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barboggo wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Very good comments here.
Warmachine is very prominent example of the game system which seems to shrink and shrink. It seems PP made a few bad decisions (e.g., no more press gangers) which led to a situation which could become fatal for the company. But this is how business goes, some wrong decisions and the company gets into rough waters.

This highlights another interesting point. Companies that have managed to diversify their IP across many types of media are more resilient to the occasional flop or bad design direction. I'm guessing a game like Warmachine doesn't have the luxury of having tons of video games and book series for sustaining audience interest. Diversification here really increases the odds of long term success. The new GW seems to understand this, given the relative accessibility of 8th, the emphasis on plastic kits, and the pursuit of newer, even more accessible/diverse product lines (Kill Team, Warhammer Adventures, etc).

Diversification is another good point. GW has diversified their product line very well. On one hand, they have released several board games such as Necromunda and Blood Bowl which complement their main games 40k and AoS very well. On the other hand, they can promote their games very well through different media. While I'm not a fan of FB I like the Azyr app for list building in AoS.

Some just expand too much.

Most start off at a relative small scale, and as numbers and collections increase, you typically see the rules tweaked and adapted to accommodate, allowing for larger and larger games to be played, without needing a weekend set aside.

Sadly, if handled wrong, you end up with Fantasy. The mechanics changed little over the years, except to accommodate larger armies. This leads to the perception that a massive army is necessary for the game, which is of course off putting to newcomers.

But equally, if you don't streamline eventually, you risk people just not buying anymore, and instead relying on constant new blood.

Whilst hobby gaming isn't precisely zero sum most folks have money, and more importantly time constraints

So to pick up a new system you'll usually have to give an older system up or least cut back

For example my local nerd-herd gave up on 40k 7th Ed to embrace X-Wing, which we absolutely played into the ground, then shifted into Guildball once we'd OD'd on spaceships

While I can't say I'm aware of games dying on a shop level (since I play almost entirely at my own home) I have experienced the death of Flames of War online. When 4th edition came out me and my friend just dropped the game entirely after we found the changes to the ruleset had effectively wrecked the game and pushed it closer to Team Yankee (which is, imo, a pretty horrible game but for different reasons). We quickly switched to Battlegroup, and then to 40k.

Online however all the FoW forums seemed to slow to a total crawl with a lot of posts becoming complaints about Battlefronts inability to actually manage the game. Added to this was the 'fantastic' decision to move to soft plastic for figures, who end up looking like melty face men. I know the decision to focus on the African Front threw people off, since it is somewhat of a sideshow theatre in the overall conflict. Others were alienated by the clear lack of planning on Battlefronts part in regards to other theatres (we finally get the Pacific, only for its future to look exceptionally bleak).

Since by this point Team Yankee and 4th ed FoW are effectively the same game but in different time periods, the problems of how Battlefront handle Team Yankee and its 'history' start to bleed into complaints regarding Flames of War. Battlefront's treatment of the Soviet Union borders on offensive - and certainly leaves a sour taste in the mouth of Soviet and WARPAC players.

I can explain the failure of Mage Knight as OP mentioned.

tl;dr Bloat, Chase, Figures, physical cards, no point in buying RNG booster packs, great ideas but never balanced or playtested, tournament prizes required to play, heavy focus on tournaments instead of casual play.



The first edition of the game MK1 had a few bad releases focusing on the subgame MK Dungeons. Chase figures in these sets were extremely low values heroes that were useless. You could simply buy a handful of figures required from the set and ignore 95% of the new releases. Placed less figures per box. No need to purchase boosters when they're all filled with junk. The game was extremely successful initially and slowly went on a downward spiral after the release of the Sinister expansion.


