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Painting space is often a highly overlooked feature of a shop. The local 40k group promotes painting at the shop way more than any group I've seen and it brings in a lot of people that end up restocking supplies while they're there.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

i find that, more often then not, people, especially if they have family, dont want to have people over to game

Yeah, you don't want those creepy weirdos around your family or touching your stuff.

Seriously though, there are people I am 100% fine with playing games with at the shop who will NEVER get an invite to my home.

My family has no problem with me inviting people over to game, but that's largely because they've been heavily vetted long before they meet them.

 LunarSol wrote:
My family has no problem with me inviting people over to game, but that's largely because they've been heavily vetted long before they meet them.

I mean, since my locals are all pre-organize the game before going to play style, in general I don't really play people I wouldn't be willing to invite over.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
My family has no problem with me inviting people over to game, but that's largely because they've been heavily vetted long before they meet them.

I mean, since my locals are all pre-organize the game before going to play style, in general I don't really play people I wouldn't be willing to invite over.

The main challenge there is finding new players to bring into the group.

 Platuan4th wrote:

I will point out that this video's premise is not a Disney problem, it's a Hasbro problem. Hasbro needs to fill out waves for the line and will often pick very weird variants to reuse molds as cost cutting measures. This is not a Disney decision and is part of why Hasbro's constantly declining sales revenue toy division is so dependent on funding from the much more successful WotC side of things.
.

Also, action figures have been declining since the 90s. As parents shifted increasingly to raising kids by plonking them in front of a screen and video games leapt forward in quality and availability, fewer kids wanted action figures and the focus for a lot of ranges turned to adult collectors, trading on nostalgia. And by now, a lot of those adult collectors are getting to an age where they aren't buying as much ( or are dead) and the next generations who didn't grow up with an interest in action figures as kids don't have that same nostalgia for them as adults.

Combine that with said figures often bring really expensive instead of the pocket money purchase they once were, and it's not too surprising if sales in that particular category are poor.

 insaniak wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

I will point out that this video's premise is not a Disney problem, it's a Hasbro problem. Hasbro needs to fill out waves for the line and will often pick very weird variants to reuse molds as cost cutting measures. This is not a Disney decision and is part of why Hasbro's constantly declining sales revenue toy division is so dependent on funding from the much more successful WotC side of things.
.

Also, action figures have been declining since the 90s. As parents shifted increasingly to raising kids by plonking them in front of a screen and video games leapt forward in quality and availability, fewer kids wanted action figures and the focus for a lot of ranges turned to adult collectors, trading on nostalgia. And by now, a lot of those adult collectors are getting to an age where they aren't buying as much ( or are dead) and the next generations who didn't grow up with an interest in action figures as kids don't have that same nostalgia for them as adults.

Combine that with said figures often bring really expensive instead of the pocket money purchase they once were, and it's not too surprising if sales in that particular category are poor.

Figures also have a much bigger competition now, with anime becoming more mainstream there is a huge figure industry suddenly in the market that is very different. But these companies are also selling way more in various markets as well. So it’s Changing but probably healthy considering.
We see a lot more high end figures go through now than the lower cheeper stuff.
This also with dolls, we been seeing high end dolls selling more, but the lower end market selling less as space is a problem.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
My family has no problem with me inviting people over to game, but that's largely because they've been heavily vetted long before they meet them.

I mean, since my locals are all pre-organize the game before going to play style, in general I don't really play people I wouldn't be willing to invite over.

The main challenge there is finding new players to bring into the group.

Not a challenge at all, we find them at the shops. We arrange games to be played at the shops over said shops Discord channels etc.
We vet them at the shops & elsewhere (the pub next door, local events, etc) over time. This is not a quick process & it's not discussed with the person in question.
If I, the circle who do have invites, & family ALL agree? Then they can be extended invites. 1 vote against = no invite. That's how you get invited to my house.
And the final test is do the dogs like you?

ccs wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
My family has no problem with me inviting people over to game, but that's largely because they've been heavily vetted long before they meet them.

