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Because we often try to think about the player based, I thought I'd post a link to the Goonhammer annual survey analysis.

https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-2022-reader-survey-and-what-it-tells-us-about-the-community/

Some pretty cool estimates and info here: among the data- about 2.4 million English language players and 13k ILC tourney players.

Goons do a good job of acknowledging limitations of the data.

Anyway, I found it to be a pretty interesting read.

Not a bad survey but not something I'm looking for.

65% of 40k players having a Marines army seems even more excessive than I thought.

But I guess as the article suggests, it sort of depends on how you define such. I mean I have my Necron half of Indomitus (plus a start collecting and a few other bits) - so I guess being honest I'd have to put myself in the 30% who have a Necron army. But I wouldn't ever really consider myself a Necron player, and while there are occasional urges to round out the collection to be a more playable 9th edition force, its most likely going to just sit there.

Tyel wrote:
65% of 40k players having a Marines army seems even more excessive than I thought.

But I guess as the article suggests, it sort of depends on how you define such. I mean I have my Necron half of Indomitus (plus a start collecting and a few other bits) - so I guess being honest I'd have to put myself in the 30% who have a Necron army. But I wouldn't ever really consider myself a Necron player, and while there are occasional urges to round out the collection to be a more playable 9th edition force, its most likely going to just sit there.

It seems about right if "owning an army" is interpreted as owning any models for that army. It's almost impossible to play 40k for any length of time and not end up with some SM at some point. I bought a big lot of DE models a few years ago and among the piles of warriors, wyches and raiders was most of a SM command squad that I assume probably fell into the box some time in the distant past and was forgotten about. It's possible to acquire SM even when you're not even trying!

Hmm....does having a lot of loyalist heads and other "bits" hanging on your models from chains and impaled on various spikey things count as owning loyalist marines?

Tyel wrote:
65% of 40k players having a Marines army seems even more excessive than I thought.

But I guess as the article suggests, it sort of depends on how you define such. I mean I have my Necron half of Indomitus (plus a start collecting and a few other bits) - so I guess being honest I'd have to put myself in the 30% who have a Necron army. But I wouldn't ever really consider myself a Necron player, and while there are occasional urges to round out the collection to be a more playable 9th edition force, its most likely going to just sit there.

I thought it was around 90%. Considering at least 1000 points of models.

2.4 million English language players seems... excessive. Taking GWs 2021 revenue of 353.2 million GBP into account, that would mean that if all of GWs players were English language they would each only spend 147GBP (about 200USD) per year on GW products, which seems excessively low. The number would drop substantially once you account for the estimated 400,000 Age of Sigmar players, or the estimated 1.1-2.6 million non-english 40k players. Assuming 3.5 million global 40k players + 400k Age of Sigmar players (of all languages), the average annual spend per customer comes down to 90.50 GBP, or 122 USD - which is just an absurdly low average IMO - and even this excludes the presumably (based on past statements) very large number of customers who don't play the game at all and just buy the minis to build and paint them, etc.

Yes, there are many players out there who built an army 3 editions ago and continue to play with it, never buying anything additional, but lets be real, that means the average customer is basically only buying White Dwarf every month and not actually buying any miniatures, rulebooks, or anything else, or they are buying 3-4 clamshell minis or 1-2 boxes of tanks/monsters/infantry a year max and absolutely nothing else except maybe a couple paints... and I just don't know that I can support that concept. I mean, I'm definitely a "whale" in GW terms, but based on observations of other active players in my local area, I would say that the "average" active 40k player is spending somewhere between 50-100 USD on GW products per month.

It also doesn't really jive with the estimated production numbers of Indomitus at somewhere beween 120-250k copies globally... thats not a lot of boxes for 3+ million players.

Tyel wrote:
65% of 40k players having a Marines army seems even more excessive than I thought.

But I guess as the article suggests, it sort of depends on how you define such. I mean I have my Necron half of Indomitus (plus a start collecting and a few other bits) - so I guess being honest I'd have to put myself in the 30% who have a Necron army. But I wouldn't ever really consider myself a Necron player, and while there are occasional urges to round out the collection to be a more playable 9th edition force, its most likely going to just sit there.

I had never owned loyalists prior to 9th. I bought Indomitus for Necrons. Then I just wound up with marines. Then I decided to start building a marine list. FML.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
2.4 million English language players seems... excessive. Taking GWs 2021 revenue of 353.2 million GBP into account, that would mean that if all of GWs players were English language they would each only spend 147GBP (about 200USD) per year on GW products, which seems excessively low. The number would drop substantially once you account for the estimated 400,000 Age of Sigmar players, or the estimated 1.1-2.6 million non-english 40k players. Assuming 3.5 million global 40k players + 400k Age of Sigmar players (of all languages), the average annual spend per customer comes down to 90.50 GBP, or 122 USD - which is just an absurdly low average IMO - and even this excludes the presumably (based on past statements) very large number of customers who don't play the game at all and just buy the minis to build and paint them, etc.

