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Hey,
I'm writing a industrial analysis paper on the fictional miniature war gaming industry. Does GW really dominate the market to the extent that people say it does? Outside of a regional context of course
disclaimer:not asking for someone to write my paper, just getting information from the forums
Thanks a ton!

How are you defining the "industry"? There is a lot of territory to cover: scale, period, mass gaming vs. single figure. GW with PP as an approaching 2nd has a strong share of the sci/fi market. The rest of the industry is very fragmented - with a handful of medium sized players and hundreds of small companies.

GW arguably has a lot of clout in the market, due to its presence and visibility and lays claim to be the biggest.

It depends on what you are specifically looking for. The opinions of partisan forum users or more substantial data.

First you need to define what is meant by miniature wargaming.

Kilkrazy wrote:First you need to define what is meant by miniature wargaming.

Well put sir, by miniature wargaming I refer to the fantasy/sci-fi, main examples would indeed be GW games, I wouldnt include historical setting games as I would say they may have a different consumer base than fantasy/sci-fi
So lets restrict it to that for the Industry
and I will take the opinions of partisan forum users....Google can be used to locate substantial data in several cases

If you're referring to the Sci/Fi and Fantasy miniature wargaming industry, then yes, GW rules the roost as far as market share and player base. I've been to wargaming shops in the west and midwest, and if a hobby store carries one line of wargaming miniatures, it's almost always GW. By way of disclaimer, I'm no GW partisan, for the most part I prefer other miniatures to GW.

Privateer press, Reaper, and Battlefront (Flames of War) each have a significant presence, and there are some others who do well also. However I don't know exactly what the breakdown is. I think most companies are publicly traded, and you should be able to research their current financials online somewhere.

Also, it'd be worth deciding whether you are going to include clix games. Companies like Wizkids/hasbro, who don't make any/many paintable miniatures games, but do make clix games probably make a fair bit of money from "wargaming" though you'd have to separate it out from the rest of the companies income from board games, toys, etc, etc.

GW has the clout because it has the retail presence.

Should GW fail it will weaken rather than strengthen the position of of its competitors.

GW is also the company to watch, the company with the largest fan base and following and manufacturing capability. Some things can only be done by GW within the hobby industry at present, including large scale plastic modelling. This can only really be addressed by plastics companies outside the the wargaming hobby like Tamiya or Revell, and not by any of the current gaming companies.


The only thing that prevents GW from having total dominance is their inability to write a tight and balanced ruleset; and at this stage there is no longer any excuse for this to be so.

Huffy wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:First you need to define what is meant by miniature wargaming.

Well put sir, by miniature wargaming I refer to the fantasy/sci-fi, main examples would indeed be GW games, I wouldnt include historical setting games as I would say they may have a different consumer base than fantasy/sci-fi
So lets restrict it to that for the Industry
and I will take the opinions of partisan forum users....Google can be used to locate substantial data in several cases

GW dominate their market. Without GW there probably wouldnt be the oportunity for games such as Infinity, Warmachine/Hordes etc to penetrate as deeply as they are into that segment of the market. A for historicals, BF with FoW probably wouldnt have had the exposure and popularity without GW to lead by example.

I think the biggest thing to understand about the industry is that it isn't really an industry, but a hobby. Most every company out there making miniatures and rules systems is doing it for the love of it - they make money but it's generally not enough to justify the vast amount of time and passion put into the hobby.

Except of course, for GW, and to a lesser extent PP. I'm not saying that a significant number of people at both companies aren't also in it for the love of it, but that there are financial rewards for those people that justify their labour, whether or not they also happen to love the hobby.