I mean, since my locals are all pre-organize the game before going to play style, in general I don't really play people I wouldn't be willing to invite over.

The main challenge there is finding new players to bring into the group.

Not a challenge at all, we find them at the shops. We arrange games to be played at the shops over said shops Discord channels etc.
We vet them at the shops & elsewhere (the pub next door, local events, etc) over time. This is not a quick process & it's not discussed with the person in question.
If I, the circle who do have invites, & family ALL agree? Then they can be extended invites. 1 vote against = no invite. That's how you get invited to my house.
And the final test is do the dogs like you?

I have never met a dog that didn’t love me… I have been squished by dog hugs several times now meeting new dogs. Honestly it’s possible it’s a curse by some trickster god at this point.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
Many GW stores are barely break-even in the UK, though I think the company strategy has shifted towards trying harder to make them profitable. GW has always seen them as partially about advertising rather than purely about retail. It works. There's a reason so many people know about GW, especially in the UK, even when they haven't ever seen a game or mini. If you live anywhere near a major city you'll have seen a GW store. That's why I was really confused when they rebranded them all to Warhammer stores. Seemed like a step backwards to me.

I am still baffled as to how not have people playing the games in the shops is a good move. Having people display your games and models for free was I thought a cunning sales tactic.

It can definitely be a benefit. And I think people miss that in this whole discussion.

But it can also be a detriment, if the only people in the shop are sat at a table in the middle playing a game, it can put people off as they think they might be disturbing it. Or maybe the players aren't actually a great advert for the game for any number of reasons (like, there's a reason you don't set up complex Eurogames for demos in a board game shop as a group of people being really quiet and staring at the board does not do much to sell a game, even if the components look nice.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ccs wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

i find that, more often then not, people, especially if they have family, dont want to have people over to game

Yeah, you don't want those creepy weirdos around your family or touching your stuff.

Seriously though, there are people I am 100% fine with playing games with at the shop who will NEVER get an invite to my home.

Not a huge leap of logic from that to seeing why a game store might not see it as beneficial to have those people in the store for 3 hours playing then.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

But, there's also the whole thing where, especially in the US, Magic keeps the light on, not miniatures players.

Learned recently that locally that's only been partially true. The local owner mentioned that hobby sales have started matching Magic.

I'm curious - did they say if that was due to hobby sales going up, or Magic sales dipping?

 insaniak wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

I will point out that this video's premise is not a Disney problem, it's a Hasbro problem. Hasbro needs to fill out waves for the line and will often pick very weird variants to reuse molds as cost cutting measures. This is not a Disney decision and is part of why Hasbro's constantly declining sales revenue toy division is so dependent on funding from the much more successful WotC side of things.
.

Also, action figures have been declining since the 90s. As parents shifted increasingly to raising kids by plonking them in front of a screen and video games leapt forward in quality and availability, fewer kids wanted action figures and the focus for a lot of ranges turned to adult collectors, trading on nostalgia. And by now, a lot of those adult collectors are getting to an age where they aren't buying as much ( or are dead) and the next generations who didn't grow up with an interest in action figures as kids don't have that same nostalgia for them as adults.

Combine that with said figures often bring really expensive instead of the pocket money purchase they once were, and it's not too surprising if sales in that particular category are poor.

There's a reason why both internal brochures for department heads and investors as well as marketing have started showing and appealing to grown collectors almost as much as children, yeah.

That said, there is still a market for kids there, hence why there's a growing market presence of stuff like FNaF toys, Skibidi Toilet, and YouTuber merch. My son can't get enough of the FNaF figures.

 Dysartes wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

But, there's also the whole thing where, especially in the US, Magic keeps the light on, not miniatures players.

Learned recently that locally that's only been partially true. The local owner mentioned that hobby sales have started matching Magic.

I'm curious - did they say if that was due to hobby sales going up, or Magic sales dipping?

