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Why do you think Warhammer is so popular, for so long?

The rules change, the fiction is fluid, but what is that all important... I don't know how to phrase it... je ne sais quoi.

What made the game succeed where so many other games have disappeared into the land of misfit toys, never to be heard from again?

It has high-street presence, where no other games like it do.
The GW/WH stores may be money pits, but they are there to keep the brand in view, and to grab new players.
And once the game has such a huge market spread, it is then a primary option for gamers to carry with them. Whether going to college or university, or on deployment with the military. Players know they will be able to get a game of 40k (and AoS to a lesser extent), where hardly anything else, even other GW games, don't.

Also, the WH universes are huge, and options to individualise or customise the models or armies are built into the games.

Well, it got going more or less before anyone else, with an approach that’s hard to replicate.

In its earliest days, it captured the nerd zeitgiest, being a bit punk rock and anarchic.

Then came the market penetration of the stores. Stores where, before too long, you could buy goods they produced. And they felt like secret clubhouses.

Also GW has been incredibly lucky in the timing of its various misfortunes. 2008 Financial Collapse, which did for some big high street names? GW survived that, having already gone through serious cost cutting measures, and Carefully Not Borrowing To Expand.

Pandemic? A more or less ideal “stay in and avoid everyone” hobby. And GW hadn’t long effectively harnessed social media to promote itself.

Now, it’s not all blind luck of course. For instance, not borrowing to expand is a conscious, financially conservative position. GW making as much of of its goods as possible in-house is also a conscious decision, which gives them a curious level of control over their supply chain which relatively few companies enjoy.

Also? By the time they’d widened the market to the point it could support competitors? They utterly dominated it - again largely thanks to having their own stores, where someone could get started in the wider wargaming hobby, and never see a competitor’s goodies.

I think a few things come to the fore of my mind for why GW has grown so big compared to others

1) Own Stores - this is a big one. As the others said if you've got highstreet stores then people take notice and way back in the 80s 90s in the pre-internet era that was almost the only way to really get exposure if you couldn't afford TV ads all the time (and GW did afford a few over the years)
Own stores push local growth - consider how many of us first started by walking into a game store. Seeing games being played; seeing the display models; the shiny pictures on the boxes.

2) Staff that were hobbyists and keen. This is another big one - the staff at (UK) GW stores were never salesmen alone. They were fellow geeks - they painted, they played they hobbied. That creates a very different impression on a customer compared to a hard-seller. Yes they were sellers too, but the methods they had were very smartly done so that the interested kid never felt like they were being sold too - they were instead being welcomed into a community and a hobby by staff who were passionate* about it.
That's a big impressionable thing on young minds - many more times so if those kids are also perhaps the kind that don't do the most socialising in general in the first place

3) Good contracts at the right time to expand. GW did land a DnD contract at some stage in the early years. They landed a few more over the years which I think helped them grow alongside their own vision.

4) Owning their own vision. Whilst they did part 3, they also pushed hard to own as much of their own vision and brand as they could. They messed up a few times (like the lost Chaos God), but quickly learned ot keep it all.

5) No loans and re-investment into owning more of their own production line. These are a huge part of why they grew and why they sustained their growth. Using what profits they had to re-invest into the company and to constantly keep buying up more of their own production and manufacture and bringing it in-house put GW in a stronger position in terms of having direct control over their own manufacture, marketing and so on.

Not taking out loans and expanding slower than many other highstreet brands probably meant GW didn't grow as fast as they could have. HOWEVER, as noted above, it meant when recessions hit the wall GW didn't have those debts sitting on their head to kill them when sales were down. This is a big thing on why GW has remained where they are on the highstreet over the years whilst many other, much bigger brands, have fallen.

6) Lore and product. GW realised early on that lore sells. It captures the imagination and GW have pushed it hard on multiple fronts. They put lore with their rules - rules being an "essential" purchase means that everyone gained a base exposure to the art and story of the setting; at least for the army(ies) they played.
Sure GW also made books and art alongside those, but they knew that was serving more interest but not the whole market by far. That's why they dribble lore everywhere - news posts; short stories; novels; artwork; codex; rulebook etc... GW smear their lore EVERYWHERE so you can't avoid it and thus you get hooked.



