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We've been at this a long time, the GW threads and 'well, that's just the online community', 'you know it's only the online community that's negative, everyone else is fine with this?'. 'the online community represents a tiny fraction of the gaming hobby'.

It is an oft cited defense, that the forums and blogs represent but a fraction of the wargaming community.

I think, purely anecdotal as I have no figures to back it up, that that's horse poo.

This is a fringe hobby, no getting away from it, it's a small fraction of the community that plays these games. Of that community, the massive majority are fairly bright people, the massive majority of society is computer literate now, well, enough to use the internet, so looking at the wargaming 'stereotype' of a late teen through to late 30s demographic, that's going to increase the internet savvy level.

We have a small community, it is internet savvy to a very large extent, even (especially?) the youngest kids can open google, search 40k and find a forum to talk about it on.

I think the painting of the internet community as a fringe hostile faction of the wargaming hobby at large and GW often cited, is false and unrepresentative. I think, if questioned, more players of 40k would say they've been onto and read dakka, warseer etc than have not. Especially given that GW it's self does not provide an online community.

Does anyone have figures on this?

I think wargaming forum users are a minority, not as much of a minority as is oft cited, but a minority nonetheless. I think there are vast swathes of GW audience and wargaming players in general who remain blissfully unaware that such discussion forums exist, even if they are internet-savvy these days. That being said, I think that while the number of active users on a given forum may be a small proportion, one must also consider just how many people lurk and browse without necessarily signing up and that figure as a whole would obviously be quite great.

Regardless of the actual figures, I think the online community comprises a very representative tranche of customers that any games manufacturer would be wise to utilise. At the end of the day, you have a bunch of your customers all in one place - you would be foolish not to engage with them at least in some manner, if even just for advertising purposes.

Unfortunately, I think any attempt to quantify how many or what percentage of gamers use online fora is doomed to failure - I just don't think the data is available in the public domain.

You are correct that within our fringe there are a good number of internet savvy people. Most of the people I know who play games use forums/facebook to keep in touch. A good number of them know about Dakka or BolS ect., however there are very few who bother to actually read the forums and of those few even less would bother to interact with the forums. Of the demographics that I have seen the older (30+)crowd reads some of the forums due to only having so much time in a day to do things with real life getting in the way and lets face it they want to still have some time to actually play the games. The younger crowd with the disposable time is usually too busy with parties, movies, the opposite sex, ect. to give a damm about going to forums and getting wrapped up in the interweb drama. The few from either group that seem to get involved are either the ones who take responsibility for the hobby and are orginizing events,introduce new people, set up games ect. or the ones who have little to no social skills and are basically hiding out typing away on their computer in an effort to feel a sense of belonging that they don't get from their non digital life.

Anyway I need to get off to work now.

vhwolf wrote:
The younger crowd with the disposable time is usually too busy with parties, movies, the opposite sex, ect. to give a damm about going to forums and getting wrapped up in the interweb drama.

I had a hard time reading that with a straight face.

The best thing Hasbro does is keep detailed metrics on how much purchasing power the 'Adult toy collector' actually holds. Collectors always say 'Kids have no money, I can buy 400$ of transformers like that! I deserve to be heard!' and then Hasbro shows up every year and shows the exact numbers of how little adult collectors make up of the overall purchases. So yeah, you can drop 400$, but for every one of you are 175 kids with birthdays getting a 30$ gift from grandma.

And right after they kick the collective fandom in the balls, they then show us all the G1 repaints they intend to sneak in to the toyline to make the adult collectors happy.

I do think there is a trend for vocal internet people to overestimate their own value as a customer, and while we probably have no data in the wargaming fandom, almost every other fandom I have ever participated in, the companies have very real metrics to show just how small and worthless our voices are. (and then we see while being 7% of the customer base, we get like 40% of the attention which makes it remarkable and people should quit ther bitchin')

I do think while the internet is available to everyone, not everyone is interested in comments or forums. I would not at all say a majority of wargamers are involved on forums. Many never get past the news feeds which share releases and articles and such. Not everyone reads the comments, wants to contribute to the comments or even dig into the forums behind the newsfeed.

