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 Retrogamer0001 wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
GW may be losing some (marginal) profits, but buying/selling 40k on places like Ebay is a huge market - I always see plenty of people buying and bidding. I think a lot of good moves are being made at GW right now.

Do note:

GW doesn't make money from ebay. The fact that buying stuff from ebay rather than GW is very common is a good indication that GW is in trouble.

Basically I meant that the game itself maintains a huge market aside from the official financial situation over at GW - people DO like to play 40K. Is the game dying? I honestly don't think it is. This is a common thread on Dakka, resurrected once a week at least, and it's usually the same go-around. I personally think the same discussion will be happening in ten or twenty years time, with GW still going and people still buying models.

while some form of this question is often asked, there's more "meat" behind it than ever. 40k is no longer the #1 selling mini's game. GW is selling dramatically less product relative to a few years ago. The level of discontent is, in general, higher, as is the number of people talking about dead playgroups.

40k isnt dead, but its certainly not in good health.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
GW may be losing some (marginal) profits, but buying/selling 40k on places like Ebay is a huge market - I always see plenty of people buying and bidding. I think a lot of good moves are being made at GW right now.

Counter to that, and with due acknowledgment to geographic variation, I found that on more than one occasion last year what I'd assumed were desirable items (Space Marine bikes being the standout) needed re-listing, whereas maybe 4 years ago, BiN stuff would sell sometimes in minutes and auction items would always attract decent bidding.

Yes it is just look at gw's sale stats. The prices went up, but the turnover goes did go downso yeah they sell less.

pm713 wrote:
They seem to be toning down price now. Or at least they're starting to.

Kharn says hi.

Basically every single new kit says hi.

I thought that way a year ago, but since then there have been plenty of indicators they're listening and moving in a better direction. They're engaging with the community again, they're offering discount bundles, releasing FAQ's, making moves into the tournament scene and they've seemingly learned from the mess AoS was on release and introduced points. It seems to be that better times are ahead. If 8th edition 40k is on the horizon I'm optimistic about it and expect a better edition than we've had for a long time

 Snake Tortoise wrote:
I thought that way a year ago, but since then there have been plenty of indicators they're listening and moving in a better direction. They're engaging with the community again, they're offering discount bundles, releasing FAQ's, making moves into the tournament scene and they've seemingly learned from the mess AoS was on release and introduced points. It seems to be that better times are ahead. If 8th edition 40k is on the horizon I'm optimistic about it and expect a better edition than we've had for a long time

I completely agree with that.

Also, I think GW still has the possibility to turn things over, because 40K's setting is still damn good. I feel like many people, including myself, play this game because we love the setting and the models, despite the subpar rules.
Almost all the bad things people say about 40K are about the rules and the price. The rules can be changed very quickly, whereas creating a setting and a line of models as rich as 40K takes decades.
The price is still an issue for most, but as many have stated, the start collecting boxes are much better deals. Also, the boxed set in general are very good values (standalone games, but also the last Death Masque box).
If (and that's a big if), 8th edition makes 40K a very good game rulewise (as good as what other companies produce), I think they could draw people back in. Especially if the rulebook tends to be cheap, just like we've been seeing lately (I'm talking about the softcover book in Death Masque and the upcoming Kill Team).

A propos positive things that GW is doing:

No grav-cannons in the deathwatch codex.

Noteworthy?

But Grav Cannons are the quickest way to make a pre 6th collection competitive... How can they be bad for the game?

 Eldarain wrote:
But Grav Cannons are the quickest way to make a pre 6th collection competitive... How can they be bad for the game?

Is this a serious question?

This can't be a serious question.

 Traditio wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
But Grav Cannons are the quickest way to make a pre 6th collection competitive... How can they be bad for the game?

Is this a serious question?

This can't be a serious question.

I like to think it has a certain baseline seriousness akin to recent threads of late.

 Baldeagle91 wrote:
I think games workshop have realised they royally fethed up with AOS. Even at Warhammer World the shop space for AOS in both the normal shop and forgeworld is slowly shrinking.