To place well at tournaments most players required a handful of extremely expensive limited edition figures or unique models. Some of these can only be obtained by winning events during a short monthly campaign from a local store - or by running events themselves. FAQ'd helped but the game needed a reboot and a ban list. The following situation occurred every release:

ex. Steve is a regular tournament player and spends maybe $50 a month of a few boosters each time he plays at an event as the entry fee. The new hot flavor of the month figure that's crushing events at the time is Bakus: http://www.knight-ware.com/cmg/mageknight/conq%20mt/%20%205.html - he's easily $150+ on eBay back in the day. Bakus is a tournament prize you can get by winning 1st place at a conquest event. A conquest event is a much larger all day event - similar to WH40k Apocalypse. Instead of 300 points you play at 1000 points with the sickest unique/limited edition/large model figure you have - which all arent used often in normal games. Steve wants to win Bakus at an event instead of buying him, but he needs to buy some siege equipment models, participate in the local escalation campaign which ends on week 4 with a conquest game with Bakus as the prize support. He now needs to 3-0 at the event and he has a super rare chase model that will win him most local events until the next expansion drops. Bakus will now dump in value to maybe 10% of it's worth. Oddly... my Bakus and the the other 7 Conquest LE's are rehosted by someone else on ebay for $320 right now. The most powerful figure in the base set of the first release was Anunub - a $500 figure that nearly breaks the game on his own. He was a prerelease freebie at a Gencon event... but ran the tournament scene.


They launched MK2 which seemed to be initially great. Great looking models, demos, but since the company was purchased by TOPPS they added a ton of cut out cards. Similar to the successful card Pirates game. These were little items the size of a space marine bolter you would place on a slot of your characters to equip them with gear. After Sorcery came out and a few other expansion you would have a dozen cards and 3-5 models for your list. Again, most of these cards where chase prizes and rares. Weather effects, terrain, spells, and so on. I'd run Chroma (tournament champ model) and a Caldera? Drac with a few cardstock items worth around $70 at the time. $200+ list in 6 cards and a few models. $200 would buy you 200 junk common figures....

They also invalidated all previously released models from seeing play in events. Luckily after multiple releases - players didn't need most of the junk models. The game was a herohammer type of game where you would choose a few tournament prize or rare chase warriors equipped with rare cards to compete at events. No need for formations, basic troops, or anything not expensive. The game died with one of it's best sets being released at the end (Nexus). I played for years at my local game store. Great game for a kid - prepaints werent half bad at the end.

The board game is fairly successful on the other hand.

Someone up-thread mentioned successful games being like steam engines in that they needed stoking. I think they're much like fire in that they need fuel, but they also need to spread horizontally, bringing in new people, all well as selling as much as possible (getting hotter) to established players.

I saw something advertising a regional final for Catan players, for example. Now I've played a lot of that game (I prefer the base game with the cards instead of dice) and I think it's a good example of a game growing horizontally as well as vertically through expansions.

Number of players leaving > Number of players coming in

Basically, not attracting new players in a sustainable quantity. Cost, bloat, competitiveness, lack of newbie-friendly ways to play and so on. Competitiveness can exist side by side with a good new player experience, but some games cater to it so exclusively that competitiveness comes to dominate new players.

I think targeting collectors (foil cards, pre-order bonuses, random packs, limited con models, monthly subscriptions where they destroy the molds) is a terrible idea as it is about the most anti-newbie approach you can have. You may make more money off fewer players, but it isn't sustainable for long and it ends up salting the earth such that nothing can grow in that space for a decade or two (see also: comic books, CCGs, toys-to-life)

I'd like to add one that hasn't hit miniature games (yet), and that's getting woke. We've seen it before in other industries (Pathfinder's new edition is having trouble, Marvel Comics is basically a zombie, Linux just lost Linus and added a code of conduct, movie reboots - you know the ones, prestigious scifi awards, open source, Magic the Gathering, etc) and it has ALWAYS ended up destroying whatever adopts it. We've been flirting with it for a while. Some places like BOLS have gone past flirting into full blown creep. It's going to happen sooner than later. My prediction is that the next major miniatures game that goes broke will be due to getting woke.

I think the single most important thing for the health of a game system is attracting new players. The new player experience is extremely important to GW and they do it well. Another one to watch is Infinity. Despite being one of the more complex miniature games out there, their starter sets are second to none - even beating GW's offerings in everything but ease of model assembly. It's not a coincidence that the most healthy games out there are the ones with the best new user experience.

@Sqorgar: Don't suppose you could describe what this 'getting woke' is?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/woke-meaning-origin

 Nurglitch wrote:
@Sqorgar: Don't suppose you could describe what this 'getting woke' is?

