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 Easy E wrote:
I think the popularity of secondary games varies a lot by region.

Quite true, it is also how much effort you or your group of friends put the effort in to build support the other games. Gaming is a niche market to begin with and it is further divided by so much choice. the problem is most people don't know anything other than current GW games.

Aside from our group playing old world, MCP and classic battle tech pretty much every game we play is no longer supported.

In our group we have active players for-
.retro 40K 3rd-7th ed
.infinity mostly N2/3
.warmachine MKIII
.BFG
.victory at sea (mongoose version)
.Babylon 5 wars (and it's mods for star wars/star trek using attack wing & armada minis)
.castles in the sky
.MONPOC
.DUST 1947
.heavy gear
.epic 40k



Peripherally rare games i am aware of but are not actively played at my local game store-
.kingdom death
.flames of war
.team yankee
.beyond the gates of antares
.star wars legion
.malifaux
.warpath
.kings of war
.star wars shatter point
.dropzone/dropfleet commander
.gas land
.trench crusade

And that right there is the problem....26 different games for a small community to choose from while one is more promoted than any others and that one also has the highest buy in cost. so funds/time are constrained for most other games, especially for those who don't have the kind of time i do to play every weekend. they tend to have 1 game and nothing else. where people like me have an entire game(bed)room in my house full of totes of armies and terrain for a dozen different games systems.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Cyel wrote:


Why does it have to be stores, though? They are probably the worst place to play anyway. At homes, in gardens, in clubs, in gaming cafes, outdoors, libraries, local culture centres, schools or office spaces after hours. I've played in all of those places and every single one is better than a store.

Stores are where tournaments, leagues, events and game nights occur.

Are they? Most tournaments I ever organised or attended were in school halls. Best place to organise a narrative event/campaign is probably at home (wouldn't want random participants derail such an event that relies on engagement). All such events in my long wargaming career, including long megabattles and even longer campaigns have been home affairs. Leagues are also easier to organise without the constraints of a shop.
I also played tournaments in all the aforementioned places apart from office spaces after hours (only games with friends there). A memorable one was in the garden of a XIX century palace (which also serves as the local culture centre in the small town where it is located so in case of rain the event could be moved inside).

Cyel wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Cyel wrote:


Why does it have to be stores, though? They are probably the worst place to play anyway. At homes, in gardens, in clubs, in gaming cafes, outdoors, libraries, local culture centres, schools or office spaces after hours. I've played in all of those places and every single one is better than a store.

Stores are where tournaments, leagues, events and game nights occur.

Are they? Most tournaments I ever organised or attended were in school halls. Best place to organise a narrative event/campaign is probably at home (wouldn't want random participants derail such an event that relies on engagement). All such events in my long wargaming career, including long megabattles and even longer campaigns have been home affairs. Leagues are also easier to organise without the constraints of a shop.
I also played tournaments in all the aforementioned places apart from office spaces after hours (only games with friends there). A memorable one was in the garden of a XIX century palace (which also serves as the local culture centre in the small town where it is located so in case of rain the event could be moved inside).

I do think that Stores are where most tournaments and leagues occur, but it's likely that most game nights and campaigns happen outside of stores. There just aren't that many stores compared to the number of gamers.

My twice monthly gaming group has done 90%+ of our gaming in homes for the last decade or so. We occasionally game at a local game-themed restaurant and once in a great while we'll do a game night at a shop just for fun, but we have zero reliance on any commercial venue to sustain our group.

From personal experience, you won't have a store in an area unless you have a existing group of customers. Therefore, you need to create a community that has games and tournaments before. The store existing is an outcome of having a good community, the store won't start the community.

Cyel wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Cyel wrote:


Why does it have to be stores, though? They are probably the worst place to play anyway. At homes, in gardens, in clubs, in gaming cafes, outdoors, libraries, local culture centres, schools or office spaces after hours. I've played in all of those places and every single one is better than a store.

Stores are where tournaments, leagues, events and game nights occur.

