The obscurity of our beloved hobby...

[Bigmaec]

The last weekend I spent with my wife on a meeting of board game friends.
My wife plays a lot of board games, I play them too, but not as much.
It was a bit like a LAN party*, just without computers.

* LAN parties were invented before we had the Internet, to spend time together playing games.
One had to physically carry his PC to another location, and link them via an obscure system
called local area net, which is WLAN but with cables. Pure madness

But I digress...

The demographics of the meeting were such as that many people there were my age,
around 40, mostly pairs, some with children, some without.

We were 35 people. Many of them playing not only board games but computer games too.

One other player plays Elite Dangerous, and he confessed he didn't even start with engineers.
Flies a Python though, so no absolute beginner.

At my work (roughly 20 people in the office) people play World of Tanks, or Farming Simulator,
or World of Warcraft. No one ever heard of Elite. Similar demographics.

My wife, as a school teacher, is already an outlier in her peer group, as she plays a lot of computer games (and board games obviously),
just no Elite Dangerous. Her co-workers play no computer games at all.

In Germany we have a phrase "Ein Geisterfahrer? Hunderte!!!"
("One driver driving the wrong direction on the Autobahn? I see hundreds!!)
which basically means one isn't able to see himself as the outlier, but instead thinks all others are


So are we nerds? I mean, real nerds? Playing a 5-year old game no one else plays?
Is Elite really that much of an outlier and unknown out there?

What are your observations?

 

[yelboc]

It's OK Bigmac - you're just weird - enjoy it

 

[Bigmaec]

It's OK Bigmac - you're just weird - enjoy it

My writing is a bit in jest, but it really got me thinking as the general demographics of the meeting
was such as it is, and still there were so few players playing Elite. There were even lots of people
who had computers at the time but didn't knew the original Elite.

I had one other guy there who doesn't play Elite because it's too fast for him and the fear of getting ganked,
and who played the 1984 version, but still...

I'm just interested in your observations...

 

[Eliza]

@Bigmaec That one made me laugh out loud at work! How dare you!
I too remember LAN-Partys.

And yes...most of my collegues / friends don't know Elite either. Then I show them some pictures I made and the adventures I encounter and they get big eyes. They all playing WoT, WoW or PoE and never went into the "simulation-business". Then I show them my hardware (Warthog, Rift) and how it is assembled and then they seemed to be very impressed.

The other day I went to "Decathlon" (sporting-equipment dealer) and asked for a pair of non-lined, anti-slip, thin gloves.The vendor asked me, for what I would need them? "Oh...I'm flying combat aircrafts and spaceships" His face was worth a million bucks.

So yeah...I think I AM a nerd...and guess what...I take this word with pride!

 

[M00ka]

I remember prior to retiring having a discussion at work with some younger colleagues and them laughing at me - someone in their mid 50's still playing computer games. Terms like 'get a life', 'what a waste of time' etc were bandied around. Then they proceeded to discuss their fantasy football teams for the next hour whilst I quietly chuckled to myself at my desk lol

 

[Dirtbird]

In my country, finding other players of Elite Dangerous is about as likely as running into another player while exploring the galaxy.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

The last weekend I spent with my wife on a meeting of board game friends.
My wife plays a lot of board games, I play them too, but not as much.
It was a bit like a LAN party*, just without computers.

* LAN parties were invented before we had the Internet, to spend time together playing games.
One had to physically carry his PC to another location, and link them via an obscure system
called local area net, which is WLAN but with cables. Pure madness

But I digress...

The demographics of the meeting were such as that many people there were my age,
around 40, mostly pairs, some with children, some without.

We were 35 people. Many of them playing not only board games but computer games too.

One other player plays Elite Dangerous, and he confessed he didn't even start with engineers.
Flies a Python though, so no absolute beginner.

At my work (roughly 20 people in the office) people play World of Tanks, or Farming Simulator,
or World of Warcraft. No one ever heard of Elite. Similar demographics.

My wife, as a school teacher, is already an outlier in her peer group, as she plays a lot of computer games (and board games obviously),
just no Elite Dangerous. Her co-workers play no computer games at all.

