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So, everyone, without denial realises space marines are by far the most common GW system army in the world. no illusions about this.

what if something CRAZY AND UNEXPECTED happens, and spacemarines stop being popular?

Will GW take a metaphorical shotgun to it's head?

Why? They'd still be selling just as much.

"OMG, I hat marines. Must buy Eldar/Ork/Tau"k

But you might as well ask "What would pubs do if we all quit drinking beer?"

Lol. not what I meant.

their entire marketting to new players is 'look little plastic guys who look like guys from halo. play with them.'

pretty much.

it seems, if the idea of spacemarine became less popular, that 'sweet spot' as it were wouldn't be there. whats gonna take it's place? orks?

Redacted for rudeness. -The Mgmt.

Same thing that happened when people stopped buying DE. They'll wait forever, and then bring them back looking better than ever.

If they didn't buy other armies, and GW kept putting out Marines stuff that NO ONE bought at all, GW would go out of business. The entire company survives on Space Marines. Last I knew they were more than 50% of their profit.

Not buying SM but instead other 40k stuff would not move them anywhere.
Dropping general sales of 4ok would either lead to a "new edition", "new features" or 40k being handed to the subcompanies of GW.
If these "new ED", "new feat", subcompanies fail to change the course, GW's beancounters will just sell of the 40k verse to any bidder and thus
it may share the fate of other popular systems ( insert example of former wellknown products here, maybe from companies like Atari, commodore,....) .

Thaanos wrote:

Captain Solon wrote:
their entire marketting to new players is 'look little plastic guys who look like guys from halo. play with them.'
?

The Moderati were here.

And you sir, are forgetting the first rule of Dakka.
There was no need to be rude.
Thats uncalled for, and you must know it is true.

And you can't deny it. if you see some teenage [13-15] kid entering a store for the first time, you'll likely hear 'have you seen these before?'

if they answer no, then the response will likely Well, have you played any games like dawn of war or Halo? [I've heard this more then once.]

which usually the would've. THIS, relates to something they're familiar with.

So, you're calling me an idiot, and you don't realise a basis of marketing?

If I knew you liked spicy food, and I had to make a dish for you, would I not make it spicy so you could relate it to you?

Thats pretty much it. relate what you're showing to the potential customer.

right now, and for the past ten years, dudes in heavy armour who are awesomely skilled and better then normal humans are the it thing.

my question is, what happens when they stop being that it thing.

Another example is knights. in fact, slap on a horse and give them a lance [removing the gunz.] and you've got a knight, haven't you?

Knights used to be the it thing. everyone aspired to be a knight. then, knights died out. [kos of the gunz] noone wanted to be a knight [ergo, sales of knight-related things reduced.]

a weird extrapalated example. but still rings true.

Don't call me an idiot. that was really not called for.

I think it would cripple GW, to the point that they would fall down to the position of being indistinguishable from any other small miniature producer.

Not just because of lost sales nor lost appeal for their IP. I could happily take the entire 40K universe with the SM stripped away and for me it would be no worse than it is now.

I think the problem would be that space marines are too easy for the company to produce. They can keep up with their release schedule (which though we complain about the lack of releases, is actually pretty good IMHO) because almost half of their models are the exact same guy with the exact same proportions, with slightly different details. For every other line they have to sculpt almost every figure from the ground up because they're all dressed and proportioned differently. They can't use the blanks that Jes Goodwin made (that resulted in the explosion of SM plastics in 3rd edition). They can't easily interchange parts. Without SM, they can't pop out a set of chest plates and shoulder pads and say they'e covered an entire army. They can't let a rookie sculptor cut their teeth on sculpting a variant army that is the basic blank in robes or the basic blank with spikes or the basic blank with garden weasels because those blanks wouldn't exist.

In a nutshell, the game would be a lot more like 2nd edition: A bit more character and variety (because every sculpt would be truly unique) but much harder to convert and customize, with much larger gaps in the product line. And a lot of good sculpts from really good artists mixed in with a lot of lesser sculpts from newer artists who need the experience.

Captain Solon wrote:
And you can't deny it. if you see some teenage [13-15] kid entering a store for the first time, you'll likely hear 'have you seen these before?'

if they answer no, then the response will likely Well, have you played any games like dawn of war or Halo? [I've heard this more then once.]

I apologize, I didn't realize that it was someone else, and not you, who was trying to tell people that Marines look like Spartans.

And you can't deny it. if you see some teenage [13-15] kid entering a store for the first time, you'll likely hear 'have you seen these before?'

if they answer no, then the response will likely Well, have you played any games like dawn of war or Halo? [I've heard this more then once.]

This does not mean that their entire marketing is centred around SM=HALO,

Guys in armour fighting aliens v Guys in armour fighting aliens - it's just a convenient reference point used by individual staff members. And a good starting point on conversations.


