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Jup there where great RPG's, card games and video games but they did not really compete in the same way that X-Wing, Warmachine, Infinity and World of Warcraft do and did. If there was to be played a different system on a gaming table (at least where I lived) it would be Mortheim or an other specialist game.

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Azreal13 wrote:

-Better support -> lots of hobby articles including but not limited to plasticard templates for vehicles in the white dwarf, direct bits sales,terran articles and the GW events.

Undoubtedly a good thing, but it all predates 3rd 40K so can't be considered to have notably contributed to any sort of upsurge, and it's all eminently repeatable.

This doesn't help the discussion at all. Here are some evidence based differences then from white dwarfs between '90 - '00 and now.

Montly FAQ's and feedback on questions of the community in the white dwarf.



Tournament support



You could oder bits from GW ( even oop ones )


There where rules for all sorts of fun things in the white dwarfs including create your own unit rules


Scratch building models with and terrain was encouraged.











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GW wasn't the same company really.

I didn't disagree with the fact it existed, I just disagree that something that largely predates the launch of 3rd Edition, which, with the possible exception of tourney support (which you hadn't included in your original list) can't really be used to explain a sudden and explosive growth in player numbers.

One has to look for things that changed, not things that already were, and I very much doubt that you'll find anyone who points to the fact they could order sepecific bits directly or that it was officially OK to use trees from a railway manufacturer as the reason they started playing from 3rd, and even if you did, those very same reasons would have already been in existence all the way back to 1st Ed Rogue Trader.

A now I get it. Yes there are differences no they don't explain the growth from 1990 - 2005

Let me rephrase my answer then. The op question is the wrong one, and this is why.

This is the only revenue graph I know, lets assume it is true ( if it isn't please give us a better one )


The previous graph has quite a lot of similarities to this graph, this makes it simpler to understand.



We should not really be that interested in what started the growth in the first.The transition from a rpg like miniature game to a full wargame while interesting isn't really worth investigating if you are interested in the current situation.
The interesting part of the graph the part when the growth started to decline. What we should be asking is what limited their revenue growth and can they do anything about that.. To be honest I don't know it could be a lot of things.
It can be that they are simpy at its max, it can be that they are being out competed or it can simply be that their old policies worked better then their new ones. Who knows.
All I know is that the company in 1990-2005 was something else entirely from what it is now if you look at how it interacts with their customer. I don't like this at all but I don't think that that is the sole reason of the stop in growth.

You are aware you're comparing the growth in GW revenue with the pattern of population growth in a biological environment?!!

Yes, there are similarities, but they're coincidental as there are entirely different factors and limitations at play. There are, traditionally, phases of growth, contraction and plateau in the lifetime of the company, but that isn't what the second graph represents.

While there are hard limits on the number of Perch that a given body of water can sustain, you'll hit a ceiling with that much sooner than with a company which is selling a product that, in theory at least, could be purchased by every person on the planet.

40K would never be purchased by every person on the planet.

It's fairly likely that everyone who might want to think buying it in Europe, USA, Japan and Australasia, is already aware of it and has made their decision to buy or not to buy. If this is true, major growth could only be obtained by moving into brand new territories like Brazil and China,

I know and the similarities aren't that coincidental at all. Most ecological models work perfectly if used correctly on economics. (there are economic theory equivalents of this graph but they don't look that nice) . Basic principles of logistic growth work perfectly for anything with a this kind of growth such as bacteria, enzyme reactions, and most companies. The hard part is finding the right variables to enter in the formula.

[edit] note that carrying capacity isn't as fixed as high school biology might suggest. Depending on the theory and the model used it depends greatly on the environments and the innovations the company makes.
Economics created the flawed (logistic growth) businesses cycle model based on these theories, most of the time completely ignoring the underlying structures of the original model.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
40K would never be purchased by every person on the planet.