Are they? Most tournaments I ever organised or attended were in school halls. Best place to organise a narrative event/campaign is probably at home (wouldn't want random participants derail such an event that relies on engagement). All such events in my long wargaming career, including long megabattles and even longer campaigns have been home affairs. Leagues are also easier to organise without the constraints of a shop.
I also played tournaments in all the aforementioned places apart from office spaces after hours (only games with friends there). A memorable one was in the garden of a XIX century palace (which also serves as the local culture centre in the small town where it is located so in case of rain the event could be moved inside).

we used to organize small leagues out of local spaces like my hoa poolhouse, local moose lodge, but insurance and event fees killed us. it would be like 150$ for insurance for the event.

Oh, that's indeed harsh!

We paid about that in £, however it covered our club for the year.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Did GW really kill that market? was it outside forces like the state of the ecnomy and time?

The peak era that you remember for Warmachine, Confrontation, X-Wing, Infinity, Malifaux was also an era when Games Workshop was bad. Their corporate focus was on cutting costs and downsizing to min max the spread sheets and the games really suffered for it.

There are a few things that changed that:


- Crowdfunding proved to work better for board games than tabletop games. So a lot of innovators with tabletop backgrounds started making board games. For a good number of players, miniatures board games took over the role of 'third' game. And one nice thing about these is that only one person in a group has to own the game (rather than collecting armies separately).

- Games Workshop changed leadership and started supporting 3rd games like Blood Bowl again. They also released a number of new smaller scale games (competing with those mentioned above).

- Asmodee started exerting control on hobby store distribution. Games Workshop has long since established their own distribution so they were able to dodge that grenade, but this was bad news for a lot of others (many have gone to online distribution only- and that's no path to be the Third Game).


All that said, there are still some other cool tabletop miniatures games around right now- but what the 'Third Game' is will vary from area to area.

Cyel wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Cyel wrote:


Why does it have to be stores, though? They are probably the worst place to play anyway. At homes, in gardens, in clubs, in gaming cafes, outdoors, libraries, local culture centres, schools or office spaces after hours. I've played in all of those places and every single one is better than a store.

Stores are where tournaments, leagues, events and game nights occur.

Are they? Most tournaments I ever organised or attended were in school halls. Best place to organise a narrative event/campaign is probably at home (wouldn't want random participants derail such an event that relies on engagement). All such events in my long wargaming career, including long megabattles and even longer campaigns have been home affairs. Leagues are also easier to organise without the constraints of a shop.
I also played tournaments in all the aforementioned places apart from office spaces after hours (only games with friends there). A memorable one was in the garden of a XIX century palace (which also serves as the local culture centre in the small town where it is located so in case of rain the event could be moved inside).

It's likely a cultural thing, I would bet most players in the US don't have free or easy access to a lot of those places especially for the amount of space required for a tabletop wargame, and gaming clubs and cultural centres arent really a thing here. in my experience the only real viable places for gaming is in stores or at home and home is only an option for people I have already gotten to know not pick up games.

It's not really the subforum for going into it in depth, but from what I can tell from various articles, the death of the "third place" (places other than home and school/work where you can spend your time) in the United States is a major topic in recent years, especially spaces where you can exist without the expectation of spending money.

People spend much more time at home than they used to.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Did GW really kill that market? was it outside forces like the state of the ecnomy and time?

The peak era that you remember for Warmachine, Confrontation, X-Wing, Infinity, Malifaux was also an era when Games Workshop was bad. Their corporate focus was on cutting costs and downsizing to min max the spread sheets and the games really suffered for it..

I think this was a big part of it, around the late 00s/early 10s. Anecdotally I really got into some non-GW games as they brought in a RoW sales ban, I lived in a country with no GW store - I could no longer do a big Wayland Games order and so was forced to try other games.

Although I question the whole premise of this thread. 40k is undeniably the big dog of the industry, but there are lots of other games doing well - go to somewhere like Salute and you will see how varied that industry is, probably more so now than at any time in the past, with some games still available for many years. Something like Bolt Action might not hit the sales volumes, but I can go to almost club or store in the UK and find a gaming group for them. Dakka was and always will be a 40k-centred forum, and so you won't ever get the full and wider picture here.

 Pacific wrote:

Although I question the whole premise of this thread.

I get the impression the OP's FLGS has turned particularly hostile against everything that's not 40k.

 lord of corn wrote:
in my experience the only real viable places for gaming is in stores or at home and home is only an option for people I have already gotten to know not pick up games.

I think part of the reason and probably the bigger discussion is around the death of the pick up game culture in general as things like Facebook and Discord groups grow. At least in the US, pre-scheduled games are the norm these days vs the older style of third space hang out and seeing who shows up to play.

