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Bullockist wrote:
I occasionally look at PP and Infinity forums and strangely don't see much bile spouted on them. Perhaps the symptoms have something to do with the disease?

Let me first say that I don't know the first thing about the PP community.

I think the 40k community is an angrier place than the Infinity community because of competitive 40k. People seem to see 40k generalship as a viable measuring stick for intelligence (see Stelek's tagline - "Army Lists, Tactics, and Commentary for the Thinking Player"), and thus get emotionally bound up in winning or losing. Furthermore, they've figured out that 40k's balance makes list building an important part of winning or losing, so people aggressively optimize their collections for tournament performance. I think this leads to a lot of unhappiness, because, if you spend your money unwisely, you're doomed to tabletop mediocrity and derision ("I hate when people cry just because I bring a decent list") until you spend more money on the right units to get yourself into the game. Games Workshop doesn't help the problem by forcing you to pay a periodic tax to stay competitive with new codices. 40k is the most popular of the tabletop games, so of course the dashofpeppers and Steleks of the world are going to play 40k, because what have you achieved if you're a big fish in a small pond?

Contrast with Infinity, where the community seems to have a gentleman's agreement (or case of mass denial, depending on how you look at it) that powergaming is impossible, and that if you follow a few guidelines and buy whatever models you like, you can win. I think they have a bit of a point - they're papering over some balance issues, but I do think, just from playing a few games with my self with paper markers (don't judge me!) that Infinity is a more randomized game than 40k - there's a dimension of rock/papers/scissors to 40k that gets randomized away much more often in Infinity, and also that exploiting terrain matters more compared to list building than in 40k.

Still, I think it's the legions of people who want to win, win, win, so they can talk to people the way Stelek talks to people that make the 40k community an angrier place.

I think you give way to much credit to stelek

Ooooh Haters, it seems like every new codex has gotten a lot of hate!

imweasel wrote:I think you give way to much credit to stelek

I just picked him as an example of somebody who thinks he's smarter than the rest of the 40k community because of how good he thinks he is at 40k. I didn't say one way or another if I think he's right in either case :p

hehe

How fringe are forum users? My only real experience is from Oslo, Copenhagen and my minor forays into international tourneys, where the people I see in the shop, club and tournaments are the same people posting on the forums. Since nobody have made any real studies of this, my anecdotal evidence is as usueless as anybody else's. However, considering the incredible penetration the internet has into popular culture these days, among younger people and children especially, I regard it as highly unlikely that the forums are entirely populated by strange basement dwellers with no connection to "the real world" and only read by those. Any commercial entitiy ignores discussion about its products at its own peril. By contrast, taking internet opinions too seriously can also be a bad idea.

Bullockist wrote:
I occasionally look at PP and Infinity forums and strangely don't see much bile spouted on them. Perhaps the symptoms have something to do with the disease?

There have popped up a few fairly aggressive posters on the PP forum over the years as well, but in general, the tone is less aggressive than it can get here. The same applies to most of the company-run forums: I lurk or post on Infinity's forum, Wyrd's forum and Spartan's forum and overall, the tone is more polite. There are several reasons for this, I think. First, size. Apart from PP's forum, the others are fairly small, something that encourages a more even tone: people know one another. Second, moderation. PP's forums are quite heavily moderated and smaller forums often "moderate" themselves even if the mods are not very active. Third, game exclusivity. Dakka and Warseer cater to many different systems, but the general sections are often read by everyone. This sometimes leads to friction-by-intention, as morons use terms like "Warmafail" or "Dicehammer" with the sole intention of driving the temperature up. There is some slamming of other games (typically GW's systems) on all the forums I mentioned above, but it is seldom picked up on (CT Gamer excepted )and thus dies down quickly without causing much heat. People who post on exclusive forums have likely bought into the game the forums discuss; anyone overly critical of them are likely to be dismissed as trolls immediately.

Blaming a competitive attiitude is a dead end, I think. There are tons of obnoxious and/or loudmouthed and/or easily offended and/or condecending, "casual" players out there - rather than identifying with their perceived skill at gaming, they tend to strongly identify with the systems they play, its background or have some sort of crusade going against what they perceive as the misguided competitive gamers...or any number of other small pet peeves. Several of them have "gaming careers" stretching back decades and forum presences that date back to the first gaming forums on the web.

A couple of things.

Not all my friends are politically up to date as I am. So, when voting season comes around, they turn to me for advice. Politically, I'm rather fringe, but hold more sway due to being someone that can put some of the issues in perspective. This is also true of my wargaming hobby. I have friends that ask me what's the game looking like, and what would they need to get back in.

Secondly, I haven't seen a mention of podcasts or youtube channels. Both are very likely informed by some of the forums. Their listeners are then given an audio form of forum opinion. Everyday, the fringe is moving a bit closer to the mainstream.

I know of about 40-50 active danish gamers (play weekly and in bi-annual/annual tournaments). I might not know them all by name , but I know them by face.

I only notice about 3-5 active danish posters on this forum.

