I was going to suggest tabletop wargaming, like Battletech, StarFleet Battles, or anything published by Avalon Hill, but I heard through the grapevine that after COVID and all the screen-time that came with it, it’s maintaining a steady interest.
I don’t know whether or not to include card-battle games like Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering in on that too… different demographic, but same idea: popular non-technology based gaming.
Tripler
Didn’t Avalon Hill get bought out by Hasbro?
When my mom died a few years ago, I checked with a half-dozen antiques and collectibles dealers and learned that her pretty good stamp and coin collections were worth essentially nothing. From all I’ve read, stamp and coin collecting are hobbies in near-terminal decline. I get the US Postal Service quarterly catalog and it’s a little pathetic to see how they’re trying to drum up youth interest in stamp collecting (SpongeBob stamps? Really?).
I don’t know about MtG but I don’t think Pokemon is going anywhere anytime soon.
Yes, in 1998. It was part of Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast division (which also makes Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons) until 2021, when it got moved into the Hasbro Gaming division).
It’s been about 28 years since I played played a game of Star Fleet Battles. My friends who owned the game actually gave me all of their stuff in the late 90s, and I tried finding other players in the early 2000s, but it seems like a lost cause. Armadillo Design Bureau is still in business producing not only SFB but also Federation Commander, which I think is a simplified version of SFB, as well as a card game called Star Fleet Battle Force.
You might be happy to learn BattleTech has had something of a renaissance in the last few years. Catalyst Game Labs has the license and they produce both classic BattleTech and Alpha Strike which is somewhat simplified for the purposes of making it easier to play out larger battles. The miniatures produced for BT are a lot better than the Ral Partha ones we used back in the day (though those old minis have a certain charm to them).
I’m afraid the old Avalon Hill, Games Design Workshop, and SPI style of games really aren’t all that popular these days. It’s been a little over twenty years since I’ve played a good old fashioned chit and hex wargame. The last time I played was with people like me who were in their late twenties to late 30s and I bet if I were to find some other players today they’d all be pushing 50 at a minimum.
Table top miniatures war gaming still seems pretty safe. Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar pretty much dominate the market here in the United States and there are plenty of players in their teens and twenties. There’s also Star Wars Legion and Star Wars Shatterpoint, both of which are based off an obscure science fiction movie from the late 1970s nobody can remember. Table top miniatures war gaming seems to be pretty secure for now. Well, historical table top war gaming seems to be of interest to old people rather than young people.
Collectible card games like Magic and Pokemon are still quite popular among younger people. If I were to go to one of the tournaments at my local game store I’d be seen as the old man. I’m old enough to be most of the players’ father.
There are possibly a few exceptions, but pretty much every hobby will face this sooner or later. Most of them sooner. So perhaps the question should be: What hobbies are hanging on longer than expected?
Amateur astronomy is no exception, and I only follow astronomy in an armchair mode, but I get the impression that it’s still attracting some young people. It’s going away, but perhaps not quite as fast as I expected.
Oddly, when I was in college in the early 80s, I actually knew quite a few fellow students who played bridge. We’d play fairly regularly in the lounge area of our dorm. I’ve hardly played since then.
I just had to mail a form that required me to write an address on an actual envelope and affix a stamp. It must have been the first time in three years and the third time in ten. I was shocked that no online option was available. I actually had been putting off the chore because I figured I could do it anytime before the end of the month only to be blindsided by the demand to physically fill out a written form with a pen and mail the fucking thing.
For a lot of people, I don’t imagine it’s easy to go someplace without a significant amount of light pollution.
It’s been a while since I’ve affixed a stamp to anything. The last time I wrote a check I had to sit down and remember how to do it.
Thanks for the reminder! There’s a bill I have to mail soon that has to be paid by check in the mail; it can be paid online, but with a $15 surcharge, so I’d rather pay by check.
My kids are 25 and 27. When they were in 2nd grade, their teachers taught them how to write a letter, address an envelope, put a stamp on it and bring it to a mailbox. I don’t know if they’ve sent a paper letter since then.
My mom and her mother were stamp collectors, but in the electronic era I can’t see the hobby surviving.
My 27 year old is part of a knitting club at work; most of the members are under 40. I taught her to knit when she was a young teen, and it seems to me that hand crafts are more popular now than they were 15 years ago.
My understanding from talking to older relatives, etc that back in the 1950s to 1960s a lot of male teenagers liked to work on their cars (modifying them one way or another, souping them up…). I don’t see this happening nowadays. Anyone know about this?
Boy Scouts (including Cub scouts, et al) has gone from a high of 4.75 million participants in 1973 to around one million today. It’s gone up and down a little but the last membership peak was 3.75 mil in 1997 sloping down to 2 mil in 2019 then the twin whack of Covid and the LDS Church pulling out of the organization cutting that in half to today’s one million.
In my news reader, I subscribe to several progressive rock news sites. It’s quite common for an article to be about some new band and their debut album, and the picture of the band shows… a bunch of people with gray hair.
My most recent hobby, making primitive bows and arrows, seems to be slowing down, but it has done this several times in the past 40 years and seems to have a small resurgence about once a decade. I don’t think anyone really knows how many are actively involved in this craft but I would guess under 5,000 casual and less than a thousand who are very active. I could be way off on that.
As I understand it, “tuners” are still kind of a thing, though even those peaked in the 1990s and 2000s, and I’m not sure how many teenagers had (or have) the money and resources to do that level of tuning/modification.
Cars, of course, are tremendously more complex now than they were in the 1950s and 1960s, when a motivated young person who had a good understanding of mechanics and engines could do a lot themselves; now, a lot of the modifications have to do with electronics. For much the same reason, “shade-tree mechanics” have largely become extinct, too.
Stamp collecting is really cheap! I have re-started paying attention to stamps and have bought a few I liked when I was a kid, now that I can find them outside the scott catalog on ebay. I like stamps!
There are still younger people who love to tinker with their vehicles in one way or the other. I see plenty of trucks driven by younger people here in Arkansas with modifications like a Carolina Squat, rubber band tires, lifted suspensions, etc., etc. Quite a few sports cars as well. I don’t think tinkering with cars is as popular with teens as it was in the 50s and 60s, but then I don’t think driving is as popular with teens today as it was even when I was a kid.
My son is in sailing and its popularity among youth is declining world wide, although there are local variations. Here in Japan, membership at the local sailing clubs have really dropped.
I haven’t seen any numbers, but the interest in WWII seems to also be declining. I watch a lot of speakers by various institutes and the demographics are not on the side of long term growth.
Bridge. It was an important part of my parents’ social world. Bridge parties at least once every two weeks at our house.
My Mom and Dad encouraged me to learn to play. Mom, because they always needed a fourth at the place where we spent summers when Dad didn’t feel like playing; and Dad because “you’re going to be going to university and everybody there will play it and you’ll make friends.”
So I learned. I liked the game, but I learned to my dismay that nobody at university played it. It must be about 50 years since I last played it.
I think you and I must have grown up in the same house. 