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So, we can up that percentage to perhaps 40-50% of gamers coming to dakka dakka over the space of a couple of months.

MeanGreenStompa wrote: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.

My (also anecdotal) experience disagrees. I've played with many people who do not even know that FAQs are out months after their release. While the community is "internet savvy" there's a big difference between being "internet savvy" and actually using the Internet for hobby purposes all the time.

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?

There is a huge difference between active users and registered users. There is also a huge difference between forum users and 40k players. I was a registered user on this forum for the many years that I did not play 40k. Many people post here only to discuss other games. Making a direct comparison between Dakka's user count and projections about Games Workshop's customer base is not going to be effective. Common sense indicates that the number of people who use this particular specialist website (out of the many specialist websites out there) is certainly going to be much lower than the overall number of people in the hobby.


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 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
So, we can up that percentage to perhaps 40-50% of gamers coming to dakka dakka over the space of a couple of months.

That seems wrong by an order of magnitude.

Yeah, Google analytics help filter that some - wasn't sure if that was your data source of if it was a server log.

I still tended to rely on the lower end of things for that (high side for load calculations though) - but that goes back to being cautious as opposed to optimistic when I was dealing with that sort of thing on a daily basis. Even Google states that their unique visitor count is generally inflated by 30% or so. There is only so much that you can do without implementing a closed system that requires authenticated users.

 Kingsley wrote:

There is a huge difference between active users and registered users. There is also a huge difference between forum users and 40k players. I was a registered user on this forum for the many years that I did not play 40k. Many people post here only to discuss other games. Making a direct comparison between Dakka's user count and projections about Games Workshop's customer base is not going to be effective. Common sense indicates that the number of people who use this particular specialist website (out of the many specialist websites out there) is certainly going to be much lower than the overall number of people in the hobby.

Legoburner has already stated these are active users coming into the forums.

So whilst my opening questions were anecdotal, we've just seen some figures, both in relation to sales and in relation to active users of the site.

Do you have any figures to counter that? Because I have seen you being one of the most frequent users of the 'the internet playerbase is tiny' argument and it appears to be wrong, according to correlation of numbers here.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Yeah, Google analytics help filter that some - wasn't sure if that was your data source of if it was a server log.

I still tended to rely on the lower end of things for that (high side for load calculations though) - but that goes back to being cautious as opposed to optimistic when I was dealing with that sort of thing on a daily basis. Even Google states that their unique visitor count is generally inflated by 30% or so. There is only so much that you can do without implementing a closed system that requires authenticated users.

Indeed, my numbers are based on a combination of that, internal stats and header (and user) analysis to determine the rate of shared connections. It's all a black art that you can twist to fit any point you want to prove he he.


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I should add as well - a huge percentage of our traffic is people coming because they were interested in one random thing, be it a single post, an image in the gallery, etc. While our raw numbers would suggest we have a massive chunk of GW's playerbase, once you factor in the visitor who is pulled in for random content who is not an actual gamer, I do think we are closer to 15-20% of the GW audience if I'm optimistic about it.

Small. Very small. Insignificantly so.

If the online wargaming community drove GW, then the company would be very different. GW can do what it does because it's driven by new and/or clueless players that are in the vast majority who:

1) Think it's ok to buy really expensive stuff because, well, they're clueless
2) Don't know there's places you can get models for far cheaper
3) Have no idea about any other tabletop wargame
4) Buy all of GW's overpriced hobby stuff such as glue
5) Impulse buy ALL THE TIME despite the expense
6) Have no idea they're being manipulated...

 legoburner wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Yeah, Google analytics help filter that some - wasn't sure if that was your data source of if it was a server log.

I still tended to rely on the lower end of things for that (high side for load calculations though) - but that goes back to being cautious as opposed to optimistic when I was dealing with that sort of thing on a daily basis. Even Google states that their unique visitor count is generally inflated by 30% or so. There is only so much that you can do without implementing a closed system that requires authenticated users.

Indeed, my numbers are based on a combination of that, internal stats and header (and user) analysis to determine the rate of shared connections. It's all a black art that you can twist to fit any point you want to prove he he.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I should add as well - a huge percentage of our traffic is people coming because they were interested in one random thing, be it a single post, an image in the gallery, etc. While our raw numbers would suggest we have a massive chunk of GW's playerbase, once you factor in the visitor who is pulled in for random content who is not an actual gamer, I do think we are closer to 15-20% of the GW audience if I'm optimistic about it.

