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to make them more "consistent" with everything else. Can't confuse little timmy now can we

and make it yourself because that level of work is worth the extra, nothing is free, and clearly wouldnt be getting sold to a little timmy who just wants more marines.

wasn't a little timmy asking mummy to buy me the $300 boxed set and $100 of modelling/painting tools.

you are going to make little timmy cry at the local GW because this tank is specifically tailored to roflstomp his ultramarines

little timmy doesnt really care after all, he's just happy that he found space vampires in power armour and the sales guy told him about this awesome game he gets to play

better now to appeal to the “non-serious” gamers. This way little Timmy can win plenty too, especially if he has cash!

Space Marines are the "Little Timmy" army.

These quotes mention some person/thing called "Little Timmy".
Why are they/he so hated? I know some great child gamers, but this forum seems to have nothing but scorn for "Little Timmy"s.

The data I have gathered suggests the following:
-"Little Timmy" always plays Space Marines (Usually blue)
-"Little Timmy" always asks his "mum" for money, and makes his parents buy things for him.
-"Little Timmy" whines if he loses, and is easily confused.
-"Little Timmy" plays at GW stores.
-"Little Timmy" is very bad at the game, and uses suboptimal units.

Please help me identify this elusive creature, and talk about them among the community.

The perceived preferred GW customer: children with rich parents.

Spoiled, self-entitled, children with rich parents.

The sort who'll grab your lovingly painted FW masterpiece off the table with greasy fingers without even thinking about asking.

Can often be heard making pew pew noises in the corner while waiting to be collected by his mum after being dumped there for the afternoon.

Yeah, as Crimson and Azreal said.

They're disliked even more so because of the perception (perhaps rightfully so) that GW caters largely to this demographic and eschews the concerns of people who actually play the game (i.e. why bother making decent rules when everything sells just by how kewl it looks?)

EDIT: I should also mention that I see "Little Timmy" mentioned in most cases pertaining to GW. I think this has to do with what I said above: the perception of catering to that group.

The good thing about little timmies is many of them eventually turn out to be good gamers.

But man,waiting for the little guys to blossom hurts.

Always a fresh batch too.

Whats worse is, at an FLGS local tournament I got paird up with a Lil'timmy. I brought a brutal tau list and him a fluffy SM ist..
God I felt so bad.

"Little Timmy" is the catch-all phrase for the ultimate "casual" 40K player, the kid with the rich parents who gets them to drop tons of cash on 40K models for no real reason other then "they look cool".

The problem doesn't lie with casual gaming or buying models because they look cool (this is a hobby after all), but rather that Little Timmy's are the individuals who basically enable Games Workshop's business practices. Little Timmy doesn't care if the game is broken, or if a model's rules are over/underpowered, he's not really all that great at the game anyway, and plays for the coolness of it. The Little Timmy doesn't care if the models are overpriced or if GW is peddling products of lesser quality for increasingly higher prices- he isn't paying for the models and doesn't understand the value of a dollar anyway.

Basically, Little Timmy is Games Workshop's target audience, the people who mindlessly buy their miniatures on impulse with total apathy/ignorance of the actual state of the game and the market. The stereotype is centered around children because theoretically adults, who generally pay for the models out of their own pocket, will have a more complicated metric for buying something then just "how ossum does it look?" Though in reality, as this forum itself shows, that expectation is pretty silly.

The Little Timmy is an unfortunate aspect of the gaming community, but I try not to look down on that mindset because we've all been Little Timmy's of something. I've purchased every Halo game despite the franchise pretty much falling off after #2. I pestered my parents into buying me hundreds of pokemon cards back in the 90's, completely regardless of the game's balance or the businesses' integrity.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
"Little Timmy" is the catch-all phrase for the ultimate "casual" 40K player, the kid with the rich parents who gets them to drop tons of cash on 40K models for no real reason other then "they look cool".

The problem doesn't lie with casual gaming or buying models because they look cool (this is a hobby after all), but rather that Little Timmy's are the individuals who basically enable Games Workshop's business practices. Little Timmy doesn't care if the game is broken, or if a model's rules are over/underpowered, he's not really all that great at the game anyway, and plays for the coolness of it. The Little Timmy doesn't care if the models are overpriced or if GW is peddling products of lesser quality for increasingly higher prices- he isn't paying for the models and doesn't understand the value of a dollar anyway.

Basically, Little Timmy is Games Workshop's target audience, the people who mindlessly buy their miniatures on impulse with total apathy/ignorance of the actual state of the game and the market. The stereotype is centered around children because theoretically adults, who generally pay for the models out of their own pocket, will have a more complicated metric for buying something then just "how ossum does it look?" Though in reality, as this forum itself shows, that expectation is pretty silly.