Minis sales have definitely gone way up but I suspect the answer is both.

 LunarSol wrote:
My family has no problem with me inviting people over to game, but that's largely because they've been heavily vetted long before they meet them.

Which of course requires some gaming in neutral ground before that decision can be made... Yeah.

Didn't read the whole thread, but I'm not surprised. Absolutely par-for-the-course for FFG/Asmodee/Atomic.

Shatterpoint could have been a great crossover with Legion as a way to make really dramatic and thematic character and unit variants useable in both Shatterpoint and in Legion, but now it's just another game that won't get played or supported as much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

I will point out that this video's premise is not a Disney problem, it's a Hasbro problem. Hasbro needs to fill out waves for the line and will often pick very weird variants to reuse molds as cost cutting measures. This is not a Disney decision and is part of why Hasbro's constantly declining sales revenue toy division is so dependent on funding from the much more successful WotC side of things.
.

Also, action figures have been declining since the 90s. As parents shifted increasingly to raising kids by plonking them in front of a screen and video games leapt forward in quality and availability, fewer kids wanted action figures and the focus for a lot of ranges turned to adult collectors, trading on nostalgia. And by now, a lot of those adult collectors are getting to an age where they aren't buying as much ( or are dead) and the next generations who didn't grow up with an interest in action figures as kids don't have that same nostalgia for them as adults.

Combine that with said figures often bring really expensive instead of the pocket money purchase they once were, and it's not too surprising if sales in that particular category are poor.

I bought ALOT of 3.75" Star Wars figures over the years, but I slowed 2 years ago when they hit $16 officially tapped out of retail this year when MSRP hit $18-24 each. I still hunt them down at discount places like Ross and there's a couple really good used/vintage toy stores here in Chicago where I can dip in to the rich history of the last couple decades of figures at a lower cost, but collecting them at MSRP seems silly now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
My family has no problem with me inviting people over to game, but that's largely because they've been heavily vetted long before they meet them.

Which of course requires some gaming in neutral ground before that decision can be made... Yeah.

Maybe I've just been lucky, but I've got well over a decade of hosting gaming in my home (as organizer of a wargaming group/club) almost exclusively and I've never had any truly negative experiences. I don't wargame at shops and haven't done any extensive vetting beyond getting the persons name and contact info. Only a few semi-weirdos visit, but they just don't get invited back and nearly always make the decision on their own not to return.

Contributing factors may be that...

- We're a group, so any newcomer is outnumbered by folks with a mature disposition.
- We game in the basement so there's no family contact.
- We're a casual group, playing less-common games so beardy power/comp gamers aren't interested.
- We only allow painted models, so there's a certain expectation of decorum.
- We're a pretty stable group, so there isn't much need to advertise for new members. Those who are interested tend to find us on their own or via the forums/discord of a game we play. We have a few visitors each year and on average probably add add one regularly attending member per year.

... but my home has become the location for all my gaming (except cons and other friends homes) and it's worked out just fine.

I live in a small apartment and my kids and wife use all the space, it'd feel very selfish to use space for a long wargame, and anyway the two and a half year old would be all over it and stuff would get broken.

If we ever move house, I doubt it'll be big enough to dedicate space to my hobby like that - maybe a shed in the garden, or space in the basement if we have one, but I doubt permanently set up! Space is just too valuable and expensive.

So I mostly play in my work, a school. They don't mind us popping in after hours to play in my classroom as long as we tidy everything up. It means carting my scenery and so on to and fro when we game but that's why I carefully designed everything to be modular and easy to store, so it will all easily fit in the boot of my car.

The only time I've ever tried to get a game in a GW shop it was pretty much the worst wargaming experience of my life, I was really disheartened by how unpleasant the fella that volunteered to play me was, his half assembled and unpainted daemon army was honestly an embarrassment to the hobby and the game was extremely unfun. I never went back to play or buy anything at that shop again, so having a bunch of fellas hanging around waiting for a game truly can be a detriment if they're not nice people.