Steelmage99 wrote:
I only notice about 3-5 active danish posters on this forum.

And how many of them are active posters on Powerfist.dk or any of the other international forums in some shape or form? "Forum Users" do not exclusively mean this particular forum.

I would be very wary of logging on to a site called powerfist.dk, just saying.

Believe you me, many a poor danish lad has been scarred by adding .com instead of .dk over the years and encountering some creative soul's webpage that catered to an all-male audience not normally associated with miniatures gaming. Thank the internet gods, the .com name these days directs to a power tool company.

Every WHFB tournament player I know in Queensland knows of dakka, some post here, more lurk.

But Oz is extremely well served by WargamerAU which is awsomesauce for tournaments.

At my ex-local GW when I would say that I was a moderator on dakka to one of the blow ins at the store, most actually knew me by my postings.

I think that you need a certain amount of time available to dedicate to posting on dakka/internet forums.
Something many people don't have... also there is a plethora of websites available so it is a very disjointed internet 'community'.

The assertion that if someone is not posting on Dakka they are a silent majority happy with GW is very presumptive.

My worthless piece of anecdotal evidence suggests that the target market of pre pubescent boys and their parents are savvy enough to know that prices are crazy even if they never read what is posted on Dakka.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Worglock wrote:Considering that most of the whining is done on this site by 2 - 3 dozen people are most. You're not a "minority" you're an "endangered species".

There are a few people at my local gW that regularly grumble about prices, while they're being rung up for another $200 in models.

Thank you for your considered input to this discussion.

Welcome to ignore.

I think you answer lies within your response. In general people are annoyed by some of the things you mentioned in your OP, however when someone wants to rant about a specific annoyance they have felt.... Well this is valid forum to do so. More moderately minded people rarely jump into a GW bashing session. More likely other annoyed individuals just hop in and fuel the fire.

In my mind the price hikes are a minor inconvenience but considering the rate at which GW is now publishing new material I think they are expected.

As to your question about being the minority. Yes, we absolutely are. In general I'd say less than 10% of regular customers are completely miffed about the current state of affairs.

Your figure of 10% is based on which survey please?

CageUF wrote:As to your question about being the minority. Yes, we absolutely are. In general I'd say less than 10% of regular customers are completely miffed about the current state of affairs.

Since we're now making up statistics, what percentage do you feel represents the folks that have left the game entirely for some other system?

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Your figure of 10% is based on which survey please?

Survey no... General observance certainly.

Table top gamers make up a very small portion of the population, I think that is a given. The average tabletop player spends somewhere between $100-$1000 a year (again an assumption, but I think a fairly reasonable one). In 2005 GW had ~215,000,000 in sales. So that equates to somewhere between 215,000-2,150,000 players world wide. Dakka is one of the top forums for this niche market and has a total of number of user ID's in the range of 7500-15000 based on the Intro section. Even if Dakka only has 1/10th of the market when it comes to GW forum users that still makes us in the sever minority.

So yes... I'd say less than %10

~1,000,000 Tabletop gamers worldwide
~10,000 Dakka users
= ~1% of tabletop gamers use Dakka
= ~10% use like forums

Many of those "users" are infrequent at best and very very few have more than a few hundred posts.

I should note there where 14'000 folks on Dakka a week or so back and the site has 47K registered users, even taking away spammers and those who have left the hobby etc, I'd say you are looking at 20K users.

Warseer, Heresy, B&C all have memberships into the ten thousand plus mark, (Warseer has 77K) not everyone has an account on each. I know plenty who wouldn't go to one or another site for various reasons.

The figure is certainly much higher than 10K online.


edit - Hell there are eight and a half thousand on between Dakka and Warseer alone right now, on a wet and dull (no news going on) Monday evening Uk/afternoon US.

sourclams wrote:

CageUF wrote:As to your question about being the minority. Yes, we absolutely are. In general I'd say less than 10% of regular customers are completely miffed about the current state of affairs.

Since we're now making up statistics, what percentage do you feel represents the folks that have left the game entirely for some other system?

Left 40k? or left all GW?

I've seen many divert new purchases to other systems, I've even seen more than a handful switch to fantasy (I cannot understand this one...) but out of our normal players I can only think of 1 who has sold off his armies because of his distaste of what is happening with GW policy. So 1/50 = ~2%.

Given a population size of 1,000,000 with a 95% confidence level and a 50 person sample size, the answer would fall between 0%-8% of the population.


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Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:I should note there where 14'000 folks on Dakka a week or so back and the site has 47K registered users, even taking away spammers and those who have left the hobby etc, I'd say you are looking at 20K users.

Warseer, Heresy, B&C all have memberships into the ten thousand plus mark, (Warseer has 77K) not everyone has an account on each. I know plenty who wouldn't go to one or another site for various reasons.

The figure is certainly much higher than 10K online.


edit - Hell there are eight and a half thousand on between Dakka and Warseer alone right now, on a wet and dull (no news going on) Monday evening Uk/afternoon US.

