Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

jbunny wrote:From a statistical stand point you can not say if the internet community is a good sample size, as you don't know the total number of gamers either in a certain country or the world as a whole.

Wouldn't you be able to get that from GW yearly sales figures, and what they consider an average customer spend?

I haven't looked but I would have thought that info is floating around.

@whitedragon: Well, if you don't mind your opinions being called "whining" and your community being called "the dregs of the hobby," that's fine -- to clarify for others so they know what the rules actually are -- but it's still trolling.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:

jbunny wrote:From a statistical stand point you can not say if the internet community is a good sample size, as you don't know the total number of gamers either in a certain country or the world as a whole.

Wouldn't you be able to get that from GW yearly sales figures, and what they consider an average customer spend?

I haven't looked but I would have thought that info is floating around.

Possible. But then you get into what is a "Customer?" The best you would get would be an educated guess, which might not be that bad.

Luco wrote:
I'm sorry my metaphor offends you. I've never tried to derail a thread and am not starting now.

Apology accepted, I'm glad that you were not actually accusing people who criticise a company's actions of being crybabies or chest puffing, because that's hardly a good opening post in a discussion, it makes you sound as incendiary as worglock and just as likely to end up being labelled and subsequently ignored.

Cottonjaw wrote:

I think you're looking for flamebait MGS. He wasn't specifying you, or anyone else, merely that some people in the Dakkamunity are definitely "complainers" rather than "criticizers" and they are particularly loud about it (figuratively, of course). Amongst the supposed "Vocal Minority" there is definitely a "Particularly vocal few".

No Cotton, flamebait does not need to be directed at me, just dropped into the thread and it drags the thread down, that's why I put the other guy on ignore, because he is so utterly caustic and unable to respond maturely in anything I've read from him. It's not personal offence, just tired of these passive aggressive broadsides devolving the discussion.

legoburner wrote:
In answer to your question, MGS, I estimate that dakka alone reaches up to 1/4 of all wargamers on the planet. The registered to guest ratio is huge, but I dont have the figures to hand right now. Either way, I would estimate people who actually post on forums to be somewhere in the 1-3% of wargamers region, and that includes people who post once every few months as well as frequent posters.

So about 0.0025-0.0075% of worldwide wargamers post on forums, but their opinions are heard by around 25% (more so in English speaking countries, and even more so by secondary word of mouth).

Many thanks Lego, this is the sort of thing I'm looking for. It does put pay to the idea of a 'tiny minority' using the net and the forums in particular. I do also agree that the most vitriolic on both 'sides' of the GW divide are very small minorities, but such is always the case in polarisation and you just need to look at lobbying in most Western democracies to see how small vocal groups can have power disproportionate to their size.


Now apologies disty, but I'm going to take on several of the points you've raised.

disty wrote:
The posters on here are the majority of tournament players. They know each other, they've played against each other and they have a similar understanding of the hobby and the company. Such an understanding can often produce a misunderstanding when it comes to the overall picture; "Everyone I speak to is aware and in agreement" but outside of the 'scene' how many still step foot in a GW store?

From what I understand, early days Dakka was very tourny based, a small social club, that is not the case any more, it's the largest forum on the internet of it's kind. Take a look at how large the gallery is now, Dakka has become a very broad church. The only unifying factors on dakka are an interest in toy soldiers and using the forum.

disty wrote:
Now how many of them would frequent a forum? Or more to the point how many 12 year old kids actually care about the sales embargo?

I would suggest a very high number of 12+ yrs people are highly internet savvy now. I think dakka has sharper teeth than many forums and that puts off many of the youngest from posting, but, as shown by Lego, many more frequent read than post.

disty wrote:
As for the point about gossip doing the rounds? I'm sure it does but let's be frank, we've had no pictures or depth of knowledge on Dakka and anything they hear of 'fantasy naval game' they could have gleamed from picking up a WD.

Until one of the 'reputable sources' posts. Here and other sites like Warseer are often the scene for leaked images or news, consider the ogre images or the space hulk 'secret' that everyone knew months in advance.

disty wrote:
Should GW listen to the forums? Yes, of course they should. Can they? Well that's difficult, I hardly see anything constructively posted that a company can look at objectively and not write off as the rantings and flame wars.