But without metrics, people will continue to believe what they want to believe in regards to how much their opinions deserve to be listened to by corporate.

How many people have a smart phone now, that can access the Internet?

How many children and teenagers are all over FaceBook and stuff?

I find it hard to believe that people in the modern world are ignorant of wargames forums (blogs, etc).

It's more believable that a majority of them read and don't post much, or read particular bits that interest them, and don't even join.

The problem I see whenever someone claims that the online community is noneffective and worthless as a demographic is that it's taken only in context with Games Workshop.

When you look at other manufacturers, you see that an online presence is actually not only worthwhile, but can be very important. Online gamers can effect change in companies that actually care what their customer base thinks, i.e., basically everyone else.

Privateer Press had its mkII playtest, and the forums are a great place to talk about anything Warmachine/Hordes.

Battlefront, when attempting to impose a 100% Battlefront only models at tournaments, was met by such stiff resistance online that they decreased that to 50% - a much more manageable number.

Look at Blackwater Gulch and On the Lamb Games, who have decided to make Dakka their official forum site.

I've seen plenty of threads on TMP of miniature and game designers showing their product, and then actively participating in the discussion that follows.

Of course, this can always backfire - look at Spartan Games in its early inception, when updated versions of Uncharted Seas came like a flood due to Spartan's attempts to please their forum users. Fortunately, that is no longer a concern, and even then it's the exception rather than the rule.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

vhwolf wrote:
The younger crowd with the disposable time is usually too busy with parties, movies, the opposite sex, ect. to give a damm about going to forums and getting wrapped up in the interweb drama.

I had a hard time reading that with a straight face.

You can't blame the guy - I'm sure its tough getting on the forums between getting enough bran and keeping those damn kids of his lawn.

I fear it's going to be a very difficult thing to put a number to

Traditional survey methods have difficulties when applied to small niche hobbies/products so you basically have to start by identifying participants and then surveying them

so you always start with a bias, how did you get your gamers and are they genuinely representative.

It seems there are at least 4 groups of folk you'd need to include (these will overlap)

people who buy in a physical store (easy to survey)
people who buy new online (easy to survey)
people who buy second hand online (hard to survey)
people who no longer buy but still play/paint/read etc (very hard to pin down to survey)

you'll also run into strong sample bias, as the people who use the net and contribute to forums etc are just the sort of people who will respond to surveys

I suspect those who are heavily invested in gaming/painting will participate in forums etc, but I'm not convinced they are in the majority

There is a lot of pretty casual gaming/painting going on, even if a fair bit of it is 'little timmys' they still count as they are a strong industry driver

and a lot of previously hardcore gamers/painters drop out or drop down their hobby time as other things (eg children) become more important, they may well only play/paint on occasion, but as long as they do they still count.

and then there are the committed few who tournament game, play in clubs or FLGS or regular leagues in friends home, or paint seriously, or work in the industry. These I will believe are almost all going to be involved in the net in some way (even if it is only scoping out the competition, or looking for second hand armies to buy)

It's a fascinating topic and I'd love to see some real numbers (with the survey methods detailed).

(on a totally anecdotal level of the 10-15 friends I know personally who I'd count as involved with gaming/painting etc there's probably only 1 who does any more than glance on the 'new releases' section of the companies they are interested in, 2-3 used to be more involved but not for a good few years now)

I guess in part it will depend on how you define those who are involved in the hobby. How little do you have to do/spend until you don't count ?

We could look at how many copies of the 6th edition starter and the rulebook for 40k were sold in 2012? That would at least give us a rough guide to approximate size of how many were playing the most popular game on the market at that stage.

Do figures like that get released in shareholder reports? Available someplace?