*Another great example of this is Top Gear. MANY fans of the show (inc myself) are not car people. And yet when you got 3 really passionate people together fooling around they became exceptionally entertaining and took you on a ride into their hobby, their interest.

The now many, many videos in the Link Tank thread also show that early GW was heavily driven by artists, be they people doing paintings, sculpting, creative writing etc, they drove a lot of it.

Yes there was a sales vision behind it, and Bryan Ansell as owner has the final say, but it all points to a collaborative effort.

At that fed into the anarchic feel of the game. A galaxy filled with weirdos and oddities that captured the imagination. It’s the same effect as the Cantina Scene. It shows worlds well beyond the scope of the existing game.

Epic was also a big part of 40k’s early success. At that scale, you could churn out tanks of varying sizes you couldn’t in 28mm metal, or afford to do in 28mm plastic. And so the vision presented grew well beyond its origins.

There was also a wide variety of looks.

Compare to Warmachine, probably the game that came closest to claiming GW’s crown. Rules entirely aside? Everything looked terribly samey. And if like me you’re not into Steampunk? It really didn’t offer anything visually. X-Wing and Armada? Serious restrictions on what you can add to the game.

Rackham also had a decent crack with Confrontation. But in the UK, the models weren’t easy to get hold of unless you had a FLGS. Which meant far fewer “oh that looks cool” impulse buys. And if the FLGS didn’t offer intro games, and/or your game isn’t played in store? You’ll struggle for promotion.

By skill and luck in just the right combination? GW created and cracked the industry as we know it now.

Honestly when you raise titles like Rackham and Warmachine its less what GW did right and almost more what their competition did wrong.

Rackham pushed for that pre-painted market and, along with other things, that didn't help and drove them under and since then the licence has bounced around and wound up in literal criminal hands.

Warmachine was hard on GW's tails at one stage and then they rushed their 3rd edition launch; shut down their PG system*; shut down most of their, at the time, active forum**. Add on top their overseas deals for model production going south on several fronts and PP just went through a phase where every choice they made appeared to result in detrimental results.

Attempting to chase fast updating meta meant that their whole "rules in the box" card approach fell apart at a time when apps and such were still kinda new and not as mainstream as they are now.


The other thing is GW got a lucky/smart break in being able to get their own plastic casting machines at just the right time. This I think is what really allowed them to grow because they could do so internally and quickly. Other firms hit the issue that resin/metal don't scale up to big markets very well at all (even without the rising costs of metal being a constant issue). Meanwhile hiring factories in China for overseas production can be very hit and miss - get it wrong and you can literally lose your moulds and everything.

It's a barrier we see many firms hit the wall of though I get the feeling its a barrier that in the last few years is coming down. Plastic casting has a few more options now and it seems like there's more ability for firms to network can gain access to good quality casting.

Warcradle I believe has their own machines or very good contacts; Siocast is out there though requires some skill training and tinkering to make it really work well***; 3D printing is an option for scaling that, in my view, seems to sit between resin/metal and plastic in terms of scaling; Tabletop Combat has access to plastic right now that feels very much like GW style, a huge step up from their earlier more packaging plastic style plastics.





*which for everyone who isn't GW with their own stores is basically essential to pushing local level support

**with the view that 3rd parties would just fill the void for them

*** from what I can gather



Also on the lore front - GW are not shy about selling their IP to other markets for use. Their video game market shows their approach really well. Basically sell to any firm willing to buy the use of the IP - BUT - have GW retain full creative control over its use. This way GW maintains their identity of their brand really well no matter who picks it up. And in side markets GW isn't afraid of smaller firms or failures - if a game fails it fails and falls to the side and no one remembers it. If it succeeds then it does everyone great.
So GW are happy to have Total War Warhammer and Space Marine even if Dawn of War 3 and Age of Sigmar failed and if Battlefleet Gothic has always remained a bit of a niche title.

Also? When it comes to licensing, it helps that GW isn’t desperate for cash, so can and will take its time to negotiate a decent deal.

The Amazon deal took what, the best part of a year for the nittygritty to be worked out to mutual satisfaction. Compare that to when Marvel, to avoid bankruptcy, sold the right to X-Men, Spider-Man and that to various media companies. And it’s still not reacquired Spider-man, despite Sony’s absolute ineptitude with the license since Spider-man 3.

