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Barfolomew wrote:


As far as model kits and railroads, I think those markets are declining because people want a bit more instant gratification as well as entertainment out of their hobby. Once the railroad or model s put together, you stare at it a bit and it's over. At least with Legos, you can build it, take it apart and build something else.

Also, I would say those industries have focused on the hard core grognards over the entry level. If you look at model rail roads you have really poor entry level product that still manages to cost a a lot, and higher quality expert level stuff that cost an order of magnitude over the beginner stuff. There's no mid tier between the kids set for under the Christmas tree and the full digital basement setup with 90 scale miles of track. A decent tabletop layout is going to run you over $500 for track and train alone. And it's wasted money if you don't have the skill to build it. There's no good cheap product to use to develop your skill.

It's the same problem GW has in a lot of ways. You either start GW games and give it up before really getting into the hobby, or you go all in. There is no room to dabble anymore. To drop $200-$300 on a single army that lets you have fun occasional games. You're doubly hurt by GW's high price point, and a unbalanced game that really punishes bad purchase decisions.

Luckily, that mid tier exists in miniatures games outside of GW. Drop $200 dollars on any other miniature game out there-with little or no knowledge of the meta-and it's much harder to end up with useless models. Which is why gaming is growing, but GW is not,

Backfire wrote:

Spoiler:

 azreal13 wrote:

You dismiss those that say that wargaming is growing as "wild speculation, based on hearsay and individual tidbits" then go on to say you don't believe that because you have "observed it with your own eyes."

Difference is that I don't have any interest in portraying 'my' business as growing: what I've seen and heard everywhere (not just my hometown, or Finland) is that young people are less and less likely pick up a hobby where physical handwork is involved. Go ask any model kit veteran how his hobby is doing. Answer: pretty bad, it's mostly old salts who stay in their beloved hobby, not that many youngsters are coming in, the hobby is disappearing from market shelves, expo attendance is down. I have really hard time believing that wargaming somehow goes against this trend.

Now, I have no problem believing that some individual games are growing. Something like X-wing, a hugely popular franchise with broad appeal, and it's actually good game on top of that: I'm sure it's doing great - at least for now. However, they are individual successes which tells us nothing how the hobby as a whole is doing, across the industry. Some games are probably gaining because they're attracting disgruntled ex-GW players, but again, that's old veteran players switching tit for tat. Once they get disgruntled to their new company, they move to something else, and that 'something else' then reports 'great growth'. Rinse & repeat. People talk about new games - and forget that 5 years ago, there were other games similarly gushed about, which are now dead or dying.

 azreal13 wrote:

No offence, but Finland is hardly the heartland of the wargaming industry, and I'll take the word of a company that offers market analysis as part of it's business or the managing director of the largest Indy wargaming retailer in the UK over your narrow observational platform any time.

So where is this mythical report? What segments are growing? At what rate, over what time? Because last time this discussion took place, someone came in with numbers which showed that BOARD game sales in US were up 10% or so in 2012 (or 2011). Which is pretty easy to believe given economic upturn after recession and everything. But that actually told us nothing about wargame industry and sales.

GW used to sell The HHHobby. You could read about The HHHobby in a White Dwarf you bought at an ordinary newsagent, or learn about it from friends' older cousins and so on (i.e. veterans). You could go to shows and see it.

If you went to the GW shop it was full of happy people having fun playing The HHHobby. They would invite you to play and show you how it all worked. if you bought a model they helped you to paint it.

They invited you back for the regular games evenings and competitions that were part of The HHHobby. They told you about the fantastic world wide campaigns, and the cool new models coming out next month to make The HHHobby even more fantastic.

You could actually buy just about everything needed for The HHHobby right there in the shop. And you could see there was an enthusiastic community around The HHhobby.

For days when you didn't want a full on tabletop game, you could buy smaller complete in a box games that were still embedded in the background of The HHHobby. And there were intermediate games that were sort of collectable and had cool special miniatures.

Nowadays it seems as if The HHHobby consists of handing over your credit card number and waiting for the kits to be delivered.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Nowadays it seems as if The HHHobby consists of handing over your credit card number and waiting for the kits to be delivered.