I would find 20% somewhat hard to believe, but 5-10%? Conceivable. Most gaming groups have at least one or two guys who read forums.

And to be frank, even if its just 5-10% using forums in general, that's a sizeable chunk of the consumer base. To ignore its potential for gathering data on your customers is a very foolish mistake by GW, as whilst it may be a minority, it is a sizeable enough minority to create usable statistics from.

Again, it is a question of what you mean by the number. I wouldn't be surprised if it was 15-20%. Like I said...the old number we tended to use was around 25% of a market would be checking things online. The nature of miniatures versus other products tends to give them something more to look at.

Granted, that doesn't mean that they are engaged on a daily basis or even read the news once a week. However, they pop in every couple weeks and they look at what interests them at the time. Might be just looking at pretty pictures. Might be trying to find a super secret army list to beat an opponent on Friday night. They look more than a single page view...but not so much that they know the latest gossip concerning rules, releases and what not.

As someone who's been using stats in business reporting for a long time, even 5% would represent a significant number of a customer base and a great litmus test of the opinion of the broader player base.

If we're rounding up and rounding down from the various figures being cited, we can look at an agreeable number of 15-20%.

And I think we can finally dismiss the argument that the the forums are some tiny, wacky fringe of the wider community.

I think online usage of wargaming, is similar to MMO patch releases, 10% know when it's coming, all the changes, and probably helped test them on the servers (i.e regular forum/online users), 20% know about the patches and maybe skimmed read the most relevant part for themselves (i.e the occasional users, know online exists), 70% are the ones you see time after time..."guys, what does this do now?" "they changed what, since when?", "what changed this patch" etc. (ie the rest)

exact figures etc, probably vary, but i'd be surprised if it wasn't quite close to it.

On the topic of "significance of the online community" it is clear that GW has formulated the opinion that the online community is not significant and doesnt matter much to their bottom line. The interesting question is whether or not they have got this right.

The big problem with all these discussions about how GW runs its business is that forum users just do not have access to enough information to judge how any particular policy impacts the bottom line of GW. There is no doubt that the online community can be a "force multiplier" but GW apparently just does not think the benefits are worth the effort.

Battlefront, Privateer and others obviously think the online community is worthwhile and an important segment of their business, I am inclined to think they have it right.

I'm not sure how significant the online community itself is, however my anecdotal experience is that the opinions of your average joe gamers mirror that of the online community. There's less back and forth arguments, but the actual opinions I don't think are all that different. Several of my friends have quit the hobby over reasons often complained about on forums even though those particular friends never read any wargaming forums.

In my experience, which is admittedly limited to the historical gaming genre, it is a small percentage bordering on insignificant. I do not want to delve too far into specifics, but I was involved in the publishing of a series of games that were universally panned in the tournament and (of course, much smaller than 40K) online communities. We sold about 50,000 copies of those rules, collectively, during their run in distribution and several of those titles are still selling today. This is while being almost universally considered "dead" rules in the vocal minority opinion. The vocal minority generally doesn't have a clue what they are talking about when it comes to sales. A person on a gaming forum once bet me $1000 that a particular title wouldn't sell 100 copies. The initial print run of 3000 was sold through to distribution before it was published; he didn't stick around for me to collect ;-> It would not surprise me at all if there are 10 gamers and 100 purchasers for every one of us that can be bothered with the online community. We are the lunatic fringe!

An important factor that I think is being overlooked in this thread is not how many people frequent a wargaming website or how often, but how these people frequent and use them and if they agree with the general opinion.

I know in my group a lot of people use dakka, bols and other sites as something to do while riding the bus to UNI and stuff like that, but while every one of us in a group of 20ish people use dakka, very few of us actually participate in any debates - and more importantly - read any of the Discussions threads. For them, it's much more about YMDC, batreps, Tactics and stuff like that.

So while perhaps 15% (or more) of GWs fanbase use Dakka, that doesn't mean that 15% read and agree with the multiple "GW can do only wrong" threads that seem to dominate Dakka Discussions, News and Rumours and 40k General.

So the question of "does the community site's opinion matter" can't be answered solely by arguing that "well, a quarter of the people playing 40k come here, so we matter!" because those people don't actually come here to participate or read any kind of opinion based threads, but solely to get answers or be entertained by the more positive (and also to a degree less serious) aspects of the miniatures hobby that Dakka fortunately also portrays.