However the get started boxes are basically a return to the old £30 battleforces and the FAQ's are helping the bloating rules. I doubt 40k will stop shrinking, but hopefully in a couple of years it will be at a scale that GW can actually manage.

The start collecting boxes are great. I was able to eBay some eldar ones for under $70 a piece. Which puts me at 140 for a small mono build army and I'm okay with that.

 Eldarain wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
But Grav Cannons are the quickest way to make a pre 6th collection competitive... How can they be bad for the game?

Is this a serious question?

This can't be a serious question.

I like to think it has a certain baseline seriousness akin to recent threads of late.

So, in all seriousness:

No gravcannons in the death-watch codex.

Any ideas on why this is? Possible direction shift for GW?

 Traditio wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:

 Traditio wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
But Grav Cannons are the quickest way to make a pre 6th collection competitive... How can they be bad for the game?

Is this a serious question?

This can't be a serious question.

I like to think it has a certain baseline seriousness akin to recent threads of late.

So, in all seriousness:

No gravcannons in the death-watch codex.

Any ideas on why this is? Possible direction shift for GW?

My guess would be the fact the DW Veteran kit has their new Infernus/Frag heavy weapons and the kits dictate the rules. (Scatterlasers for all etc)

Eldarain wrote:My guess would be the fact the DW Veteran kit has their new Infernus/Frag heavy weapons and the kits dictate the rules. (Scatterlasers for all etc)

Ah.

More of the same, then.

Yeah. 40k is screwed.

The statistics do show that the tabletop games industry as a whole is growing. That means that 40K's slow decline in sales is entirely blamable on GW, not general industry trends.

Although the "statistics" in this case may not necessarily hold up to robust analysis.

It is difficult to argue against copious anecdotal evidence over a number of years though, even if the collection method isn't exactly scientific.

 koooaei wrote:
Just roll it off.On a 4+ it's not dying.

good one.
The bloat and at least awareness of some issues even if they aren't directly affecting your gaming area presently seems to be something I'm seeing just about everywhere. Honestly though, I think once the change happens with 40K and if it gets simpler and more streamlined without losing its character things will be zomg-drama for 3-6 months then it will start to pan out, probably be great and all this will be in the past. Or it could somehow completely implode. I'm an optimist. Either way I expect to see positive change start with the new campaign. As much as I would like to see 40K change now! I guess I can only reasonably expect GW (or any gaming company) to be able to do so much so fast.

I feel more for the players who have limited gaming options and have put playing aside in frustration until something changes from on high. Wonder how competitive gamers are doing. Though I suppose most tournaments have house rules or FAQ docs.

It is but I've seen a number of articles recently stating that tabletop gaming overall is dying out. I mean I can't tell the difference, we had a two-man GW store, a Battle Bunker, and an independent gaming shop (Which broke my heart when they closed. I love using alternate minis all dallied up with a good kitbash to make unique models which couldn't even be pulled out at a GW store) but the Battle Bunker shrunk to a 2-man outlet, the 2-man outlet nearby is literally run by 1 dude now, and as I said before the freelance store died (Still a mystery to me as it was very busy, almost exclusively for Warmachine).

The real deal-breaker is the prices, which is a huge can of worms but there's just no justifying those prices. Yes they're amazing models and they do come with oodles of bits, but you don't have to look terribly far to find third-party kits that offer the same and are almost half the price. The fact that for a SMALL 40k army you could make a healthy-sized Infinity or Warmachine army (The fewer model count also helps) is a big no-brainer pointer as to why those are growing and 40k is finding itself sitting on the shelf more often than not nowadays.

It's just like. If they'd make money cost versus how many models you need a little more manageable it'd do so much. Infinity and Warmachine models cost more/equal to a GW set but you only need like, <12 figures in Infinity's case and less than 50 individual figures for Warmachine (Often not even 20). That's why I enjoy Kill Teams a lot because I only need to drop maybe $50 at the most and boom I've got a pretty tight kill team. But if I have a Kill Team with a vehicle sweet momma it starts to skyrocket.

After the demise of 5th edition, 5/6 of our gaming group quit.