Generally speaking, it is the adoption of identity politics (as in, you are now awake to the truth), though I think it is more that identity politics becomes more important than anything else. It's not drinking the Kool-Aid. It's thinking everything but the Kool-Aid is poison, and wishing harm on anybody who doesn't drink it. Here's a few examples from other places:

- Code of conduct for players, saying what kind of behavior is and isn't acceptable, but vague and enforced selectively. Force FLGS to put up the CoC posters and to enforce it. Banning people from tournaments for unrelated things posted to their social media account. Disinviting guest speakers from cons. Removing people from forums and communities (especially ones they helped build) based on unsubstantiated accusations of harassment or misogyny. A CoC was used by GitHub to make open source political, and used to remove many projects that were not breaking any terms of service. Just being associated with a "known hate group" (like being conservative) was enough for them to refuse service due to the CoC.

- Creating terrible new lore which contradicts the old lore that is filled with a bunch of lazy mary sue characters used to preach politics at inappropriate times. I call it the Riri Problem, from when Iron Man was replaced by a 15 year old black girl who was smarter and more capable than Tony Stark and replaced him as the main character in his own book. This also extends to things like open source, where putting identity politics ahead of actual competence is becoming a real problem. For instance, Python just had an update that changed the terminology for master/slave, so as to not draw parallels to human trafficking.

- Insulting their current fan base in an attempt to target another fan base (which may or may not exist). Star Wars is a good example of this, with how Disney has been trying to paint everybody who didn't like The Last Jedi as a white supremacist. Or, you know, everything to do with the Ghostbusters reboot. If you don't think boob armor is wrong, then you must be oppressing women. Which, of course, is against the code of conduct, so please don't bother showing up to the con you were planning on going to.

It basically comes down to creating a subpar product and treating your fans like crap, but there's an ideology behind it that makes them commit to such mistakes long after their profits have started circling the drain and all the good will bought by one's legacy has been eradicated. Star Wars can recover, for example, but it won't.

Edit: Man, I answered you honestly, but I just checked your past posts in Dakka Discussions - you already know what woke means. I thought this was a legitimate question.

 Nurglitch wrote:
@Sqorgar: Don't suppose you could describe what this 'getting woke' is?

I read the definition and I'm still not sure how it relates to a successful or failing tabletop game3


edit: Thank you Sqorgar

 Nurglitch wrote:
@Sqorgar: Don't suppose you could describe what this 'getting woke' is?

I think he means bringing enforced diversity into a story or game at the expense of well-established lore and against the general wishes of the fanbase.

I can only speak for the 2 games that I play, in the locations that I play them. That being Warmachine/Hordes and Malifaux in London and SE of England.

In relation to Malifaux, It is by its nature a small to medium game in the UK and the community for it is as it has ever been. Medium sized with a decent tournament scene both locally and nationally. However the game itself suffers from two major issues. 1) many people don’t get the card mechanic and it’s a skill in itself to manage your hand and deck alongside playing the objectives on the tabletop. A skill which many people are not prepared to learn. And 2) Wyrd is pretty awful at advertising and promoting its game. Many of us really hope that the launch of M3E early next year is accompanied by fanfare, marching elephants playing tubas, a really good 2 person starter set and……well…… good promotion.

In relation to Warmachine/Hordes the poor lunch of Mk3 and the game state at lunch really battered to the community. I still maintain that PP the best games company out there in terms of communication, community engagement etc and is filled with good people who are passionate about the game. But good people can still make a massive mess up of things even if it was well intended, and this is what happened at Mk3 launch. PP took ownership and has fixed the game state through the CID process and in my area, the community has recovered. We have lots of new players coming in and old players returning. We also enticed many basement players out of their homes and to gaming clubs etc to help further build the community. The introduction of the mini factions like Grymkin has made it possible for people to get into the game without having to commit to one of the old factions with their masses and masses of models and combination. The Warmachine/Hordes World Team Championships has just ended and there were teams from almost every conceivable part of the world. This bodes well for the future.

But what keeps these games and other smaller games like Infinity, Guildball etc going? It’s the communities they build and the positive vibes in those communities. Why do games die out? The communities become negative, stop caring, stop turning up to games nights, stop representing. Games don’t die. Players kill games.

