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BattleTech was pretty huge fluff wise and king for awhile. Quite a selection on what to run on tabletop by mech's, houses, clans, fleets' or Merc's till they lost the law suit

Namica wrote:(the closest being Warmahordes, which hasn't anywhere near the mainstream appeal)

Eh? How do you figure?

40k will not be dethroned in the foreseeable future.

Warmahordes may be the closest of the competitors, but steampunk will never have the mainstream appeal of sci-fi/space marines, and PP's models are among the least aesthetically appealing of all the miniature companies (only Mantic stops them from being hands-down worst, but at least Mantic miniatures are cheap). In terms of getting people interested in starting the game, those two factors are far more important than the rules.

Moreover, as Warmahordes expands farther and farther into being an army- rather than skirmish-based game, less veteran 40K players are going to make the change due to monetary and time costs and more pronounced power imbalances.

TutorialBoss wrote:but steampunk will never have the mainstream appeal of sci-fi/space marines,

Mass-market internet message boards weren't around in the 80s, but I can imagine this is what people said when 40k first came out.

-Loki- wrote:I don't see why people don't realize you're allowed to play more than one game at a time. If you have a Warmahordes army sitting next to a 40k army, no one is going to turn up at your door and kick you in the face over it.

For some reason many people seem to have a sports team mentality about wargaming. MY game is better than YOUR game etc.

Melchiour wrote:

-Loki- wrote:I don't see why people don't realize you're allowed to play more than one game at a time. If you have a Warmahordes army sitting next to a 40k army, no one is going to turn up at your door and kick you in the face over it.

For some reason many people seem to have a sports team mentality about wargaming. MY game is better than YOUR game etc.

It's not so much that people have a sports-team mentality for their games, but it's that this hobby is pretty expensive (doubly so for GW games). If your local scene is 40k dominated, it may be tough for a person to get people interested in any other game (even Fantasy) simply because of the monetary dedication.

Melchiour wrote:

-Loki- wrote:I don't see why people don't realize you're allowed to play more than one game at a time. If you have a Warmahordes army sitting next to a 40k army, no one is going to turn up at your door and kick you in the face over it.

For some reason many people seem to have a sports team mentality about wargaming. MY game is better than YOUR game etc.

RPGs are like this too. I don't get it either.

Doubt it. 40k beats everything else in the sheer volume of fluff it provides. That alone draws a lot of people in. The game could be better, but there's all sorts of reasons to be involved in 40k

KingDeath wrote:At times it seems as if GW is actively doing their best to dethrone the game by themselfs.

+1 to this

"what's the best way to increase sales and get more people playing"...."INCREASE PRICES"

I think GW will continue to piss everyone off until they take somemore heat from other miniature games. When other companies get bigger and they see a drop in sales they'll say
" Wow we really up, we need to fix this." Then GW will start to please people and start getting their monopoly back. And when they're back on top they'll be big douchebags again.

Eh? How do you figure?

While I'm not going to sit and say that alot of people know what WH40K is, I can guarantee that more people know what it is over any other war game.

Great White wrote:I think GW will continue to piss everyone off until they take somemore heat from other miniature games. When other companies get bigger and they see a drop in sales they'll say
" Wow we really up, we need to fix this." Then GW will start to please people and start getting their monopoly back. And when they're back on top they'll be big douchebags again.

Welcome to capitalism, this is how it works.

mugginns wrote:

TutorialBoss wrote:but steampunk will never have the mainstream appeal of sci-fi/space marines,

Mass-market internet message boards weren't around in the 80s, but I can imagine this is what people said when 40k first came out.

Right, because military sci-fi hadn't existed as a viable genre before 1987? *cough* Alien, Star Wars, Heinlein, Buck Rogers, War of the Worlds, shall I go on? *cough*

GW is mismanaging it poorly this last year especially, but they're still a responsible company out primarily for profits and once it becomes clear that there's a serious competition and a loss of miniature purchases because of their policies they'll loosen the noose. War Machine is a viable and real alternative for players from what I've seen and this is the first real competition for GW which has had an essential monopoly over the industry. There will be an inevitable blowback and reform to that blowback.

Nerd rage over pricing is so annoying. Get a job and buy more plastic crack. If you dont like it , simple quit buying. If price is an issue then buy online from a vast amount of discount sellers. As far as will GW ever be dethroned. Unlikely anytime soon. PP is a good company and has many great products to offer true, but it doesnt appeal to as many people as 40k does. And warmahordes suffers from power creep also. Just in a different way, and like GW they simply release a new set of core rules and rebalance. Its the nature of the beast with wargamming. So quit your nerd rage and pick up some dice for what ever game you like and play. RELAX its just a game afterall.

The only thing that is actually keeping 40k interesting is vehicles. No other commercially available game allows for that scale of vehicles to be used. Its a very niche thing that is helping keep 40K in peoples sights.