This, sadly :(

When I was a kid, back in the 90's, I used to be lucky to get £5 given to me each week by my parents. This was enough money for me to go to town, and into the local 3rd party retailer spend a while perusing the shelf of boxes and blister packs. The usualy pick up a blister pack, occasionally I would decide I wanted to wait a week and get something slightly more costly. This was not a FLGS,they were a book shop that put GW stuff in a section at the back. No gaming table space. I didnt actually play the game back then, just build and paint em. I was happy with that at the time. My first paints were gifted to me by my uncle who used to collect paint and play with DnD fig's and I didnt need to go buy a whole set of paints to get going - just add 1 or 2 pots - which would cost me not getting a model that week.
I don't know how much pocket money the average parent gives their kids now, but is it actually viable for a kid to go and spend their pocket money on GW figures?

Now I'm an adult, my hobby purchases are mainly online in relative bulk and not very consistent, I have neither the time nor the inclination to keep going to the GW store thats opened up in town since I was a youngster to pick up a little bit at a time and I generally only do so when I can't wait for a product that I could get from there.

Now that I shop online, I'm a lot more exposed to any alternative or competing product, to the point where I'm considering dropping a few hundred pounds into Kings of War rather than GW purchases this time around.
GW's internet presence is somewhat lacking and confined to the GW website domain when compared to the ways others are supporting their product online with those who buy/play them.

I think that the company could do very well to realise that the people on the internet do more than buy things, and being part of all the other fun stuff actually leads us to buy more things. Whats weird is that they used to do some larger community based stuff, right uptill the point where it wouldve been so much easier because of the internet, then they stopped! lol!

GW today is run like a drug store. No wonder: Wells has been a shampoo manager. And the non-gaming management is totally blind to the specifics of gaming stores, like supporting and organizing the local gaming community. Now that we entered the escalation/desolation phase, they panic and do even more of the same instead of doing it right.

MWG

New Tyranids, GW Stock Drop, and Warmachine




Share price at 30.12.

azreal13 wrote:
I'm not claiming there is incontrovertible proof, I'm saying that there is enough solid information from reasonably reliable sources to make some reasonable assumptions.

Rich from Wayland has stated ITT that they are growing, and that the growth is coming from sources other than GW. I do believe he has also intimated that the growth could be greater if the supply chain issues that smaller companies have been experiencing (and as a keen X Wing player, I know exactly what he means) could be resolved.

There has also been the icv2 report kicking around for some time now which states similar.

I agree that none of this constitutes hard evidence in and of itself, but when all of this information keeps corroborating itself, regardless of source, one has to make the call about whether there is some sort of global conspiracy, or whether we have a proverbial smoking gun.

While you have Wayland stating 15% growth overall, you have Mikhala stating things were relatively flat outside GW's drop. Also, the ICV2 reports does not list non-collectable miniatures as being part of the rapid growth being talked about.

Wayshuba wrote:
Sorry my friend, it is indeed true and miniature wargames in not a mature market. One has only to look at the growth of pre-painted minis to see that. This information is available from various game company sources who study this market. In fact, Hasbro has written about this in presentations given on overall markets last year. Also, many distributors and retailers in the market will tell you their sales grew with miniature wargames last year, but mainly from the collective of various titles (Malifaux, Infinity, Flames of War, Hell Dorado, et. al) filling in the gap. One only has to look at the breakdown on KickStarter to see the number one growth area has been games and that miniature games were a significant portion of that. Heck, Kickstarter alone was $55 million in games last year with almost half of that going to miniatures based games. that alone accounts for 8% growth. Lastly, when you see new companies quickly creating niches (Privateer Press, Battlefront Miniatures, Wyrd Miniatures, Corvus Belli, Mantic, et al.) this is a clear indicator of a growing market. There are too many indicators out there showing consistent market growth, not just one source. So it is pretty safe to say that the market is growing at a steady pace.

Lastly, 8%-10% growth is only enormous relative to the size of the initial market. If you have 8% growth in a $30 billion industry (like online recruiting) then yes, it is enormous. But the miniatures wargame market is in the low to mid-$100s of millions, so a 10% growth is only $35 to $40 million, which isn't really all that big on a global scale.