YMMV, but locally what's killed off games seems to be focusing on organised/competitive play and relying on the publisher to do the thinking for you. Warmachine and Malifaux both had fairly strong showings locally, but with hindsight it seems to be because they had someone pushing events, tournaments, etc. When that one person goes away or moves on, n o-one is sufficiently committed to carry on, so they move on to the next thing (Warmachine - Malifaux - Guild Ball - X-Wing seems like a fairly common path). There was no real community, just gamers who'd turn up if someone else did the work.

Getting new players is probably the only thing that really matters. No matter how good a system is and how much people are invested in it, its not life and sooner or later life gets in the way of gaming. People grow up, get new jobs, change schedules, make new friends, start new relationships, have kids, get interested in other time consuming activities, get bored with the game, move to a new town and on and on and on. The point is, people leave and if the game is primarily driven by a single major influx of players instead of a regular stream, its going to dwindle and die out.

I do think our current internet culture is perhaps exacerbating the drama behind all of this. There's a lot of extreme entitlement driving geek culture currently and it feels like its no longer enough to walk away from a game; its now necessary to ensure it burns to the ground before you go. There's always been an undercurrent of this out there, but the era of Twitter culture makes this feel a bit more like the norm.

Sunno wrote:
Many of us really hope that the launch of M3E early next year is accompanied by fanfare, marching elephants playing tubas, a really good 2 person starter set and……well…… good promotion.

The last Malifaux starter set was one of the worst I've ever seen. I mean, I would hesitate to even call it a starter set, since you couldn't even, you know, start the game since it didn't include the rules. It also only had a few generic models. I haven't seen 3E's starter yet, but it has to be an improvement.

In relation to Warmachine/Hordes ... We have lots of new players coming in and old players returning.

Warmachine has good battle boxes (but poor models), but WMH has never had problems getting new players coming in. It has problems keeping them after the first few games. WMH's problem is a community problem.

I wonder if the rise of the "walled garden" model is to blame in part, too.

I mean, if you get bored of Warmachine and fancy Malifaux, you need new models - which often means getting rid of the old ones, so now you won't be playing Warmachine any more. However, if you were playing Frostgrave and you fancied A Song of Blades and heroes, well, all you need is the rulebook. If three months later someone new turns up and asks if anyone plays Frostgrave, then you might think "I've not played it in a while, why not?".

Making your game a closed system means you might retain some people due to sunk costs, but when they do go, they're more likely to go and not come back?

 Sqorgar wrote:

I'd like to add one that hasn't hit miniature games (yet), and that's getting woke. We've seen it before in other industries (Pathfinder's new edition is having trouble, Marvel Comics is basically a zombie, Linux just lost Linus and added a code of conduct, movie reboots - you know the ones, prestigious scifi awards, open source, Magic the Gathering, etc) and it has ALWAYS ended up destroying whatever adopts it. We've been flirting with it for a while. Some places like BOLS have gone past flirting into full blown creep. It's going to happen sooner than later. My prediction is that the next major miniatures game that goes broke will be due to getting woke.

I agree with many of your posts (AoS saving 40K being the most controversial), but I really dislike the way you throw around the term Woke.

Being woke has not hurt X-Men since it took that approach in 1975, I would say the Wolverine worship of more recent times has been much worse IMO.

There's also other extenuating circumstances that might affect popularity that could also easily explain decreased success apart from supposed "PC Culture."

Pathfinder's original success was based on overwhelming discontent with WotC's move to 4th Edition. Is it really surprising that its second edition isn't doing as well when D&D is currently in something of a new era of popularity with 5th?

And Star Wars is even easier - they're bad movies, recycling plots and ideas from the original with bunch of digital effects (and don't even get me started on the insanity that was The Last Jedi''s treatment of Poe. That traitor should have been shoved out an airlock halfway through the movie). Same goes for the Ghostbusters movie. Without the all-female lead controversy, it would have been better known for just being a mediocre reboot.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
@Sqorgar: Don't suppose you could describe what this 'getting woke' is?