It's fairly likely that everyone who might want to think buying it in Europe, USA, Japan and Australasia, is already aware of it and has made their decision to buy or not to buy. If this is true, major growth could only be obtained by moving into brand new territories like Brazil and China,

Well, they have tried that to a degree. Tau were their attempt to move into the Asian market - specifically Japan - which failed pretty badly for a variety of reasons. But I guess we got Tau out of it.

Tau wasn't specifically invented for Japan, AFAIK, and it has been a popular faction for the western market, although it didn't crack Japan anyway. I think there are various social and cultural reasons for this.

China looks like a bit of a tough market for a number of reasons, but I'm slightly surprised that GW haven't tried to go into South America.

The starting sets are a step in the right direction. If they continue to offer bundles with real discounts and start to make the rules cheaper they would likely see an uptake in sales/ new players.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
40K would never be purchased by every person on the planet.

It's fairly likely that everyone who might want to think buying it in Europe, USA, Japan and Australasia, is already aware of it and has made their decision to buy or not to buy. If this is true, major growth could only be obtained by moving into brand new territories like Brazil and China,

I didn't say that every person would buy it, but every person could buy it. Theoretically every person on the planet is a customer, unlike an ecological model, where the environment imposes hard limits on what can be possible (although I suppose those limits would inherently limit the customer base, if we humans weren't so good at working out ways around them.) If every person in a given town was a 40K player, nothing bad would happen. The reality is, of course, that to make 40K into a product some people would buy it would be necessary to change it beyond all recognition (think Blood Angel, a fragrance for women) but it doesn't mean that it couldn't be done if GW had a mind to.

But there's still a rich vein of untapped customers in their key territories to be mined, IMO, as the retail chain as advertising model is hopelessly inefficient, especially in physically larger areas where there could be substantial areas with no store in feasible travelling distance, plus, of course, we're all making more of them all the time.

 oldzoggy wrote:
A lot on top of that, times change.

This feels like asking what rock/grunge/metal bands in the 90's and 00's did right and how we can replicate that nowadays.

I understand what you are saying due to economics and mindset but I disagree to a large extent that they can not get back to what they had. GW had a very different business model in third edition. It was about growing the business rather than maxing out the return on income. Hobbies the ran the company and not the accountants. It was when they started to focus on income and "lean out" the business that their appeal started dropping. This allowed games like Warmachine to take market share and opened the door for several other gaming systems. There are soooo many companies that have done this and it is such a poor long term business model but good for short term gains. It is a losing strategy.

Can GW get back to that point....maybe. They have hurt themselves and the road back is long and requires much crow eating. They need to reopen hobby centers in mainstream malls to reach a younger group. They need to become customer oriented again by offering paint lessons, play night, group events, etc. They need to make their rules query more standard answer and easy to acces. They need to concentrate on their games and what the customers want.

Surely 'Blood Angel' for women is a sanguinitary pad, not a fragrance?

3rd Edition took a game that had a pretty deep and broad model range, but incredibly complicated rules, byzantine army construction concepts, and horrible balance, and distilled it down to a pretty simple, playable game.

Obviously, there are clear parallels which imply that GW could regain some of that magic. I think that for there to be another jump, GW needs to do what they did in third: leverage the living crap out of their advanges. They used stores, White Dwarf, and their website to promote the hobby, they bundled plastics into battle forces at a pretty nice discount, made the rules cheap and readily available, and they even included hobby basics in both the main rule book and individual codices. hell, third edition codices usually included guides for army composition and even basic (if laughably naïve) tactics.

In short, they made products that would instill interest in the game and the hobby, and supported them with events (they created tournament scenarios!) and material and even trophies!

Also, there were TONS of products released for 40K (and the related universe) in the days of 3rd going forward, many of which have been simply rereleased in new forms during 6th/7th (like Wulfen). I'm not sure how some people think there wasn't huge growth in the brand in those days, whose inertia continues today.