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
We could look at how many copies of the 6th edition starter and the rulebook for 40k were sold in 2012? That would at least give us a rough guide to approximate size of how many were playing the most popular game on the market at that stage.

Do figures like that get released in shareholder reports? Available someplace?

There's a document in the Chapterhouse Studios thread that showed the number of kits that were sold by GW of x number of years, and I believe that it had a yearly average breakdown... Idk what page it's on... but it might still be up on Pacer.

 Alfndrate wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
We could look at how many copies of the 6th edition starter and the rulebook for 40k were sold in 2012? That would at least give us a rough guide to approximate size of how many were playing the most popular game on the market at that stage.

Do figures like that get released in shareholder reports? Available someplace?

There's a document in the Chapterhouse Studios thread that showed the number of kits that were sold by GW of x number of years, and I believe that it had a yearly average breakdown... Idk what page it's on... but it might still be up on Pacer.

Thanks Alf, not sure if number of kits would give as much idea as number of starters and rulebooks though, as there is a great variable on who buys what in overall terms. I think the rulebook/starter sales, given that you need them to play the current incarnation of the game but you basically need either one or t'other, gives an allusion to how many players there might be.

Contributing forum members will be a very small proportion of customers by gaming or spending, but it's also the one most willing to provide feedback if asked so it's far from useless.

I imagine the reach of internet communities is far greater though; a lot of gamers will browse sites like this without registering, as a source of news and information without being "active".

It actually had a lot of information...but it was an accidental posting and was quickly redacted. Those sales figures were meant to be filed under seal. Those numbers should come out in open court though, and anyone who goes can report back easily enough...they are required in establishing things like the value of the property in question.

Regarding the online community...it really does tend to be small. Even if you wnet through and added up all the registered users of all the different game forums (assuming no overlap) you would have a very small number...a couple of years ago, I did and it was less than 150,000 (I think it was 50 or 60 of the more popular forums). That is all miniature related sites...not just GW focused ones too. There are a billion or so people in the markets that are currently a focus for tradtional wargames, so even if the overall wargaming population is only some tiny number like 0.1% you would still be looking at the online community being only a small portion of the larger community. Taking a quick glance through the couple dozen forums I follow, it looks to have gone up a good bit...but I would guess it is still less than 500,000 (which would include a lot of overlap, inactive users, duplicate accounts and robots).

Then you have Facebook and the like. While they do get so e gaming related chatter...you also have a lot of pictures of cats wearing clothes, pictures of duck face and what someone ate for dinner. Facebook has their own stats that you can check up on, but the information there is not the same as here...so while it is a larger percentage...the information has less depth.

You than have lurkers, people who just read forums and blogs but never register or interact. They are a much larger percentage, although even they tend to be fractional of the whole.

All of those people take information back to their hives and share it in game stores and clubs. I know in my local group those who are active in online game communities are roughly 7% of the total. Most others only hop online to order things or to do a Google image search to get ideas for paint schemes.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

vhwolf wrote:
The younger crowd with the disposable time is usually too busy with parties, movies, the opposite sex, ect. to give a damm about going to forums and getting wrapped up in the interweb drama.

I had a hard time reading that with a straight face.

To be perfectly honest, I was like this in college-girls knew I played, knew I painted, and I spent most of my time with friends, girls and going out on thirsty-Thursdays. I never joined a forum, though I knew about BoLS, B&C and Warseer. Didn't know about Dakka at the time. So it is a legitimate answer. Once we start getting older, put on a bit of old-man weight, feel less inclined to go hang out with drunken college brats, friends aren't living 5 feet down the hall, and haven't yet attracted a mate, well....more time for forums.

BTW - it still doesnt mean it isnt representative of the larger community either...though you have to look at things more closely then. The concerns of one class (sci-fi gamers) are different than those of another class (space marine players) and still different than another (miniature painter).