Dawn of War is a good reference though since that IS GW and IS SM vs aliens!


And yes, a lack of interest in marines would result in some sweating in the board room.

Captain Solon wrote:

Thaanos wrote:

Captain Solon wrote:
their entire marketting to new players is 'look little plastic guys who look like guys from halo. play with them.'
?

[youtube]you are an idiot (although presented in a video)

And you sir, are forgetting the first rule of Dakka.
There was no need to be rude.
Thats uncalled for, and you must know it is true.

And you can't deny it. if you see some teenage [13-15] kid entering a store for the first time, you'll likely hear 'have you seen these before?'

if they answer no, then the response will likely Well, have you played any games like dawn of war or Halo? [I've heard this more then once.]

Don't call me an idiot. that was really not called for.

what he should have said was you idea is stupid and full of idiot holes.

their marketing is nothing to do with halo as it has been the same since the start, years before halo. they picked the superhuman defenders of humatity as their core marketing race for that exact reason, they are humans but better.

i have also never heard a red shirt use a 'have you played halo' hook, they have used the dawn of war hook as its a GW product.

you may not realise this but GW has become a very profit focussed company, if space marines dropped in sales they would try and push them for a bit and if that didn't work they would use the most popular race as the figure head and make more regular models/codex for them.

also if you spelt space marines correctly in your title, people would be more likely to show respect you ideas, spelling is also a rule on Dakka

Spehs? I forgot to include marheens, yes. but it's part of a joke. but I'm suprised you'd not know it.

It's not an unintentional mispelling. [I don't think I could propose the argument I have if it weren't for the fact that I can, infact, spell space.]

I know GW is profit focussed? I don't expect them not to be. it's a very lucrative focus ;D.

It may just be me. but I'm not just talking about the halo reference.

Yes, 'humongous heavy armoured tank men' has been around since at least the first war but they can use them specifically as their hinge point.

What I'm saying is, BECAUSE they are so often used, BECAUSE they're big in the gaming world, [video games included] they adapt to accept. they may be the original plastic space men, but that doesn't make them above using other titles to relate to customers.

To be honest I keep waiting for the combined Microsoft\Blizzard siege of lawsuits to bring down Games Workshop for ripping off all their IP. Space Marines are totes ripping off Halo.

Hmm, I probably need to see my web doc, I can't tell if Ouze is serious or not...

And on topic I'll +1 that GW would just try another push/edition and if that didn't work try another figurehead. Probably IG since it's still Imperium.

I doubt very much if we see Space Marines ever lose popularity.

I always thought that Starship Troopers blew it big time as both movie and miniature game by not going back to Heinleins original story, and focusing on the mobile infantry.

Captain Solon wrote:

What I'm saying is, BECAUSE they are so often used, BECAUSE they're big in the gaming world, [video games included] they adapt to accept. they may be the original plastic space men, but that doesn't make them above using other titles to relate to customers.

Again, who is this they you keep referring to?

Corporate Head Office? Telling its staff at store 'infer that our products are exactly like Spartans (TM) (C) (R) (Pat. Pending). from HALO (TM) (C) (R) (Pat. Pending)'.

Or is it just one individual at a store that references HALO in order to find some common ground when introducing vampire super human troopers or super human troopers on wolves etc like you know, armour, space, killing aliens, aliens, ...common themes in sci fi....

If players stopped buying Space Marines, I'd imagine alot of the side codex (Space Wolves, Blood Angels etc.) would take the turn of the Dark Eldar and not get updated for forever.

I'll take the same stance as the others, and say they'd probably try a big push, then fall in behind the next figurehead based on their current sales.

--

However, the OP seems to take the idea that the only reason new players buy Space Marines at all is because they're easily identified with games they've already played, like Halo.

I would say that it has more to do with the fact that out of 16 codex currently available, 7 are Space Marines of some description, and that they are the among the most forgiving armies for a new player to learn the game with, thus veteran players tend to recommend starting out with our boys in power armor if you like that kind of thing.

Also, some of us, like myself, genuinely like the Space Marine lore, lore that was began long before Halo (To which I've only played the first game anyway, and wasn't really that impressed), and enjoy being a genetically-engineered superhuman created for one purpose and one purpose only, that being war. It's not because it's the -in- thing, we play a hobby that will never be the -in- thing, but because alot of players enjoy having an elite force that is a step above the best humanity has to offer.

---

Gonna be honest, I never connected in my mind Halos 'Spartans' and Space Marines until this thread. I always viewed the Space Marines as demi-gods, more superheroes than anything else. I mean, they can spit poison, take wounds that would kill a mortal and continue fighting, are massive compared to the average human....it's like Superman, but clad in Mark VII Power Armor.

My FLGS manager figures if you're in his store, you probably aren't too worried about seeming 'nerdy', and thus doesn't worry about trying to connect Warhammer to 'trending' popular characters/races (As a general rule, he did go through a phase where he likened the Tyranid Bio-Titan to the massive cockroach from Men in Black, just alot bigger).