Can you provide this report? The last time people were quoting Hasbro reports at the last annual GW report, I had to go digging, found the reports, and none of the information they claim was in it was there. I have seen general business sections talk about miniature games, but they are including games like Skylanders and Disney's Infinity (beware CB) in it. Those are doing $1B+ sales. Context is key here and there is a bad habit to exclude key bits of information in those reports.

Still on the decline today.

 loki old fart wrote:
MWG

Spoiler:

New Tyranids, GW Stock Drop, and Warmachine




Share price at 30.12.

Great vid. Kind of cool to watch someone shoot the breeze about GWs failings in a laid back way, rather than ranting. It comes across more as reasoned argument (albeit the ones we hear all the time).

 CaulynDarr wrote:

Also, I would say those industries have focused on the hard core grognards over the entry level. If you look at model rail roads you have really poor entry level product that still manages to cost a a lot, and higher quality expert level stuff that cost an order of magnitude over the beginner stuff. There's no mid tier between the kids set for under the Christmas tree and the full digital basement setup with 90 scale miles of track. A decent tabletop layout is going to run you over $500 for track and train alone. And it's wasted money if you don't have the skill to build it. There's no good cheap product to use to develop your skill.

In case of model kits, it's actually casual and entry level (ie. kids) buyers who make up most of the revenue. The hobby is suffering because not too many kids pick it up anymore, leaving only grognards. Which is sad as nowadays the kits themselves are better than ever. Point might be true about model railroads, which seems to be centered more around loyal grognards, although I'm not terribly familiar with that hobby.
What I have observed over last 4 years in wargaming that there are not too many kids playing it anymore. Which many see as positive but the truth is that a hobby without a supply of fresh young entrants is doomed to wither and die.

But lets examine the claim "Wargaming industry is growing whilst GW declines". To see if it has chance of being true, we need to find out how large wargaming industry is overall. Everyone agrees that GW is by far the largest player on the field, but how big share it holds? Estimates seem to be ranging from 20 to 90% market share. All fiction based miniature wargames companies are tiny compared to GW. Fantasy Flight Games is seen as a big player in board game industry, and it's revenue in 2011 was around one-seventh of GW. They may have grown from that somewhat, but even then their miniatures sales must be tiny fraction of GW. I haven't seen any hard number of Privateer Press' annual revenue, but outside estimates seem to place it between 1 and 5 million USD. Other companies appear to be much smaller, probably ranging from 0.1 to 1 million USD in annual revenue. I've read that Rackham was doing well over $10 million revenues at their peak, and they were considered pretty big at their peak, but they're gone now. It seems obvious that GW even today is probably 5 to 10 times bigger than all its direct competitors combined.

But of course there are also historical wargames. It is much more fragmented market which I don't really know lot about. Compared to GW, even larger companies of that segment like Battlefront seem nevertheless seems pretty small fish. OTOH there are lots of companies so when put together, their sales are probably quite large even compared to GW. Anyway, the point of this thought exercise is to demonstrate that it seems extremely improbable that entire wargaming industry is growing at strong rate whilst GW declines, because that would require absolutely stupendous annual growth from other companies. If your revenue is $1 million, then mere $100,000 increase means nice 10% growth, however compared to entire industry which is dominated by GW, it doesn't make much of an impression. You'd need something like 50 to 100% growth rate from non-GW companies to put entire industry to 10% growth if GW declines. I think that most people agree that whilst many companies indeed seem to be growing, it's not anywhere close to that dramatic. Even PP, which icv2 reported as outselling WHFB already 3-4 years ago (in retrospect, seems bit suspect), has clearly not grown at such exponential pace.

But maybe what was meant that non-GW companies have grown annual 8 to 10%? That seems somewhat more plausible, and it's actually well believable over single year. All it takes is one or two successful titles to gain big sales. However, even then it doesn't seem all that likely that such growth is maintained year after year. Over 4 years it would mean around 50% growth. Honestly: has it really appeared that there has been quite so big growth in non-GW games? Lets not forget that many of those titles were available even back then, and there were some which have since gone under.

I don't think it's fair to parse Miniature games from Tabletop games as a whole when talking about the industry. There's too much hybridization going on right now do. Is Zombicide a miniatures game or a board game? Can you really call X-Wing a true miniatures game? Fact is, Tabletop Gaming took in 60 Million through Kick Starter last year, and ICv2 claims that when these games hit general release they sell roughly proportional to the Kickstarter's funding levels.

