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 Insectum7 wrote:

The thing is, there's still gaming products aimed at boys though, and some aimed at girls, and some for everybody.

Right. And according to GW, Warhammer belongs to the last category.

On the RPG thing? When I first started playing Vampire the Masquerade around 2000, the pronouns it used in the rule book were female.

So given the game predates my involvement? That’s at least a quarter century at least some of the more popular RPG settings have been welcoming of women.

 techsoldaten wrote:
Disney lost money on Star Wars by realigning the story to a new demographic.

No they just made some bad films and refused to do anything with the IP that wasn't to do with the Skywalkers.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.

And now you know why anyone who shouts, "But Sisters!" is wrong.

I mean, Ken is a massive afterthought, whilest sisters were one of the oldest incorporated factions, just GW criminaly disregarded them so it's not the gotcha you think it is.

Ken was released in 61' just two years after Barbie. Proportionally, he's been a part of the franchise for longer than sisters models have been a part of 40k.

 Crimson wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

The thing is, there's still gaming products aimed at boys though, and some aimed at girls, and some for everybody.

Right. And according to GW, Warhammer belongs to the last category.

I'm sure GW would love to simply check the inclusion checkbox and double the number of people who want to engage with 40k. I think in practice it's a little more complicated then that.

Does it drive away existing players? Do enough new players engage? Do the new players stick around and spend enough to make up for any losses? Does it damage perception of IP stability that manifests in lower continued engagement over time even by players who stick with the product?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

PenitentJake wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
That's incredibly disingenous, you know for a fact that Ken is not the main focus in Barbie and has far less toys and options/outfits, he's basically an accessory to the main line.

And now you know why anyone who shouts, "But Sisters!" is wrong.

I mean, Ken is a massive afterthought, whilest sisters were one of the oldest incorporated factions, just GW criminaly disregarded them so it's not the gotcha you think it is.

Ken was released in 61' just two years after Barbie. Proportionally, he's been a part of the franchise for longer than sisters models have been a part of 40k.

Yeah, but what's the ratio of Barbies to Ken dolls?

 Bosskelot wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
Disney lost money on Star Wars by realigning the story to a new demographic.

No they just made some bad films and refused to do anything with the IP that wasn't to do with the Skywalkers.

This is one of those things where people say something "Lost money" when what they mean is "It didn't make as much as we anticipated."

People can be forgiven for doing that, because economists do it all the time (which is one of the reasons I think the "science of economics" is the reason things are so messed up in 2024).

The movies cost 720 mil and made back 4.8 bil. The IP cost 4 bil, but Disney got WAY more out of the IP than the 3rd trilogy, which is the scope of what we're talking about.

As for Skywalkers, looks like Disney knew what they were doing; Solo was the lowest grossing movie. Why? No Skywalkers.

Worth mentioning that some chunk of SW TV is Skywalker free (and successful - Mandolorian and Fett in particular).

PenitentJake wrote:
Worth mentioning that some chunk of SW TV is Skywalker free (and successful - Mandolorian and Fett in particular).

And Andor, which is the best (though maybe not from a financial success point) addition to star wars since the original trilogy, was Skywalker-free. In fact, it went further than that and is completely Jedi and Sith free.

Insectum7 wrote:Does it drive away existing players? Do enough new players engage? Do the new players stick around and spend enough to make up for any losses? Does it damage perception of IP stability that manifests in lower continued engagement over time even by players who stick with the product?

As I highlighted earlier, since GW started diversifying their sculpts and skin tones on paint jobs, we’ve also seen an increase in their annual turnover and profit margin.

But as I also highlighted, I don’t think the conclusion there is as straight forward as “diversity = profit”. Because there’s far more moving parts going on.

We can also observe that over the same period (where they more than tripled their income since 2014/2015, so 8 years) they’ve offered up more than 40K and AoS. We’ve seen Necromunda return, WarCry and Underworlds hit the market, ever greater monetisation of the underlying IP via licensing, Heresy move to plastic and so on.

Yet we should also note that out of the gate? Underworlds and WarCry both offered noticably diverse sculpts. Men, wimmins, things and gribblies all.

We’ve also had their significant bump during the pandemic, because who knew an indoors creative activity would prove popular when nobody was going outside!