Well, the simple answer is that Games Workshop would go out of business. I mean, most of their money is made from the sales of Marines, so with such a huge chunk of their profit margins dissappearing overnight, the earnings would not cover their outgoinngs, not by a long shot.

They would have to push Guard and =I= twice as hard. Space Marines are the first human-looking race most new players see, and I'd argue that has something to do with it.

Captain Solon wrote:What I'm saying is, BECAUSE they are so often used, BECAUSE they're big in the gaming world, [video games included] they adapt to accept. they may be the original plastic space men, but that doesn't make them above using other titles to relate to customers.

its not GW policy to use another company's IP to attract sales, this idea of yours may only come from one guy in a hobby shop, the halo reference would also be rubbish as the two games are nothing alike.

As much as I get totally bored with Space Marines, they have to be about the smartest bit of product design GW has ever done.

1. They look human.
This means players can easily relate to them. This means that any bit from any other GW line can be used in scale with their 9 foot tall super-cavemen.

2. They are claimed to be superhuman.
This means they fulfill juvenile power fantasies easily. This means new players wanting to start "the best" army can see pretty clearly which one to try.

3. They are standardized.
As I said above, now that Jes has made blanks it's pretty damn easy to make a space marine model. But even more important, most of them wear fully-enclosed armour. So while they still serve as wish fulfillment for some players, they don't have faces unless the players want them to. When you paint an army with faces, you can't control who those people are because you can't control the faces. When most of the faces are under masks, you can easily imagine them to be who you want them to be.

4. They are customizable. This is the most important point in SM success. Right in the background from the very beginning we are told there are a thousand chapters, all different, and most of them are not listed so we are free to fill in the blanks with our own creativity. This, more than anything else, is what has made SM huge IMHO. New players can customize their SM army to not just be Ultramarines, but to be MYMarines. Experienced players can adapt their marines to exercise just about any modeling, painting, or strategy trick they want to try. It only takes a few bits to customize them, so everyone wants to do that.

If SM vanished, then to make the lightning strike twice GW would have to find a way to do that with their other lines. What other lines can people customize in the same way? Tau and Eldar are too varied from trooper to trooper to be adapted with a couple bit swaps. Necrons and Nids are too alien and uniform. Orks are easily customizable, but they also have a pretty unique aesthetic and proportions that it's hard to use other bitz with. You can't exactly start tacking Bretonian helmets onto Orks to make a crusader force. Imperial Guard could possibly fill the role, but the faces make it harder for the player to project their own ideas onto the army and you need so many of them. Besides, in the background IG are always portrayed as the losers who die. I love IG, but I can see why they don't get the love SM do.

If Space Marines magically disappeared, it would be very hard for GW to create an army that sells just as well. Without turning them into Space Marines.

@Ouze
Note that GW created SM before anyone even knew about Halo [Mod Edit - Rule #1: Learn it and live it! ]

goggari wrote:@Ouze
Note that GW created SM before anyone even knew about Halo (dumbass)

Oh very dear.

goggari wrote:@Ouze
Note that GW created SM before anyone even knew about Halo (dumbass)

I'm pretty sure he was joking.

To the OP, that's a pretty far-fetched "What if...?"

I don't buy the Halo argument, if GW were pushing Space marines to sweep up the fallout from Videogames/movies they would look very different. Everyone knows that master chief is a rascist, arrogant, British-Nazi-knight/monk with no character traits apart from hate and perversions of honour and duty.... 'Nuff said.... Space marines would be spouting HOO-RAH have rude messages on their armour and always be on the look out for Hot babes if GW purely wished to exploit the kiddies....

Modquisition on. Lets get back to rule #1 compliance people. Private warnings have been sent.

mikhaila wrote:I doubt very much if we see Space Marines ever lose popularity.

I always thought that Starship Troopers blew it big time as both movie and miniature game by not going back to Heinleins original story, and focusing on the mobile infantry.

I think they decided to take the easy way out in terms of special effects - but I agree, they blew it bigtime there!

Also, the whole "spehsmarienz" thing is very, VERY tired.

Also, everyone stay calm and remember the rules of the site, OK?

Thanks!

BluntmanDC wrote: also if you spelt space marines correctly in your title, people would be more likely to show respect you ideas, spelling is also a rule on Dakka

Ah, sweet irony. Muphry's law in action.

goggari wrote:@Ouze
Note that GW created SM before anyone even knew about Halo [Mod Edit - Rule #1: Learn it and live it! ]

i believe that Ouze's use of 'totes' was a clear indication that he was being ironic to make a point that the OP's view is flawed, I know that tone can be hard to interpret on the internet but he made a clear effort (other than putting 20 after his post) to show his intent.