Bitter Veterans

OK normally I'm not one for moaning about people on my blog. It's not something I've done since I used to do gig reviews; in all honesty I'm not a fan of receiving the backlash that comes with saying negative things about people. It rarely came up because I was never nasty about it, but the few times it did knocked my confidence quite a bit.

However, with the games I've been involved with in the last sort of year and a half, and some of the conversations I've had with people, there is a demographic with which I find my patience rapidly receding into the dark and spite-filled hole from whence it came. That demographic is what I've now come to recognise as 'Bitter Veterans,' and since there are quite a few of this sort of people around and I know many in person, I'm in quite a strong postition to say I'm not talking about anybody in particular here. When I refer to specific conversations I'm not going to use names, most of them ought to know who they are and if they've got a problem with what I'm saying, well, maybe they should think about the reasons why I'm saying it and be a bit more careful what they're saying in future.

So what is a 'Bitter Veteran?' Let's start with Veteran shall we - I don't really know what characteristics you need to be able to call yourself a veteran but I tend to find they're people who've been doing the hobbies for a long time and are particularly good at playing the game or painting the models where applicable, or both. Now I've been doing the Games Workshop hobby on and off for half my lifetime and I don't think I'm much good at either painting or gaming, and I don't consider myself a veteran for that reason. So it's a subjective matter as much as anything else.

I'm afraid that my attitude towards veterans isn't always kind, and this is largely to do with the time I spent working for Games Workshop. A lot of the reason it caused me so much anxiety was that I always had to make a terrific effort to go up to people and talk to them, and particularly if I knew those people didn't want me talking to them. With veterans, I'd say this was the case about 80% of the time. Understandable to a degree - I know the GW staff come on too strong sometimes, and it can put people off going in to the shop at all so it's not surprising that veterans don't always think too kindly of the GW staff either. But what I really didn't like when they would say things like "I've been doing this longer than you've been alive," as though I'm not going to find that the slightest bit condescending. The worst one I had was when I worked in the Walsall store, which at that time was packed with veterans who didn't think I had the right to be telling them anything at all and that I should just let them get on with it. Every single time I worked in that shop I closed up wishing I didn't work for the company, it was horrible. The specific incident I'm talking about was when one person I'd never seen before but was clearly a hobbyist - he knew everyone in the shop and had a certain 'look' about him - came into the shop to either buy a model or pick up a mail order, I can't quite remember which. When I handed over whatever it was I asked him if he'd got all his clippers, glue, paints etc, a perfectly reasonable question that I would have asked anyone who'd brought a model. He gave me a look of bitter amusement then looked back into the shop, saying to everyone something to the general effect of "He's asking me if I've got clippers and glue?" There's something about being treated like a pile of dog mess that still resonates with me, years later.

Now to avoid tarring everybody with the same brush, some veterans are actually really nice people when I get talking to them. Most of the ex-staffers I'd happily sit and talk to for hours. A lot of the regulars who went into the Dudley store when I worked there I have no problem with. Even one or two of the tournament players, with whom I usually entertain very little patience indeed, escaped my prejudice because they had no problem with talking to me and understood what needed to be considered in a shop environment. And it's those people whose names and company and remember as being the good bit about working for GW.

So, moving on. Bitter Veterans, what are they? Well, for a start, applying everything I've just said about veterans, bitter veterans are miserable buggers who don't really enjoy the hobby anymore and think that nobody else should either. Everybody's story is different, but the pattern rarely varies: At some point, the game company they have been following for years and years and years have done something, said something, or heaven forbid release a new version of their game, the bitter veteran isn't happy with it and on principle decides to boycott the game, the company and all who play it. The reason they annoy me so much is that they've somehow got the idea that just because they think that something is rubbish, that means that no one else is allowed to enjoy it either.

And what better time to see them cropping up like boils on a backside than after Games Workshop release 6th Edition of 40K? One particular conversation I saw on Facebook yesterday involved one person wanting to sell something like 27,000 points worth of Tau because the new rules didn't fit his tactics, and he'll never play the game again. Now I can understand that some of the new rules don't fit all the armies quite as well as they did before, but to be brutally honset this nothing more than a bitter veteran having a strop. A few holes in his comments to pick out straight away:

1. The Tau codex was designed for 4th edition. Of course it's not going to work as well with 6th; that shouldn't be news to anyone.
2. That being the case, Tau are probably going to get an update in the mid term future, where they'll be resdesigned to work just as well as they ever did, if not better.
3. In the meantime, if you have 27,000 points of an army and can't find SOMETHING that works in the new edition of the game then you probably shouldn't be playing it anyway. Be honest, when did you last play a game?

