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On a scale of 1-10, how confident are you that this hobby will continue to grow & be successful over the next 10 years? Taking into account things such as GW's movement towards direct only, decreasing amount of FLGS's carrying GW products, advancement in 3D printing technology, & the current state of the game (Ruleset) etc.

Edit: By "Hobby", I am referring to Warhammer 40k

Are we talking "the hobby," as in miniature wargaming and modeling in general, or "the hhhobby," as in Games Workshop and the collection of Games Workshop Games Workshop Games Workshop?

Continue to grow? Its not growing very much right now. And i have next to no confidence for it to start growing with GWs no advertising rule.

I voted 10 since the author of the top post/poll did not specify.

 djphranq wrote:
I voted 10 since the author of the top post/poll did not specify.

Specify what? Its pretty clear to me.

 djphranq wrote:
I voted 10 since the author of the top post/poll did not specify.

Apologies, I should have been more specific. By hobby I mean, Warhammer 40k.

 ninjafiredragon wrote:

 djphranq wrote:
I voted 10 since the author of the top post/poll did not specify.

Specify what? Its pretty clear to me.

...Oh... One day... One fine day, you shall truly see light. It shall burn at first, but when you reach past the pain, you'll appreciate the true prominence of enlightenment and be overflowing with joy. One fine day.

 Fafnir wrote:

 ninjafiredragon wrote:

 djphranq wrote:
I voted 10 since the author of the top post/poll did not specify.

Specify what? Its pretty clear to me.

...Oh... One day... One fine day, you shall truly see light. It shall burn at first, but when you reach past the pain, you'll appreciate the true prominence of enlightenment and be overflowing with joy. One fine day.

I dont really know what to say to this.....
but ok

 Fafnir wrote:

 ninjafiredragon wrote:

 djphranq wrote:
I voted 10 since the author of the top post/poll did not specify.

Specify what? Its pretty clear to me.

...Oh... One day... One fine day, you shall truly see light. It shall burn at first, but when you reach past the pain, you'll appreciate the true prominence of enlightenment and be overflowing with joy. One fine day.

Don't worry... It's probably because he's from Texas....

40k will live on long past GW when someone sees a highly popular and well liked IP that has endless marketability that they can snap up for cheap if/when GW bites it.

Confident enough to keep spendin money on it.

I'm confident it will grow, we've had a huge explosion of alternate games/model makers/etc in the last few years. It's entirely possible we'll see a bubble and burst at some point as well however. that said, it will be very different in 10 years than it is now or was 10 years ago, and I do not believe GW will be as dominant was it has been in the past, it certainly isn't as dominant now as it used to be.

 Kain wrote:
40k will live on long past GW when someone sees a highly popular and well liked IP that has endless marketability that they can snap up for cheap if/when GW bites it.

This. Even if Games Workshop goes bankrupt, Warhammer 40k will continue to live on. Another company will just buy the intellectual property.

For the past five years gw hasn't grown at all, and that's with price hikes and lower production costs.

GW/40k specifically? Very low.

The miniature wargaming hobby at large? Very high.

Now, 40k will most assuredly live on past any theoretical death of GW, but it will not be growing or successful without someone taking up the IP after. Currently, GW is not exactly the shining beacon of hope for the game we call 40k.

The hobby of miniature warming will continue long after GW is gone. I really don't think GW is getting as many new players as some other gaming systems. 40K however will probably continue to be present in one form or another, but the parent company probably won't be GW.

Commissar Benny wrote:

 djphranq wrote:
I voted 10 since the author of the top post/poll did not specify.

Apologies, I should have been more specific. By hobby I mean, Warhammer 40k.

Well, crap, I want my answer changed. I voted "10" because I think wargaming will continue growing. However, if we are talking 40k specifically then I'd vote a 5 because they have several serious issues they need to fix which is entirely within their reach. I'm just not sure they will do it.

Mini-wargaming? I have like 7-8 armies across 5-6 different games or something crazy. I have a hard time learning all the different rules because they are all great in their own ways with gorgeous models and cool communities.

If you mean the hobby of GW; the hobby of buying GW products as it were now, then no. Trends already point to that declining. Save any real judgements for the next financial report.

40k will survive past Games Workshop, or at least GW in their present configuration (sometimes buyouts change their name to the bought company).

It's a marketable IP. Those things don't go away.

D&D, Starcraft/Diablo, Star Wars, Oz, Frankenstein, Dracula, etc all continue to exist despite their creators no longer controlling it. In fact, that's already happened to 40k at least twice, yet it still moves on.

From what I've seen, GW opened up loads of shops over the last few years, but have to start closing them. Unless they figure out something smart for 3D printers, they could be in trouble once they become affordable. Something like steam where you pay a fee for "Tactical Squad" then a small fee each time you print a guy. They'd have to up their modelling though, and get their codices balanced.

I know that bashing GW is hip at the moment and everyone who wants to be cool does it, but in all honesty they aren't as stupid as everyone wants to believe they are. Sure, they are making some questionable decisions, but, you know, if they were as slowed as you're branding them, the company would not have survived 25+ years.

