Gamers Only 20 Percent of Games Workshop's Customers

[bluelucied]

I'm not surprised by reading this at all, watching how the hobby has deteriorated at my local store. GW's product support is abysmal, especially with AoS. It doesn't help that AoS seems to be an ass-backwards attempt to streamline the armies even more and turn the game into Fantasy 40K.

I used to be one of those dedicated hobbyists, I enjoyed painting my Bretonnian models and would go to the local store at the time at least twice a week and on weekends. I didn't play because I didn't ever have enough models for an army, nor was I rule-savvy, and not being rule-savvy in a community where cheese is king is rather painful. When I go to the local store now I don't see Warhammer, I see warmachine mostly, or nothing at all. It doesn't help that they've killed all their smaller specialist Games, not to mention the disaster that was Finecast.

Now, as I consider getting back into a miniature Hobby, I'm looking at Warmachine because they seem more interested in listening to their customers, to make their game enjoyable. Yeah, GW has some cool models, but the price, plus GW's abysmal direction only leads me to look at their products with nostalgia for the good ol' days, not with intent to buy (or even play).

 

[Silent Protagonist]

You could chalk me up as one of their customers that didn't play the game. I haven't purchased anything from them in over a decade, but as a kid I really liked their 40K Space Marine stuff and loved building and painting the models. I even liked trying to build scenery/obstacles/cover for the board from scratch out of trash and junk I could find.

I finally got around to playing an actual game with my cousin (who had introduced me to it to begin with), and I absolutely hated it. It was incredibly tedious, even given that we skipped a lot of stuff for simplicity and to save time. I hated that to have a single soldier shoot at a single enemy we had to make no less than five separate rolls, and that had to be done for every freakin guy. I doubt we made it even one fifth of the way through a game before we had to call it quits. I still collected, built, and painted the models for while after that, which I genuinely enjoyed, but I had no desire to play the actual game again.

 

[Timedraven 117]

I don't know about those whack rules that people have to follow (Like needing stuff painted and such) but it may just be that our GM is one of us, and he used to play games with us (And still does when not working) before our previous two gms had to move away for college and, too start his own hobby store.

While we don't get the entirely dedicated crowd we used to, we still get people playing with armies and having fun. I use an imperial armor army, of 3 lemans ruses, 2 hellhounds, and two veterans squads in chimeras with upgrades and all within force organization and 1250 points!

But that statistic ad those horror stories are either false, or blown out of proportion. At least where I live.

We typically don't take the rules and games that seriously, I don't even own the new rulebook, just basing my knowledge off what i know and picked up. And if we got a question we ask our GM or someone around us.Inf act we have display case with about a thousand points of a couple armies, and if someone is interested in playing we take the armies out with permission and they use them and we have a medium sized game (The official in house limit for games is 1500 points when we have alot of people)and we have terrain and tables about 4 by 4 feet. Not big yes, but it encourages smaller game and less bloating.

 

[bluelucied]

I don't know about those whack rules that people have to follow (Like needing stuff painted and such) but it may just be that our GM is one of us, and he used to play games with us (And still does when not working) before our previous two gms had to move away for college and, too start his own hobby store.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that rule about painted mini's really only applies to bunker stores, iirc they want people coming in to see gamers playing with fully painted armies. And that leads into the painted for tournament rules, where WYSIWYG rules apply, along with the whole 'model has to be a GW miniature' to be table-legal.

What I miss most about the hobby is the 'Iron Painter' competitions, 25 models in 24 hours. They used to be real fun, really get into the game/lore/etc, but they stopped being that a long time ago, at least at my local store.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

And no, you can't use the same brush for 200 minis and you can't use the paints you used for your last army, not understanding how huge of an impact worn out tools and globby paint make will make your models look much worse)

Just got to say: I have Citadel paints I bought 25 years ago that still work fine. The ones I bought from them 5 years ago when I got back into the hobby? Nope.

 

[John Markley]

Hasn't Games Workshop always based it's business model on this assumption? They've always regarded themselves as a minaitures company first, a game company second, or so I understand.

 

[Dandymanx]

I have to agree with Packadurm on this one, Kirby and his henchmen have proudly stated they do no Market Research so this 20% figure has clearly been pulled from a goblins bum, nice to know as well as treating 'customers' like dirt that GW have now moved onto outright lying to shareholders and investors

 

[Gennadios]

That was a few years ago. Nowadays i know at least 15-20 that stopped playing because GW just fucks you over with the rules forcing you to buy their latest imba-shit and also generally makin' the game unplaybable due to constant erratas, rearraging the rules and just flat out wrong reading of their own rules in FAQ's/Errata Sheets.

GW inundates players with errata? 7E doesn't have a single FAQ out and a two page PDF for the core rulebook. I would LOVE to be drowned in FAQs for some of the less coherent rules right now.

As far as GW goes, I'm currently making an earnest attempt to get into the game but kept getting burned every step of the way. I bought 3 6th Edition rulebooks in early April 2014... a full month before the 7E rules were released with barely even any notice.

Then I noticed that the Space Marine chapter I like to play is horribly neglected, with rules lifted straight from 6E that don't quite jive with 7E, and there hasn't been a single FAQ for the whole edition.

So yeah, they're just extremely lucky that they have a hard to replicate IP on their hands. The only reason I started was the fact that I was spending literally hours reading the 40K wiki.

I still hate the company so much that I buy second hand and out of print figures exclusively, and will buy obvious recasts of the more modern models without a second thought if the price is right.

 

[Aetrion]

Just got to say: I have Citadel paints I bought 25 years ago that still work fine. The ones I bought from them 5 years ago when I got back into the hobby? Nope.

Yea, it depends really heavily on what paint you're using and how they are stored. If you keep paints in truly air tight containers, possibly in a fridge somewhere they will keep for a really long time, but with the newer containers that have the flip top you can get ones that are already too dried up to apply evenly from just sitting on the store shelf too long.

 

[MerlinCross]

It's the entire point behind a model kit.

To me that's more hobbyist than collector. Collector to me sounds like the type of person who goes and buys something to never use or do anything with, like comic books or cards. So premade models sound like it's right up their alley. Hobbyist sounds like they'd put the thing together even if it's just to display. It's "I own that" to "I made that".

 

[Nailzzz]

I suspect this may in fact be the case for a lot of other games outside of GW as well. I used to play and GM a game called RIFTS. I haven't actually played the game in about 10 years. But I still keep up on buying all of the books. I blow about $100 a year on books for a game I don't play anymore. I just really find the story/setting interesting.

 

[rosac]

yeahhhh after you tore warhammer fantasy to shreds (it went from a large scale battle system to Age of sigmar- skirmish based) I'm not shocked.