 Ashiraya wrote:
It's not really the subforum for going into it in depth, but from what I can tell from various articles, the death of the "third place" (places other than home and school/work where you can spend your time) in the United States is a major topic in recent years, especially spaces where you can exist without the expectation of spending money.

People spend much more time at home than they used to.

This thread details a lot of alternatives 3rd spaces to use and how to start a wargaming community in places without stores:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/816544.page

It maybe of use to the OP. However, when trying to build a community it is not a small undertaking. Hence, why people like to use existing stores or clubs because that is the "easy" button. I do not blame anyone for doing that.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Pacific wrote:

Although I question the whole premise of this thread.

I get the impression the OP's FLGS has turned particularly hostile against everything that's not 40k.

it very much has, The store has a very strict no open play policy if an event is going on(Even is said event has 4 people alongside being required to pay to play.
There is also no open play nights at all, they used to have it, but shoved it to Saturday nights when there wasnt a magic events(IDK about you but more often then not my Saturdays are booked.
the store owner onces said that people who come but dont play games with their friends are "Stealing his air conditioning"

It's my experience that store owners who make it a point to make customers feel unwelcome are generally on the way out of business. I've regularly taken this as a sign to start building a life raft to keep the community going once they inevitably shut down until the next place comes along.

 LunarSol wrote:
It's my experience that store owners who make it a point to make customers feel unwelcome are generally on the way out of business. I've regularly taken this as a sign to start building a life raft to keep the community going once they inevitably shut down until the next place comes along.

He has been in business for over 20 years, even wrote a book about running a game store

Well, as a former small business owner myself; I am convinced that most do not make it past 5 years for a simple reason. It's not money. They simply get sick of dealing with their own customers.

After 20 years, this guy actually is really sick of his own customers. I can't blame him. Hell is other people, and the Duke's of Hell play at the store.

 Easy E wrote:
Well, as a former small business owner myself; I am convinced that most do not make it past 5 years for a simple reason. It's not money. They simply get sick of dealing with their own customers.

After 20 years, this guy actually is really sick of his own customers. I can't blame him. Hell is other people, and the Duke's of Hell play at the store.

i legit think he hates his customers, he has so many anti-consumer policies its sickening.

 Easy E wrote:
Well, as a former small business owner myself; I am convinced that most do not make it past 5 years for a simple reason. It's not money. They simply get sick of dealing with their own customers.

After 20 years, this guy actually is really sick of his own customers. I can't blame him. Hell is other people, and the Duke's of Hell play at the store.

This has been my experience growing up in the restaurant business. Most of the time its really not that they fail. It's just that they stop being fun and turn into way more of a grind.

 LunarSol wrote:
It's just that they stop being fun and turn into way more of a grind.

This is exactly why they tell you not to make your hobby your job.

 Pacific wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:


Although I question the whole premise of this thread. 40k is undeniably the big dog of the industry, but there are lots of other games doing well - go to somewhere like Salute and you will see how varied that industry is, probably more so now than at any time in the past, with some games still available for many years. Something like Bolt Action might not hit the sales volumes, but I can go to almost club or store in the UK and find a gaming group for them. Dakka was and always will be a 40k-centred forum, and so you won't ever get the full and wider picture here.

I tend to agree that this feels localized to their local store to some degree, just from my anecdotal evidence last year I participated in a weekly warcry night, Kill team, and two three month long weekly Necromunda campaigns with 10-12 players each. Also battletech seems to be huge here with at least 8-10 players on battletech nights, same with infinity. if anything ive noticed that a lot of skirmish level games have taken over, hell ive probably witnessed more people playing Spearhead games than full on AoS

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Pacific wrote:

Although I question the whole premise of this thread.

I get the impression the OP's FLGS has turned particularly hostile against everything that's not 40k.

it very much has, The store has a very strict no open play policy if an event is going on(Even is said event has 4 people alongside being required to pay to play.
There is also no open play nights at all, they used to have it, but shoved it to Saturday nights when there wasnt a magic events(IDK about you but more often then not my Saturdays are booked.
the store owner onces said that people who come but dont play games with their friends are "Stealing his air conditioning"

Saturday is a good night for open play, when a lot of players maybe free. Is it that only certain games can be played Saturday? They probably lack the space to do a lot unless there events are small. The don’t play games is weird, since I assume they buy drinks and snacks if available? I sometimes paint at our local store, sometimes I teach children to paint and play. sometimes I turn up hours early to set up and relax. Never been an issue for our store owner.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It's just that they stop being fun and turn into way more of a grind.