A more fitting number would be to look at either the number of views on a lot of these threads, or perhaps if possible the number of unique views that those threads recieve. After all, if there is a lot of valid points in a thread no one is reading, it's a bit like shouting at a deaf guy - it doesn't have a of effect no matter how valid your arguments are

Cheers

Gorlack

Jack_Death wrote:
In my experience, which is admittedly limited to the historical gaming genre, it is a small percentage bordering on insignificant. I do not want to delve too far into specifics, but I was involved in the publishing of a series of games that were universally panned in the tournament and (of course, much smaller than 40K) online communities. We sold about 50,000 copies of those rules, collectively, during their run in distribution and several of those titles are still selling today. This is while being almost universally considered "dead" rules in the vocal minority opinion. The vocal minority generally doesn't have a clue what they are talking about when it comes to sales. A person on a gaming forum once bet me $1000 that a particular title wouldn't sell 100 copies. The initial print run of 3000 was sold through to distribution before it was published; he didn't stick around for me to collect ;-> It would not surprise me at all if there are 10 gamers and 100 purchasers for every one of us that can be bothered with the online community. We are the lunatic fringe!

What was the name of the rules you published?

Also, whilst you encountered some anecdotal negatives in individual cases, that has no bearing on the numbers visiting forums or using them, just on encountering an asshat or two during your own online posting. Just because there are a couple of people holding court in a party, doesn't mean the room's not full...

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
As someone who's been using stats in business reporting for a long time, even 5% would represent a significant number of a customer base and a great litmus test of the opinion of the broader player base.

If we're rounding up and rounding down from the various figures being cited, we can look at an agreeable number of 15-20%.

And I think we can finally dismiss the argument that the the forums are some tiny, wacky fringe of the wider community.

While 5% may be a statistically significant sample... because of the way the 5% are being chosen, it becomes a damaged, potentially biased sample because you have chosen a sample which all have a key demographic in common. It would be like sampling 5% of people who attended a football game and only choosing people wearing hometeam jerseys in the season ticket holders section and extrapolating it to all 80k attendees. You may get some data, but that data may or may not actually be representative of the whole and your results would be biased because it is overly focusing on one subsection of the varied demographic.

While you may think Dakka is a nice clean cross-section of gamers and has a variety of valid opinions, everyone here has a level of involvement that extends past the casual, so may or may not reflect the opinions of the casual which makes it a bad sample.

I also question the concept of using rulebook sales to judge customer base when there has been past evidence that many miniature customers do not play the game. It seems like trying to get an artificially small 'total unique customers' in order to give the over-inflated 'number of unique dakka users' more clout than it deserves.

Sorry, this whole exercise seems that a predetermined agenda has been decided and stats are being manipulated to prove a point opposed to attempting to figure out the truth.

Not so much. Information science studies show that the samples of internet forums (barring those with a very specific leaning - for example a forum called GW Must Die, would likely not being very representative of the general population) are representative of the population as a whole. The difference isn't in specific view points, but in intensity of those view points. That is why your home team analogy falls flat - this, Warseer, Bell of Lost Souls, Bolter and Chainsword...they are not home team examples - though they do tend to be more GW centric so attempting to use information from them to determine information on the larger gaming community is not nearly as helpful.

Figuring the overall impact of the online forums goes back to other long standing and well researched rules as well. Marketing types have been crunching the numbers, doing physical surveys in malls, over the phone and through the mail for years in order to get a handle on what the internet means to their customers. They have accumulated enough information to make valid assumptions in terms of the overall participation rates and how those impact their clients within a given market.

Then of course there is the rulebooks...not a perfect method - but I don't think the people who buy GW figures but do not buy GW rules would even cause a statistically significant blip on their overall sales and customer numbers. It could be - but I would be dumbstruck if it were larger than a fraction of a percentage.

The calculated figure might seem low to some - but it doesn't include people who play but are no longer buying GW products (those who continue to play with RT, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th Edition rules). At the 440-660,000 range that would mean that each customer is buying $300-450 worth of GW products per year. New customers will hit that by the time they choose their first army (Starter, BRB, Codex, Battalion). Existing customers will spend more or less depending on if they decide to maintain an army (new rulebook, codex, new models to update existing army).

Based on various sources - miniature gamers tend to spend between $1000-3000 per year depending on the games they play and their demographic position...so, again - that does not make the calculated number artificially small...if anything it is artificially large.