Gleaning from complaints to conduct root cause analysis and bring about process improvement is not impossible. It would also seem good business sense.

I'm the only one of my group of 7 that comes to DakkaDakka, but anything I see in News & Rumors that would pertain to one of their armies I pass on.

When I see price increase rumors, I pass that one. Finecast releases, 3rd party stuff, or interesting models or terrain that they might like.

Good and bad, my gaming group is aware of it. But we're 7 gamers out of ____ in the world. How "normal" are we?

Dunno, really. But if you have a group of gamers that hang out at their FLGS or GW store, you can bet that one of them go to Dakka or some other forum/blog (Warseer, HeresyOnline, Bolter&Chainsword, BoLS, BoK) and has been exposed to some of the same news and rumors as us. Now, that whole gaming group is aware of the current rumors.

So, to answer MGS' question, I think that while the forum-goers are a tiny subset of the gaming community, there are still plenty of non-forum-goers who are aware of price increases, grumblings about finecast, or other issues. Dismissing the ability that these places have on spreading information to the gaming community isn't wise.

The 'fringe' as GW sees it are people that focus on anything besides buying models.
They are vehemently not a game company, but they do read forums like this one. They just do not care so much about the gaming aspect, and there is precious little constructive feedback on the models that I see. Gaming is a means to an end--they do not want to tie (most of) their models into someone elses rules, even if those rules are infinitely better.

Not sure if that really relates, but I generally agree with MeanGreenStompa otherwise.

Editing to add to a divergence:
I have met a surprising number of folks who read DakkaDakka, a surprising few who post, and a very rare minority of those post often.

I would tend to think that GW's most loyal fanboys would also, amongst themselves at least, also be its most caustic critics. When I browse sites dedicated to PP, for example, I do not see the same worshipful attitude that I come across pretty often here on Dakka. Instead, I find complaints about high prices, lame/error-ridden sculpts, ineffective communication with customers, etc. I hope that GW does, at some level, pay attention to these kinds of boards because the complaints (or some percentage of them) do come from people who are very much fans. As to the breakdown of the vocal minority on fora versus everyone else in the hobby -- whenever I hear the hobbyshop crowd talk about GW, it's usually the same tone and volume of complaints (not to mention subject matter) that I read on Dakka -- and yes most of those guys are not necessarily Dakkanauts. It seems to me that the vocal minority being talked about are GW's perennial customers: mostly adults, mostly been buynig for over five years (or much longer), mostly willing and even eager to keep doing so. The minority isn't people on the internet fora -- the minoirty is "real" hobbyists more generally. I suspect we simply aren't where the money is: that status is likely enjoyed by one-time buyers, maybe (likely?) parents getting younger adolescents kits that will never be assembled, painted, or make it into a game. Now, those kids will hardly have complaints one way or the other much less join a web forum much less become regular, active members of a web forum. So while the vocal crowd may be a minority, I think it's still a pretty important one.

If I was GW, I wouldn't care a whole lot what forums were saying. I'd be more interested in the atmosphere of the hobby centers and how steadily shipments were leaving the wherehouses.

The internet gives everyone a voice and they usually use it to complain.

My experiences have been similar to Kronks, where most of the people who I've played with tend not to pay a lot of attention to forums. In fact, I've gotten a couple of people to join Dakka, primarily on the grounds that it is easier to coordinate games using it.

Granted, that is anecdotal evidience, but it does suggest that the forum population is not a plurality of the wargaming community, atleast in certain groups and areas.

You know, if GW were to put $100 bills, or your countries equivalent in every single kit and in every codex, there's going to be someone complaining about it being wrinkled or folded wrong, I guarantee it. I say that if you really love the hobby, ignore the problems, or play another game, that simple. No, I didn't care for the grey knights codex, no, I don't care for finecast, but I'm not going to hate GW for it, or matt ward.

remilia_scarlet wrote:You know, if GW were to put $100 bills, or your countries equivalent in every single kit and in every codex, there's going to be someone complaining about it being wrinkled or folded wrong, I guarantee it. I say that if you really love the hobby, ignore the problems, or play another game, that simple. No, I didn't care for the grey knights codex, no, I don't care for finecast, but I'm not going to hate GW for it, or matt ward.