Generally speaking, it is the adoption of identity politics (as in, you are now awake to the truth), though I think it is more that identity politics becomes more important than anything else. It's not drinking the Kool-Aid. It's thinking everything but the Kool-Aid is poison, and wishing harm on anybody who doesn't drink it. Here's a few examples from other places:

- Code of conduct for players, saying what kind of behavior is and isn't acceptable, but vague and enforced selectively. Force FLGS to put up the CoC posters and to enforce it. Banning people from tournaments for unrelated things posted to their social media account. Disinviting guest speakers from cons. Removing people from forums and communities (especially ones they helped build) based on unsubstantiated accusations of harassment or misogyny. A CoC was used by GitHub to make open source political, and used to remove many projects that were not breaking any terms of service. Just being associated with a "known hate group" (like being conservative) was enough for them to refuse service due to the CoC.

- Creating terrible new lore which contradicts the old lore that is filled with a bunch of lazy mary sue characters used to preach politics at inappropriate times. I call it the Riri Problem, from when Iron Man was replaced by a 15 year old black girl who was smarter and more capable than Tony Stark and replaced him as the main character in his own book. This also extends to things like open source, where putting identity politics ahead of actual competence is becoming a real problem. For instance, Python just had an update that changed the terminology for master/slave, so as to not draw parallels to human trafficking.

- Insulting their current fan base in an attempt to target another fan base (which may or may not exist). Star Wars is a good example of this, with how Disney has been trying to paint everybody who didn't like The Last Jedi as a white supremacist. Or, you know, everything to do with the Ghostbusters reboot. If you don't think boob armor is wrong, then you must be oppressing women. Which, of course, is against the code of conduct, so please don't bother showing up to the con you were planning on going to.

It basically comes down to creating a subpar product and treating your fans like crap, but there's an ideology behind it that makes them commit to such mistakes long after their profits have started circling the drain and all the good will bought by one's legacy has been eradicated. Star Wars can recover, for example, but it won't.

Edit: Man, I answered you honestly, but I just checked your past posts in Dakka Discussions - you already know what woke means. I thought this was a legitimate question.

Things sometimes seem to mean different things to different people. For example, I don't really get why someone might construe 'woke' as bad, but you've done a good job of explaining that. Thank you for answering honestly.

Warmachine has good battle boxes (but poor models), but WMH has never had problems getting new players coming in. It has problems keeping them after the first few games. WMH's problem is a community problem.

As a long time WM/H player, i totally 100% agree with your assessment. It frustrates me that some people in the wider community don't recognise this as well

And that has been our most successful change in our gaming group is setting up an environment where, yes we want to teach people the depth of WM/H and allow them to get better, play steamroller format and attend comps if they want to. But also we want to make it "fun". And you do that be having a good attitude and be good people. Its about building the community that you want to see. The person who taught me the most about WM/H was a judge at the WTC this year. And he is the funnest tabletop gamer i have met. As i said previously, the community makes the game and you get the community you deserve/create.

The WM/H community is changing fairly rapidly IMO and its the new wave of player that are affecting that change. We are keeping the hardcore competitive element and high end play but also combining it with a casual play and hobby (in WM/H, surely not.....!!)

As for the "poor models" comment, that the BB are of a slightly lower material quality but they are fine once painted up. The PP models over the last year have been killing it imo. But each to their own i suppose :-)

I'd like to add one that hasn't hit miniature games (yet), and that's getting woke. We've seen it before in other industries (Pathfinder's new edition is having trouble, Marvel Comics is basically a zombie, Linux just lost Linus and added a code of conduct, movie reboots - you know the ones, prestigious scifi awards, open source, Magic the Gathering, etc) and it has ALWAYS ended up destroying whatever adopts it. We've been flirting with it for a while. Some places like BOLS have gone past flirting into full blown creep. It's going to happen sooner than later. My prediction is that the next major miniatures game that goes broke will be due to getting woke.

Pathfinder's playtest isn't doing well because it's mechanically a poor system. Issues with how magic items work, the necessity of certain classes, heck even how the bonuses that separate trained and unskilled characters being pretty insignificant. It's a matter of mathematics, not "redpill" anti-PC masturbation.

AndrewGPaul wrote:I wonder if the rise of the "walled garden" model is to blame in part, too.

Not in my opinion. I've never been a "one system, forever" type of gamer, and to me, a whole new system with all new models is a selling point. I don't even like Tolkien, but I'm inches away from pulling the trigger on Middle Earth SBG. BUT - and this is a big butt - there needs to be a good starter set for me to try out a new game.

