I was thinking about how well X-wing does and besides the star wars name it hit me, the game is sold at Barnes and Noble. So I was thinking why don't GW start to sell the easy to assemble kits and B&N along with the codexs
How to make the 40k tabletop game more mainatream
Alexander Price
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Benjamin Bell
But I don't want it to be mainstream. I mean, it is about as mainstream as a tabletop wargame can get outside of XWing, seeing as the sci-fi section at said Barnes and Noble is composed of several hundred Horus Heresy novels.
Aaron Fisher
X-Wing is pre-painted and ready to play for normies who don't want to get engulfed by a deeply autistic hobby. It's more like a board game.
Warhammer 40k is a Rolls-Royce-costing luxury game that requires actual time commitment and willingness to learn the skills of modelling and painting that take months and years to become proficient and then skilled. All the shit you have to know to even make a squad of a troop choice, from buying a bunch of paints and tools to learning techniques and the why behind paint lore and loadouts, takes actual time. There's no way in hell such a thing is going to sell in masses at a book store. Dealing with GW and hawking their rack of shit is really only possible for niche places like FLGS who cater to serious collectors/hobbyists. Plus there's are no tables at B&N to play, which is another mega downside to buying there.
The only way to sell 40k at a normal store is to make it like X-Wing, which means changing it into an entirely different game/hobby.
Jason Turner
Make it remotely affordable to anyone who isn't already playing it anyway. There is no good way to onboard new players which is why the playerbase has stagnated for a decade.
Other than that have rules that aren't absolute trash which create lop sided and totally pre-determined games (lol knights). Something they never quite achieved, but late fifth was probably the closest they managed.
Dominic Brown
Most Toy Stores have a section for model kits or other build it yourself stuff. It's an entire genre with tons of board games that come unassembled and unpainted.
A Mordheim esque game with a few dozen models of different factions and a WELL WRITTEN (so not at all like mordheim) set of rules could gateway drug people into the larger main game. It's what they used to do with specialist games before abandoning new player recruitment entirely and tripling the prices of every thing over 15 years.
Austin Miller
Well I'm not really into those speculations, I was just saying why 40k won't sell at a normal store. The game in its current incarnation can only be sold in the comic book nerd sphere, because the only people willing to pay those insane prices and dedicate their time to such an in-depth game are people who are already into "nerd stuff" for lack of a better term. FLGS cultivate an atmosphere that is conducive to selling this stuff to the people who are likely to frequent them.
At B&N you're trying to sell to the average person, not a comic book nerd. The average person is going to look at the price of multiple plastic kits, paintbrushes, files, glue, epoxy, flock, pin vices, etc. etc. etc. and the time commitment and think "nah fuck this".
40k isn't a mainstream game, and that's okay. Not every game has to be. Besides it's still the most mainstream game in its own sphere already.
Cooper Rogers
Get the IP in front of more eyeballs. Most people simply aren't aware of it's existence, and the more people that know about it = more potential customers. GW would have to start doing what Marvel did to their IP: movies, TV series, that sort of thing. Depending on how it's handled, this could either be the start of something great or a massive clusterfuck of heresy.
Kayden Murphy
They have a line done in cooperation with Revell that is sold in toy stores and such. Previously "Battle for Vedros", now "Build+Paint".
games-workshop.com
games-workshop.com
Liam Collins
Their faction vs faction army boxes actually aren't out of line with model or board game prices you see at Walmart.
Games workshop would have to be willing to lower its outrageous margins (injection molded plastic costs pennies) but they could do it. Not sure if they'd be willing to enter into the death race for shelf space in an American big box store, though. That's a kind of competition GW has never experienced. It could do very well for them if they cared about increasing their player base.
But for a long time they've shown they don't actually care about increasing their playerbase or growing in the long term.
Hudson Baker
oop, my pasteboard pasted an old link
walmart.com
That's the $80 walmart board game i was linking too.
Nathaniel Campbell
Mine has the 40K novels in its own section behind the SF section, reserved for fuckhuge universe series like 40k and Star Wars.
David Thompson
As someone starting 40k from a purely PC gaming background, i think the biggest missing piece is a grid based system and more standardized maps with tighter knit small-medium force rules.
When i look at the average 40k game. Its just too much of a clusterfuck with models scattered about, autisticly having to measure everything, troops clumped together instead of making formations or seeking cover.
The ideal for me would be playing 40k like a large-scale X-Com game with troops, heroes, tanks and mechs. But with the X-Com system of quick move and shoot mechanics.
Shadow War doesnt really capture the scale for me despite its popularity.
Hudson Stewart
I know GW has sold at normal stores, they do this in Japan more often.