-Completely new armies (90% of Necrons added, Tau invented)
-Chapter Approved errata and new material, including new armies (Kroot Mercs, Cursed founding rules)
-Vehicle Design Rules (though it was partially a modernization of ideas and material from 2nd edition)
-Summer Campaigns like Armageddon and Eye of Terror introducing new units and armies into the mix.
-Setting-specific rules like the Cities of Death/Codex Cityfight material
-Apocolypse rules
-Forge World gets going gangbusters


-Smack in the middle of the years of the editions of Epic 40K was also great for the setting, as well as Battlefleet Gothic. Necromunda, too.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

-Smack in the middle of the years of the editions of Epic 40K was also great for the setting, as well as Battlefleet Gothic. Necromunda, too.

Necromunda was 2nd edition, and was gone well before 3rd ed dropped.

And from what I recall, Battlefleet Gothic didn't really do fantastically compared to the other specialist games, and Epic 40K took a long time to get up to steam - pretty much didn't take off until they started adding back in all of the detail that had been stripped out for the change from Space Marine/Titan Legions to Epic 40000.

I honestly don't see any explosive growth happening no matter what GW does. Its just different times. I actually started during 3rd edition I believe (Eldar was my first army). Now with technology as the main source of entertainment (video games, movies, internet), something like models painting/table top gaming is always going to take a second seat

 insaniak wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:

-Smack in the middle of the years of the editions of Epic 40K was also great for the setting, as well as Battlefleet Gothic. Necromunda, too.

Necromunda was 2nd edition, and was gone well before 3rd ed dropped.

And from what I recall, Battlefleet Gothic didn't really do fantastically compared to the other specialist games, and Epic 40K took a long time to get up to steam - pretty much didn't take off until they started adding back in all of the detail that had been stripped out for the change from Space Marine/Titan Legions to Epic 40000.

I know it was 2nd edition (I owned it from launch, as well as Gorkamorka) but I thought it was still around at least a little after 1998 (3rd edition) because that's when some of the later gangs came out? I thought things like the Redeemer, Guilder gangs, Arbites squads(with the Gorkamorka style vehicle rules) etc came out after I graduated in 2000, around when Inquisitor stuff was being released.

I think more than 40k, GW in general was booming in the years around 2000, between Fantasy, 40k, and Specialist Games before they started winding down.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

I know it was 2nd edition (I owned it from launch, as well as Gorkamorka) but I thought it was still around at least a little after 1998 (3rd edition) because that's when some of the later gangs came out? I thought things like the Redeemer, Guilder gangs, Arbites squads(with the Gorkamorka style vehicle rules) etc came out after I graduated in 2000, around when Inquisitor stuff was being released.

That would have been around the Specialist Games era, when they brought it back. It never really regained a foothold, though, as it was too hard to get most of the stuff for it.

As someone who played in the 3rd to 4th era, the big difference was GW really put in the work for their community. We had the Eye of Terror Campaign that my FLGS did a ton of special tables for and game events. They had Black Goblin Magazine, which was a free online White Dwarf, I even submitted a question that was published as an article about Chaos demon world terrain. The list really goes on.

Then GW started opening their own stores, they started taking support away from the independent guys, and over night the stores went from having almost the entire thing dedicated to GW, to a mix of Warmachine, Confrontation, Flames of War, and whatever else. It was like all the other sections of the store just started eating into the GW sections when that happened.

Moral of the story, if you want to grow, don't cut off your best sales people in hopes of squeezing just a little more out of your thing.

Edit: Believe it or not, but Magic had a lot of the same issues 40k has had early on, at least in terms of game design, but never support of community or retailer. What's different though is that Magic actually understood the issues it faced and didn't double down bad design, and as such it grew to be the juggernaut that it is today.

And yes, Magic almost died a couple of times due to design choices that they learned a lot from.

The "feel" of 3rd edition is completely different from today.