Yes, there are many players out there who built an army 3 editions ago and continue to play with it, never buying anything additional, but lets be real, that means the average customer is basically only buying White Dwarf every month and not actually buying any miniatures, rulebooks, or anything else, or they are buying 3-4 clamshell minis or 1-2 boxes of tanks/monsters/infantry a year max and absolutely nothing else except maybe a couple paints... and I just don't know that I can support that concept. I mean, I'm definitely a "whale" in GW terms, but based on observations of other active players in my local area, I would say that the "average" active 40k player is spending somewhere between 50-100 USD on GW products per month.

It also doesn't really jive with the estimated production numbers of Indomitus at somewhere beween 120-250k copies globally... thats not a lot of boxes for 3+ million players.

Some years I'm pretty silent on purchases. Others I go a little too far. It all depends what catches my eye. I think there's probably a lot of dormant players that rotate in and out, which is why the release model works so well for GW ( life events, frustration, etc ).

I imagine I am going to see a lot of new T'au players in tournaments that haven't been looking at 40K for the past 3 to 4 years.

The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

You'd need to factor in the cut.

I.E. I've not bought anything direct from GW for years. Its usually from an FLGS with a 20%~ discount. I assume they are getting the stock from GW at a bigger discount (because otherwise they'd be losing money on every sale) - and that's the figure that would end up in GW's accounts. I don't know what percentage if any that makes of all GW's income.

With that said - I don't think £100-150ish is a crazily low figure. I'd consider myself a reasonable addict with an all too large pile of shame - but I don't tend to spend more than £200 a year.

For comparison, $75 a month is $900 a year. Or £650~. That's basically a full 2k points army at retail prices every year. I don't think that's a normal customer. Certainly not once people have their "main army" at a level they can play with anyway.

This Goon article is a lovesong to the competitive scene. They are competitive dissectors so no surprise there.

Regarding the influence of the competitive scene on GW, i think it's here, but i also think they do not grasp how to improve the gameplay with. All they did so far is add more firepower, and then more defense stats inflation to counter the firepower they made up with no oversight.

Tactical gameplay is still left out, aside from hiding no-LOS weapons behind walls.

I've already got large armies, only thing I really need to do is buy books, so £150ish sounds right.

I have no plans to start any more armies for AoS or 40k.

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

Competitive players are great at finding and exploiting busted combos and units. At the very least GW can act on data such as list compilations to figure out what is consistently showing in top performing lists and try to patch them accordingly. Not to say this happens, but competitive players providing feedback indirectly to how balance patches could be applied could be a very good thing for the health of the game and community. Unfortunately, stratagems and auras make determining what exactly made those units and war gear options busted in the first place a bit murky.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Siegfriedfr wrote:
This Goon article is a lovesong to the competitive scene. They are competitive dissectors so no surprise there.

Regarding the influence of the competitive scene on GW, i think it's here, but i also think they do not grasp how to improve the gameplay with. All they did so far is add more firepower, and then more defense stats inflation to counter the firepower they made up with no oversight.

Tactical gameplay is still left out, aside from hiding no-LOS weapons behind walls.

I completely agree with you on this.

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

Total community isn't total players, it's total hobbyists. From conversations I've had with GW staff, the estimated number of players sits around about 25%.

 Gert wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

Total community isn't total players, it's total hobbyists. From conversations I've had with GW staff, the estimated number of players sits around about 25%.

Also note that that number is likely unique site views. I have four different devices I regularly check WarComm from, so I'd count four times. I imagine that most other people are fairly similar in that regard.

macluvin wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

Competitive players are great at finding and exploiting busted combos and units. At the very least GW can act on data such as list compilations to figure out what is consistently showing in top performing lists and try to patch them accordingly. Not to say this happens, but competitive players providing feedback indirectly to how balance patches could be applied could be a very good thing for the health of the game and community. Unfortunately, stratagems and auras make determining what exactly made those units and war gear options busted in the first place a bit murky.

It's more that whacking power builds does nothing to adjust the stuff that the rest of the game might use or want to use. Taking core off the talos etc. is good for competitive play, but it doesn't make a land raider any better to use as a loose example. Until that top wad of competitive players get them to bring things up, rewrite units, as well as push top units down, we won't get a game wide health check.