If you consider something like one of the new SM flyers, the space marine player thinks it is great - an additional powerful unit for his army. The sci-fi gamer thinks it looks bad and impractical as a flying vehicle. The painter thinks it looks silly...but is looking forward to converting it into something that looks workable in order to paint it.

All 3 represent hundreds or thousands of people in thier silent class of customers, so while it might only be a handful squakking online, the positions they hold are held by many more.

I believe I saw some figures a while back as to the number of active accounts on Dakka. Take that figure, add it to the number of hits from non-account members to account for lurkers.

I'm presuming if you then took that figure and compared it to the sales figures of the 40K rulebook/starter set for 6th, you'd have an extremely rough idea of what percentage of current 40K players actually read Dakka.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

vhwolf wrote:
The younger crowd with the disposable time is usually too busy with parties, movies, the opposite sex, ect. to give a damm about going to forums and getting wrapped up in the interweb drama.

I had a hard time reading that with a straight face.

If we really want to talk about a niche, insignificant portion of the wargaming hobby, it would be that portion whose time is occupied with parties, movies, and the opposite sex.

I have to say like, I reckon we're a pretty small minority. I only heard about dakka off Albatross, I think a small percentage of an already small percentage (wargamers) use forums online.

From speaking to people at stores and such, Id guess its only about 3-5% of people, although I have no way of proving this obviously!

I also kind of understand where the lad was coming from who MGS laughed at.. I mean.. maybe not the young are always partying kinda thing, but I do post way more on a weeknight (finish work, go to the gym, lounge about all night) than a weekend (get fething leathered) thanks to that whole.. youthful party lifestyle thing. I reckon younger people actually do use the site less than older, they probably do actually spend more time with their actual friends, as opposed to us old duffers.

I mean, is it just me, or in your thirties with a partner, do you only see your male friends on weekends?!

So hes not totally wrong.. although, embarrassingly when I was involved in a particularly heated debate (doesn't happen anymore as you are aware unfortunately!) I would be sat in the pub going "sorry lads I'll be right with you, I have to swear at some fether on dakkadakka"

 mattyrm wrote:

I also kind of understand where the lad was coming from who MGS laughed at.. I mean.. maybe not the young are always partying kinda thing, but I do post way more on a weeknight (finish work, go to the gym, lounge about all night) than a weekend (get fething leathered) thanks to that whole.. youthful party lifestyle thing. I reckon younger people actually do use the site less than older, they probably do actually spend more time with their actual friends, as opposed to us old duffers.

I laughed at it for two reasons.

Firstly we're not known for being a hobby that attracts the sex/drugs/rocknroll brigade, certainly I left wargaming behind when I went into overdrive about 21 till around 30. The kids I see at the gaming stores aren't exactly living the 'skins' lifestyle.

Second, he gives his own removal from that age and life away when he says this, because kids these days are permanently connected to forums, facebook, twitter and the rest of the social networking. I'd imagine there are a few posting from iphones in pubs and out around town. This idea that 'the healthy, cool kids' are out doing important things instead of lurking dakka neglects the current situation, you can be anywhere and posting online now. FFS I'm friended with some young cool kids on facebook and those bastards are on it all the time, posting what they are about to eat, posting a message about every random thought they have.

MGS, here is the post with the Sales volumes of many GW products. It was redacted because it says, "highly confidential" (whoops). It doesn't give starter box or rulebook sales... but it does give things like Tactical Box sales.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/3930/355433.page#5493523

It depends what you count as a 'forum user'. Dakka has hundreds and hundreds of thousands of unique users each month, but those who dip in once a year is measured in the millions of uniques, even after accounting for the bounce rate. On a bi-monthly basis I'd reckon we have 20-25% of the global GW market reading at least 1 page of dakka - the registered users count is a tiny fraction of our actual traffic.