In Germany we have a phrase "Ein Geisterfahrer? Hunderte!!!"
("One driver driving the wrong direction on the Autobahn? I see hundreds!!)
which basically means one isn't able to see himself as the outlier, but instead thinks all others are


So are we nerds? I mean, real nerds? Playing a 5-year old game no one else plays?
Is Elite really that much of an outlier and unknown out there?

What are your observations?

That would be an ecumenical matter!





Honestly though, I feel much the same - I have one friend who dipped his toes into Elite ("last seen 23 months ago"), but he's got short attention span when it comes to anything, and games even more so, thus I never saw him sticking to it for the long term. Nobody else I know plays Elite or has even heard of it - most are 'serious' people that don't 'have time' for pooter games, I feel like the only person in my circles who's still having the same hobby for the past 30 odd years.

I find it quite peculiar though how committed I still am to a 5 year old game - this has never happened to me in the past and I always scratched my head about people who either play a single game excessively (or even exclusively) over a long period of time, as surely that'd be boring, right? It's even more interesting in my case since I didn't warm towards it after some time - I played since launch, then got frustrated with the slow progression, then something clicked and played it almost daily for the past couple of years. And it's the only game I've regularly spent sizeable amounts of money on micro (lol) transactions in the form of cosmetics.

The game seems to give me a certain fix that other games can't (at least not over the same time period), I'm still not quite sure what it is. And I can't see myself stopping anytime soon either. So weird.

 

[Penny Umbra]

I use the pub as the definition of normal (disclaimer: other normals are available).

At the pub then, there is myself and my husband and one of the bar-staff who play regulary (and is building his ship with a 3D printer), one bar staff member who plays rarely on console, and one semi-regular who has recognised my or my husbands Elite themed T-shirts.

Based on the T-shirts worn in the pub, Witcher games, Call of Duty, and World of Warcraft are popular, and several older people play minecraft or farming simulators (it being a rural area, this causes some amusement among the real farmers!).

On explaining about Eliteangerous to the curious, the inevitable question is "Do you play Star Citizen?", suggesting that that is the game that defines space games in peoples minds, and that playing other space games places us on the far edges of wacky gamer-dom.

I always feel like a nerd when talking to "normal people" about Elite. Especially during DW2 when I was saying things like "I won't be in the pub because I'm meeting up with the expedition at Sag A*. Sag A*?, it's the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy, we're building a space station there."

It's niche, and it's improved by databases and spreadsheets. The people who like it, love it, and get t-shirts printed or build ships at home and alarm the un-initiated with long explanations So yes. Elite is a bit of a nerd game.

 

[Airtroops83]

Spaceship game fans is a pretty small pool..
Fans of grind is also a small pool.
Fans if games that feel empty (or 'create your own fun') is an even smaller pool.
People that will play a 5 year old game is a below average pool.
People that will play a game where the majority of the time is spent just going from one place to another is a VERY small pool.
People that will play a game that is pretty hard to learn is a small pool.
People that will play a game where progression is pretty slow is a small pool.

People that will play a game like this with no story or direction or currated missions is much, much smaller still...
and finally, people that will stick around is smaller still..

And ED is where all those circles overlap, IF the person has heard about it, bought it, and enjoys it enough to play over other games.
its just a really small niche.
Theres too much about this game that doesn't appeal to most people. More still that people actively don't like, for it to EVER be a huge game.

 

[yelboc]

I know one other person who plays regularly and one who has dabbled. Its not a game for adrenaline junky 1st player shooters or driving game players (despite the SRV), so given that gamers are a small percentage of the population and then ED players are a small percentage of that, then - yes its not that common (much as previous posts have said)

There's also a large element of nostalga born out of the original game in the 80's shown by the demographic of the forum..

Oh and I did infect my Son, and one of his friends with it too (he plays Battlefront more tho')

 

[Eliza]

I know one other person who plays regularly and one who has dabbled. Its not a game for adrenaline junky 1st player shooters or driving game players (despite the SRV), so given that gamers are a small percentage of the population and then ED players are a small percentage of that, then - yes its not that common (much as previous posts have said)

There's also a large element of nostalga born out of the original game in the 80's shown by the demographic of the forum..