Problem is, this is basically just b8 to get a quick buck. People who buy that shit from Wal-Mart are probably much less likely to actually get very deep into the hobby, and will likely drop it sooner than later and regret wasting their time painting horrible looking miniatures and their limited experience interacting with sweaty neckbeards, if any. If they really cared that much in the first place they would google more information about what playing 40k really entails and likely end up at a FLGS.
I just don't think 40k has mass appeal. 9 times out of 10 when you play 40k, it will be in an environment of mostly affluent white dudes between college age and 60, and I don't see anything wrong with this. It's a niche for certain kinds of people. Not everything has to be a massive public success, it's not like 40k is some obscure game barely held together by the scrappy underdog called Games Workshop. If you really want to shill tabletop hobbies then why not try getting more people into more diverse games that don't get enough love like Dropzone Commander or whatever.
Logan Walker
>Problem is, this is basically just b8 to get a quick buck. People who buy that shit from Wal-Mart are probably much less likely to actually get very deep into the hobby, and will likely drop it sooner than later and regret wasting their time painting horrible looking miniatures and their limited experience interacting with sweaty neckbeards, if any. If they really cared that much in the first place they would google more information about what playing 40k really entails and likely end up at a FLGS.
Yeah, that's their conversion rate user. If they manage to turn 5% of the timmies who get the box at christmas into players that's great for the longterm bottom line and health of the game and GW as a company. Ceding the market completely means that once its player base churns under a certain critical mass the game will loose networking effects and collapse.
When I started playing halfway into third (I don't now because seventh was a fucking abomination and sixth had bordered on unplayable) Land raiders were like 35 dollars and Orks were 20 dollars for a box of 18. The game was affordable. I picked it up on allowance and lawnmower money.
The game doesn't have to be where old aspie neckbeards spend their retirement money and weaboo drug dealers hang out during the day. Games workshop is not a healthy company, it's been in market retreat forever. It actually looks like it's trying to re-establish itself and stop digging its own grave, and new player recruitment is step 2 (step 1 is un-fucking your most important game).
Landon Ramirez
Price is biggest thing holding back the hobby. Cut the price, and you open it up to the masses.
We could use an influx of new players in the hobby. Anything to break up the monotony of autistic screeching.
Josiah Martinez
>Price is biggest thing holding back the hobby.
I'm pretty sure you'll find that the biggest thing holding it back is that you have to assemble and paint the toys, a lot of kids today do not have the patience for that and parents hate toys that require a lot of assembly for their snot mouthed kids.
Oliver Cooper
>I'm pretty sure you'll find that the biggest thing holding it back is that you have to assemble and paint the toys, a lot of kids today do not have the patience for that and parents hate toys that require a lot of assembly for their snot mouthed kids.
>the worlds most popular videogame is minecraft
No, I think they have the time and inclination to slowly put things together, but not the hundreds of dollars. Kids didn't magically change in the decade since 40k hit its peak in the mid 2000's, they're the same kids. What changed dramatically is the sticker price.
Jose Thomas
If 40k went mainstream, the media/bloggers would pick up on it, we'd catch ridiculous flak for how overtly politically incorrect this game seems to the average individual. It would be terrible.
Charles Thompson
You mean like how christian groups did to Magic decades ago? That shit isn't new and it doesn't require bloggers. It already happened to 40k during the RPG's cause devil worship scare.
Mason Morris
>Games workshop is not a healthy company, it's been in market retreat forever
My shares in the company disagree with you - up nearly 100% this year and at an all-time high. Kirby made mistakes, and the company suffered for it, but under Rountree they've really turned things around.
Anyway, the putting boxes in big stores thing is something they've tried before, and it's never really worked out for them. Part of the reason for that is probably because the game is so damnably complicated. 8th might solve that a bit, but what they really need to get new players is to release affordable standalone games with a smaller number of push-fit models in coloured plastic, and rules that are very straightforward.
Hello, what's this?
Nicholas Ward
I second this. The main box is $45 and has a deffkopta, dread, and like 30 dudes, all push-to-fit, and highly truncated rules (for example, it says only the warboss' powerklaw can hit the dread) so children can understand.
Carson Russell
Marvel Movies aren't making Marvel Comics sell any better. The DC comic still sell just about as well, in spite of their Movies being shit and not having the same breadth of the setting explored. Tell me, do these look like number Disney should give a flying fuck about?
comichron.com
Because from where I'm standing, the movies sell further movies, not comics.
Gabriel Cox
This
Ian Walker
No, im more afraid of shit that more recently has affected MtG, with things like the Gatewatch, and all the schlock of the current lore.
Adam Ortiz
Why would you want a shit game to have more popularity?