What you count as a GW hobbyist is also a very fuzzy number - many are casual hobbyists who dip in and out from time to time. By my very rough estimates there were 25,000-100,000 copies of the tau codex sold, but well over 3 million people got THQ's space marine. I can massage the numbers for dakka to suggest anything, but I suspect the total number of GW hobbyists who are actively interested in playing (even if they dont play or buy anything) is somewhere in that very broad range.

 legoburner wrote:
It depends what you count as a 'forum user'. Dakka has hundreds and hundreds of thousands of unique users each month, but those who dip in once a year is measured in the millions of uniques, even after accounting for the bounce rate. On a bi-monthly basis I'd reckon we have 20-25% of the global GW market reading at least 1 page of dakka - the registered users count is a tiny fraction of our actual traffic.

What you count as a GW hobbyist is also a very fuzzy number - many are casual hobbyists who dip in and out from time to time. By my very rough estimates there were 25,000-100,000 copies of the tau codex sold, but well over 3 million people got THQ's space marine. I can massage the numbers for dakka to suggest anything, but I suspect the total number of GW hobbyists who are actively interested in playing (even if they dont play or buy anything) is somewhere in that very broad range.

Back in 2008, a former employee of mine worked for a company who did a contract for GW regarding their website...

At that time, he had said the target was around 400,000-500,000 active customers in total. I was lead to believe that that number was based off from the sales figures of their core rulebook for both games and starter sets (with cross over between the two). That meshes well with information I had gotten from retailers regarding average spending per GW customer per year and their top line sales figures in their annual reports. The figure was needed for determining load balancing and server requirements for the new GW website (yes - that monstrosity).

Take it for what it is - third hand information from an anonymous source that is several years old.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:

I also kind of understand where the lad was coming from who MGS laughed at.. I mean.. maybe not the young are always partying kinda thing, but I do post way more on a weeknight (finish work, go to the gym, lounge about all night) than a weekend (get fething leathered) thanks to that whole.. youthful party lifestyle thing. I reckon younger people actually do use the site less than older, they probably do actually spend more time with their actual friends, as opposed to us old duffers.

I laughed at it for two reasons.

Firstly we're not known for being a hobby that attracts the sex/drugs/rocknroll brigade, certainly I left wargaming behind when I went into overdrive about 21 till around 30. The kids I see at the gaming stores aren't exactly living the 'skins' lifestyle.

Second, he gives his own removal from that age and life away when he says this, because kids these days are permanently connected to forums, facebook, twitter and the rest of the social networking. I'd imagine there are a few posting from iphones in pubs and out around town. This idea that 'the healthy, cool kids' are out doing important things instead of lurking dakka neglects the current situation, you can be anywhere and posting online now. FFS I'm friended with some young cool kids on facebook and those bastards are on it all the time, posting what they are about to eat, posting a message about every random thought they have.

Aye thats true, the lads are connected these days.

its true for me as well mind, about fething the hobby off I mean. I was massively into wargaming and comic books when I was 14, but at some point being cool in front of my peers stupidly become more important, because teenagers are stupid, and same as you, I fethed it off, and was utterly uninvolved for 15 years. I only took up warhammer again when I left the corps in 2009, and my ultramarines (still my only army) were the first minis I painted since I was a teenager.

I suspect we are in a majority. Remember that BBC story that went about on dakka last year? I remember the bloke on that saying the same. It seems like many men cave into peer pressure and start doing "cool" stuff between 16-30, and then wisely in their late twenties/thirties think "I don't actually care what people think about my hobbies anymore"

Its almost embarrassing to admit, but I really was bothered what people thought of me when I was a teenager, I was serving with the TA at 16 and I confess that a large part of why I went for the RM instead of my local regiment or the air force or something was merely because I was bothered about looking like a bad ass.

See, this is why I think its logical to hate teenagers, I'm a nice bloke and I was a fickle tit when I was a teenager, Imagine what actual ass holes are like at that age!

legoburner wrote:It depends what you count as a 'forum user'. Dakka has hundreds and hundreds of thousands of unique users each month, but those who dip in once a year is measured in the millions of uniques, even after accounting for the bounce rate. On a bi-monthly basis I'd reckon we have 20-25% of the global GW market reading at least 1 page of dakka - the registered users count is a tiny fraction of our actual traffic.