Another thing is that nothing's going bad at the moment for them, aside from some lower sales lately. 40K and WFB sell like hot cake in Poland, and that's with prices being(in relation to salary) three times more expensive than in any other country(aside maybe from Australia), so yeah.

As for 40k.. I'm sorry, but no other game available on the market hits even near the niche that 40k is taking up. Vast majority of other systems is some small scale skirmishes like Infinity or wannabe medium-sized games that still feel skirmishy like the Warmachine. No other system will give 40k players the fix they got used to, be it fluff-wise or gameplay-wise, so the game will thrive unless GW breaks. But again - they aren't as stupid as you think. If they go too far, they have the means to just restart it and 50% of people will thank them while the remaining 50% will keep on bashing, ever unsatisfied.

tl;dr: 40k will survive next 10 years and it will be better both gameplay-wise and for modellers too, because every year their minis are becoming more and more spectacular with finer detail and cooler designs.

 Klerych wrote:
Stuff.

GW primarily survived as there wasn't cheap means of creating competition and the market was smaller.

Thanks to modern artistic products such as CAD, cheaper Chinese molding services, and the relative ease to either crowd fund or use the internet to determine player base wants, GW is in a much, much different market then what they have survived in tradtionally.

For those interested in game, regardless of setting or "style" (skirmish to grand scale battler), players are seeing how other companies treat their customers and fans. There is zero argument to be made against this: other companies are more community focused and customer driven than 40k is now.

It doesn't matter what you say anecdotally, the last several financial reports show a drop in actual volume sold. Higher costs have kept revenues, and thus profits, high along with cost cutting procedures. GW's handling of the hard shift to digital, one man stores, massive lay offs, downsized community support, and more are all non-sustainable decreases in operational costs. To many much more financial minded folks, these are short term gain modifiers.

I'd like to know when GW went public; that most likely is the first stroke of change to their practices. Public entities operate for profit. Private entities are allowed to operate as they see wish benefitting the sole owner(s). When you introduce a much larger amount of cooks, the recipe is bound to get a bit funky.

I suggest you head over to masterminis.net and read a 12~ article review on the state of GW and how it dramatically differs from anything of the last recorded 25 years of their business. It's written by a business owner and former executive level businessman; who just happens to be a GW and minis fanboy in the process.

TL;DR: Times change, GW has massive competition and is choosing to ignore both them and their customers. The market they operate in is drastically different then that of yesteryear and being a publicly traded entity in a niche, social hobby isn't helping them.

 Kain wrote:
40k will live on long past GW when someone sees a highly popular and well liked IP that has endless marketability that they can snap up for cheap if/when GW bites it.

The problem is that that 'someone' would likely be Sega, they already hold the license to make computergames etc., and I don't think they would like to lose that. They would probably grasp the opportunity and buy the entire IP. Much profit for Sega, but probably not for us, as Sega probably wouldn't be very interested in the tabletop game.
At best they could license the right to make a 40k tabletop game out to another company

The "hobby" I play is miniature warfare gaming, and a sub hobby of that is painting, converting, and collecting.

Now if you are referring to games workshop, they are not a hobby, but a company.

They produce miniatures for their wargaming hobby.

Despite all the GW hate and cheese lists, and every other complaint I see here on Dakka... everyone admit it, we all love 40k and its flaws and that's why were all here in the first place.

Ten.

Yeah, I also went with 10. People have been predicting the self-destruction of GW for the past 15 years for the exact same reasons, and every time it doesn't work, the doomsayers just move the date of the apocalypse back a little bit and then carry on as if they were never wrong dozens of times in the past.

GW has weathered dozens of competitors that all come by promising to be better, and then they're not, and they go away. The only serious competitor that has stuck around has been warmahordes, but they've survived by copying GW's business model.

GW has huge structural advantages going for it. The 3Dprintapocalypse is something that's been looming for a long time now, but isn't something that can't be worked around, and GW isn't going to go away because a few tournament player queque about the rules.

If GW is actually going downhill, which it isn't difinitively, then it certainly has enough altitude to continue to glide for at least another decade. And that's assuming that it never does anything right to fix whatever is apparently so wrong in the first place.

I'm gonna be another person who notes that if GW goes out of busniess and sells off it's IPs it's not gonna go to a gaming company. if GW has a "great IP firesale" it likely won't be a game company buying it, but a bigger company mostly intrested in lisenceing the IP

When GW goes out of business it wont be the end of 40k but it IS going out of business long before 10 years.

Sales are falling like a stone, the one man store system is clearly failing and GW's competition is rapidly growing in popularity. Their response to this? "Everything is fine, fire all the middle management and keep doing what we're doing'.

There is plenty of time to turn everything around but GW have stuck their heads in the sand and refuse to listen to the feedback needed to change.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Kain wrote:
40k will live on long past GW when someone sees a highly popular and well liked IP that has endless marketability that they can snap up for cheap if/when GW bites it.

The problem is that that 'someone' would likely be Sega, they already hold the license to make computergames etc., and I don't think they would like to lose that. They would probably grasp the opportunity and buy the entire IP. Much profit for Sega, but probably not for us, as Sega probably wouldn't be very interested in the tabletop game.
At best they could license the right to make a 40k tabletop game out to another company

FFG would probably get the license.