#hobbyneutral

It was @apocrypha_now (who is a patron, btw) who tipped me to (his?) tag, #hobbyneutral, that was largely inspired by his horror at recent GW releases increasingly adding yet more plastic crap to the tabletop. It may not, technically, be "one use" plastic, but let's not kid ourselves that it won't end up in landfill eventually.

And that got me thinking.

You see, one of the things I've been doing while Precinct Omega has been on its winter hiatus is assisting my wife in her work as a director of a local community enterprise primarily built around running a minimal plastic/packing food shop. Whilst I'm not an official volunteer in the enterprise, the business needed some help getting a community share offer (link for info more than for your investments, but if you *do* have £1000 or so burning a hole in your pocket and would like a reasonable chance at a 3% return, do check it out*) together.

I know nothing about community share offers, but I do know a thing or two about persuasive writing and desktop publishing, so I pitched in to take worthy but awkwardly-worded goals and objectives and craft them into something that sounded business professional. I also designed the PDF, posters and flyers to support the campaign.

Throughout all of this, I spent a lot of time thinking about the environment, climate change, food sourcing, poverty and government. And I spent a lot of time looking at myself and my own life through that lens. Those of you who know me IRL probably already realize that I take this stuff pretty seriously - we've raised our house's EPC rating up to the top end of the "A" bracket, installed solar panels, drive an electric car, cook 85% of our food from scratch, grow our own veg, joined the Green Party, etc. And I always wanted Precinct Omega to be an ethical, environmentally-responsible business. And I realized that a lot of the stuff that was stressing me out was partly because it was, to some extent, at odds with that idea.

Long-term patrons will know I've had an ambition to produce my own miniatures. I wanted to go with white metal, because that was the most recyclable of the options. But when I looked deeper into metal prices, sourcing and extraction methods, I began to shift back to the idea of just resin. But then I looked at the manufacturing processes (mostly in China) for the components and it didn't look much better, not to mention the issue of non-recyclability of bad casts, sprue and gates. So naturally I turned to 3D printing - the option I had wanted to avoid but which was staring me in the face as the logical option. And that, of course, was really no better than resin with the additional issue of the significant energy use of the printers themselves.

Eventually, I faced facts. I couldn't, in all good conscience, manufacture new miniatures, however much I had invested in getting them this far, however much more I would owe my sculptor who gave me a massive discount in return for a share of the profits which I would now owe to him in full. I understand the sunk cost fallacy and I wasn't going to fall for it.

This simple fact dawned on me:

I already own enough stuff.

And, in fact, so do most miniatures wargamers - at least, those in a loose orbit around Precinct Omega and other independent developers. I love seeing people paint big armies or panning shots of people's impressive collections on Instagram or TikTok or whatever. But those are really just a devious way for the invested interests of manufacturers (in wargaming or wherever) to persuade us to keep buying shit despite the fact that doing so is wrecking our mental well-being, our environments and - if you scratch the surface just deep enough - even the economy that everyone seems so keen to protect.

Am I saying that miniatures wargaming is ruining the Earth? No, obviously not. Even GW is obviously just a tiny fraction of a percent of the issue, here. But I don't have a voice outside that tiny fraction of a percent that anyone cares about. Here, I have a voice. It's a teeny-tiny voice that barely gets heard above the general blast of "OMG! NEW FUCKING SHIT! LOOK AT IT! IT'S CO COOL!!", but it's the voice I have so I kind of have to use it.

There's a risk here of being seen to be a bit political about this. But if you hadn't twigged that I'm a bit political by now, you've not been paying attention. However, I don't want to dwell on #hobbyneutral or why I think it's an important idea. I think different people will have different perspectives. For some it'll be about the environment. For others, about protesting GW's business practices. For still others, it'll simply be about finances or living and storage space.

#hobbyneutral is a thing, though. And I want to spend some time, over the next couple of, months, unpacking what it can mean, why and how.

I'm going to use my Patreon blog for this, initially, for a few reasons:

First, I don't feel it would be healthy  or productive, right now, to be trying to podcast or make videos on top of everything else.

Second, you guys are mostly a friendly, positive audience for my ideas. You tell me when I'm wrong or need to think more about something, but in a supportive way. When you outright disagree with my philosophy, you just stop paying me. It's a nice relationship, in that way, particularly compared to the Internet in general. I find that I'm surprisingly thin-skinned for someone with a YouTube channel. You'd think I could just let it wash over me, but it doesn't.

Third, this is a chance to test and refine my thoughts and ideas with mostly-like-minded supporters before pushing them into a more public space for wider consideration.

So in my next article about this, I'll talk about what I think #hobbyneutral should mean.

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*No, that's not my wife in the video. My Best Beloved wouldn't be caught dead on that side of a camera.