What I think we can infer here though? Is that at a time they’ve increased the diversity of sculpts and skintones on models? It doesn’t appear to have had a detrimental effect on their bottom line. Outside of the most baseless “but it they kept it a cis-het white Sosig fest they’d be making a billionty pounds a day!” nonsense drivel claims.

So I put it to you all that at absolute worst? The push toward greater diversity and representation in sculpts and paintjobs has been entirely neutral.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Right. And according to GW, Warhammer belongs to the last category.

I'm sure GW would love to simply check the inclusion checkbox and double the number of people who want to engage with 40k. I think in practice it's a little more complicated then that.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Or whether the tantrums about inclusion create a perception that the playerbase is full of some sort of bigoted cavemen, thus repelling potential customers.

This very succinctly sums up my views about the whole female custodes controversy.

It's gotten to the point where I'm more irritated by the reactions to perceived wokeness than I am to the actual wokeness.

I don't come to DakkaDakka often but I was curious to see what people had to say about recent developments and I'm pleased to see that, for the most part, there's a pretty civil and productive discussion here, so that's cool.

 Truth118 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Or whether the tantrums about inclusion create a perception that the playerbase is full of some sort of bigoted cavemen, thus repelling potential customers.

This very succinctly sums up my views about the whole female custodes controversy.

It's gotten to the point where I'm more irritated by the reactions to perceived wokeness than I am to the actual wokeness.

I don't come to DakkaDakka often but I was curious to see what people had to say about recent developments and I'm pleased to see that, for the most part, there's a pretty civil and productive discussion here, so that's cool.

On the last part, yeah barring a few... hiccups, I am thrilled that the discussion has gotten this far and has seen so much actual engagement and discussion.

And to everyone reading this you have no idea how nice it is as a mod to be able to say that. Love you people, keep it up!

Well now I just want to call someone a rude name.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well now I just want to call someone a rude name.

You can become a hiccup too if you wish, I would rather we keep up the positive atmosphere though.

From the N&B thread, it sounds like BrookM was having a different experience with the thread. Are they okay?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
From the N&B thread, it sounds like BrookM was having a different experience with the thread. Are they okay?

Frankly, no its been moderately awful the past week for all of us which is why we appreciate all the great posters that are making a true effort to have an honest and civil discussion. Even with all the trimming this thread has made 26 pages which is great! But yah things can get on top of us at times, we are human beings after all and not machines, but just the fact that you thought to ask means a lot.

I want to thank the mod team for the important work you're doing. It must not have been exactly the easiest week!

 vipoid wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

You cut out the rest of my post. Clearly, fantasy racism against fantasy races is part of the setting and an important part of the satire of real life racism. Similarly fantasy genocide of fantasy peoples can satirize real violence and real injustices without depicting the actual genocides of actual people.

Once again, you see this all the time in Sci Fi and fantasy. Gul Dukat works as a genocidal monster character because he is a Cardassian, a made up race who committed war crimes on a made up people. If you made a show with a charismatic antagonist based on a real Nazi who oversaw a real concentration camp, it wouldn’t work.

I'm scratching my head as to what you're arguing here.

You say that fantasy racism is okay and part of the setting, so long as it involves fictional races. However, the Imperium comprises thousands of worlds. Surely virtually all of them will involve fictional races/ethnicities? Not only that, but race/ethnicity seems to be largely defined by world.

Surely Cadians being racist towards Catachans or Vostroyans would amount to fictional racism?

Fantasy racism is a way to explore racism without actually literally targeting the reader with bigotry. There are no elegothans in reality to be racist to.


But, the ism against women seems to coast through without any fantastical element and it gets defended for 'atmosphere' or 'theme'. 40k doesn't have 4 different human sexes and uses the qunales as a representation for sexism by saying they can't be techpriests.

Unlike racism, there is no fantasy sexism. There is just the reader reading women being treated like gak, or being excluded entirely. And yet that gets defended in a way that real world racism generally wouldn't.

I find that really disheartening.

But other than Astartes? There’s seemingly no role or rank closed off to women within The Imperium. From the lowest menial to a High Lord of Terra, women have featured.

Women being dainty precious things to be protected doesn’t seem to be a tenet of the Ecclesiarchy as a whole. So whilst yes, Imperium is huge and some planets will be misogynistic? It’s not centralised or expected.

