GW Grognard: How do you “Retire” from a hobby?

Hey everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to expound on the ridiculousness of 40K!

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have been playing this game, and wargaming in general, for a long time. I really am a “Veteran of the Long War”, especially given that my first army was Chaos Space Marines, and I have been playing Black Legion since the Rogue Trader days. There are times when it does seem a bit much, or maybe other obligations must be taken care of and you need to step away from the game. I wrote about this in a previous article. My question this time, though is: “Can you ‘retire’ from a hobby?”

Now a hobby is basically something you do for leisure. It is not something that you have to do.  You are not required to do the hobby in order to provide for yourself or your family. It is something that is done outside of your normal work environment to relax from your real job, whatever it may be. The exception, clearly, are people that make a living from producing items for the hobby, but then it becomes a job rather than a hobby so retiring from that makes sense. If you are really into something like playing Golf with your friends on Sunday mornings, or you have a Thursday night Poker game, you might play World of Warcraft or Apex Legends online with your friends for hours each week, maybe you’re even in a band you perform with for fun, do you retire from those activities? No, you just lose interest and move on. Your friends might miss you, they might not, but a retirement announcement certainly isn’t required.

An argument can be made that if someone was heavily into the competitive scene of 40K they might qualify as a “pro” or “celebrity”. If they are planning to step away, you could, by definition, “retire” from the competitive side because athletes do it all the time. The issue with that is that you would have to consider the player an athlete, or a professional. I will just say that most people, including myself, are a long way off from being considered an athlete, or a professional player. Professional athletes who retire, make a living playing that sport. So like I said before, once you’re making money doing something it stops being a hobby and has evolved into a job. Although competitive 40K is getting a lot of traction in recent years, we are still a way off from people being able to make a living off playing 40K while not living with their parents.

In the end, who really cares? No one will bat an eye because you decided you’re important enough to “retire” from a leisure activity. As I mentioned earlier, the current state of competitive 40K does not support a need to make announcements about retiring, especially if you still plan to play in smaller events, or in other game systems. I must give people some sort of respect having the ego to think that the community cares about them that such an announcement is needed. I’m sure there are some people that do care, but to the wider 40K audience, they don’t. One of my favorite original 40K quotes sums it up best, from the inside cover of the Rogue Trader rulebook:

“But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed…”

That’s all for this week, I hope you enjoyed the read. Let me know your thoughts, and how you,or your friends, quit the hobby, in the comments section. Don’t forget to visit our Facebook, Twitch, and Patreon pages to stay up to date on what we’re up to and when episodes drop!

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