It’s a solid position to be in, and is the current end result of decades of lore building across multiple fronts, and never being too much of a stickler about what is and isn’t canon.

Its interesting that over the years, especially the waning years of the previous CEO, who became convinced he was always right, they are their own worst enemy when it comes to losing their position.

And counterintuitively all this is sustained with a series of games that are often objectively terrible compared to other board and wargames, making the title of the company somewhat ironic

GW very much went through that phase of looking purely at the numbers and focusing on the finances and shareholders and nothing much else it seemed at the top end of the company.

Which is what you can honestly see from a LOT of bigger firms - they get fixated on the numbers and lose touch with their market and actual customers.

It doesn't help that a lot of "big business" these days is focused on very short term gains with a view that you'll basically pump and dump the company and make off with a big share sale at some point for the top end of the firm. So following many common business practices can result in very short term company goals and focus.

I think there is where GW have managed to survive because they've had periods of long term targets and goals.

Of course they had some bumps along the way - lets not forget that whilst Kirby's end was a bit of a disaster; his start was almost essential for turning around GW's finances and costs.

He just grew too isolated from the customers as a management team whlist the current management appears to be much more in-tune with customers. Also Kirby went through that whole "we hate the internet sue everyone" phase too!

I do wonder if GW simply outgrew Tom Kirby.

I don’t mean that as a slight against the guy, as he clearly knew his onions, and is ultimately responsible for the GW we know today.

But, being able to guide and grow a company from pretty tiny to multi-national is one thing. Being able to do the next steps of Hopefully Inevitable Growth, such as leveraging IP effectively is quite another.

He may not have had the contacts for that, he might not have had the knowledge and insight on how to go about it and so on.

I 100% get the feeling that Kirby was outgrown.

Now how much that was just him or him and the managers directly under him and so on is impossible for us to really tell on the outside.

There very much was a phase where he was 100% needed and turned things around and he set a LOT of elements in stone that have lasted the test of time really well.

But I do get the feeling he was a one-trick-pony. Or that any adapting he made was just not in the right direction.

Again its hard to separate him from the management team - it could well be he simply wound up approving and having managers under him that supported poorer choices. It could also be he read into company management from big firms that have very different attitudes and, whilst they might be big, might also have that - as I noted earlier - focus on pump-and-dump approaches to companies and that whole shareholder focus over actual customer focus.

Suffice it to say that Kirby stepping down and Rowntree stepping was very much needed at the time (if not honestly before) for GW to turn a corner and thrive like they have done.

I think if they'd stuck to their guns of AoS at launch; almost no internet marketing; hostility toward fans/news sites (esp today with 3D printing); a fixation on maximum return on investment (ergo marines marines and more marines); then I think we could well have seen GW remain big but not as big as they are now and potentially winding up burning even more long term customers.


Of course it could also have meant that other firms would have got tehir head up even more so so its not all doom and gloom. UK side though I can say that GW are almost essential for one big thing and that's new people. So many other firms rely heavily on people already into the market. Who are already geeks/wargamers/modelpainters and converting them rather than getting totally fresh blood into the hobby and space. That's where GW has maintained a massive edge and its things like their school programs; their stores and so on that really help inspire new generations.

It's great for the market in general and it does GW great because it means as their older customers move on; they've got fresh young ones coming up

Rowntree also took what I presume to be a calculated risk in bringing back side games, after Kirby had shuttered Specialist Games entirely.

That lead to different price points for consumers. For instance, Underworlds was a very cost effective game when it first launched, and offered some unique models. So it had the appeal of a game designed specifically for Competition Play, a low entry price, and appeal to painters, who now only need spend £12* to have some interesting project pieces.

Blood Bowl, Necromunda, War Cry, Aeronautica, Adeptus Titanicus and that. All very different games, and more than just Main Game At A Small Battle Scale.

So anyone wanting to get involved no longer had to spend a couple of hundred quid to get something satisfyingly usable.

I’ve no doubt those games make only a modest profit each. But I’d guess the philosophy there is “it’s new money, and a decent chunk we’d have missed out entirely, as we’re catering to those uninterested in, or unable to afford, a 40K or AoS army”.

*Yes I’m aware the price has gone up quite a bit since launch.

Great thread!