What you count as a GW hobbyist is also a very fuzzy number - many are casual hobbyists who dip in and out from time to time. By my very rough estimates there were 25,000-100,000 copies of the tau codex sold, but well over 3 million people got THQ's space marine. I can massage the numbers for dakka to suggest anything, but I suspect the total number of GW hobbyists who are actively interested in playing (even if they dont play or buy anything) is somewhere in that very broad range.

Sean_OBrien wrote:
Back in 2008, a former employee of mine worked for a company who did a contract for GW regarding their website...
At that time, he had said the target was around 400,000-500,000 active customers in total. I was lead to believe that that number was based off from the sales figures of their core rulebook for both games and starter sets (with cross over between the two). That meshes well with information I had gotten from retailers regarding average spending per GW customer per year and their top line sales figures in their annual reports. The figure was needed for determining load balancing and server requirements for the new GW website (yes - that monstrosity).

So, we could make a generous estimate around 800,000.

Dakka alone has 'hundreds of thousands' of unique users, so, we're talking, for dakka dakka by it's self, accounting for a regular readership of at least ?/10 of all 40k players, approximately, possibly higher, then you can add all those who only use other sites, warseer, bols, bolter and chainsword, beasts of war and a slew of others.

These figures are pointing me to a higher number of 40k players, as an example, being online and having regular exposure to forums and interactive media/social sites for hobbying.

Going by the gamers I've met over the years, I would say that those who spend time on internet forums are indeed a minority, at least here in Oz.

However, those forum goers are most certainly not the only ones dissatisfied with GW's recent behaviour.



The online community is slowly changing, from what I've seen. A lot of gamers who wouldn't have bothered with forums are connecting through Facebook... and the same themes are playing out in discussions there.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

legoburner wrote:It depends what you count as a 'forum user'. Dakka has hundreds and hundreds of thousands of unique users each month, but those who dip in once a year is measured in the millions of uniques, even after accounting for the bounce rate. On a bi-monthly basis I'd reckon we have 20-25% of the global GW market reading at least 1 page of dakka - the registered users count is a tiny fraction of our actual traffic.

What you count as a GW hobbyist is also a very fuzzy number - many are casual hobbyists who dip in and out from time to time. By my very rough estimates there were 25,000-100,000 copies of the tau codex sold, but well over 3 million people got THQ's space marine. I can massage the numbers for dakka to suggest anything, but I suspect the total number of GW hobbyists who are actively interested in playing (even if they dont play or buy anything) is somewhere in that very broad range.

Sean_OBrien wrote:
Back in 2008, a former employee of mine worked for a company who did a contract for GW regarding their website...
At that time, he had said the target was around 400,000-500,000 active customers in total. I was lead to believe that that number was based off from the sales figures of their core rulebook for both games and starter sets (with cross over between the two). That meshes well with information I had gotten from retailers regarding average spending per GW customer per year and their top line sales figures in their annual reports. The figure was needed for determining load balancing and server requirements for the new GW website (yes - that monstrosity).

So, we could make a generous estimate around 800,000.

Dakka alone has 'hundreds of thousands' of unique users, so, we're talking, for dakka dakka by it's self, accounting for a regular readership of at least ?/10 of all 40k players, approximately, possibly higher, then you can add all those who only use other sites, warseer, bols, bolter and chainsword, beasts of war and a slew of others.

These figures are pointing me to a higher number of 40k players, as an example, being online and having regular exposure to forums and interactive media/social sites for hobbying.

I would say that 800,000 is a very, very generous estimate of GW players...not just 40K players.

Trying desperately to stay on topic...