There are two of hings GW can do:

1. Lower prices

2. Rewrite the rules to make it a skirmish game.

If 40k becomes a skirmish game you need less of those high-dollar models.

If prices are lowered, people are more likely to buy large armies despite the gakky rules.

 Robin5t wrote:
I'm not sure 'dying' is the right word - I think it's more that the IP is changing. Tabletop is seemingly shrinking, but Video Games based on the IP are getting more common than ever.

Tons of tabletop companies are growing. It's GW that's shrinking. And as much as GW would like to think so they aren't same as tabletop games.

GW needs to make buying the rules to play the game and one army not a $200+ affair. I considered getting back into Tau and discovered that aside from the main book and codex there were 2 other books with various formations. No, I do not want to spend $240 CAN on codexes for ONE ARMY, Games Workshop!

Meanwhile, other games manufacturers are giving away .pdf of their rules. No wonder why GW is losing market share. Not long before the Warpath Kickstarter fulfills, and then the real bloodletting begins.

I can't speak for anyone else, but in my area 40k is but a fraction of what it once was. It use to be massive. In hobby stores, in malls everywhere. Now you're lucky if any individual FLGS in the area carries GW products.

Despite how often these threads come up, it signals a real underlying problem within the community. Its like we are on board the titanic after its hit an iceberg and we are just re-arranging deck chairs while we wait for the rest of the ship to capsize. We all love this hobby and we want it to be successful. I think by voicing our criticism, we are reaching out hoping that GW will pull their head out of their ass and fix the current state of the game. It seems they have little desire to however. I have all kinds of hobbies and interests and I've seen this trend before. From what I can tell GW is just trying to squeeze whatever they can out of the remaining players. If enough players leave, they just offset the loss by increasing the price of all their products and make the existing players pick up the cost.

I think the saddest part of all of it, is how passionate this community is about the setting and realistically how little work it would take to fix the ruleset. Hire an outside gaming company to come in. Revert to 5th edition rules. Take out the bad sh*t of 5th people hated. Add the elements between 5th-7th that were most successful. Release a new edition with 1 army codex. Balance everything around that codex. Most importantly point values. Point values need reflect stat value, power, utility, effectiveness on a model to model basis game wide. If a model is 5 points in one army and 5 points in another army, they better be identical or near identical with utility that balances out.

Game fixed, rake in millions. Your welcome GW.

Yeah, hobby gaming is growing rapidly.

http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/35150/hobby-games-market-nearly-1-2-billion

These threads come up regularly.

BUT

Yes, I think 40k is currently in trouble. The price of the miniatures is only bearable from a collectors' POV - the state of the rules means gamers can no longer really justify spending the requisite amounts. Despite gW's infamous claims to the contrary, I don't see much of a future for a company that cannot or will not tackle the issue of game design.

I've been saying the game is doomed ever since the change from Lead to Pewter and the outrageous price hikes that came with it ($6 for 3 guardsmen!).

I have to be right sooner or later.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I've been saying the game is doomed ever since the change from Lead to Pewter and the outrageous price hikes that came with it ($6 for 3 guardsmen!).

I have to be right sooner or later.

Something about a stopped clock

The Get Started boxes are great value, both for new players and older players wanting to expand their collections.

Kill Team just got new rules, to allow smaller scale games, also lowering the amount of money you need to spend to get into the game.

More and more people are getting into Horus Heresy, which is even more expensive than 40k, but the balance is considerably better, and the models and fluff is the best I can think of (within miniature gaming)

Yeah there's a lot of broken stuff in the game (some formations, gargantuans, etc.) and the amount of books needed to play some armies "well" is ridiculous.