Their numbers methodology on gauging the game's popularity is...basically wild guessing. They're taking the number of people who have any ITC standing, and are using that number measured against the extremely nebulous member count of several different subreddits where huge numbers of members never play and are just into the lore, or haven't played or logged on in years. I don't think there's much value in any of those guestimates.

That said, some of the other numbers are interesting, the priorities ranking even for the Goonhammer crows appears to rank competitive stuff as almost least important thing except for Community, even if they're primarily looking at Goonhammer for competitive content. Also quite telling that most readers play less than once a month.

Necrons are seemingly a lot more popular than I had expected, Eldar substantially less so.

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

The rest of the article disagrees with your premise.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

The rest of the article disagrees with your premise.

I dunno, there's already posts in here telling me it's a much larger slice than stated.

Dudeface wrote:

macluvin wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

Competitive players are great at finding and exploiting busted combos and units. At the very least GW can act on data such as list compilations to figure out what is consistently showing in top performing lists and try to patch them accordingly. Not to say this happens, but competitive players providing feedback indirectly to how balance patches could be applied could be a very good thing for the health of the game and community. Unfortunately, stratagems and auras make determining what exactly made those units and war gear options busted in the first place a bit murky.

It's more that whacking power builds does nothing to adjust the stuff that the rest of the game might use or want to use. Taking core off the talos etc. is good for competitive play, but it doesn't make a land raider any better to use as a loose example. Until that top wad of competitive players get them to bring things up, rewrite units, as well as push top units down, we won't get a game wide health check.

Which was exactly my problem with the most recent CA and balance dataslate. They seemed to only pay attention to what's "meta" and a few hand picked units, while ignoring most of the rest of the game. It seems if it isn't in a brand new codex, or "meta", they aren't interested in balancing it.

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

I get where you're coming from, but as a guy who doesn't play matched, I feel the need to clarify:

Competitive players clearly have an impact ON MATCHED PLAY. And of course, that is probably the most common format, even among casual players- particularly if they play with strangers.

But the tournament scene has very little influence on Crusade and Open Play, and the article does have interesting things to say about Crusade. We are a minority, but we are NOT insignificant. Also, as the article points out, many Crusade players are home or garage hammer players- yet another reason why the tourney scene doesn't affect Crusade as much.

Dudeface wrote:
The big thing here is the 0.6% of the estimated total community are "competitive players" which takes us back to the less than 1% deciding how the game goes for the other 99%. And I'd wager a fair chunk of that 99% screaming that they're actually really a competitive player.

point of order, but "competitive player"=/= "tournament player", which is what the 0.6% figure would be. plenty of people are playing competitively in non GT formats that isnt tracked, and by extension would be intrested in competitive content. Hell, i'm a fully casual player, doing 1k games on my mates table, but i'm still intrested in thier takes on things.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Their numbers methodology on gauging the game's popularity is...basically wild guessing. They're taking the number of people who have any ITC standing, and are using that number measured against the extremely nebulous member count of several different subreddits where huge numbers of members never play and are just into the lore, or haven't played or logged on in years. I don't think there's much value in any of those guestimates.

That said, some of the other numbers are interesting, the priorities ranking even for the Goonhammer crows appears to rank competitive stuff as almost least important thing except for Community, even if they're primarily looking at Goonhammer for competitive content. Also quite telling that most readers play less than once a month.

Necrons are seemingly a lot more popular than I had expected, Eldar substantially less so.

I think it makes sense. Like they point out in the article, Necrons being in the starter boxes and the evil faction focus for the edition has some influence on the numbers. If they stay that high afterwards, we'll see. I suspect they'll stay up there but probably not maintain being the 3rd most popular.

Eldar isn't all that suprising either, when you look at how such a large portion of the range is so dated. I know tons of folks interested in Eldar, but won't collect until more of the range is updated. The upcoming update will help, but there are still so many finecast units....

What suprised me the most at first was how low Nids were. Then I remembered how bad the dexes have been for several editions.....

I don't understand this survey. At least the proportion of factions owned section.

There's clearly more Imperial Guard players than Custodes, Craftworlds, and Orks but they don't get a percentage allocated to them? What? Does Goonhammer hate Guard too?

chaos0xomega wrote:
2.4 million English language players seems... excessive. Taking GWs 2021 revenue of 353.2 million GBP into account, that would mean that if all of GWs players were English language they would each only spend 147GBP (about 200USD) per year on GW products, which seems excessively low. The number would drop substantially once you account for the estimated 400,000 Age of Sigmar players, or the estimated 1.1-2.6 million non-english 40k players. Assuming 3.5 million global 40k players + 400k Age of Sigmar players (of all languages), the average annual spend per customer comes down to 90.50 GBP, or 122 USD - which is just an absurdly low average IMO - and even this excludes the presumably (based on past statements) very large number of customers who don't play the game at all and just buy the minis to build and paint them, etc.