 Da Boss wrote:
I live in a small apartment and my kids and wife use all the space, it'd feel very selfish to use space for a long wargame, and anyway the two and a half year old would be all over it and stuff would get broken.

If we ever move house, I doubt it'll be big enough to dedicate space to my hobby like that - maybe a shed in the garden, or space in the basement if we have one, but I doubt permanently set up! Space is just too valuable and expensive.

So I mostly play in my work, a school. They don't mind us popping in after hours to play in my classroom as long as we tidy everything up. It means carting my scenery and so on to and fro when we game but that's why I carefully designed everything to be modular and easy to store, so it will all easily fit in the boot of my car.

The only time I've ever tried to get a game in a GW shop it was pretty much the worst wargaming experience of my life, I was really disheartened by how unpleasant the fella that volunteered to play me was, his half assembled and unpainted daemon army was honestly an embarrassment to the hobby and the game was extremely unfun. I never went back to play or buy anything at that shop again, so having a bunch of fellas hanging around waiting for a game truly can be a detriment if they're not nice people.

That's an excellent way to do it, espeicially in an area where space may be smaller and/or more expensive. I'd suggest that what you are doing has more in common with gaming in an american's basement than it does with a game store in terms of your control over (and responsibiltiy for) the space.

I'm lucky enough to have a basement that can fit an 8x4, 6x4 and 4x4 simultaneously, but it's also the family's puzzle, play, toy, craft space, so I can't monopolize the space in between game nights.

I have no problem inviting other players to my house. Old friends are particularly welcome but my wife is also used to hearing "no, you don't know the guy, he's new, I met him online. Can we have a game or two of Kill Team on Sunday". Obviously sometimes it needs extra arrangements with her, but as we play in a separate room of the flat, we hardly get into each other's way (bathroom being an exception maybe).

Those "random" opponents aren't that random too. If I invite them that's probably because we caught a good vibe talking online or playing each other at some tournament and I roughly know that I can expect sporting behaviour and a good game. I know anyone I play against is here for a quality experience - painted armies, knowing the rules, all that stuff.

It would be a shame if I had to play in public spaces exclusively, as shops are probably the worst place to have a game I know (crowd, noise, limited space, expectation to buy, often crappy tables/terrain not to mention totally random opponents - these are out of the equation). To be fair I'd rather arrange a game on the outside (like setting up a board on a table in a park). Clubs or gaming cafes are better, but nothing beats the comfort of my own home.

Cyel wrote:
I have no problem inviting other players to my house.

As long as they take off their shoes...

I mean, most decent-sized family homes have some sort of dining table, do people not just play on that? Yeah you've got to be done by dinnertime but that shouldn't really be an issue.

(Or if you're loaded you can get one of those fancy gaming tables where the game space is recessed and you can leave it set up, and put the leaves back on top of the table for dinner)

In my esperience, No, also for alot of people i know, gaming is an escape and time away from family

deano2099 wrote:
I mean, most decent-sized family homes have some sort of dining table, do people not just play on that? Yeah you've got to be done by dinnertime but that shouldn't really be an issue.

(Or if you're loaded you can get one of those fancy gaming tables where the game space is recessed and you can leave it set up, and put the leaves back on top of the table for dinner)

We could use the dining room table. And we do for board games & small scale skirmish games. But the living room is much larger & has better lighting.
So when I host large scale games like 40k/AoS/etc we set up a portable table, mats, etc in the living room.

ccs wrote:

deano2099 wrote:
I mean, most decent-sized family homes have some sort of dining table, do people not just play on that? Yeah you've got to be done by dinnertime but that shouldn't really be an issue.

(Or if you're loaded you can get one of those fancy gaming tables where the game space is recessed and you can leave it set up, and put the leaves back on top of the table for dinner)

We could use the dining room table. And we do for board games & small scale skirmish games. But the living room is much larger & has better lighting.
So when I host large scale games like 40k/AoS/etc we set up a portable table, mats, etc in the living room.