One Q I've always had - was/is Kirby a gamer? I never got the sense he was part of it in any big way.

I think what Rowntree saw was multiple kickstarters and startupfirms making games that GW had once made and being highly profitable doing so.

To me its a shift in attitude from Kirby who was very much focused on short term profits and maximum return on investment - tricks that worked really well in the early days to turn GW's finances around
To Rowntree whose management is clearly more willing to invest into side/specialist games that maybe don't bring back as much return on investment; but

1) Help keep people within the GW ecosystem and also stops 3rd parties basically profiting of what GW did in the past.

2) as you say present different price-point and I'd say time investment games. Older games might be rich in cash but poor on time whilst younger are the opposite. So having quicker games like Underworlds and lower cost games like Warcry and Killteam is ideal for both groups

3) Games like Warcry and Underworld are long term investments. On their own they aren't massive and they require more upkeep than, say Dreadfleet which was one and done. However they create new customers; keep them engaged for longer when they can't afford big armies and then BOOM before they know it they've slowly collected up enough models or gained income to afford into the bigger games.


As you say its about chasing smaller profits because GW already clearly invests more than enough into Marines. I think also Rowntree saw things like Primaris as over-investing. Much like how MTG has steadily been burning customers by over-investing in new lines and side lines and chasing "whale" customers. At some point your cash-cow hits a limit and if you push hard beyond that there's the greater risk that you just burn it out and then everything starts falling apart.

Plus all-eggs-in-one-basket is great short term; but long term leaves you highly vulnerable.

For the many flaws the GW systems have, it's also important that they are really accessible to new people.

Even discounting GW's "high street" presence, you can pick up a box of models that will get you an army to play with literally out of the box.
All you need is some form of measure (i.e., a ruler or tape measure from the DIY kit) and some basic dice (which are super, super easy to get a hold of).

GW also have quite staggering brand loyalty. And that is likely a legacy of their stores.

The rules have always been pretty wonky and imperfect. But in the early days, the community saw Mend And Make Do as part of the appeal. House rule here, tweak there, wargear banned, point adjusted. It felt pretty DIY. And GW encouraged that ethos.

Now, as ever this is not to excuse GW’s current level of offerings - but the Mend And Make Do feel of the community still continues, somewhat offsetting wonk.

Same with balance. Where other games suffer is the inevitable GW balance comparison. Like X-Wing. That was really well balanced. Until, perhaps unavoidably, it wasn’t. So they did a 2nd Edition. Which required people to cough up for an upgrade pack or three to convert their existing collection. Which suddenly felt….a bit GW. Same as WarmaHordes, which were presented (at least by the community) as the anti-GW. Until they did a GW with edition churn, invalidation of army builds and so on.

Also, look at how the stores work and are stocked. In short? You can walk into one knowing nothing of the game, and walk out having played your first game, painted your first model, and, potentially, with everything you need except the elbow grease to have a board and armies at home. The glues, the paints, the brushes, the tools, the board, the terrain, the models, the rules. All of it. With a neat little GW seal of approval.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
GW also have quite staggering brand loyalty. And that is likely a legacy of their stores.

I think its a legacy of age. A LOT of us got into gaming when we were young and that was most often through GW and GW stores.
That makes a huge impression on us that we really don't realise, but it makes it really hard to walk away from. It's similar to how generations have now grown up with games like World of Warcraft and Minecraft - both of which have massive loyal fanbases.

In miniature wargaming, esp scifi and fantasy - GW is often the gateway. It's that first impression so everything else gets compared to it and it means that its always one of those things that pulls hard on the nostalgia strings. Even if you're getting into an army you never played before its still a GW thing with their style and all behind it

Why have franchises such as Alien, Predator etc succeeded? Same reason as 40K. There's something to the setting that captures the imagination of people in a profound way, that sets them apart from the "me too" out there

One thing often overlooked is how well GW has managed distribution and keeping product on shelves. While some of these things have ruffled customer feathers, they've been very protective of the supply chain and kept retailers happy.

Resisting online sales prevented the product from being devalued. Codices keep long term players buying from the FLGS. Regularly refreshing FOMO boxes cycles the product on the shelf. These things that players begrudgingly accept are things that keep GW in their face and constantly relevant.

I do wonder if part of it is just how long GW functionally had the market to themselves?