The Little Timmy is an unfortunate aspect of the gaming community, but I try not to look down on that mindset because we've all been Little Timmy's of something. I've purchased every Halo game despite the franchise pretty much falling off after #2. I pestered my parents into buying me hundreds of pokemon cards back in the 90's, completely regardless of the game's balance or the businesses' integrity.

Respectfully, I agree and I disagree, in part.

I disagree that "little Timmys" are GW's target audience. Warhammer is a hobby, like any other, that requires disposable income. The people who spend the most on the game and have the biggest collections are adult players who have their own discretionary income. The adult players are the ones who will readily snap up limited edition codexes and the big $100 centerpiece unit models with their own credit cards. Adult players will buy the GW terrain pieces, campaign books, and secondary army supplements. The kids generally just want a tactical squad and a tank in order to play with us.

I agree that "little Timmys" should not be looked down upon. We should strive to help new players learn the game, get excited about the game, and grow with the game.

We were all "Little Timmy" at one point.

We all had models that we bought, cut, posed, glued, painted, and played because they were cool looking. Of course we did. That's how every single person gets into this hobby.

We painted those models badly. Of course we did. That's how every single person gets into this hobby.

We all got crushed in games by older players. Of course we did. That's how every single person gets into this hobby.

To think that you're "Randy Magnum" and that the new kids aren't worth your thought or time is downright silly. Be kind, be patient, educate, and teach a new generation of players to love the game that you love. That's how the game keeps surviving. If you complain that the young kids at your store are bad and disrespectful players, it's because you haven't taken the time to work with them and make them better.

Whether you like it or not, the "Little Timmys" look up to you.

Teach them sportsmanship by being a sportsman yourself. Teach them courtesy by being courteous yourself. Teach them respect by being respectful yourself.

If you look in the mirror long enough, you will see little Timmy.

BlaxicanX, you make me to be "little Timmy" simply because I play Dark Angels. Because I realy did chose them on the basis of cool-looking models, lol. Same could be said for every not-top-tier-army player like Adepta Sororitas, Tyranids and Dark Eldars to some extend.

I agree with much of what's been said so far really. BlaxicanX made some great points, as did G.Whitenbeard. Everyone, at some stage in their lives has been a 'Timmy' about something. For me, yes, it was GW stuff. I remember going in to my old local store (Peterborough) and blagging my Mum to buy me a unit of Death Company and 2 Rhinos. OK, it was a lot cheaper back then (the early 90's) but still, I was that preferred target audience that GW has come to love. Back then, my parents were making some good money and were willing to drop it on stuff that I really knew nothing about other than they looked cool...

Little Timmy's are actually children, while the gamers that resent them so much are just socially inept man-children. I think the older players are just jealous.

I don't think that a proper formulation of "Little Timmy" should be condemnatory of him. The 'proper' usage of the term, IMHO, isn't to call out poorly behaved children with low impulse control.

Little Timmy is simply a young consumer who likes and selects his models on the basis of appearance, rather than cost, in-game utility, or in-game 'legality'. There's nought wrong with him at all. He doesn't pay for his own models, so pricing is only relevant in how it affects his parent's willingness to purchase models. He has a limited understanding (or even no understanding) of the TT game, but this is often due to youth and inexperience, or disinterest, rather than any failings on his part.

The problem with Little Timmy is when a game company decides to make decisions based on Little Timmy's criteria for models, instead of good, sensible values.

While the aesthetic appeal of models is not to be discounted, there is no reason why a good tabletop game cannot have balanced, well-constructed rules that do a good job of capturing how a model is 'supposed to play' as well. GW seems to be continually making the mistake of not just designing models that will make Little Timmy go 'Wow', but constructing an entire game which supports Little Timmy's playstyle of "line everything up and make pew-pew noises". Just because Little Timmy (and his parents) would like to have a game where he can take his spiky marines and his Big Robot and fight the space aliens and the space elves doesn't mean that is a good idea.

Little Timmy would still find Space Marines to be cool looking and desirable even if they were used in a well-designed, well-balanced ruleset. He'd still want to buy the cool looking models, but GW could attract and retain OTHER demographics if they would consider Little Timmy a subset of their demographic, rather than the majority of the target audience.

Strangely, however, GW seems to cater to Little Timmy in a lot of ways, but is also adamant in rejecting his needs in others. You can have your Space Marines summon daemons, because daemons are cool and you want to buy them. However, you cannot have two Lascannons in your marine squad, or 11 marines in the squad, or nine, or two marines with power weapons. The first is cinematic narrative forgings, and the second is, of course, wildly illogical wishlisting.

 G. Whitenbeard wrote:


Respectfully, I agree and I disagree, in part.

I disagree that "little Timmys" are GW's target audience.