All non-Astartes armed forces have female members. Assassins, Inquisition, Navy, Guard, Knights, Ad-Mech, Custodes, Rogue Traders, Hive Gang Militia, probably others I can’t think of right now.

And even among the Astartes? Chapter Serfs and fleet crew (up to and including Ship Captains) all include women among their ranks.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
Disney lost money on Star Wars by realigning the story to a new demographic.

No they just made some bad films and refused to do anything with the IP that wasn't to do with the Skywalkers.

...

As for Skywalkers, looks like Disney knew what they were doing; Solo was the lowest grossing movie. Why? No Skywalkers.

I'd argue that Solo was low-grossing because it was just kind of a bad/boring movie.

Worth mentioning that some chunk of SW TV is Skywalker free (and successful - Mandolorian and Fett in particular).

This, I think, supports Bosskelot's point. It's fairly different from a lot of what we've seen with Star Wars, but it's also good. And it's successful.

There's probably something to be said for Ahsoka's inclusion in Clone Wars doing a lot to make the franchise more approachable and marketable to women/girls as well as giving us a great character.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But other than Astartes? There’s seemingly no role or rank closed off to women within The Imperium. From the lowest menial to a High Lord of Terra, women have featured.

Women being dainty precious things to be protected doesn’t seem to be a tenet of the Ecclesiarchy as a whole. So whilst yes, Imperium is huge and some planets will be misogynistic? It’s not centralised or expected.

All non-Astartes armed forces have female members. Assassins, Inquisition, Navy, Guard, Knights, Ad-Mech, Custodes, Rogue Traders, Hive Gang Militia, probably others I can’t think of right now.

And even among the Astartes? Chapter Serfs and fleet crew (up to and including Ship Captains) all include women among their ranks.

This argues FOR female inclusion in all things they currently don't exist in though, you do see that?

You can't say the imperium isn't sexist to justify when the imperium is sexist...


So, the imperium believes in having women everywhere, so obviously they'd have them in the custodes. Because there was never any 'genes only work on men' fluff in their background.


The women can't be space marines thing, is the only remaining barrier and it uses a silly but far more tangible reason than, we traditionally just picked men (which given your point, seems even more silly).


And, given the happiness with which GW invented primaris marines, it's clear that that barrier isn't as tangible as people want it to be.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

As for Skywalkers, looks like Disney knew what they were doing; Solo was the lowest grossing movie. Why? No Skywalkers.

I'd argue that Solo was low-grossing because it was just kind of a bad/boring movie.

I quite liked it, but I tend to rank movies by their fight choreography. People HATED Phantom Menace, but duel of the fates is probably the best lightsaber battle ever filmed, making the movie one of my faves.

The knife fighting and Teras Kasi moves at the end of Solo were straight dope for me.

I'm also still pretty in-touch with my twelve year old self, and I tend to let him watch Star Wars- because who wants to be adulting while you're watching a Star Wars movie?

I think a lot of people who are disillusioned with newer stuff need to remember who they were as children.

 Insectum7 wrote:
I'm sure GW would love to simply check the inclusion checkbox and double the number of people who want to engage with 40k. I think in practice it's a little more complicated then that.

It's really not.

Does it drive away existing players?

If this drives anyone away, then good riddance - they're the kind of toxic players we're better off without.

Does it damage perception of IP stability that manifests in lower continued engagement over time even by players who stick with the product?

We all know that the only things that really drive away long-time players are prices and the constant flux of the rules. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people ready to flip a table over this or any other retcon.

PenitentJake wrote:

I think a lot of people who are disillusioned with newer stuff need to remember who they were as children.

A Star Trek fan!

I don’t see what the big deal is…

all the comments about "but why can't we make the female-only factions include men" are living in a magical reality where real world gender politics do not exist

 Crimson wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

I think a lot of people who are disillusioned with newer stuff need to remember who they were as children.

A Star Trek fan!

As a choreographer, most Trek doesn't have enough fighting. And for all they make of Klingons being hand to hand monsters... I gotta say, if I choreographed Klingons, it would take at least five of any other species to take'm down, and not all five would ever live to tell the tale. I've always wanted a pair of Bat'leth because given a year to train with them, I'm willing to bet my partner and I could come up with better fight sequences than you've seen in any Trek- though to be fair, I haven't seen every episode of every franchise.