I remember when I got into the hobby, probably around 2003 or somewhere around that time; White Dwarf was great to read and nearly every kid between 12 and 16 had either some plastic orcs or a LotR-kit laying around, covered in shiny thick acrylic paint, and played something vaguely resembling warhammer on the kitchen table with their neighbourhood friends. Did these people have a genuine interest in the gaming or hobby aspect? Not really, it was just a trend after the LotR movies came out, and Fantasy was really getting into mainstream entertainment culture. Now these people have a wider array of entertainment sources, from an extensive selection of video games across different gaming stations to smartphones, playing with plastic toy soldiers falls low on the priority list. Especially those you need to buy paint, glue, clippers, primers, sand and flock, etc. for. I do think that GW, for a long time, expected this type of people to make up the majority of their sales, and decided to give the short end of the stick to the "serious" gamer.

Anyways, around this time, 2003-2005, my local area had a pretty active gaming club, where people mostly played WHFB with a few 40k players. Then WoW started getting big, and nobody bothered showing up to the gaming club, and I also packed away my minis. From 2006 and on I was leveling my Undead Warlock, not painting my Vampire Counts. Did Warhammer, both 40k and whfb, die at this point? Clearly not.

So while 7th edition started off great, the power creep and the library you need to find all the rules has been pretty damaging to the game. I do, however, think that GW Is slowly turning things around. As others have mentioned, they now interact with the community, they communicate with tournament organizers (to make the AoS general's handbook), they have started doing the FAQs, and a lot of things that make things look promising.

Many tournaments/events are also growing every year. The ITC is doing a lot, not just in the US but also influencing things here in Europe. Even if disregarding their FAQ (which I've never seen used here), they put out articles, create debate, advertise for events, etc. PR is great and its essential for keeping the hobby alive. So while GW is far behind other companies (like PP) in terms of assisting event organization, there are signs pointing to them trying to catch up.

We, the community, keep the game alive. Organize an event, hold some demo games, be active on things like Facebook groups for your local gaming area and show the people wondering about getting into the hobby that it's fun. Wraithknights and free Razorbacks scaring away new players? Then don't be that guy. It sucks that you'll often have to do a whole bunch of planning before a game instead of a pick-up game ("Which FAQ are we using? Which mission pack? Competitive or friendly lists?), but modern social media makes this a lot easier than it was just 10 years ago.

Korinov wrote:

pm713 wrote:
They seem to be toning down price now. Or at least they're starting to.

Kharn says hi.

Basically every single new kit says hi.

I had to read the price for Kharn three times to be sure I hadn't misread it .

I still want the model though..

Mitochondria wrote:
After the demise of 5th edition, 5/6 of our gaming group quit.

There are two of hings GW can do:

1. Lower prices

2. Rewrite the rules to make it a skirmish game.

If 40k becomes a skirmish game you need less of those high-dollar models.

If prices are lowered, people are more likely to buy large armies despite the gakky rules.

I can't see them lowering the prices per kit, but if they keep bundling things at a lower overall cost that'd be swell. I would also really, really, really like a return to a skirmish game. I do wonder what it'd be like to play 7th ed. with Epick 40k models though .

I think part of it may be gaming groups dying, and gamers moving on to other things, rather than 40k 'dying'. Whilst it's easy for kids, college students and young adults to embrace the hobby/gaming 'full time', it gets harder as you get older and when you have other life commitments - life,career, family et , and it's not strange at all for gaming to slip down the list of priorities and eventually get put aside. Other gaming groups may form, may relocate, or 'erupt' in other places to replace them. A lot of gaming groups are small, self contained 'cells' that often have little or no contact and interactions with other 'cells'. This is not surprising either. Players in one cell may see it shrink and die away and to them, the 'community is dying', and while their perspective may not be wrong, they're not necessarily seeing the bigger picture as other cells may be perfectly fine. I think we have a habit of seeing our own micro-ecosystems as reflective of the bigger picture, and this isn't necessarily accurate. That said, there is plenty anecdotal evidence online of gaming communities shrinking etc, and while the plural of anecdotes isn't data, it does possibly reflect a shrinking from, say, ten years ago. Then again, it could just represent less of an online presence instead. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle myself.

WayneTheGame wrote:
No, see tabletop is growing. Just GW is shrinking.

TheWaspinator wrote:The statistics do show that the tabletop games industry as a whole is growing. That means that 40K's slow decline in sales is entirely blamable on GW, not general industry trends.

tneva82 wrote:
Tons of tabletop companies are growing. It's GW that's shrinking. And as much as GW would like to think so they aren't same as tabletop games.