StygianBeach wrote:I agree with many of your posts (AoS saving 40K being the most controversial), but I really dislike the way you throw around the term Woke.

Being woke has not hurt X-Men since it took that approach in 1975, I would say the Wolverine worship of more recent times has been much worse IMO.

First, I don't even agree with many of my posts. Second, the Chris Claremont era of X-Men was obviously the best. Days of Future Past. Dark Phoenix. 'Nuff said.

I used the term "woke" because "get woke, go broke" is cute and increasingly true. Certainly you can see the difference between <Unsolicited opinions on Israel> and the early X-Men comics? I don't want to derail the topic (more than I already have), but there's a difference between using metaphor to recontextualize a social ill and preaching about it. For instance, there's a Spider-man comic where the hero helps a sick homeless kid that is EXTREMELY effective. Like, I'm tearing up just thinking about it now. But if the comic had just been the hero lecturing me about the dangers of homelessness and how I'm not doing enough to help, it's effectiveness might be measured in how far below zero it drops.

Sunno wrote:As for the "poor models" comment, that the BB are of a slightly lower material quality but they are fine once painted up. The PP models over the last year have been killing it imo. But each to their own i suppose :-)

I haven't seen one of PP's resin models in person yet, but I'm sure they are fine. The metal models are almost universally great. The one plastic sprue model I have is good (not GW good, but good enough). But PP's restic models are an abomination. "Slightly lower material quality". Ha!

It's ironic that WMH was at its most popular when its models were at their worst quality.

I haven't seen one of PP's resin models in person yet, but I'm sure they are fine. The metal models are almost universally great. The one plastic sprue model I have is good (not GW good, but good enough). But PP's restic models are an abomination. "Slightly lower material quality". Ha!

It's ironic that WMH was at its most popular when its models were at their worst quality.

The Battle Boxes/faction starter sets are of lower quality. Maybe I was being a bit disingenuous But the standard PP plastics are all normal hard plastic exactly the same as GW. Mould line issues can still persist but a quick once over with the fine file sorts out any issues. All the new models are either plastic, or resin with some metal bits. The new models are lovely (apart from one or two odd Legion ones....), the gargantuans are beautiful IMO. Look at the Sea King, Storm Raptor etc.

But it could be a style thing. This isnt a thread about model quality.

I do agree with your point though that the WM/H community needs to fix itself and in my neck of the woods, that is what we are doing. :-)

I think the aspect of "getting new players" is one that needs more emphasis.

Especially during GW's dog days, there've been quite a few games/lines that managed to sustain a reasonably profitable niche simply/mostly by absorbing dissatisfied/bored/disgruntled former GW customers (but thus by definition people already "in the hobby").

GW's big strength (even in it's worst Kirby-days) was having good influx of brand-new players through it's store network (and some super-devoted hard-core fans, like those people keeping Blood Bowl alive with no support for nearly 20 years or so). PP actually had a reasonable set-up to bring in new players with press gangers, some board games, etc.., FFG obviously is working (with mixed success) at moving board gamers into "light" wargames of one type or another, etc.. but relying exclusively on "you're a GW customer looking to switch it up, here's my pitch" doesn't seem to be a sustainable long-term plan for a gaming company to stay in this business and grow (though it might work as a launch to get going).

 Big Mac wrote:

Cost: genuine flames of war miniature are expensive for what you get. Platoon of 5 panzer IV=$80

Or $40ish - depending upon wich site you order from. 5 plastic pz IV per box. Decent quality, made by Battlefront themselves.
Or you can track down the older metal/resin boxes & spend $50-$80....
Or you can spend about $80 & get a box of plastics that contain enough tanks/guns/etc to make a 100pt starter force (generally about 8 tanks & 4 guns)
But it's WWII. You don't HAVE to play FoW using Battlefront minis. Any decent 1:100 scale pz IV etc will work. (assuming you built it with the correct barrel) So you can choose your price range: $$$=Battlfront, $$=Plastic Soldier Co., $=Zveda. Of course most players learn about PSC & Z after they've joined the game.