Having said that, I have loved Trek... And somewhat relevant to the topic, Janeway was my favourite Captain; Discovery is one of my faves because Michael Burnham (surprise, another woman) is a fist of rage. Even numbered Trek movies are pretty good, odd numbers less so.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Bosskelot wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
Disney lost money on Star Wars by realigning the story to a new demographic.

No they just made some bad films and refused to do anything with the IP that wasn't to do with the Skywalkers.

This is one of those things where people say something "Lost money" when what they mean is "It didn't make as much as we anticipated."

People can be forgiven for doing that, because economists do it all the time (which is one of the reasons I think the "science of economics" is the reason things are so messed up in 2024).

The movies cost 720 mil and made back 4.8 bil. The IP cost 4 bil, but Disney got WAY more out of the IP than the 3rd trilogy, which is the scope of what we're talking about.

The Disney Star Wars movies made $2.1 billion in profit at the box office. That's $2.9 billion less than they paid to acquire the IP.

Source: Forbes

The article references the following presentation that was part of the recent proxy bid for board seats:

Source: The Walt Disney Company

Feel free to talk about merchandise, derivative revenue streams, other Lucasfilm IP acquired during the deal, the growth of their streaming service, licensing revenue, etc. But Disney does not claim those as relevant sources of revenue when speaking to shareholders and investors.

As noted in the article, Disney continues to incur expenses related to the films and receive tax reimbursements from the UK government. It is possible they will someday receive $2.9 billion in tax reimbursements, or the cumulative profits of future releases will somehow get them to $4 billion. In this presentation, WDC makes the case that 10 year aggregate revenue streams between theatrical releases, home entertainment, consumer products, etc could someday lead to them making a profit. If they made a profit, they would have no use for mark to market accounting.

12 years in, the Walt Disney has not made enough money to pay for the Star Wars franchise it acquired.

 techsoldaten wrote:


The Disney Star Wars movies made $2.1 billion in profit at the box office. That's $2.9 billion less than they paid to acquire the IP.

Source: Forbes

The article references the following presentation that was part of the recent proxy bid for board seats:

Source: The Walt Disney Company

Feel free to talk about merchandise, derivative revenue streams, other Lucasfilm IP acquired during the deal, the growth of their streaming service, licensing revenue, etc. But Disney does not claim those as relevant sources of revenue when speaking to shareholders and investors.

As noted in the article, Disney continues to incur expenses related to the films and receive tax reimbursements from the UK government. It is possible they will someday receive $2.9 billion in tax reimbursements, or the cumulative profits of future releases will somehow get them to $4 billion. In this presentation, WDC makes the case that 10 year aggregate revenue streams between theatrical releases, home entertainment, consumer products, etc could someday lead to them making a profit. If they made a profit, they would have no use for mark to market accounting.

12 years in, the Walt Disney has not made enough money to pay for the Star Wars franchise it acquired.

Well it does sound like you've done more research- I didn't want to turn off the addblocker, so I couldn't read the Forbes article, but they should be reliable. I think Disney probably make as much streaming the stuff as they do from the box office though. A box office run is a few months. Streaming is forever- and sure, drop-off is real- most views will happen in that first year- those that missed it in the Theatre or want to watch it a second time.

The Disney report you dropped suggest that THEY think there's a 2.9% ROI on Star Wars, and 3.3% on Marvel, and I think that those two properties did more for their streaming service than anything else, which is likely why they report a 2.9% ROI.

Anyway, you do seem to know more about this stuff than I do- I liked the movies, personally (although I was really disappointed with the fight against the Royal Guards as a Kir Kanos fan), and I've never thought of the box office as a Star Wars movie's revenue stream. Even in the 70's and 80's they made more off merch than movie. Merch is down compared to the classics, but streaming has risen. I know a fair number who subbed for Mando and Fett. I did.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As I highlighted earlier, since GW started diversifying their sculpts and skin tones on paint jobs, we’ve also seen an increase in their annual turnover and profit margin.

But as I also highlighted, I don’t think the conclusion there is as straight forward as “diversity = profit”. Because there’s far more moving parts going on.