While working as a staffer, 'Little Timmy' was used as a moniker for the customer for sales technique work at GW HQ, by some quite senior staff. Although as you say the move towards collectibles and ltd editions has perhaps changed that a bit over recent years, in my mind the company products are aimed much, much more at children than they were when I myself first got into the hobby. Even down to the stores themselves and the staff, it's no longer a couple of pale-faced guys skulking in the rear of the store with some death metal on the music system, while some frightened-looking mum steps tentatively into the store wondering what the hell her kid is into

I don't think anyone really 'hates' Little Timmy (after all, most of us were one once!) but more the changes within GW that have made him the focus of the company; the sharp acquisition of the young, uncomprehending customer who has to dump one xmas and one birthday money on their products, and then is expected to disappear. It's why the stores are now entirely driven towards intro games, at the expense of gaming leagues and campaigns, how a new release of the 40k rulebook can come out within 3 years, why WD turned into a sales pamphlet, and why there is a common conception of a lot of the more recent releases appearing more 'toy' like, away from the gritty, more adult-focused releases of the past (ironically, I think a lot of us were attracted to GW at a young age, because it looked more adult and less toy-like!)

Of course the real question is that whether GW's current policy in this regard is helping to foster the wargaming industry, or damaging it. If kids drop out after a few years, do they drop it altogether, or look elsewhere for a different experience/a cheaper game?

i've been buying mini based soley on how cool they look for 30 years...
i never had the least interest in playing, or the rules...
i love the art, fluff, and cool models...
Space Marines have been my favorite minis since the first Rogue Trader releases...
there is not a single range of figures, produced by any company on the market, that i like more than Marines...

i must be a 40 year old "Little Timmy"...
next time i see my mom, i'm going to ask her to buy me a box of BA Tacticals and Termies...
hahahahahahaha

cheers
jah

It comes from magic the gathering and their design approach, which broke their customers down into timmy, johnny and spike. http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr11b The idea being that they would try to create a game that would appeal to all 3 'types' of player. Whereas gw seems to only be interested in 'timmy'.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
"Little Timmy" is the catch-all phrase for the ultimate "casual" 40K player, the kid with the rich parents who gets them to drop tons of cash on 40K models for no real reason other then "they look cool".

The problem doesn't lie with casual gaming or buying models because they look cool (this is a hobby after all), but rather that Little Timmy's are the individuals who basically enable Games Workshop's business practices. Little Timmy doesn't care if the game is broken, or if a model's rules are over/underpowered, he's not really all that great at the game anyway, and plays for the coolness of it. The Little Timmy doesn't care if the models are overpriced or if GW is peddling products of lesser quality for increasingly higher prices- he isn't paying for the models and doesn't understand the value of a dollar anyway.

Basically, Little Timmy is Games Workshop's target audience, the people who mindlessly buy their miniatures on impulse with total apathy/ignorance of the actual state of the game and the market. The stereotype is centered around children because theoretically adults, who generally pay for the models out of their own pocket, will have a more complicated metric for buying something then just "how ossum does it look?" Though in reality, as this forum itself shows, that expectation is pretty silly.

The Little Timmy is an unfortunate aspect of the gaming community, but I try not to look down on that mindset because we've all been Little Timmy's of something. I've purchased every Halo game despite the franchise pretty much falling off after #2. I pestered my parents into buying me hundreds of pokemon cards back in the 90's, completely regardless of the game's balance or the businesses' integrity.

I think that is about the core of the thing. People collect models because they like it and it's okay. Little kids do stupid things (pick up models etc) but they're just kids. Noobs don't play sensible lists but they're new to the game. That's not the point.

Little Timmy sees cool models, make his parents drop tons of cash on the game (thereby supporting GWs policies) and probably drops the game after a couple of months or so because painting models is such a hassle. Kids that stay after that are just kids. They start to consider their choices, learn about other systems, whatever. Little Timmy is only briefly interested in the hobby. The high fluctuation of Timmies however keeps GW sales running. It also keeps ebay in supply with cheap, basecoated, half-assembled models, for what it's worth.

Well, I know such little Timmies.
This Species is growing well at GW locations.

All the "little Timmys" I have met, were way to old to be called little.

Ahh, now im remembering my Timmy years

 G. Whitenbeard wrote:


Respectfully, I agree and I disagree, in part.

I disagree that "little Timmys" are GW's target audience. Warhammer is a hobby, like any other, that requires disposable income. The people who spend the most on the game and have the biggest collections are adult players who have their own discretionary income. The adult players are the ones who will readily snap up limited edition codexes and the big $100 centerpiece unit models with their own credit cards. Adult players will buy the GW terrain pieces, campaign books, and secondary army supplements. The kids generally just want a tactical squad and a tank in order to play with us.