That document in the CHS thread has the sales figures for the 40K rulebook (4th Edition - $1.5 million covering the whole lifespan...5th Edition - $1.6 million covering the whole lifespan) and Battle for Skull Pass starter set ($1.3 million covering the whole lifespan) and the 7th Edition Warhammer Rulebook ($648K covering the whole lifespan...pretty sure it is 7th...though I don't follow WFB enough to know for sure). You can work some math...poke some numbers...do some estimates and come up with a pretty tight range that will tell you what is what.

First the estimate - is it retail values or is it GW revenue? It should be retail value based on other cases I have had to provide similar information in. So, if we take the $1.5 million in 4th Edition books sold and divide that by the $50 cover price we get a number...30,000 copies. I think 5th started at $50 as well...though it bumped up somewhere along the way IIRC...still that gives us another number 32,000 copies. The other end of the spectrum would be if all of those were at wholesale (which we know they are not) lets simply double the number. 60,000 and 64,000 respectively. Lets go ahead and double it again for the small rulebook from the starter sets (although there is no 40K starter listed that I recall - there is the WFB starter which sold twice as much as the rulebook...and cost about twice as much too - soooo...happy, simplification and assumptions). Realistically though, since the split for sales is about half through independents and half through GW - you get about 45,000 copies sold.

Worsed case reasonable guess of the 40K community at large would be 60,000 or so. Best case would be 120,000 or so. Realistic best case would be about 90,000. WFB is about half that. In the US of course - could extrapolate further using financial report numbers and the segment break down information to determine how large it is globally...just a quick speedball puts the North American market at 25% of GW total sales...to times by 4.

So, we have a range of 240,000 to 360,000 40K players and maybe another 200,000 to 300,000 WFB players (WFB being more popular outside the US...I would tend to fudge the numbers upwards even though it only put up numbers less than half what 40K did in the US). Total GW customers - 440,000 to 660,000.

Also, keep in mind...this is off memory pretty sure those numbers are close. Will double check tonight when I get home to a regular computer as opposed to using the silly tablet thing.

Rulebook sales don't give you anywhere near an accurate figure, since a surprisingly large number of gamers never buy it.

Even ignoring those who just download it, it's common for several people to share one, or for gamers introduced to the game through a store or club to just not bother with it since there is generally one available where they play.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

I would say that 800,000 is a very, very generous estimate of GW players...not just 40K players.

Trying desperately to stay on topic...

That document in the CHS thread has the sales figures for the 40K rulebook (4th Edition - $1.5 million covering the whole lifespan...5th Edition - $1.6 million covering the whole lifespan) and Battle for Skull Pass starter set ($1.3 million covering the whole lifespan) and the 7th Edition Warhammer Rulebook ($648K covering the whole lifespan...pretty sure it is 7th...though I don't follow WFB enough to know for sure). You can work some math...poke some numbers...do some estimates and come up with a pretty tight range that will tell you what is what.

First the estimate - is it retail values or is it GW revenue? It should be retail value based on other cases I have had to provide similar information in. So, if we take the $1.5 million in 4th Edition books sold and divide that by the $50 cover price we get a number...30,000 copies. I think 5th started at $50 as well...though it bumped up somewhere along the way IIRC...still that gives us another number 32,000 copies. The other end of the spectrum would be if all of those were at wholesale (which we know they are not) lets simply double the number. 60,000 and 64,000 respectively. Lets go ahead and double it again for the small rulebook from the starter sets (although there is no 40K starter listed that I recall - there is the WFB starter which sold twice as much as the rulebook...and cost about twice as much too - soooo...happy, simplification and assumptions). Realistically though, since the split for sales is about half through independents and half through GW - you get about 45,000 copies sold.

Worsed case reasonable guess of the 40K community at large would be 60,000 or so. Best case would be 120,000 or so. Realistic best case would be about 90,000. WFB is about half that. In the US of course - could extrapolate further using financial report numbers and the segment break down information to determine how large it is globally...just a quick speedball puts the North American market at 25% of GW total sales...to times by 4.