I don’t think its as clear cut as folks would like to make it out. The headline of ‘GW in decline, other wargames companies growing, therefore overall growth!!’ might make pleasant reading to those with the specific agenda of hating on GW all of the time but the simple truth is that it is not as straight forward as it seems at first glance. Whilst people love pointing to the big tabloid headlines of GW ‘failing while other companies grow hugely’ as some kind of proof of the wargames industry growing, when you read the text behind the headline, dig a bit deeper into the story, and look at the actual numbers, not the percentages, you realise that it’s not necessarily that simple or straightforward - the numbers tell a completely different story. The truth is these statements often need to be qualified. The statistics might show that gaming as a whole is growing, but a lot of that is driven by board games and ccgs like Magic, the recent Pokemon phenomenon, and Star Wars X-wing, and not in fact by games like 40K or Warmachine or Infinity. I know a few people in the management/retail side of chain gaming stores and I know from them that the big margins are in boxed games, not miniature war games. It's no surprise to me to see gw going down this route as well.

Granted, GW used to be the 800lb gorilla in the room. They’re not what they were at their peak, but they’re still the 600lb gorilla in the room. They’ve had a rough time over the last 5 years, caused themselves no end of problems, made some seriously boneheaded decisions and alienated, or driven away a lot of fans. But they seem to be shaping up a bit better now with a different captain at the helm – they’re making healthier ‘noises’ recently. And while the monkeys that surrounded it are bigger and meaner, the question must be asked if it is because they're being fed from 'outside' or did they steal the gorilla’s food? The second thing to bear in mind is that GW have shifted focus over the last few years – they are not aiming to sell ‘lots of stuff’ to ‘lots of people’. They’re not trying to position themselves as the ‘company of the masses’. They probably can’t be that company of the masses any more. Instead, they’re selling to the high end. They’re aiming to sell less for more to a smaller, more controlled and ‘in-tune’ player base. Essentially, they’re targeting whales. Though this approach will have its problems and consequences, it’s not necessarily a ‘decline’ so much as a shift in focus. And they probably don’t really care about anyone that stomps off in a huff as a result of this change in focus or gets left behind (they’re quite ruthless like that!)– so long as their margins are fine, they’re happy. If you’re not buying, you’re not a customer, and they’re no longer interested in you. And despite this, some people still are interested – as mentioned, there are still the high end ‘whales’ which is precisely where GW wants to be.

The other wargaming companies might have been growing (and some have been doing quite well for themselves) but with the probable exception of Privateer Press they’re all small fry. And even PP hit the wall in numbers with Mk2 (they basically did most of their hoovering up of players back in the ‘summer of discontent’ in 2011/12), and anecdotally of course, the WMH gaming population didn’t continue its meteoric growth (quite the opposite in fact!) hence their change in direction with Mk3 with more of a push to grab some section of the ‘casual’ market rather than just focus on the hyper-competitive one. The huge growth of GW’s competitors must be qualified. They’re still minnows. Often with tiny, or relatively small player bases. Don’t think for a moment that I am biased against these other companies. I am a big fan of Corvus Belli for example – despite their flaws and hiccups, I really like what they do. They had hugely impressive growth in 2014 (iirc 75-ish percent, which again, was touted all over the internet as proof that GW was the incompetent), but they are a tiny operator compared to GW. Their 75% growth is meaningless for GW-its a rounding error, and translates to a drop in the bucket. CB have 30 staff compared to GW’s 1600. GW’s player base dwarfs that of Corvus Belli. Heck, GW’s staff probably dwarfs CB’s, or other companies’ player base! (Yes, a deliberate exaggeration, but I don’t think I’d be far off, relatively speaking.) The question must also be asked if the growth of these smaller companies is ‘new’ players coming into the hobby and staying, or if it is merely cannibalising disgruntled players that walked away from companies like GW, or even Privateer Press. The latter is not industry growth. Whilst other wargames certainly draw in ‘some’ new players, (and a lot of it is X-wing’s doing, but I wonder how many of them initially bought in because ‘star wars’ rather than ‘I want to get into wargames’, and how many of them will stay and eventually step over into other miniature games-That to me would represent real growth but I don’t think it will be a large amount) I suspect there is a lot more of the latter (ie cannibalization) than people realise or want to admit to, and a completely different picture emerges when you consider this – like I said, minnows can still survive, grow and thrive in an eco-system that is shrinking and can't support whales anymore. Pointing to the success of these minnowsdoesn’t necessarily give an accurate picture of the size, shape or overall health of that ecosystem as a whole.