I didn’t really encounter much in the way of competition until the mid 90’s or so. And serious competition wouldn’t materialise until the early 2000’s and WarmaHordes.

That’s a long time to be the only fish in the pond. And it felt like a lot relied on disenfranchised GW players, rather than actively seeking entirely fresh blood. At least in the UK, likely thanks to GW dominating the high street.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I do wonder if part of it is just how long GW functionally had the market to themselves?

I didn’t really encounter much in the way of competition until the mid 90’s or so. And serious competition wouldn’t materialise until the early 2000’s and WarmaHordes.

That’s a long time to be the only fish in the pond. And it felt like a lot relied on disenfranchised GW players, rather than actively seeking entirely fresh blood. At least in the UK, likely thanks to GW dominating the high street.

UK as well and I'd echo this. GW really were the only big fish in the pond - I think it wasn't helped that often GW was the only gamestore in town when there were other gamestores they were often REALLY tiny and in very poor parts of town. The kind of places that young kids are not going to wander past/into. Or maybe it was a shelf in the corner of an otherwise "stuffed with other stuff" toyshop. Even today once you step past the giants like Wayland and Firestorm - many game stores are still tiny and in the cheaper bits of town. Again the kind of places that you "go too" rather than wander past.

Warmachine was about the only other brand I recall actually seeing in a few of those 3rd party stores around the time of them growing. Most other brands are just not there to draw in the trickle of customers. You find them already being in the market - either online; in gamer groups; youtube videos or from other club members.

I feel like in some ways 3rd parties have improved and become worse over the years - improved in that more of them are willing to carry other lines now; but worse in that most want to focus on cardgames for the higher profits AND worse because costs of doing business have gone through the roof meaning that they are often still small stores; cheap spots and very limited on what stock they can hold.

It certainly doesn't hurt that GW has often been the only game in a niche that's kind of all about sunk costs.

True that!

It also helps when competitors models aren’t as appealing.

For those as old as me, remember Warzone? They weren’t bad as such, but big, solid lumps of metal, which didn’t really have much detailing on them.

The setting takes a bunch of great sci fi tropes and smushes them all together with the wildcard influence of the Holy Roman Empire in Spaaaace to make something that is just amazing.

John Blanche's visuals, Jes Goodwin's mini designs and Rick Priestley's original setting ideas and appreciation of making a sci fi setting feel like it has capital H HISTORY all blend together with the contributions of all the other creatives to just make something powerful that spurs the imagination.

I was into 2000AD, medieval history and LOTR before I found 40K. It was electrifying to see them all playing in the same sandbox, along with all this fascinating stuff that I later found out was inspired heavily by Dune, another stone cold classic. It's been 28 years and my enthusiasm for the setting hasn't really waned. I've played other games, notably Warmachine and Hordes, and though I liked the settings none of them have had that impact on me. (Though I'm well aware you can only be 12 once!)

GW / WH

Warhammer is touching 40yrs old

They've got a lot right & so much wrong

40k Space Marines the end - (playable Starwars storm troopers)

WFB - im old enough to have started at 2nd ed

2nd Ed - everything on plastic square base's . rank able straight from the off. (no metal based figures, rebasing - mini dioramas needed)
First army list appear
3rd Ed - A push to start every army off with plastic core troops, everyone of certain age will remember the fantasy regiments boxset,60 men for £9.99 -10 troops with 6 races. so all your mates gravitated to one of the 6. Orcs, Goblins, Skaven, Dark Elves, Wood Elves & Dwarfs
Then you'd end up swapping each race for your collected army.
Warhammer armies was additional add on sale to the main rule book
4th Ed - The game changer
following the same format of the 3rd Ed 40k
You get the rules - 2 starter armies with a card board character & war machine - which would appear a physical miniature's with in 3 months of launch.

Massive expansion of the GW stores all over the UK
instead of having to travel to a major city - now in just about every city & large town.