So, we have a range of 240,000 to 360,000 40K players and maybe another 200,000 to 300,000 WFB players (WFB being more popular outside the US...I would tend to fudge the numbers upwards even though it only put up numbers less than half what 40K did in the US). Total GW customers - 440,000 to 660,000.

Also, keep in mind...this is off memory pretty sure those numbers are close. Will double check tonight when I get home to a regular computer as opposed to using the silly tablet thing.

Given that rough outline vs Legoburner's stats for this site...

It would appear that forum visitors would make up the vast majority of gamers and hobbyists then. Whilst the routine posters is a small minority, the forums themselves are indeed being visited by the hobby at large, both within and without the GW bubble of experience.

So, the oft touted 'forums are a tiny fraction' and 'this is the fringe of wargaming' is a falsehood, unless someone wants to counter this with some figures?

 insaniak wrote:
Rulebook sales don't give you anywhere near an accurate figure, since a surprisingly large number of gamers never buy it.

Even ignoring those who just download it, it's common for several people to share one, or for gamers introduced to the game through a store or club to just not bother with it since there is generally one available where they play.

I agree...but I don't agree. The sales themselves don't say too much. Some people buy none, some buy two. Some of the people who buy a starter set (remember - we doubled the basic rulebook sales to account for hypothetical starter sets with the small rulebook) also buy the rulebook. Some people will buy multiple starter sets. The broad range should account for all of that - and I am fairly comfortable...and in fact would be extremely surprised if GW had more than 750,000 customers worldwide (active customers - not people who have GW products but are no longer buying them for whatever reason).

It also helps that my third hand information happens to fall in the middle of my Fuzzy math calculation...might be a coincidence, but I generally do not believe in those.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:


Given that rough outline vs Legoburner's stats for this site...

It would appear that forum visitors would make up the vast majority of gamers and hobbyists then. Whilst the routine posters is a small minority, the forums themselves are indeed being visited by the hobby at large, both within and without the GW bubble of experience.

So, the oft touted 'forums are a tiny fraction' and 'this is the fringe of wargaming' is a falsehood, unless someone wants to counter this with some figures?

Pretty much. When I was more actively involved in this sort of a thing for a living...there were firms who would research such data. The trends stayed the same all the way through MySpace and into the early years of Facebook...I really haven't seen a significant upswing in forum participation even with Facebook and Twitter becoming more mainstream. Back then though, the rule of thumb was that each active forum user represented roughly 1000 customers. Roughly a quarter of your customers will look online but not say anything at all.

Regarding Legoburner's numbers - it is important to remember the way that sites track that information. When I check at home - I am a unique user. When I check it from my tablet - I am another unique user. When I checked at the office - that was still another unique user. All three will add to their unique visitor log file, but really only be one person. I am pretty sure that he is right though that he probably gets about 20% of the GW market through Dakka every couple months...just that even if the number of unique visitors is 400,000 in that period it doesn't mean that the GW market is 1.6 million people.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Regarding Legoburner's numbers - it is important to remember the way that sites track that information. When I check at home - I am a unique user. When I check it from my tablet - I am another unique user. When I checked at the office - that was still another unique user. All three will add to their unique visitor log file, but really only be one person. I am pretty sure that he is right though that he probably gets about 20% of the GW market through Dakka every couple months...just that even if the number of unique visitors is 400,000 in that period it doesn't mean that the GW market is 1.6 million people.

That's not entirely true - if you have ever signed in to the same google services (gmail, docs or similar) on any of your devices, you are counted as a single unique user across any devices you have ever signed in to. The numbers are more accurate than they used to be because of that - without that factor our traffic numbers are boosted by about 15-20%. They are still overly high, but that is countered by the large numbers of people on shared connections (schools, military, families, pooled IPs from ISPs, etc), so the actual numbers are pretty accurate these days and dont need the disclaimer you've given anymore.