Remove the armor and there are lots of other sci-fi based games that could easily knock it out. Better rules and better looking figures.

However, on the world market, I'd be willing to bet that historical type wargaming is much more lucrative and popular than 40K and fantasy combined.

reorox wrote:Nerd rage over pricing is so annoying. Get a job and buy more plastic crack. If you dont like it , simple quit buying. If price is an issue then buy online from a vast amount of discount sellers. As far as will GW ever be dethroned. Unlikely anytime soon. PP is a good company and has many great products to offer true, but it doesnt appeal to as many people as 40k does. And warmahordes suffers from power creep also. Just in a different way, and like GW they simply release a new set of core rules and rebalance. Its the nature of the beast with wargamming. So quit your nerd rage and pick up some dice for what ever game you like and play. RELAX its just a game afterall.

It's not so much nerd rage as you charmingly put it. The fact is that inflation is sky-rocketing worldwide and people are having their pay held down, losing overtime, losing their jobs, etc. What sort of company jacks up its prices twice in a year (in the UK) under those circumstances. This is especially galling as they already must have astronomical profit margins especially on plastic figures (think of the amount of plastic McDonald's gives away in Happy Meals and their profit margins - although making the stuff in the UK is clearly more expensive but not surely that much more!). The fact that they clearly don't make all that much profit even allowing for their margins speaks of poor business practices, or likely very high pay to the top management and HQ bods. I earn good money but price is an issue for me, I look at the prices over the last 5 years or so and it really gives me pause. I wonder what they hope to achieve by effectively sticking two fingers up to their cutomers saying "we know you're struggling but we're going to really jack up our prices against the backdrop of a massive economic disaster". It's alienating people big time from what I see. I had never even heard of Warmachine til the last few months and now nobody plays anything else in the shop where I go. The guy has stopped stocking 40K and only gets them in as orders. I know it's not representative but the fact is that the option is there, or if you just want wargames there is Flames of War, etc too.

Isengard wrote:

reorox wrote:Nerd rage over pricing is so annoying. Get a job and buy more plastic crack. If you dont like it , simple quit buying. If price is an issue then buy online from a vast amount of discount sellers. As far as will GW ever be dethroned. Unlikely anytime soon. PP is a good company and has many great products to offer true, but it doesnt appeal to as many people as 40k does. And warmahordes suffers from power creep also. Just in a different way, and like GW they simply release a new set of core rules and rebalance. Its the nature of the beast with wargamming. So quit your nerd rage and pick up some dice for what ever game you like and play. RELAX its just a game afterall.

It's not so much nerd rage as you charmingly put it. The fact is that inflation is sky-rocketing worldwide and people are having their pay held down, losing overtime, losing their jobs, etc. What sort of company jacks up its prices twice in a year (in the UK) under those circumstances. This is especially galling as they already must have astronomical profit margins especially on plastic figures (think of the amount of plastic McDonald's gives away in Happy Meals and their profit margins - although making the stuff in the UK is clearly more expensive but not surely that much more!). The fact that they clearly don't make all that much profit even allowing for their margins speaks of poor business practices, or likely very high pay to the top management and HQ bods. I earn good money but price is an issue for me, I look at the prices over the last 5 years or so and it really gives me pause. I wonder what they hope to achieve by effectively sticking two fingers up to their cutomers saying "we know you're struggling but we're going to really jack up our prices against the backdrop of a massive economic disaster". It's alienating people big time from what I see. I had never even heard of Warmachine til the last few months and now nobody plays anything else in the shop where I go. The guy has stopped stocking 40K and only gets them in as orders. I know it's not representative but the fact is that the option is there, or if you just want wargames there is Flames of War, etc too.

Check the annual reports.

They aren't exactly rolling in money

http://investor.games-workshop.com/

Essentially, the bigger a company is, the harder it is for them to keep prices low as they have to ramp up for demand. They aren't some super corperation like Wal-Mart who has gotten so far ahead that it can afford to give penny prices.


That, and all the wargames are expensive as hell. Their biggest competition, Warmahordes, infact tends to charge more for getting less.

EDIT: Infact, wal-mart has gotten to the point where it's brought up demand for some other companies so high by offering prices that are so low, that they've nearly run them into the ground because they can't afford to charge less with demand so high.

An interesting question, and some interesting answers. I would be inclined to agree with the consensus that, though Warmachine has reduced its extent, Games Workshop's monopoly is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

That said, back in the 1990s, who would have predicted that FASA would go under? Or TSR? It cannot be outwith the bounds of possibility that the same could happen to Games Workshop.

Conversely, ten years ago, Privateer Press and Fantasy Flight were just two tiny companies producing terrible* D&D supplements among hundreds of others doing the same, most of whom have now mercifully vanished.

*Yes, really, really bloody awful. The sort of rubbish that would have made even Mat Ward feel nauseous.

When/If it is dethroned, it will be from GW's own failings as opposed to someone else's doing.