And here is why people post negatively.

Not to pick on you, it's just the last one in the thread, but this response right here shows multiple reasons why the whining continues.

1) Is an condescending response to a concern, which means that anybody that's posted prior to it feels offended/victimized/made into an enemy.

2) It shows an inflexiblity of thinking that is sure to trigger nasty flame wars. Saying "like it or leave it" is not exactly the door to compromise.

3) It shows a lack of critical thought, which is more or less exactly what many people accuse the "haters" of.

As long as people keep posting like that, people will post bile, because it creates drama.

OTOH, being able to dislike something instead of hating it, and sometimes everything associated with it, is healthy. A lot of criticism go way, way overboard. As long as that's the case, the defense will be likely to go just as overboard.

Manchu wrote:OTOH, being able to dislike something instead of hating it, and sometimes everything associated with it, is healthy. A lot of criticism go way, way overboard. As long as that's the case, the defense will be likely to go just as overboard.

Being able to seperate an emotional feeling (hatred) from a value judgment (this is bad) is the core of good criticism. I posted the following in another thread, and I think it's relevant here:

Attention is the new currencty. It's not my idea, I read it somewhere. Essentially the idea is that in modern society, the only thing that is limited is time, hence attention. It was phrased in the context of jobs creation, and how focusing on production misses the point that we produce plenty.

I think in the context of Dakka we all have only a few resources to trade amongst ourselves. We have knowledge, to be sure, but we're here to exchange attention, acknowledgement, recognition... in short, time.

Part of the problem is that we rarely comment positively on a post. I know I seldom do, and I think aside from "+1" and the like, there's little acknowledgment for posting positively and constructively. Posting flame bait, hyperbole, or just rants... that gets the juices flowing.

What this means is that when a person wants a reaction, they know they can get one by making over the top ciriticisms. Some people will intelligently and calmly take their point apart, but somebody will almost always reply emotionally, leading to what is really craved by all us: attention.

I think that interpretation misses a lot of the interaction that goes on here. It certainly doesn't accurately account my experience outside of my duties as a moderator. Maybe this is more revealing about your own experience rather than something that can be generalized to everyone else's? The criticism is sometimes about commiseration but it's only rarely flat-out attention whoring, which we try to shut down.

There seem to be alot of tangents to this issue, but as to the OP's general questions of how "fringe" are the forums and how well they represent wargamers as a whole I would make the following observation.

About two thirds of my friends who is a gamer is active on at least one online forum. Not being 40k players, most are more active on forums other than dakka, but they are involved. Also, most other gamers I meet are present on some forum as well.

In general, the gaming views expressed at Dakka seem pretty in-line with the range of views held by wargamers. Perhaps a bit more vociferous in their presentation, but that's just the way the internet is.

So while the internet does encourage extremes a bit, I don't think Dakka qulalifies as "fringe".

Manchu wrote:I think that interpretation misses a lot of the interaction that goes on here. It certainly doesn't accurately account my experience outside of my duties as a moderator. Maybe this is more revealing about your own experience rather than something that can be generalized to everyone else's? The criticism is sometimes about commiseration but it's only rarely flat-out attention whoring, which we try to shut down.

It could be, but the reason people post, as opposed to lurk, is to share their ideas. Not every post is a "light yourself on fire, do a dance" form of attention seeking, but people in general, I think, post for feedback, response, or acknowledgement. It's not all negative, either in content of posting or in terms of ethics of posting.

I'm using attention in a fairly broad sense, maybe that's why you're not seeing it.

To ask the reverse: why do you think people post on dakka? Not read it, but actually post?

I guess it's just a matter of perception. I mean, if somebody disagrees with my opinion, then go for it. My only thing is I have a pet peeve about painting and the lack of being an issue. 40k, despite the PR, is not srs bzns.

Ah, I was referring to the following from your self-quotation:

Posting flame bait, hyperbole, or just rants... that gets the juices flowing.