We can also observe that over the same period (where they more than tripled their income since 2014/2015, so 8 years) they’ve offered up more than 40K and AoS. We’ve seen Necromunda return, WarCry and Underworlds hit the market, ever greater monetisation of the underlying IP via licensing, Heresy move to plastic and so on.

Yet we should also note that out of the gate? Underworlds and WarCry both offered noticably diverse sculpts. Men, wimmins, things and gribblies all.

We’ve also had their significant bump during the pandemic, because who knew an indoors creative activity would prove popular when nobody was going outside!

What I think we can infer here though? Is that at a time they’ve increased the diversity of sculpts and skintones on models? It doesn’t appear to have had a detrimental effect on their bottom line. Outside of the most baseless “but it they kept it a cis-het white Sosig fest they’d be making a billionty pounds a day!” nonsense drivel claims.

So I put it to you all that at absolute worst? The push toward greater diversity and representation in sculpts and paintjobs has been entirely neutral.

Frankly, I don't think it has much of any impact either way.

While female Custodes are a soapbox opportunity for people to either praise GW for inclusivity or rail against 'woke' politics, I strongly doubt that having some of the male power fantasy beefcake murder warriors be female in this military-history-inspired tabletop army battle game is really going to be the thing that draws in more women as players. The identities of the models are the shallowest surface-level veneer on a hobby that is otherwise heavily male-coded. Wargaming, military simulation, the over-the-top violent machismo of the setting, the male-gaze character design like Sisters, the bro-code fraternity of the poster boy faction, these are all things designed to appeal to men. Expecting female models to attract women is like, to paraphrase an analogy used upstream in the thread, expecting Ken dolls to get boys into Barbie. Yeah, it's representation, but there's more to appealing to a demographic than just representing them.

So what has GW been doing that actually has been expanding their demographics? Well, you touched on a couple:
-Smaller-scale games that are quick to play and don't require massive investment in either armies or terrain.
-One-off models intended for painters, and standalone support for painting as a hobby rather than a vehicle for getting armies on the field.
-Licensing into tie-in media like books and role-playing games.
-Selling games people can viably play at home (during the pandemic) and not at hobby shops that can range from 'awkward' to 'hostile' when women are present.

In other words, leaning into products besides the flagship one of building an entire army of little angry masculine soldier dudes to fight against other angry masculine soldier dudes through a byzantine ruleset on a sprawling table probably at a hobby shop. Which primarily appeals to men, specifically nerdy men, either in their teens or post-college and with the disposable income to support it, and comfortable with playing in a public venue. That's a narrow market, and expanding beyond it seems to have paid off.

So yeah, I support diversity and representation in the fictional worlds GW creates. I appreciate their push for inclusivity. I don't think it amounts to much on its own; the greatest value is in sending a clear signal that they do not promote or support intolerance and helping to foster a more welcoming image. But greater diversity in the playerbase comes from making products that appeal to a cater to a greater variety of potential players, and racial and sexual representation in the minis themselves is only a small part of that.

I could not care less that Custodes can be women now. I have a couple of female friends who are into tabletop RPGs but have zero interest in tabletop 40K, and this change isn't going to be what brings them in. GW isn't about to go broke because they went woke or whatever the feth the line is. Storm in a teacup.

^Another bangin' post from catbarf. Nice.

As I've been thinking about all this I've come to another realization and just want to post about a shift in the demographic locally that's been really bugging me. And that's that my game shop has gone from blue-collar to white-collar.

When I was showing up to hobby night 10 years ago, we had a security guard or two, an ex boxer, a mailman, a bike repair guy, the shop-keeps, a commission painter, a short-order cook, a nurse, and a smattering of computer engineers along with a number of local students.

These days when I show up to hobby night it's more computer engineers, data analists, marketing strategists, hardware prototypers and other higher-education types. It's been a heck of a shift. There's been more women, and that's nice (none of whom I've seen play, just paint), but the occupational shift has been stark. Incidentally the old crew was more racially diverse, and the new crew is predominently white and asian.

I mostly chalk that up to local demographics shifting about, but I have seen one or two of them show up on nights when cheaper games are being played, Battletech iirc, which makes me think that the aggressive churn of 40k might also be part of it.