So maybe the overall growth rate of table top's ins't dramatic, but I don't think that GW's decline means people are abandoning gaming. It probably just means they are taking advantage of a unprecedented number of choices.

Feel free to call me out talking rubbish. As I pretty much am.

One thing I've been noticing in the past couple of years is the concept of 'gamer dads.'

Thanks to GW making tabletop wargaming (relatively) mainstream over the past 35 years, recently I've been seeing more and more people talking about wanting to do tabletop gaming with their kids and despite GW being the one for them when they were young, it's just not feasible anymore, either due to price, or the lack of the aforementioned entry level games.

X Wing has done particularly well out of this gamer dad concept, I imagine.

 CaulynDarr wrote:
Can you really call X-Wing a true miniatures game?

Doesn't really matter what you call it, but in war gaming terms, X Wing is currently getting my money. GW is not.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
GW used to sell The HHHobby. You could read about The HHHobby in a White Dwarf you bought at an ordinary newsagent, or learn about it from friends' older cousins and so on (i.e. veterans). You could go to shows and see it.

If you went to the GW shop it was full of happy people having fun playing The HHHobby. They would invite you to play and show you how it all worked. if you bought a model they helped you to paint it.

They invited you back for the regular games evenings and competitions that were part of The HHHobby. They told you about the fantastic world wide campaigns, and the cool new models coming out next month to make The HHHobby even more fantastic.

You could actually buy just about everything needed for The HHHobby right there in the shop. And you could see there was an enthusiastic community around The HHhobby.

For days when you didn't want a full on tabletop game, you could buy smaller complete in a box games that were still embedded in the background of The HHHobby. And there were intermediate games that were sort of collectable and had cool special miniatures.

Nowadays it seems as if The HHHobby consists of handing over your credit card number and waiting for the kits to be delivered.

And this time period was where they saw their biggest growth, at least in my area. WHen the stores in the Atlanta Market closed the FLGS tried to run with it and did for a few years but pricing and GW's collection policy put most out of busisness (of note not all were the most business savy ). THis has pretty much killed the groups in the area and I have seen that around the nation.

What does HHHobby mean?

Joyboozer wrote:
What does HHHobby mean?

It all started here...





And has been subverted to mean the GW Hobby, or the False Hobby as it is otherwise known.

DEATH TO THE FALSE HOBBY.

Joyboozer wrote:
What does HHHobby mean?

GW don't consider themselves part of the hobby, they think they ARE the hobby (and, according to one of the senior staff, who was under oath at the time, our favorite part of the hobby is buying stuff from GW).

There is a distinction between the hobby (miniature wargaming) and The Hobby (GW). Calling it the Hhhhobby or whatever is just a way of making fun of that.

While we're on this subject I'd like to submit to you all that this attitude is exactly whats wrong with GW at the moment.
No matter how big you are no one is a market onto themselves, ignoreing your competition and just trying to keep your customers from finding out about them can not possibly be healthy for a business.

Is it just me, or is that a young kirby smashing the computer

Backfire wrote:

...snip...

But maybe what was meant that non-GW companies have grown annual 8 to 10%? That seems somewhat more plausible, and it's actually well believable over single year. All it takes is one or two successful titles to gain big sales. However, even then it doesn't seem all that likely that such growth is maintained year after year. Over 4 years it would mean around 50% growth. Honestly: has it really appeared that there has been quite so big growth in non-GW games? Lets not forget that many of those titles were available even back then, and there were some which have since gone under.

Yes, the growth has been that big. In the industry, miniature wargames fall into one of two-classifications - collectible or non-collectible (pre-painted or unpainted doesn't matter). You are looking at GWs game structure and comparing it to similar companies rather than looking at it in terms of consumer dollars spent on collectible miniature games. Collectible miniature games can be those like 40k or those like Deadzone, Dreadball, et al. The collectible miniature board game industry is growing like gangbusters right now and accounts for the majority of that 8% CAGR. But tabletop wargaming is still growing, albeit at a slower pace.