If you actually mean "interaction" rather than "seeking attention," which are pretty different, then I just agree with you. People post on a forum to have discussions about things that interest them with like-minded people. That's one reason why I'd agree with MGS and, it appears, Eilif that we're not very fringe at all.

Manchu wrote:Ah, I was referring to the following from your self-quotation:

Posting flame bait, hyperbole, or just rants... that gets the juices flowing.

If you actually mean "interaction" rather than "seeking attention," which are pretty different, then I just agree with you. People post on a forum to have discussions about things that interest them with like-minded people. That's one reason why I'd agree with MGS and, it appears, Eilif that we're not very fringe at all.

How can you really interact with a person that isn't paying attention to you?

You can seek out attention of others without being what is colloquially known as "attention whoring." You don't tell a joke to a group of friends without wanting their approval and laughter.

Any actual discussion, as in, an exchange of comments or ideas or statements, is attention. It's good attention, but still attention.

Don't overgeneralize. Busting into a room and screaming fire is not the same thing as getting together for conversation over coffee.

Manchu wrote:Don't overgeneralize. Busting into a room and screaming fire is not the same thing as getting together for conversation over coffee.

It's a matter of degree, not of kind.

You can change "attention" to interaction if you're hung up on nomenclature, but people like to be noticed. "Attention whoring" isn't bad because attention is a bad thing (just like doing something for money isn't a bad thing), but because whoring is a bad thing (because some things shouldn't be done for money.)

We, as a community, find certain behavior so odious that we frown on them as mechanisms for gaining the attention of others, but that doesn't mean that even the most mild post isn't an attempt to seek the attention of others. In different ways and to different degrees, but they all fulfill the need for human acknowledgement and interaction.

It's no different from comparing a home cooked meal to fast food: very different in how good they are for you, but both fill a need.

Manchu wrote:Don't overgeneralize. Busting into a room and screaming fire is not the same thing as getting together for conversation over coffee.

Well, that explains why everyone was so confused the last time I had people over for coffee.

@Polonius: But you quoted yourself talking about flamebaiting, hyperbole, and rants as the order of the day, as (explicitly) opposed to "positive" contribution:

Polonius wrote:Part of the problem is that we rarely comment positively on a post. I know I seldom do ...

Attention in the sense that you are receptive to my attempt to communicate is significantly different from the attention-seeking you were talking about originally. It's so significant, in fact, that our rules distinguish between them. And it isn't a matter of degree: the attention seeking you seemed to be talking about (flamebaiting, hyperbole, and rants) is not an invitation to dialog. Spectacle invites comment rather than interaction. I think you're confusing the issue because this medium involves all the responses remaining in place, lined up one after another, as if they must be a discussion. Of course, that's not necessarily so.

How "fringe" are we?
I would say that forum users in general are less fringe, within the wargaming community, than Tea partiers are within the voting public community.

This comparison is not as invalid as you may think.

The more or less "official numbers" given by Legoburner estimate 1-3 % of the wargaming community post on forums like this one.
The latest estimate for the "Tea Party" community is less than 1 million out of the population of just over 300 million. Even if you subtract an estimated 1/3 of the current population as being below "Voting age" you still have less than 1% of the population appearing as "Tea partiers".
Which puts the numbers into perspective.
The tea party folks just get their message heard by a greater audience due to better relations with the press.

To answer the OP, I've visited a number of hobby shops in my time, both GW's and independents. And in just about every one (I like to spread the creed of Dakka) people have already been here. Dakka and Warseer are both far better known and browsed then most people would guess in the hobbying world.

The vast majority of players I know in real-life read the forums infrequently and post less. I am very much in the minority in that regard.

well looking at the numbers, Dakka has 48,000ish registered users, while im online now it has about 9,000 of them online, they're both very good numbers of people, however because like in most communities alot of those people dont actually have the same opinion of things the amount of people that are actually complaining are a much lower number, possibly down to a number that larger companies just aren't that bothered by.

however if the full 9,000 online at the moment or even half the 48,000 registered all rose up with a single voice of complaint i think then we would find forums like this would be alot less fringe and have quite alot more push with the bigger companies. A large company never listens to the single voice in the crowd, however if the crowd is a single voice then thats another story.