I am also going to have to disagree with you... Yet again... adults in fandoms who share marketspace with children overestimate their worth and market impact due to their massive discretionary income. For every adult who collects 20k points of armies there are dozens if not more casual customers who more than out pace the purchasing power of the hardcore hobbyist with his discretionary income. EVERY fandom that has adults sharing it with children falls in this pit and then uses it to bludgeon companies over the head on why they should be considered the core demo and catered to. GOOD companies get statistics and put those entitled people in the fandom in their place and show them how little value an adult spending 300$ a month really holds to their business.

Hasbro does it wonderfully every year... For every adult collector who can drop cash and buy an entire wave of figures, there are easily 500 kids getting taken to tousRus by grandma to buy a 20$ toy. Never overestimate that adults who go into crushing CC debt and buy tons of things to feed their addiction are the majority market or are keeping all these miniature companies alive.

Huh. I was never a "little Timmy". I never begged my parents for models (my dad is well off he could have bought me a full army when I was 16 in one shot). I always did it myself, other than a couple Christmas presents from all over the family tree, broken up over years: one blood crusher, Archaon, flagellant box, hand gunner box, ice queen of Kislev. That's it. From 5 different family members over a few years. Definitely not Timmy material. Most I counted in that direction was "oh, cool, what army is that?!" At my first tournament. Of course, I made the mistake of asking the TFG and he screamed that I had the audacity to ask what army he was playing.

The term winds me up no end.

It's as if those throwing the term around were never young or new to the hobby, and never annoying! They just woke up one day in your 20s/30s with a painted army and encyclopedic knowledge of the last 6 editions of GW rules.

And it's not a kids fault if their parents have some cash. Stinks like sour grapes to me.

Though I recall we had The Nurgling in our local GW when I was younger. Painted his stuff in enamel, and pronounced Chaos as Chows.

edited so that it didn't seem like I was directly having a pop at any posters here!

By GW's own admission their target demographic is basically rich white kids. The exact wording was something like "affluent, educated and well-behaved males ages 14-22"

The problem is that the younger kids tend to be terrible players, constantly try to break the rules (either intentionally or because they don't understand them), have doting parents who will defend them no matter what (not only a wargaming thing) and who will buy anything they want to keep them occupied.

The term is used derisively because as was stated it appears that GW caters to this demographic as its core customers, and pisses on everything else including making a good game because they can basically con rich parents into buying overpriced plastics for their brats and then drop them off at the GW store for a few hours.

 monders wrote:
The term winds me up no end.

It's as if those throwing the term around were never young or new to the hobby, and never annoying! They just woke up one day in your 20s/30s with a painted army and encyclopedic knowledge of the last 6 editions of GW rules.

And it's not a kids fault if their parents have some cash. Stinks like sour grapes to me.

Though I recall we had The Nurgling in our local GW when I was younger. Painted his stuff in enamel, and pronounced Chaos as Chows.

edited so that it didn't seem like I was directly having a pop at any posters here!

Well, my interest started while I was in single digits. Living in a rural area, with absolutely no LGS of any flavour for around 60 miles except a couple of shelves and some hooks of blisters at the local static model/railway shop, my interest was largely theoretical (excepting reading the books and buying the odd blister/receiving the odd gift) until I met someone who played (and more importantly, had the rules!) in early 2nd.

We then proceeded to play at each other's houses for the next few years, and while by this time there was a FLGS (and a good one) I only ever played a handful of games, and these were against people of a similar age or older.

So I'm confident that I'm clear of timmyitus, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. That said, I've encountered more mature, sensible young lads than I have obnoxious stereotypes (which is not to say never) so I'm fairly ambivalent towards the whole Timmy thing anyway.

The most obnoxious gamers I've ever encountered were in fact young adults playing Yu Gi Oh, on what appeared to be industrial doses of caffeine.

Imaginary young middle class target demographic of GW who - instead of being encouraged to continue wargaming - must be shunned and ridiculed because plastic space soldiers are serious business for serious MEN.

Dang, I thought "little Timmy" just meant younger players that were really new to the game.
I had no idea it had so much sub-text.

 Las wrote:
Imaginary young middle class target demographic of GW who - instead of being encouraged to continue wargaming - must be shunned and ridiculed because plastic space soldiers are serious business for serious MEN.

Well, while I don't necessarily think wargaming is serious business, those price tags on the rule books would make me think they were at *least* high quality products- in terms of rules that is. Don't get me wrong, the books themselves are nice, but $50 is a massive price tag, especially when you compare them to the much cheaper Dark Heresy books, which are just as nice and half the cost.

EDIT: and just to be clear from my previous post, I don't have an issue with Little Timmy's. It can be quite rewarding teaching younger players the game.

Are we implying that we all have to field armies that exploit the horribly broken/imbalanced rules, instead of doing something, y'know, fun?

Gragga Da Krumpa wrote:
Are we implying that we all have to field armies that exploit the horribly broken/imbalanced rules, instead of doing something, y'know, fun?

Which rules are broken? I hear this but have yet to find any...