TheWaspinator wrote:Yeah, hobby gaming is growing rapidly.
http://icv2.com/articles/news/view/35150/hobby-games-market-nearly-1-2-billion

Icv2 data is useful, but it is nothing more than a ‘finger in the air’ when it comes to weather forecasts. Again, the data must be qualified. When you look beyond the headlines, a slightly different picture emerges. If you look at the breakdown (see below) Collectible games (defined by ICV2 mainly as CCGs like Pokemon and Magic) are leading the pack by a huge margin and represent about half of that total. Board games comprise the next biggest chunk of a quarter of the total. Non-collective miniature games is between 15 and 20% of the total by my math. So less than a fifth in total. We’re the minority hobby. And even with impressive growth (40% according to ICV2), 40K, despite GW apparently ‘shrinking’ (and a question must be asked how much of that 40% growth is represented by the biggest player in that section. This cannot be discounted.) they are still on top of the pile there, with Star Wars in second and third, and warmachine/hordes in fourth/fifth. No mention of other companies (Wyrd, Corvus Belli, Hawk Wargames etc)Like I said earlier, how much of that ‘growth’ is because of casual ‘mommy, mommy, star wars’ buy ins that will never stay and go from there to ‘ooh, miniature wargaming’ as a full time hobby, and buying in to all the other games here? This data also probably represents a nod towards the large number of (sometimes excellent) Kickstarter projects. With regard to kickstarter though, is it people buying in to the hobby (ie growth) for the first time or is it a case of people already invested in the hobby spending more on self contained and/or specialized projects outside of their regular games? (Ie are more people becoming 'wargamers' or is it the same small number of wargamers that currently define our community, just spending more.) there are a lot of ways to look at this data – at best, its an incomplete picture. And it doesn’t necessarily back up the assertions that people would like.

Even with the higher estimates for 2014, the growth rate in 2015 was a remarkable 29%, with growth in every one of our five product categories. The largest category, collectible games, grew 14% from $550 million to $625 million, the lowest percentage growth of any category, but the second largest dollar growth.
Hobby board games, now firmly established as the second largest hobby game category, grew 56%, from $160 million in 2014 to $250 million in 2015.
Non-collectible miniature games grew 40%, from $125 million in 2014 to $175 million in 2015.
The fastest growth rate was for hobby card and dice games, which added a digit and grew 75% to $105 million in 2015, up from $60 million in 2014.
And the smallest category, roleplaying games, grew 40%, from $25 million in 2014 to $35 million in 2015.

 Rotary wrote:

 Baldeagle91 wrote:
I think games workshop have realised they royally fethed up with AOS. Even at Warhammer World the shop space for AOS in both the normal shop and forgeworld is slowly shrinking.

However the get started boxes are basically a return to the old £30 battleforces and the FAQ's are helping the bloating rules. I doubt 40k will stop shrinking, but hopefully in a couple of years it will be at a scale that GW can actually manage.

The start collecting boxes are great. I was able to eBay some eldar ones for under $70 a piece. Which puts me at 140 for a small mono build army and I'm okay with that.

I do like the new Start Collecting boxes, they're a step in the right direction.... but I remember my first ever set being the original catachan battleforce, when the plastic jungle fighters first came out. It was 20 jungle fighters, a sentinel (but before the armoured kit was plastic so just the scout variant) and a leman russ... all for £50-£55.... Now you get 10 men, 1hws, a commissar and a Leman Russ for the same price.