If I were looking to make it smaller, I would reduce it for players who play both WFB and 40K (which is a significant percentage). I would also seek to eliminate the favorable exchange between wholesale and retail. Pretty much everything that I did in my rough math was in favor of the GW community being larger than it probably should be.

No agenda - just a number that can be worked with from me. I can't speak as to whether or not legoburner has an agenda in this regard...but I can't see any real agenda that he could be pushing - so I would guess he is just providing an honest look behind the curtain in response to a persons question at the top of the thread.

nkelsch wrote:

While 5% may be a statistically significant sample... because of the way the 5% are being chosen, it becomes a damaged, potentially biased sample because you have chosen a sample which all have a key demographic in common. It would be like sampling 5% of people who attended a football game and only choosing people wearing hometeam jerseys in the season ticket holders section and extrapolating it to all 80k attendees. You may get some data, but that data may or may not actually be representative of the whole and your results would be biased because it is overly focusing on one subsection of the varied demographic.

The only unifier in this case would be 'uses an internet forum', I'm not sure that, in of it's self is any more significant than the usual caveat when presenting data that 'this data is gleaned from the types of people who answer surveys'. You accept certain factors into admitting that your broad selection of hobbyists won't always include the entirety, just, as described, a broad cross section.

nkelsch wrote:

While you may think Dakka is a nice clean cross-section of gamers and has a variety of valid opinions, everyone here has a level of involvement that extends past the casual, so may or may not reflect the opinions of the casual which makes it a bad sample.

You have no ability to back that statement up. I could buy a skaven blister and look on dakka to find out more, plus, as Legoburner's figures were clearly stated, that's the number of visitors, not posters.

nkelsch wrote:

I also question the concept of using rulebook sales to judge customer base when there has been past evidence that many miniature customers do not play the game. It seems like trying to get an artificially small 'total unique customers' in order to give the over-inflated 'number of unique dakka users' more clout than it deserves.

No, I've been attempting to understand the claim, made by yourself among others, on a number of occasions, that the online community is a tiny fragment of the hobbyists at large, the only people contributing figures to this discussion have strongly evidenced that is not the case. Could you also cite the figures or report that state mini collectors vastly outnumber gamers using the miniatures and further that the miniature painter buys anything like as many figures as the game player? The very way the game is constructed, in addition to the high retail cost of the miniatures, would seem to conflict with that.

nkelsch wrote:

Sorry, this whole exercise seems that a predetermined agenda has been decided and stats are being manipulated to prove a point opposed to attempting to figure out the truth.

It's hardly a surprise you would find that the case or that you would raise bizarre things like mini painters greatly outnumbering gamers buying GW minis, you have frequently touted internet forums as a fringe and are doing so again here, yet you have no figures to counter what's already been provided by both Legoburner and Sean_Obrien. I raised the point in my OP that the claim you, Kingsley and a few others frequently fall back on is, I believe, a falsehood, repeated ad infinitum in any and all GW threads. You just don't like the figures because they point to you being wrong.

 Kingsley wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote: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.

My (also anecdotal) experience disagrees. I've played with many people who do not even know that FAQs are out months after their release. While the community is "internet savvy" there's a big difference between being "internet savvy" and actually using the Internet for hobby purposes all the time.

Might be because no one at GW fething announces when FAQs are released? What about the fact that they're hidden amongst one of the sub menus (not the 3 game system menus)?

GW would let us know if new FAQs were released... Probably even let their Red Shirts know too... ya know, if they cared...

I'd assume a huge number of people get to places like dakka dakka who are in the hobby.

I think i got here first after typing in Ork or ork tactics into a search engine.

Bullockist wrote:
I'd assume a huge number of people get to places like dakka dakka who are in the hobby.

I think i got here first after typing in Ork or ork tactics into a search engine.

That, and Dakka Dakka holds a LOT of weight in cross section talk about the subject. Not that BOLS, Warseer. and the like have lesser, they have a particular clientel on those sites, and not as cross the board general as Dakka is.
Though there are a few that just sign up and lurk, there are a cross section of gamers that actually discuss subjects, word of mouth more people go check it for themselves, and then come on in without having issue to add in thier experiences as well.

Point in fact- I am in FL, theres a few from NC in the fayettnam area that I still know of, and have discussed subjects that were on dakka in some circles. I've seen some on Youtube use dakka as reference, and then there were a few that references some posters info as well. Discussion happens, posted, then expanded on.