So now you can go in store, get a demo game of this fantastic boxset game with over a 100 miniature's (looks & feels very value for money, even though £40 back in 92 was a lot of cash) still a big ticket item. Christmas or birthday presents was looking odds on
the release of the card board characters & war machines as miniature's in boxsets, you get the retail golden ticket - return sales with in 3 months (not including the normal addition sales of white dwarf, paint , the odd blister or glue)

That set the model to become the giant of the gaming world.

in 2 years of releasing the 40k & warhammer core games with massive store expansion to close to 100 stores in the uk

it instantly crushed all other games of miniature manufactures by 1996

in the next 15 years GW makes some massive mistakes but with the shelve life of most gamers being 3yrs. the mistakes are overlooked or forgotten or simply not know as the wave of gamers join the ranks

now is GW to big to fail......

many companies have come close & tried to copy / emulate GW but can not touch it.
an average of 12 massive races/army in each core game, each race/army has 50 plus different miniature's
other companies have games with 4 or even 8 races/army in. but that's just 1 game
not 2 or any other spin offs like GW

GW forsore this happening in the late 80s - it farmed off 3 / 4 of their rising stars in the figure sculptors in to a spin off company called marauder miniature's to see if they could dent the GW sales figures / market share
It didnt
they worked out from sales figures it would take 10-15 yrs to rival & not within a year, which was GW main worry.

GW will not be going anywhere any time soon

Store saturation.

For me, I spent years travelling for work. I kept a gw army and a climbing sack in the boot of the car, as I knew that wherever I went in the UK, I could get a game of 40k in the evening instead of sitting in the hotel bar reading a paperback...

It's quite funny to see store saturation listed over and over again when that only applies to the UK and at a much smaller scale, the US. Meanwhile GW games managed to dominate the market in countries which had no GW store till 2010s or still don't have one, so while this might be the answer locally in the GW home market, it clearly isn't they key to their global expansion.

For me, it was the fact that they were really big on self-promotion, there were GW catalogs in local game stores that sold them even back in the late 90s in dirt-poor eastern european market. And then they followed D&D and Battletech examples, and quickly added fiction expand the settings beyond just background decorations, making it so much easier to stay invested emotionally in the games.

It certainly didn't hurt that their competition kept getting into financial troubles one way or another, be it FASA in the US or Target Games in Europe (as far as I understand).

 rockgod2304 wrote:
GW / WH
3rd Ed - A push to start every army off with plastic core troops, everyone of certain age will remember the fantasy regiments boxset,60 men for £9.99 -10 troops with 6 races. so all your mates gravitated to one of the 6. Orcs, Goblins, Skaven, Dark Elves, Wood Elves & Dwarfs
Then you'd end up swapping each race for your collected army.

I loved that box.
And several boxes worth of those old Skaven/Dwarves/Wood Elves & Goblins are still fighting in my forces today.
As are about a dozen of the Orcs. The Dark Elves? I gve those away looong ago.

Angronsrosycheeks wrote:
It's quite funny to see store saturation listed over and over again when that only applies to the UK and at a much smaller scale, the US. Meanwhile GW games managed to dominate the market in countries which had no GW store till 2010s or still don't have one, so while this might be the answer locally in the GW home market, it clearly isn't they key to their global expansion.

For me, it was the fact that they were really big on self-promotion, there were GW catalogs in local game stores that sold them even back in the late 90s in dirt-poor eastern european market. And then they followed D&D and Battletech examples, and quickly added fiction expand the settings beyond just background decorations, making it so much easier to stay invested emotionally in the games.

It certainly didn't hurt that their competition kept getting into financial troubles one way or another, be it FASA in the US or Target Games in Europe (as far as I understand).

2010s..... yes they cracked the USA

only took them 20 plus years & about 4 reboots

Try & try & try again regarding the USA

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Its interesting that over the years, especially the waning years of the previous CEO, who became convinced he was always right, they are their own worst enemy when it comes to losing their position.

And counterintuitively all this is sustained with a series of games that are often objectively terrible compared to other board and wargames, making the title of the company somewhat ironic

Agreed.

Also, answering the OP, same reply I got when asking why Discord is so popular: It got there first, despite being worse than a forum or Telegram.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:


Even discounting GW's "high street" presence, you can pick up a box of models that will get you an army to play with literally out of the box.
All you need is some form of measure (i.e., a ruler or tape measure from the DIY kit) and some basic dice (which are super, super easy to get a hold of).

Also this!!

As decades pass, people become more and more lazy.

So a system that requires to get the minis for an army in place A, rules in place B, and other army in place C are doomed (used to be like that in the old times).