So yeah, go ahead and sell everything you've spent all that time and money building up just because you're not happy with a change in the rules that alters the way you use the army in the game. Really clever decision, that.

I saw this quite a lot with the new edition of Warhammer Fantasy as well, a lot of people who I knew from the shop - I'd not long left, at that point - wanting to sell their armies because they don't like the new edition of the game, their armies don't work, or whatever. Now, I'm not being funny, but if your current army doesn't work, it can't be that much of a tall order to find something that does? I shouldn't imagine that it would be much more of a job than coming up with an army list that will work better in the game, and buying another couple of units if you need to? I'm not sure how many Warhammer armies get an update in one gaming iteration - I've never really sat Warhammer out from one edition to the next so I don't actually know when a lot of the current army books were published - but chances are, if your army is that bad for the current edition of Warhammer, an update can't be far away? And GW have more freedom to do this with Warhammer than they do with 40K because they aren't restricted to lavishing so much attention on Space Marines...

Now I've seen a blog from FrontlineGamer - well worth a read - who is quite adamant about his dislike of the current edition of Warhammer Fantasy. Initial reading of his blog might make him come across as the kind of veteran that I wouldn't necessarily enjoy talking to while I worked for GW. But looking a little deeper and you discover that his opinions are formed not by taking the popular opinion, or by looking at the rulebook and deciding he hates it, but by road-testing it and actually playing some games. Reading his coverage on Warhammer, he did actually give the new edition a go and found that he didn't enjoy it because of the way the game plays. Now to me, that's fair enough, for two reasons:

1. He's formed an opinion on something more solid than arrogant wishful thinking
2. At no point during any of his reviews does he instuct that people do not play the game; he recognises that others have their own opinions and reviews are there to form and assist opinions, not instruct. So he's never said "None of you must ever play Warhammer 8th!"

I see it in other games as well, and if you want to see a spawning ground for bitter veterans look no further than Dungeons and Dragons. My word, that game divides opinion like no other. Spend 10 minutes on Youtube, guarantee you'll find someone's posted a rant to the general effect of (dorky scene kid voice) "Oh wow dude, like, no one can play D&D 4th because it's, like, totally retarded, and it's all about the combat and not about the roleplaying, and it's destroyed everything that Dungeons and Dragons is supposed to be about, and it's like, whoa..." and his mate standing next to him going "Schyeah, whoa..." No wonder I find it so hard to get a game in, if even its own demographic aren't prepared to take the game for what it is and give it a go.

I could go on, but... Basically, I find conversations with bitter veterans uncomfortable, claustrophobic and infuriating. It's ironic that they voice their opinions about games so strongly as they are the people I am least likely to listen to. Because at the end of the day, I can't help but think that most of them are moaning for it's own sake; they like to have a bit of a whinge, and because they're not enjoying something quite as much as they did before they think that none of the rest of us are allowed to enjoy it either.

Now, I'm not exactly rushing to Games Workshop or Wizards of the Coast's aid here. They're the more popular companies for roleplaying and wargames and are easy to pick on. I know GW has made some appalling decisions in the last few years that I don't agree with, but funnily enough I'm still coming back to them after 13 years... Because the plain fact is that with the popularity of their games still outstripping their competition by quite a long way, this is where the new hobbyists/gamers/roleplayers are going to come from. And by refusing to get involved in anything new, all they're doing is stifling themselves from the evolution of their own hobby. Change is going to happen - it has to. Otherwise the companies that make the games will stagnate, fold completely and you'll be left with all you've got now. It will never change, and you'll be stuck playing the same game for however long it takes you to get fed up with it.

In the spirit of this, I sometimes find myself in a position of responisbility when I'm running games; it's up to me to make sure that everybody's having a good time so that they'll come back and have another go; I'll talk about that another time.

So yeah. Not a fan of bitter veterans.

Now I've avoided saying what I think about the new edition of 40K because that's something for another blog I think. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get some new painting blogs and some commentary on my armies out. Until then, ciao, hope you've enjoyed my thankfully rare rant and I'll see y'all again soon.