Also helps that the living room has the TV for streaming ambience music and with the way my home is set up, is both more kitchen(relative to the dining area) and outdoor drink fridge adjacent for easy refreshment obtaining.

Coming back to X-Wing.

I do wonder exactly what the licensing agreement says.

Because ideally, if AMG/Asmodee lost the license, I’d love for whoever picked it up next could just return it to market.

I understand you can’t copyright game rules as such. And it may require investing in new sculpts and moulds depending on who actually owns them, and of course where they actually are these days,

But I think the game itself still has sufficient pedigree and dare I say nostalgia to be profitable should another company get the chance to pick up where it left off.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Coming back to X-Wing.

I do wonder exactly what the licensing agreement says.

Because ideally, if AMG/Asmodee lost the license, I’d love for whoever picked it up next could just return it to market.

I understand you can’t copyright game rules as such. And it may require investing in new sculpts and moulds depending on who actually owns them, and of course where they actually are these days,

But I think the game itself still has sufficient pedigree and dare I say nostalgia to be profitable should another company get the chance to pick up where it left off.

Wizkids back in the day bought a license of the X-Wing rules to make Star Trek Attack Wing (and still producing it). So to me it seems the rules are separate from the SW license. So, SW is probably the bigger problem with AMG still selling SW games and obviously holding that license.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Coming back to X-Wing.

I do wonder exactly what the licensing agreement says.

Because ideally, if AMG/Asmodee lost the license, I’d love for whoever picked it up next could just return it to market.

I understand you can’t copyright game rules as such. And it may require investing in new sculpts and moulds depending on who actually owns them, and of course where they actually are these days,

But I think the game itself still has sufficient pedigree and dare I say nostalgia to be profitable should another company get the chance to pick up where it left off.

Anyone bring it back would likely need the Star Wars license, as well as anything produced by AMG, Asmodee and FFG possibly. But when it died, the game was really dead. Why not a great way to know exactly where it sits, shatterpoint is getting hundreds more views on YouTube than what X-wing was(it’s not even close). Even at the end, discussion videos didn’t seem to get much interest.
So someone picking it up would be fighting up hill to bring it back. As well as would people be buying the ships again, to support a game coming back.
It could be the game was just dead before AMG got it, and it was stuck needing investment but not getting the money to get that support ether.
Pedigree and nostalgia isn’t all you need sadly.

But I think if they were to bring it back, having fleet books would be the only way to do it. The cards system was great, but i remember so much complaining constantly about the cards. Constant, everywhere and in like every discussion on the game it come up. So maybe if they supported something similar to there main games where rules are easy to access and free I could see it coming back.

X-Wing was not doing great when AMG got it, but their actions weren't exactly helpful in changing those fortunes. Not sure about Shatterpoint's online presence as I don't play it, but we did just have a 140-person X-Wing tournament in the UK a couple of weeks ago so it's not a dead game by any stretch.

The rules for X-Wing were licensed by FFG/Asmodee from the Wings of Glory ruleset, then simplified. That actually makes it a bit more likely we'd see a revival of the game if the licesne went elsewhere since the core mechanics aren't owned by Asmodee, though I suspect many of the more Star Wars additions (Force, tractor beams, etc) would be a stumbling block in that scenario.

Which is why I’d love to know the details of the underlying license.

Certainly if the moulds don’t belong to Disney (who own the central property) then should the license go elsewhere? Said moulds would become virtually worthless.

I'm actually fine with games dying. Your miniatures are forever, but at some point it's not sustainable to keep gak on the shelves on the off chance someone new will join up, when most potential customers already own everything, and new additions make the game worse, not better.

X-wing had a great run, let it be. I'd love for the flight path system to return somewhere else, how about a Wing Commander license?

I think it would be more sensible use one of your own IPs or make a new one so then you wouldn't be beholden to external licenses and restrictions.