The point is, where are gamers spending their dollars. Whether it is on a traditional tabletop wargame, like Warhammer 40k, or a collectible miniatures game, such as X-Wing or DeadZone, is of no consequence. The dollars are being spent and going somewhere. Unfortunately, GW is not a benefactor in this. While they have made so bad decisions in regards to the internet and channel, the decision to move out of specialist games at a time when this is the fastest growing part of the sector, is probably hurting them more than anything else.

Net effect, is in 2009 x$ were spent on collectible miniature games. In 2013, y$ we spent. 2013 estimates place total expenditures around $400m-$450m. So to your earlier point, GW would be around 45% market share. Which is large. However, their market share is declining in typical fashion as their corporate arrogance and hubris come to rest (Like Kodak did with the advent of the digital camera while they wanted to protect their film margins, or Apple did in the in between Jobs years, or Wang Computer did with the rise of the tiny WordPerfect Corporation - in which a $500m dollar company (WordPerfect) forced a $51 billion dollar company (Wang) out of existence).

And just one small point, PP is probably sitting at the $20m-$40m range based on three observations. The overall sales of WHFB and that PP has surpassed them (you really believe GW would even keep WHFB around if it only did $1m-$5m in sales?), the observed penetration in the market (# of stores stocking, games being played at FLGS and conventions, etc.), and that Rackham was known to be about $10m and Confrontation had no where near the presence that Warmachine does.

I wonder if GW's stock price decline is somehow related to the implosion of emerging markets which is causing world stock and bond markets to be thrust into turmoil...

Nah.. got to be the one man stores

dereksatkinson wrote:
I wonder if GW's stock price decline is somehow related to the implosion of emerging markets which is causing world stock and bond markets to be thrust into turmoil...

Nah.. got to be the one man stores

You're obviously correct, the rising stock price that GW had in the previous years had, after all, been a direct consequence of the increase in demand that China had placed in the worlds reserves of rare earth elements.

It also in no way exactly correlated with the announcement of some very disappointing interim financial results.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Google showing a volume of almost 1.3m today.

That's a glitch, surely?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Nope, no glitch, someone or something is apparently hoovering GW shares today.

 azreal13 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Nope, no glitch, someone or something is apparently hoovering GW shares today.

Someone sold a half million shares today at 4:00 pm which drove the price down to 520 and then at 4:20 someone bought 1.2 million shares driving it up to 523, whereupon it dropped back to 520.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GAW.L#symbol=gaw.l;range=1d;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

timd wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Nope, no glitch, someone or something is apparently hoovering GW shares today.

Someone sold a half million shares today at 4:00 pm which drove the price down to 520 and then at 4:20 someone bought 1.2 million shares driving it up to 523, whereupon it dropped back to 520.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GAW.L#symbol=gaw.l;range=1d;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

Well now, isn't that interesting.

Depends how many shares there should be in total?

I think I calculated it as ~30m have been issued, but was a while back in the old thread, and I might be misremembering.

Just for the record: German retailers were informed that GW Germany HQ will be closed "in spring". It is official now.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Depends how many shares there should be in total?

31.85m shares.
http://investor.games-workshop.com/shareholder-statistics/
(Nomad holding 3,131,194 , Investec holding 3,087,765 , Ruffer holding 2,492,260 , and Tom Kirby holding 2,131,394 shares. So todays trades are substantial. There was a suspicious spike yesterday as well, but I haven't checked the volume.

 azreal13 wrote:
I think I calculated it as ~30m have been issued, but was a while back in the old thread, and I might be misremembering.

The shares outstanding is listed at 31.67 million. So that's roughly 3% of the shares.

Edit: I'll just leave this stuff to Kroot.

 Kroothawk wrote:
Just for the record: German retailers were informed that GW Germany HQ will be closed "in spring". It is official now.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Depends how many shares there should be in total?

31.85m shares.
http://investor.games-workshop.com/shareholder-statistics/
(Nomad holding 3,131,194 , Investec holding 3,087,765 , Ruffer holding 2,492,260 , and Tom Kirby holding 2,131,394 shares. So todays trades are substantial. There was a suspicious spike yesterday as well, but I haven't checked the volume.

The volume has been sub 100k for a week or more, I'd been keeping a casual eye on it, hence picking up on today's shenanigans.

 azreal13 wrote:

Fist of Fun....that brings me back to my days as a callow youth.