Manchu wrote:@Polonius: But you quoted yourself talking about flamebaiting, hyperbole, and rants as the order of the day, as (explicitly) opposed to "positive" contribution:

Polonius wrote:Part of the problem is that we rarely comment positively on a post. I know I seldom do ...

Yes, because negative attention seeking behavior works! Flamebaiting gets responses, it's why people do it.

Attention in the sense that you are receptive to my attempt to communicate is significantly different from the attention-seeking you were talking about originally. It's so significant, in fact, that our rules distinguish between them. And it isn't a matter of degree: the attention seeking you seemed to be talking about (flamebaiting, hyperbole, and rants) is not an invitation to dialog. Spectacle invites comment rather than interaction. I think you're confusing the issue because this medium involves all the responses remaining in place, lined up one after another, as if they must be a discussion. Of course, that's not necessarily so.

I'm confused by your confusion.

I say that people post positively for attention just like people post negatively, and that's an overgeneralization.

I say that people post negatively for interaction and acknowldgement just like people post positivley, and apparently it's not an inviation to dialogue.

I'm going to try once more to break this down.

People interact with others, in every form from manifestos to flashing, to seek affirmation that they are a person in a community. That they have some value, even if it's just existence. People post on dakka for a lot of different reasons, but nearly all posts are rooted in a desire to be heard, to be noticed, to be acknoweldged as part of the commuinty. (that's not always true, as some posts are genuinely exchanges of information, either offers or requests).

You can call it whatever you like: attention, building a reputation, attracting a following, developing friendships, whatever. The point is that even in an antagonistic role, a person feels part of the community.

So, yes, negative posting behavior is different, but it's rooted in the same need to interact as positive posting. Not all interaction is a high minded dialog. If I flamebait, and somebody bites and flames back... that's still interaction. If I post a WIP blog, and somebody comments, that's still attention.

To limit terms like "interaction" so that they can't include scorn or comment is select a fairly arbitrary defintion. Any time one human acts in a way that shows that he's aware of, or responding to, another, is a form of interaction.

In a niche hobby, like wargaming, everybody is in the minority because it's a boutique hobby; you cannot find it, play it, or participate in it unless you intentionally leave the mainstream to do so.

Ultimately, in the 'apologist vs hater' dichotomy it's going to boil down to a handful of individuals that viscerally disagree over what is usually a difference in value-based perspective. Value-based perception is not something that individuals are easily swayed from. That's why criticism threads can so easily devolve into hate/whine threads--especially when you toss in the anonymity, relative social equality and lack of peer sanctions, and heuristic reasoning common to internet forum-posting.

However, I think that the broad-brush themes and tone that forums replicate over time should be valuable to boutique companies like the wargames miniatures companies. Times change, preferences change, and there probably isn't a more easily accessible bellwether than the online communities (high referability, free, instant, anonymous access) ((and, conversely, the downsides are small sampling populations, lack of cohesiveness, and low replicability)).

Look at the chaos codex, for example. By the creator's own admission (on some post off in the blogosphere) it's very vanilla. There's not very many options... for anything. And the community generally hated it, even though its power level was quite high in a primarily footslogging 4th edition/early 5th edition environment. Now look at the more recent codices; SM, IG, SW, DE, BA, GK and even to some extent the more maligned Nids. Most of these are regarded as very powerful codices. All of these... save Nids to the same extent... are filled with special characters or diverse upgrade options to create unique models that affect or alter army organization or abilities. Clearly the trend is away from systemic streamlining (as we saw in Chaos, Dark Angels) and toward diversification and differentiation. I can't help but think that player disgruntlement was heard, in that respect.

Judging by this thread, we should have Shakespeare done in a few days.

Anyway, On Topic: I feel that the Online Gamers are either whiney or hardcore. Once online, they begin to fall into a few catagories: Casual, Hardcore, Apologist, Hater, and Who gives a damn, it's a stupid game.

And yes, we are the Minority.