Dakka holds wieght to gaming discussions. Even some in this section are being discussed, in particular the GW FLGS discussions.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:

There is a huge difference between active users and registered users. There is also a huge difference between forum users and 40k players. I was a registered user on this forum for the many years that I did not play 40k. Many people post here only to discuss other games. Making a direct comparison between Dakka's user count and projections about Games Workshop's customer base is not going to be effective. Common sense indicates that the number of people who use this particular specialist website (out of the many specialist websites out there) is certainly going to be much lower than the overall number of people in the hobby.

Legoburner has already stated these are active users coming into the forums.

So whilst my opening questions were anecdotal, we've just seen some figures, both in relation to sales and in relation to active users of the site.

Do you have any figures to counter that? Because I have seen you being one of the most frequent users of the 'the internet playerbase is tiny' argument and it appears to be wrong, according to correlation of numbers here.

The number of registered users is 71,461. The number of those users who play 40k is less than that. The number of those users who play 40k and are active is less than that.

There's also no obligation to register unless you actively want to share stuff - the actual visitor numbers are over an order of magnitude higher.

 legoburner wrote:
There's also no obligation to register unless you actively want to share stuff - the actual visitor numbers are over an order of magnitude higher.

Sure. But when I talk about the community being a tiny fraction, I'm referring to the community of people who actually post, follow threads closely, etc.. I suspect a great many people have seen a gallery or a modeling how-to or a rumor thread-- but far fewer I think pay attention to the rest of the 40k boards, much less Dakka Discussions.

 The Shadow wrote:
Small. Very small. Insignificantly so.

If the online wargaming community drove GW, then the company would be very different. GW can do what it does because it's driven by new and/or clueless players that are in the vast majority who:

1) Think it's ok to buy really expensive stuff because, well, they're clueless
2) Don't know there's places you can get models for far cheaper
3) Have no idea about any other tabletop wargame
4) Buy all of GW's overpriced hobby stuff such as glue
5) Impulse buy ALL THE TIME despite the expense
6) Have no idea they're being manipulated...

I know that Dakka Discussions is unnofficially the anti-GW forum, but please refrain from insulting millions of people.


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 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
So, we can up that percentage to perhaps 40-50% of gamers coming to dakka dakka over the space of a couple of months.

Meaningless. I might show a couple of my friends the Tau rumour thread so they can check out the pictures, but that doesn't mean they're "engaged" in the slightest.

To be fair, Kingsleys post does make sense, less than half the users who come here will actually play GW actively.

So, say what.. About 30,000? I suppose that is a pretty tiny percentage.

And of that, there are only a few who are really active.

Kingsley, Bryllcream and nkelsch. All three of you have used the 'online population is tiny' argument, very frequently, in various threads, without numbers to back this defense up.

I raised a challenge to this statement in this thread, numbers have now been provided that can place the dakka dakka users at 10 - 30% of the wargaming population for 40k alone.

You've all jumped in here (because the online community is a pack of snide bastards who hate GW yet you're all prodigious posters, so consider what that says about you...) to dismiss these figures without any of your own.

Provide evidence to the contrary, provide cited figures not just your opinion. I know you're all quite invested in this, as it's your traditional crutch in any and all debate on the forum (of which you're always on, which does sort of prove a point eh readers?), and it must be painful to see the actual figures being cited proving a high level of interaction between the forums and the playerbase. But there it is and shouting 'but it's not really' or the utterly ridiculous 'but when I said people that are online, I meant people who actually post a lot in certain forum boards with opinions I don't care for', or even the (frankly amazing in it's desperate clutching) 'but there are lots more painters than players'...

Meaningless, counter the figures with figures or accept what is being shown you.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Meaningless, counter the figures with figures or accept what is being shown you.

Kingsley wrote:The number of registered users is 71,461. The number of those users who play 40k is less than that. The number of those users who play 40k and are active is less than that.

There is no way you can correlate the online presence to what GW actually think of us.

It doesn't mean a thing when a few dozen up to a lowly few hundred run their mouths. It happens with movies, sports, games, local amenities etc. etc. - They really don't care about the internet.

Also, the fact that most people here from my viewpoint aren't actually engaged in conversations and the forum for 2 of the other top five TTG's in the world get very few posts per week, I doubt any body really cares what this website, or any other website has to say... They're still making money.

I think it is foolish to disregard a portion of your demographic just because they are unhappy, let alone internet users.

We may not be many here on dakkadakka, but we still represent an aspect of the wargamers community and we are still a place people will find their news or other like minded people once they explore the hobby of miniature wargaming.