Oh and I did infect my Son, and one of his friends with it too (he plays Battlefront more tho')

I play this game because it is "calm". A good place to come down after a day of work. For me, personally, I find it odd, that one can come home, switch on the TV, and literally does NOTHING!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

In terms of general fame, I think Elite lacks many of the big things:

- really widespread player base. 3+ million accounts is pretty good but still only a percent of the really popular ones. And looking at a list of the really popular ones with many tens of millions of players, I hadn't heard of all of them before, either. There was too big a gap between FE2/FFE and Elite Dangerous for it to be a famous series, either.
- comedy/meme potential. Think Kerbal, or Untitled Goose Game, or Dwarf Fortress - all famous despite being relatively niche. Elite Dangerous of course moved away from honk-based gameplay just as it was becoming cool.
- multi-million marketing budget. And as long as sales continue to come in fast enough, everyone would probably want that money spent on development.
- context-light stories. There's a lot of exciting things going on by or between player groups in Elite Dangerous ... but most of them require a lot of context to explain why they're exciting to someone who doesn't already play Elite Dangerous [1] as they usually don't have the "big space battles, everyone understands those" aspect.

And there are a lot of games out there nowadays. Even getting to "heard the name" levels of awareness is a big competition, never mind "and know that it's a computer game with spaceships".



[1] For example, Distant Worlds was a really big player project, but to understand why "lots of people went over there and then came back" is a big thing you need the context of there being no 'fast travel', the size (in ship-hours, not light-years) of the game world, the distribution of settled systems, the normal number of long-range explorers, perhaps the original history of Beagle Point, etc. If you're already familiar with Elite Dangerous, no problem ... but there's a lot of background to give first.

Or the Gnosis misjump - you have to explain a considerable amount of backstory, both in-fiction and in-game, to set up why the Gnosis has unique capabilities, why the permit regions are important, who the Thargoids are (mentioning their hyperdiction technology without giving away the ending), etc. etc. before you can get to the stage of "and so, on Wednesday night, the Gnosis was picking up its last passengers before the jump..." and start telling people about the exciting bit.

 

[uncle bulgaria]

I'm a regular on a football forum ("soccer" for our US/Canadian friends) and there's a reasonable number of Elite players on there, we have a dedicated thread for ED. There's a very busy general PC Gaming thread also. The demographics there are slightly younger than here, probably average mid 20s to mid 40s with a few oldies - there's at least a couple of retired guys on there.

In my work it seems a bit of a non-gaming ghost town, I don't know a single other gamer but it's possible we're just all flying under the radar and not making ourselves known to each other. I work for an oil company so there's a lot of people who would generally be regarded as "nerds" in their youth (engineers, economists, geologists etc.). The people with kids report that their kids all play pretty much nothing but Fortnite

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I'm a regular on a major gaming website's forum, the Elite thread is pretty much dead and even when it was busier, not a patch on other more popular games/franchises. One of the reasons I came here in the end

 

[Shiro Akai]

The last weekend I spent with my wife on a meeting of board game friends.
My wife plays a lot of board games, I play them too, but not as much.

Oh, I envy you. What kind of board games if I may ask? In my youth I played a lot Talisman knock off. After Games Workshop lost all incentive to publish original any further and local distributor failed license attempt, we had new product, based on original but undere different name. I still have the board, the cards and all the stuff and sometimes I play it with my family.

Recently I tried to get my son into tabletop minifigure genre. Warhammer is too expensive so we decided to play Warmachine. Sadly, got starter set, played few matches and we got stuck..

It was a bit like a LAN party*, just without computers.

Heh, LAN parties. I remember those on my studies. Fun times, pre internet era (at least in my county).

The demographics of the meeting were such as that many people there were my age,
around 40, mostly pairs, some with children, some without.

Late 70s, early 80s. People born at those times saw the rise of PC gaming. Before that they played board games, D&D and such. No wonder shared interests.

At my work (roughly 20 people in the office) people play World of Tanks, or Farming Simulator,
or World of Warcraft. No one ever heard of Elite. Similar demographics.