This is exactly why they tell you not to make your hobby your job.

+1 to that.

Oooof.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pacific wrote:
Although I question the whole premise of this thread. 40k is undeniably the big dog of the industry, but there are lots of other games doing well - go to somewhere like Salute and you will see how varied that industry is, probably more so now than at any time in the past, with some games still available for many years. Something like Bolt Action might not hit the sales volumes, but I can go to almost club or store in the UK and find a gaming group for them. Dakka was and always will be a 40k-centred forum, and so you won't ever get the full and wider picture here.

I'm not sure I'd look at big conventions like Salute - or Adepticon here in the States - as representative of the wargames/miniatures playing market as it is an aspirational marketing space for the designers, publishers, and manufacturers.

I love that there's so much cool stuff that shows up online and at the conventions, but that absolutely does not translate to what you're likely to be able to find other players for in any given local context.

It could be argued that if you lump Historicals into one category, that is bigger than GW.

However, putting "historicals" together is a very, very broad brush.

 Easy E wrote:
It could be argued that if you lump Historicals into one category, that is bigger than GW.

GW is measured in the billions. You could combine every historical miniature company and game into one and it still wouldn't come close. GW is simply massive.

 Eilif wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
It could be argued that if you lump Historicals into one category, that is bigger than GW.

GW is measured in the billions. You could combine every historical miniature company and game into one and it still wouldn't come close. GW is simply massive.

I would be curious just to know where it stands, since a lot of historical companies do seem to do really well with only a small number of kits. Releasing 1 or 2 a month but doing just fine. So they must have a wide reach even if there teams are small.

But it does put GW in perspective considering it is simply soo huge for the little niche.

Regarding the question of why do some many games fizzle out, my simple answer would be - because there's too many of them. Too many games are released each year, everyone and their dog is writing a ruleset these days, while the wargaming community remains relatively small (compared to other hobbies). So naturally, it has to be a selection process.

Easy E wrote:It could be argued that if you lump Historicals into one category, that is bigger than GW.

I'm not certain this is true; I'd say Warlord are probably the biggest player, and their 2022 accounts showed a turnover of £15m, whereas GW are in the £300 to £400m range.

And most historical manufacturers are smaller than Warlord by orders of magnitude; many of them aren't even VAT registered, so turnover of less than £85k pa.

It's possible all together they could reach GW levels of turnover, but I honestly doubt it.

Apple fox wrote:I would be curious just to know where it stands, since a lot of historical companies do seem to do really well with only a small number of kits. Releasing 1 or 2 a month but doing just fine. So they must have a wide reach even if there teams are small.

It's always difficult to say how well they are doing. I used to sculpt freelance for a lot of historical companies, and they were generally run as weekend businesses, on top of a regular day job.
Two of them at least were being run at a loss, with the losses offset against profits from their main business.

 Lovejoy wrote:

Easy E wrote:It could be argued that if you lump Historicals into one category, that is bigger than GW.

I'm not certain this is true; I'd say Warlord are probably the biggest player, and their 2022 accounts showed a turnover of £15m, whereas GW are in the £300 to £400m range.

And most historical manufacturers are smaller than Warlord by orders of magnitude; many of them aren't even VAT registered, so turnover of less than £85k pa.

It's possible all together they could reach GW levels of turnover, but I honestly doubt it.

Apple fox wrote:I would be curious just to know where it stands, since a lot of historical companies do seem to do really well with only a small number of kits. Releasing 1 or 2 a month but doing just fine. So they must have a wide reach even if there teams are small.

It's always difficult to say how well they are doing. I used to sculpt freelance for a lot of historical companies, and they were generally run as weekend businesses, on top of a regular day job.
Two of them at least were being run at a loss, with the losses offset against profits from their main business.

that all makes sense, there is a lot of little company that is just doing there own thing and surviving it seems.
I wonder how much GW makes on book sales as well. They seem to be doing even more books now than they used to for there games.