Okay, this gives quite a bit more info. How many gamers world wide do you think there are?

I noticed the "Most users ever online was 14,706 on 2011/07/31 13:27:29" which I was looking for earlier but the best I could do at the time was the number of introductions (Then doubled).


So lets call it 300,000 Unique players among the major websites (for arguments sake this 300,000 makes up 95% of tabletop forums). Assuming only 1,000,000 players... that still only puts is in the minority.

I'd guess the real number of actual players well exceeds 1,000,000... but that only skews the numbers against us.

Sadly the only active study I know was based on tabletop RPG's by Wizards in 1998 and 2004.

Neither would be much help, but it penciled them in at about 2.5million and of that total 19% noted as they'd played minature games.

juraigamer wrote:

Releasing Dawn of war and the Space Marine game is managing that pretty well.

Neither of which help their core product bring customers. Its LOTR all over again- it'll bring in revenue as unit sales drop again in their main line.

But it is still supposition that non forum member gamers are totally happy gamers.

You also need to factor in responses based on demographics.

Just because, for the sake of argument, 10% of gamers are miffed with GW, that does not automatically invalidate their disatisfaction. Nor indeed voicing their disquiet on a wargaming forum.

I could make some educated guesses based on traffic patterns and I know the stats for some smaller companies and various stores but cannot share specifics.

All in all, I'd reckon there to be somewhere around 1.5 million people who have purchased GW stuff worldwide within the last 2 years, including books.

These guesses are based on a few numbers, and I'm doing a rough calculation in my head. There is a huge error margin so I wouldnt base anything too substantial off it.

Overall I am not sure about declining popularity. The best monitor for 40k popularity is probably the popularity of bolter and chainsword, as it is consistent in design and efforts, and deals with a standard range that is strongly linked to games workshop. Their post rate and signup rate has been fairly consistent for 4 years now. Dakka's traffic has shot up over the last few years, but we've been adding new features. Many other sites have seen reduced traffic but they have either had technical problems, no new features or are losing users for other reasons. Overall, I'd say that popularity is most likely fairly consistent, but that is not to say that spend per player is the same or moving in a positive direction.

I'm not sure if I understand the thread... or what is meant by fringe (minority? a separate entity?)...

If we are a portion of a portion of a whole, then I think we're fringe.

djphranq wrote:I'm not sure if I understand the thread... or what is meant by fringe (minority? a separate entity?)...

If we are a portion of a portion of a whole, then I think we're fringe.

Exactly. This site represents pretty much the radical haters of the community. If they weren't a very vocal minority segment of the minority of the hobby, they would already have their stated goal.

A dead GW and a ghost town of a hobby.

I'd suggest the P&M board and various other discussion across the site, would disagree with your position Worgock.

Seems a big jump from a vocal few, to the whole site are now radical haters of GW.

carmachu wrote:

juraigamer wrote:

Releasing Dawn of war and the Space Marine game is managing that pretty well.

Neither of which help their core product bring customers. Its LOTR all over again- it'll bring in revenue as unit sales drop again in their main line.

I'm not sure I agree with this premise. Several of the new players at my FLGS got interested in tabletop 40k specifically because of DoW or DoW II. I imagine this will repeat itself with space marine.

CageUF wrote:

carmachu wrote:

juraigamer wrote:

Releasing Dawn of war and the Space Marine game is managing that pretty well.

Neither of which help their core product bring customers. Its LOTR all over again- it'll bring in revenue as unit sales drop again in their main line.

I'm not sure I agree with this premise. Several of the new players at my FLGS got interested in tabletop 40k specifically because of DoW or DoW II. I imagine this will repeat itself with space marine.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. A few people that have played 40k video games may have joined, but the greater amount has not.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:I'd suggest the P&M board and various other discussion across the site, would disagree with your position Worgock.

Seems a big jump from a vocal few, to the whole site are now radical haters of GW.

I'd say forums like Dakka Dakka give the more radical of our brethren a means to express their views, and they do so vehemently. That is not to suggest that we as a whole share this view point, rather that they express their views often and loudly which potentially distorts the true medium of the community.


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infinite_array wrote:

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. A few people that have played 40k video games may have joined, but the greater amount has not.

I'm not really sure what your point is? Have the majority of DoW/DoW II/Space Marine players joined in at the FLGS, absolutely not.

Was my statement anecdotal, sure. Does that mean it is inaccurate or indicate an incorrect correlation? I'd argue no, but that is the joy of an anecdotal statement. Regardless it is an absolute fact that gamers have been driven to tabletop gaming by console/pc releases. While these players represent the minority of gamers, it is getting people interested.

CageUF Wrote:

Regardless it is an absolute fact that gamers have been driven to tabletop gaming by console/pc releases. While these players represent the minority of gamers, it is getting people interested.

I understand where you are coming from however if you got hard data that shows a sufficient amount of people making that choice to back your comment up I would like to see it and I think GW would too. It would be a positive spin for the corporation.