The game/fluff matched much more closely, and everything was much more grim-dark. Equipment is rare and breaking down, everything racing towards the darkness, and you can feel it in the game, when you're only allowed very limited equipment. No spamming of weapons you see today. Las/Plas/Fist in a 10 man squad was the order of the day.

Fluff was sparse but very dark. Nothing was ever heroic, and everything ended on a very negative note.

Miniatures and rules were cheap too.

GW had a forum too (!!!) and were one of the leaders in taking advantage of the technological revolution (!!!) with online shops, etc. I think too much flaming of GW went on, and they closed the forum and drew themselves inwards.

Also, computer gaming was not as mainstream, so playing miniatures was also seen as viable.

kburn wrote:

GW had a forum too (!!!) and were one of the leaders in taking advantage of the technological revolution (!!!) with online shops, etc. I think too much flaming of GW went on, and they closed the forum and drew themselves inwards..

GW's forums were a prime example of GW not making the most of an available resource.

Instead of using the forums as an avenue to engage with their customers, they set them up and said 'There you go, talk about our stuff!', and aside from the very, very occasional post from the studio in the Games Development section, that was pretty much the extent of their involvement with it. Volunteer moderators took care of deleting anything that was too offensive, when they happened to see it, but other than that it was just let to run wild.

People (rightly so, IMO) expected that the 'official' forums would be a place to get their issues heard and responded to, and instead they just met a wall of silence from GW... and so voices got steadily louder until they started drowing out any worthwhile discussion, and GW closed the whole thing down, claiming that other websites offered better venues for discussing their games.


Which is crazy talk. It might be true for small, boutique companies that simply don't have a big enough following to keep a forum ticking over... but for a company the size of GW, to tell their customers to get off their lawn and go talk about their stuff somewhere else ... I just can't even comprehend what sort of drugs would have to have been involved for that to seem like a good idea. Particularly given that GW are well aware of how vicious other forums can be, where they're concerned.

A properly moderated forum with active involvement from the studio would be an incredible resource for encouraging people to participate in the 'GW Hobby'. It's like shooting fish in a barrel.


But no... go over there and talk about us instead, while we ignore you all and continue to assume that you'll buy whatever we decide to serve up.

That's what happened with their facebook group too.

kburn wrote:
The "feel" of 3rd edition is completely different from today.

The game/fluff matched much more closely, and everything was much more grim-dark. Equipment is rare and breaking down, everything racing towards the darkness, and you can feel it in the game, when you're only allowed very limited equipment. No spamming of weapons you see today. Las/Plas/Fist in a 10 man squad was the order of the day.

Fluff was sparse but very dark. Nothing was ever heroic, and everything ended on a very negative note.

Oh I miss this so much. The universe from this period just felt so well done, and now the fluff is there purely as miniatures sales support mechanism for whatever new plastic kit is coming out this week.

Is this thread about 40K the game setting, meaning the fluff and all the spin-off games, or is it about Warhammer 40K the tabletop game?

kburn wrote:
No spamming of weapons you see today. Las/Plas/Fist in a 10 man squad was the order of the day.

3rd edition was the era of spamming *6* man Las/Plas squads.

That's why the modern rules *require* you to take 10 man Tactical squads to take both weapons in order to limit them.. (changover started mid-4th edition with the Dark Angels codex).

In my area there was no explosive growth. Numbers went down. My main group quit playing completely when GW lied. They were enthusiastic when announced and at DragonCon actually asked one of the big wigs at GW about 3rd and the guy told them they would have to change very little about their armies to play 3rd which as we all know was complete rubbish. So they all quit and only one has come back recently more for love of making terrain and nostalgia than the rules.

My other group didn't gain anyone and lost a couple unwilling to shell out for double the army size or break down their lovingly converted models to play by the new rules. I still have a few friends who play 2nd exclusively.

-One perk that was hyped was the supposed cheap codices. They were $19.99 and were barebone rules. This was supposed to be the standard from then on. We see how that went.