wonderful designs to explore and superb artwork that i’ll be honest, surpasses the mainstream publishers choices, and yet sometimes there’s half a dozen videos if any.