 Big Mac wrote:

Direction: I’ve never played any of the Star Wars games, they come like toys, pre painted miniatures in low quality cast. Directed toward an audience like MtG players where you can open the box and play right away. The audience tend to lose interest after a short while, as there is no investment other than money spent.

The quality is fine. The paint jobs are fine as well. Being ready to go is the whole point of the game.

There's no problem with prepainted - the only issue tends to be when you do something like Rackham did which is when you go from unpainted to prepainted. Because you've already built a fanbase who are willing to paint and then you cut off their model supply and force them to either paint strip or accept your paint scheme only.

Things that grow fast die fast.

They're generally called fads by those who think longer term.

It's comparably easy to be big for a short period of time.

Even big things, like GW, have had declines, but them being bigger, and growing slower, has made them more resilient.

A fad generally has no long term commitment built-in.



People played Ark, then they all went to PUBG, then all to fortnite, then in a few months it will be everyone to the next fad.

X-Wing and Warmachine - compared to GW games, are just a short flicker in the long night of eternity - or something.


It takes insane luck, success and dedication to actually get something as stable and large as 40K.


It's important to remember that both X-Wing and Warmachine sold a lot on the premise of "small investment", i.e. minimal commitment, X-wing more so with no painting and barely a few hundred bucks

Minimal commitment, minimal barrier to entry, maximum market acceleration, minimal barrier to exit, maximum market exit speed.

Or something like that...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
but relying exclusively on "you're a GW customer looking to switch it up, here's my pitch" doesn't seem to be a sustainable long-term plan for a gaming company to stay in this business and grow (though it might work as a launch to get going).

Clearly, and it's mostly depending on how many customers GW is bleeding.

When that number turned negative, it started hurting bad for those companies.

They'll always have an easier time because of no need to educate the customer, but I doubt GW will go back to its terrible business practices any time soon. I think it was kind of an organizational maturity crisis going from "hey we inherited this pile of gold, let's sit on it", to "hey we inherited this dwindling pile of gold, let's try and invest it".

 Sqorgar wrote:

Sunno wrote:As for the "poor models" comment, that the BB are of a slightly lower material quality but they are fine once painted up. The PP models over the last year have been killing it imo. But each to their own i suppose :-)

I haven't seen one of PP's resin models in person yet, but I'm sure they are fine. The metal models are almost universally great. The one plastic sprue model I have is good (not GW good, but good enough). But PP's restic models are an abomination. "Slightly lower material quality". Ha!

It's ironic that WMH was at its most popular when its models were at their worst quality.

I'll have to disagree. I've recently bought a bunch of PP restic figures for the RPG and to try Company of Iron and it's been perfectly fine to work with. I'd rather have something in it then metal--especially anything larger then a human. I'm also comparing it to Mantic's first attempts at restrict (looking at you 1st edition Deadzone) which was a true horrible mess. Honestly don't get the restic hate. Mold lines aren't that hard to get rid of if you know how (plastic file and nylon brush).


Speaking of Company of Iron and the IK RPG. I think having different uses for the models you buy from a company make's it more likely you'll stick with the company. I think several people have been making that argument here with recent GW and I agree. I'm more likely to buy and paint something up if I know I have a lot of different uses for it.

You know, they dedicate entire college courses to these kinds of subjects and successful businesses still fail. You can't pinpoint why on a general level, only specific instances pertaining to that company.

From my experience, beyond what has been mentioned above, edition change seems to be large tipping point in the survival of a game. When a company changes a game edition, that’s when you discover how enthused and invested your fans are. Wizkid’s Mechwarrior seemed to suffer an edition change and quickly fading out. And we all know about the reaction of the shift from D&D 3E to 4E as well as the fallout of WHFB to AoS. Both took quite a beating at the switch, and while they recovered, they had fairly significant turnover (witnessing the creation of anti-systems/revolutions, in systems such as Pathfinder & 9th age, respectively).

Also, overall popularity of the property can have substantial effect on the longevity of the game. For example, the Terminator Genesys movie seems to have been a major factor in why the TT game couldn’t gain a foothold. I suspect Star Wars may be having a bit of a slump combined with an edition change and the apathy towards the last few movies. GW under Kirby certainly had its low point, and I’m sure there are many other examples.