Yes, there are many players out there who built an army 3 editions ago and continue to play with it, never buying anything additional, but lets be real, that means the average customer is basically only buying White Dwarf every month and not actually buying any miniatures, rulebooks, or anything else, or they are buying 3-4 clamshell minis or 1-2 boxes of tanks/monsters/infantry a year max and absolutely nothing else except maybe a couple paints... and I just don't know that I can support that concept. I mean, I'm definitely a "whale" in GW terms, but based on observations of other active players in my local area, I would say that the "average" active 40k player is spending somewhere between 50-100 USD on GW products per month.

It also doesn't really jive with the estimated production numbers of Indomitus at somewhere beween 120-250k copies globally... thats not a lot of boxes for 3+ million players.

This error comes from a problem of perspective of... native english players. English is lingua franca of modern times, most europeans speak english as a second language. I'm not a native english speaker but I only ever read 40K related content in english, as do all players in my group. So the 2.4 million has a large proportion of "the rest of the world" in it as well. On the spendings though, this seems about right. Most people are hobbyists and only spend what they can utilise in a given time. Not everyone has a pile of shame, not every one can afford to and not everyone is a hoarder. I can reasonably paint about 30 minis a year, this is how much time I can devote to this part of the hobby. If I only painted and not played the game, I would have no reason to buy more than three squads a year, which is about $100-150.

Also, I had no interest at all to buy Indomitus, the same with the rest of my group. One in fourteen people buying Indomitus doesn't strike me as improbable, especially when many people split such boxes, so it is closer to one in ten when looking at a fraction of playerbase who have bought at least a part of Indomitus.

And now for the casual vs competitve split - as I have repeatedly wrote in other threads, tournaments are there to provide publicity, not to be the core of the activity, and this is why GW invests in tournament crowd - to stop them from complaining all the time and making bad publicity, while at the same time all of the rest of GW content is addressed at casuals and hobbyists. The old "all people in my FLGS play competitive matched" argument always omits the part in which a game of unoptimised casual vs optimised competitive lists will always be one sided, so will nearly always lead to one of two long term outcomes - casual player will either grow tired of always loosing and "git gud" by joining the meta chase or will grow tired of always loosing and switch the FLGS for his garage with like minded folks or focus on hobby aspects only. So the vast majority of players will fly under "the FLGS radar". This is exactly the same as with any sport-like activity, be it football, cycling, climbing, boardgames, wargames, computer games, whatever - only a small portion of people into any given sport-like activity is focused on competition, why should 40k be any different?

Might want to redo your math there, 120-250k copies of indomitus vs ~2.4 million players is a lot less than 1 in 4. At best its 1:10, at worst its at least 1:24 or at the extreme end of the scale 1:400

Tyel wrote:
65% of 40k players having a Marines army seems even more excessive than I thought.

But I guess as the article suggests, it sort of depends on how you define such. I mean I have my Necron half of Indomitus (plus a start collecting and a few other bits) - so I guess being honest I'd have to put myself in the 30% who have a Necron army. But I wouldn't ever really consider myself a Necron player, and while there are occasional urges to round out the collection to be a more playable 9th edition force, its most likely going to just sit there.

Well, I'd say they have to be assembled and probably painted to count as "having an army". But I'll come the othter direction I'm surprised the number is ONLY 65%. They're the go-to Imperium army in most boxed sets. You collect the other half long enough, you're going to give in and make a Marine Army.

The 65% figure is from a multiple choice list with basically no restrictions.

So that means 65% of respondents self identify as marine players in some form. How big a marine army they have is basically irrelevant in that context as its self reporting

For me the most interesting aspect is that 90% change the view of their faction after reading goonhammer articles or even their decisions about what kits to buy.
I must say not even the thought crossed my mind that I'd somehow change anything about my army after reading those articles, they're merely condensed information about what's new in the codex to me.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
For me the most interesting aspect is that 90% change the view of their faction after reading goonhammer articles or even their decisions about what kits to buy.
I must say not even the thought crossed my mind that I'd somehow change anything about my army after reading those articles, they're merely condensed information about what's new in the codex to me.

Me either, but that's kind of because I'm running out of kits to buy. Its getting time to spend more time on secondary armies, and those kits are pretty much pre-determined by the theme I'm going for with the army.