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I'd not searched for 'games workshop' on google trends - an index of how much people are searching for given terms. The graph is rather aligned with perceptions of everything else. This is a pretty good measure of GW's popularity because it does not cross over into video game territory and would be largely made up of people already invested in the brand going to their website to purchase stuff:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=games%20workshop&cmpt=q

It's more a measure of their web traffic than any business-related data, but still a very consistent slide down.

That's really interesting, I hadn't ever thought of checking that out. Thanks lego

Genius, lego! That really is an interesting and stark tend.

And for privateer press.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press

What was released in June 2011? All I can find is that they were leading up to Domination, what else was there?

You don't need to do regression analysis on that GW graph to see the general trend.

It supports my view on their financials, which is that the significant price increases in the past few years have not led to any increase in revenue -- i.e. they are simply selling less stuff to fewer customers at higher prices.

Of course what the graph cannot measure is the quality of internet chit-chat about the company. I think we would all agree that the mood on DakkaDakka has become increasingly negative about GW over the past five years.

INFINITY is a little harder to search for especially since Disney released their 'Skylanders' killer...

Any idea on how to effectively use that trend search to get at Infinity the Game by Corvus Belli?

I tried searching for Yu Jing on the grounds it is pretty specific to Infinity.

The trend surprisingly is downwards, however perhaps this reflects the introduction of more factions during the period, diluting the importance of Yu Jing which I think was one of five armies at the beginning and two or three new armies have been added.

Infinity is too tough to do as it is too generic.

Here's GW and PP on the same graph (with dakka's most common search term as well):
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20games%20workshop%2C%20dakka%20dakka&cmpt=q

so you can see the relative volumes.

PP is about 8% market share and GW is about 90% still (as of last year), so the graph very roughly tallies with the expected ratio.

I'm not hugely familiar with the implications of all this, but what could one infer from the fact that the top town in the top location for interest is Nottingham?

Interesting stuff, though not too surprising. It's fairly obvious in a lot of ways that GW are losing their stranglehold on the market. I'd be interested to see GW vs Mantic.

Interesting thread. I wonder if you would get a better result for PP if you searched for 'Warmachine', although guess there is some comic-book crossover there?

Mantic looks pretty flat-line compared to GW, just because of the sheer volume differential, but if you look at Mantic on their own they are definitely on the upward.

Interesting to note that 2nd most popular country for Mantic searches is Australia - wonder if that's a direct response to GW's pricing strategy there, or simply because Azazelx hasn't added a favourite to his toolbar?

Jeez. Its MOD city in here. 5 different MODs and an ADMIN.


Dare someone to break a rule...



Interesting stuff though. Thanks Lego.

Thanks Lego!

I think it is also important to include "Warhammer" in there too, as I expect GW is more associated with this brand than "Games Workshop."

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20games%20workshop%2C%20dakka%20dakka%2C%20warhammer&cmpt=q

And Warhammer by itself. The trend is broadly similar.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=warhammer&cmpt=q

Now, for fun, I did "Imperial Guard" and "Astra Militarum," which in my opinion is a much bigger LOL.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=imperial%20guard%2C%20astra%20militarum&cmpt=q

Now here's an interesting one.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20mantic%2C%20Warmachine%2C%20deadzone&cmpt=q

'warhammer' would typically include people who used to like it and want to see what has changed (which also makes up a large chunk of dakka's searches), as well as all of the spinoff videogames and books, whereas 'games workshop' would cover a larger proportion of 'active' gamers and deal more exclusively with the tabletop side of things.

It may be interesting to note that, over the past few years, there have been less and less reasons to actually go to the GW website, unless you just want to purchase something from them. No more Specialist Games, no more hobby articles, no more gaming articles, and even the FAQs are on a different website now.

 motyak wrote:
What was released in June 2011? All I can find is that they were leading up to Domination, what else was there?

This was also the approximate time of GW's "Summer of terror" IIRC. PP conveniently added 10th anniversary bundles to their store at around the same time.

It is worth understanding that Google Trends is calculated roughly speaking as an average against all search terms, therefore if over 10 years the amount of searching doubles, the amount of searching for Games Workshop could half in comparison while the actual number of searches for Games Workshop stayed at the same level.

Of course we might expect that the more people there are on the internet, the more people would be searching for Games Workshop.

Another possible explanation is that people have moved away from searching for Games Workshop and search for GW instead.

Unfortunately, GW is a relatively common term, so lots of non-Games Workshop items muddy the result.

The "Space Marine" trend line is also interesting.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Space%20Marine&cmpt=q

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Now here's an interesting one.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20mantic%2C%20Warmachine%2C%20deadzone&cmpt=q

As much as I wish the DZ line were accurate, I don't think it is. The upwards trend for Deadzone starts in October 2012, but I don't think it was even announced then. Here is the first official "announcement" (though it is an April Fools joke) that I can find which is 2013. IIRC the first unoffical confirmation was at the Clash of Kings tournament in Feb 2013.

I could've sworn there was a video game called Deadzone released in 2012, which at least the earlier spike would account for, but can't remember what it's called. However, as interest in video games over time dies down, and it wasn't famous enough for me to remember, I suspect that a large portion, if not the majority, of the current trend is Mantics deadzone.

You also have the Stephen King novel screwing with that.

This is quite fun...

Skaven are generally more searched for than Necrons (except for November 2011 when the Codex Necrons was released). Who knew?

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=skaven%2C%20necrons&cmpt=q

By and large though, whatever GW specific term you type in, it's on a downward trajectory.

 Laughing Man wrote:
You also have the Stephen King novel screwing with that.

And the TV series up to about 2007.

Well, interesting statistics. Going down on a linear base.

Most of the other companies are hard to judge as they are private entities relatively closely held to their small sphere of influence. Games Workshop can appear in news articles discussing New Line Cinema deals, video game releases, and financial reports because they are publicly traded. This may be inflating their overall presence in comparison to other war games, but the downward trend may be indicative of something foul.

I really want that financial report.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20%2Fm%2F043h9d%2C%20%2Fm%2F0mbr2&cmpt=q

That's also pretty interesting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also interesting.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20mantic%2C%20Warmachine%2C%20deadzone%2C%20%2Fm%2F012ywp&cmpt=q

Still massive popularity.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Space%20Marine%2C%20%2Fm%2F0mbr2%2C%20%2Fm%2F043h9d&cmpt=q

I think the spike for Space Marine in Sep 2011 was because of the video game, right?

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20%2Fm%2F043h9d%2C%20%2Fm%2F0mbr2&cmpt=q

That's also pretty interesting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also interesting.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20mantic%2C%20Warmachine%2C%20deadzone%2C%20%2Fm%2F012ywp&cmpt=q

Still massive popularity.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=Space%20Marine%2C%20%2Fm%2F0mbr2%2C%20%2Fm%2F043h9d&cmpt=q

I think the spike for Space Marine in Sep 2011 was because of the video game, right?

Space Marine was released in September 2011, so yes.

Don't forget that you can change the scale of the graph (top of the page) to better see the trend without the spikes:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=privateer%20press%2C%20mantic%2C%20Warmachine%2C%20deadzone%2C%20%2Fm%2F012ywp&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q

 TheKbob wrote:

I really want that financial report.

9 days to go

What will the next financial report tell us?

If the company is in decline or if the company has just hit a low point? I dont keep up with this stuff, just wanna know what answers this report may hold.

The January report had a definite hit to their bottom line. So the mid-year report will go some way towards establishing whether that was (as Mr Kirby claimed) a one-time aberration from the restructuring of their stores, or the start of a downward slide.