I work in a big company, entire age spectrum and noone to talk about games. But from my friends, similar age to mine (37 atm) I believe only I am an avid gamer. Other people may have played something at some point but it was mostly FB game or Sims. In high school I had a class mate, same nerd or even bigger. While I was playing SimCity 2000 or other Transport Tycoon he was enjoying another Linux compilation.

So are we nerds? I mean, real nerds? Playing a 5-year old game no one else plays?
Is Elite really that much of an outlier and unknown out there?

Nerds? Nah, more like old school gamers. People who witnessed the rise of PC gaming, hardware race (anyone else remember graphics accelerator cards? 3D-FX as a separate component?). Then consoles appear and started new genre. Now we observe mobile gaming on the rise, while still sticking to that big box of a PC. I know I am.

As for ED - allow me to digress.

Few days ago my G13 gaming pad "broke". One of keys stuck in pushed position, couldn't raise it in any way. At first I thought I need new gaming pad since G13 is long discontinued and totally unavilable (what is is Razer stuff but worse compared to G13). While researching options I had that talk with my wife - it's hard to buy decent gamepad and it's bit expensive due to 2 factors:

• it is aimed for gamers whose are specific group of computr users
• it is aimed for specific type of gamers, niche ones

Same translates for ED - it is a product aimed for specific niche of a specific customer. ED is demanding itself, not rewarding on instant basis, requires time and effort. Also requires bit of a hardware (tho K+M is perfectly viable, let's be honest - joystick is a target device with HOTAS as a default option). This means costs and only people really interested in such narrow experience are willing to cover those expenses.

What are your observations?

We are niche players. Heck, we are niche as a players. Among people I know only I play games, not only PC - any games, board ones included. Some of my friends have some modern "board" games but those are those party games: Scrabble, various versions of Monopoly. Or card games. When I talk about games the most common reaction is: I don't play games or oh, I heard about that one but never played myself.

Oh, and a story.
Me playing WoW, farming something as usual. My guild master appear and since we didn't have anything better to do we started talking abouth nothing. Idle chat. At some point I asked where he'd been since it was some time. He answered he was playing other games. I asked which ones (expecting some trending titles). He said:
- you probably don't know it, space sim called Elite Dangerous.-
I heard his jaw dropping over the internet as I replied "o7 CMDR". Turned out my WoW GM is a CMDR as well.

General observations - I play MMO games to stick to people similar to myself. Although I'm not the best social beast, rather opposite, it's nice to play along similar minded people. Personally I don't have gaming friends, truth be told I don't have any real friends (only people I know and see once every few years). I have my gaming hobbies and noone to talk about it.

So Bigmaec - I envy you because you can have at least board game meet up.

 

[Eliza]

Ever thought about the following? We're not in a niche...we are...guess what...ELITE!!!

 

[Old Duck]

Ever thought about the following? We're not in a niche...we are...guess what...ELITE!!!

Considering what a lot of my non-gaming friends do for entertainment, there is truth in this statement.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Oh, I envy you. What kind of board games if I may ask? In my youth I played a lot Talisman knock off. After Games Workshop lost all incentive to publish original any further and local distributor failed license attempt, we had new product, based on original but undere different name. I still have the board, the cards and all the stuff and sometimes I play it with my family.

Recently I tried to get my son into tabletop minifigure genre. Warhammer is too expensive so we decided to play Warmachine. Sadly, got starter set, played few matches and we got stuck..






Heh, LAN parties. I remember those on my studies. Fun times, pre internet era (at least in my county).






Late 70s, early 80s. People born at those times saw the rise of PC gaming. Before that they played board games, D&D and such. No wonder shared interests.






I work in a big company, entire age spectrum and noone to talk about games. But from my friends, similar age to mine (37 atm) I believe only I am an avid gamer. Other people may have played something at some point but it was mostly FB game or Sims. In high school I had a class mate, same nerd or even bigger. While I was playing SimCity 2000 or other Transport Tycoon he was enjoying another Linux compilation.





Nerds? Nah, more like old school gamers. People who witnessed the rise of PC gaming, hardware race (anyone else remember graphics accelerator cards? 3D-FX as a separate component?). Then consoles appear and started new genre. Now we observe mobile gaming on the rise, while still sticking to that big box of a PC. I know I am.

As for ED - allow me to digress.

Few days ago my G13 gaming pad "broke". One of keys stuck in pushed position, couldn't raise it in any way. At first I thought I need new gaming pad since G13 is long discontinued and totally unavilable (what is is Razer stuff but worse compared to G13). While researching options I had that talk with my wife - it's hard to buy decent gamepad and it's bit expensive due to 2 factors:

• it is aimed for gamers whose are specific group of computr users
• it is aimed for specific type of gamers, niche ones

Same translates for ED - it is a product aimed for specific niche of a specific customer. ED is demanding itself, not rewarding on instant basis, requires time and effort. Also requires bit of a hardware (tho K+M is perfectly viable, let's be honest - joystick is a target device with HOTAS as a default option). This means costs and only people really interested in such narrow experience are willing to cover those expenses.





We are niche players. Heck, we are niche as a players. Among people I know only I play games, not only PC - any games, board ones included. Some of my friends have some modern "board" games but those are those party games: Scrabble, various versions of Monopoly. Or card games. When I talk about games the most common reaction is: I don't play games or oh, I heard about that one but never played myself.

Oh, and a story.
Me playing WoW, farming something as usual. My guild master appear and since we didn't have anything better to do we started talking abouth nothing. Idle chat. At some point I asked where he'd been since it was some time. He answered he was playing other games. I asked which ones (expecting some trending titles). He said:
- you probably don't know it, space sim called Elite Dangerous.-
I heard his jaw dropping over the internet as I replied "o7 CMDR". Turned out my WoW GM is a CMDR as well.

General observations - I play MMO games to stick to people similar to myself. Although I'm not the best social beast, rather opposite, it's nice to play along similar minded people. Personally I don't have gaming friends, truth be told I don't have any real friends (only people I know and see once every few years). I have my gaming hobbies and noone to talk about it.

So Bigmaec - I envy you because you can have at least board game meet up.

Have got to say, a lot of the things you wrote resonate quite well with me and my life situation (apart from the board game bit - have zero interest in those, and never really did in the past either beyond Monopoly as a child). Elite is the only game I play actively online (as in, Open), normally I'm a single player kind of guy. But as for the rest - that could all be me.

Whenever I read about others knowing lots of people IRL who also play games, never mind Elite, I do feel a bit envious - while I have this friend I mentioned he's more of a tech nerd than game nerd. I used to play with some friends/colleagues via LAN parties but that was a relatively short period of time (maybe a year, or two) and all of them have since "grown out" of playing computer/video games. I feel like I haven't really "grown up" and I don't really want to. So it's nice to be able to speak with like-minded people on forums like these!

o7 CMDR

 

[Eliza]

Have got to say, a lot of the things you wrote resonate quite well with me and my life situation (apart from the board game bit - have zero interest in those, and never really did in the past either beyond Monopoly as a child). Elite is the only game I play actively online (as in, Open), normally I'm a single player kind of guy. But as for the rest - that could all be me.

Whenever I read about others knowing lots of people IRL who also play games, never mind Elite, I do feel a bit envious - while I have this friend I mentioned he's more of a tech nerd than game nerd. I used to play with some friends/colleagues via LAN parties but that was a relatively short period of time (maybe a year, or two) and all of them have since "grown out" of playing computer/video games. I feel like I haven't really "grown up" and I don't really want to. So it's nice to be able to speak with like-minded people on forums like these!

o7 CMDR

Same in my friendship-hemisphere. They all grew out of video-gaming. Why not me? I wonder myself sometimes either. Maybe the fact that I play video-games since I left my diapers, started with PacMan, Pitfall and Space-Invaders on an Atari 2600. Then I was an apprentice salesperson for videogames and after my service in the German AirForce I went into shiftworking jobs and had almost no social contacts due to working-times. So I still stick into video games. And my spleen for simulations of any kind was there since I layed my hands on Elite '84.
Yeah, maybe a bit of nostalgia, but not the only reason I hold the Elite-Banner high.

 

[Slowfiddler]

A lot of talk of "five year old game" here. When you get to my age (mid 50s) five years feels like last month.

I was on a company website yesterday where they stated "In business for 30 years." I thought "oh, started up in 1980 then?" erm... 1990 was thirty entire years ago!