Misjudging the Market: AOS VS Star Wars

[nsc]

But what is competing with age of sigmar?

What other game lets me paint dwarfs with hammers and name them and read books about heroes and great battles.

What other hobby hands me elves and magic and tells me to paint my own magical effects?

Star wars x-wing competes with games, GW doesn't.
I play board games, of all types, I play video games (much less these days than when I was younger), I read books, watch movies, follow a few tv shows.

All of these forms of entertainment compete for my time, but none of them satisfy my urge to model and paint 50 satyrs and watch them charge into a line of swordsmen.


So yes, there are other games, x-wing is another game, but GW is trying to cut out competition, they're not a games company, they're a hobby company. They're warhammer. Age of Sigmar isn't marketed at gamers, because better games have existed and will always exist. For competition you can't get better than Magic, with a worldwide tournament network that's supported in almost every single country. Furthermore, changing your competitive angle in Magic is leagues easier than even x-wing, and transportation to farther competitions is dead simple. You put your deck of cards in your pocket and go.

If adults want a super technical competitive game there is chess, go, poker. There are amateur sporting events for competition, there are countless ways to compete.

There is only one way to dream up a fantasy army and play with toy elves.

Age of Sigmar is targeted at the person who sees a box of dwarves and thinks "boy I really want to paint that"
Then they look over at their friend who bought a box of elves and thinks "boy I want to see my guys fight his guys"

Warmachine and hordes has a tight game, and organized play. Almost nobody I know plays it. They love the imperium in 40k, the tales of space marines and the (sometimes) tragic brothers who fell to chaos. It's about the struggles of humanity in the face of an overwhelmingly hostile universe.

Age of sigmar is very similar to that, they've given you entire realms to carve out your made up empire, lead by your made up leader, be he a king, she a queen, an emperor, a pope, a priest, whatever you desire there is space for your story in this world. For the squads you paint to exist, to breathe and march against the forces of your friends who have their own story for existing.

Finally I would challenge your idea that Americans require competition. Why is it routinely written about by Mark Rosewater and other executives at Wizards of the Coast that the casual players make up the majority of magic the gathering card sales? The tourney players hound forums, finding optimal lists, rarely buying booster packs they instead prefer to buy from secondary markets to minimize the cost of buying randomized booster packs. Why is it in this hyper competitive game, with a huge international competitive scene, why are the casual players still more profitable? More desirable to the businessmen, the CEOs, the stockholders?

If, as you claim, america is so culturally competitive, why is the casual scene of magic the gathering still far larger and more profitable than the competitive circuit?

[40kGamer]

If, as you claim, america is so culturally competitive, why is the casual scene of magic the gathering still far larger and more profitable than the competitive circuit?

My group considers ourselves casual but by the standards I see on forums we are apparently competitive simply because we want points values and some form of reasonable game balance. We aren't looking for balanced perfection and we also aren't fielding 4-5 Wraith Knights just because the designers screwed the rules for the model up really bad. But at the end of the day we do want some 'system' for selecting our armies, and we want it to be reasonable. As GW moves away from any semblance of balancing factors we've moved away from them. There are simply too many other ways to spend those valuable gaming hours at the present.

[Erik Setzer]

Um... Basically, your selling point for AoS is the same selling point as John Doe writing a very, VERY generic set of rules and fluff and posting them on the Internet. Being "wide open" is only because nothing's really defined yet (despite what BoLS will tell you about all the fluff being completely defined so much better than the first few years of 40K's life).

What other games let you paint fantasy heroes and name them things and all that? Let's see... Kings of War, Warthrone, Malifaux, Hordes, Frostgrave, probably lots of others I haven't thought of. In other words, EVERY FANTASY MINIATURES GAME OUT THERE.

Age of Sigmar is aimed at collectors, not gamers. It's something to do with the models they assume you buy just because you like models, rather than the models you buy to support a game you like to play. It's something to do with the kits that normally are supposed to sit on a shelf at home and look pretty. The models come first; the game is an afterthought.

Is that a bad idea? Heck yeah! And I'm frankly shocked they went that far, since they used to quietly admit that's wrong (and then go back a bit further and they straight up admitted the games were important to sell the models). But that *is* the core idea now.

Personally, the games come first, and I'll pick the toys I use to play a game with based on which game I'm playing.

And yes, people, Games Workshop miniatures are still toys. When you get super-serial about it and rage and whatever or try to talk up your figure collection, you need to remember they're still toys. That's not a bad thing, I have toys on my desk at work to show off my fandom, but it helps keep perspective on what we're talking about here.

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Star wars x-wing competes with games, GW doesn't.

This is, by far, the most incorrect comment yet.

Games Workshop makes games, and they make toy soldiers to play those games with. You might buy the toy soldiers for other reasons. The reality is that if you get rid of Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar tomorrow, GW sales of models would plummet. The company would take heavy losses. Why? Because people buy their toy soldiers to play games.

Which means they are competing with other games.

[Lexington]

This is, by far, the most incorrect comment yet.

Maybe. I think this is the experiment GW is running with AoS - can they actually do the things nsc is talking about? Can they make themselves a "hobby" company, with games created as an afterthought? From a business perspective, the "game" part of the business is almost all limitation. Points limit sales, army lists limit sales, comp limits sales, etc. Much better, from a pure business perspective, to say "buy all you like!" especially since their more traditional model is failing for them.

At the end of the day, I doubt they can do it, or at least I doubt they can with AoS. "Hobby" markets like this require a strong IP to draw customers, and AoS just ain't it. GW lacks the internal resources and structure to create intriguing worlds anymore. All the best creatives left the building a long time ago. The fairly low interest that the game seems to be generating is a result of this.

[Erik Setzer]

GW might well be trying to not compete with other games... but that doesn't matter. AoS *does* compete with other games. It's a game. And if you take away the game, the model sales will plummet.

The current board has tried an approach that's just bound for failure. They want to sell just models and ignore games, but without games, there's no reason for most people to buy the models, especially specifically GW models. The games are what let them control their IP and try to hold onto people. If they tried to become a serious miniatures-first company, without games, then they'd have to directly compete against a lot of other miniature companies out there, and why get GW's Undead when some other company makes serviceable (or even better) Undead models at a much lower price? What use are Stormcast models to most people? You can't repurpose them for many games. You can just go down the line like that. Companies like Reaper are able to make it work because they aren't trying to create a monopoly, they just make nice figures and put them out at a good price. The same goes with other companies. Take away the game Infinity, and most of those miniatures won't sell nearly as well as they do right now, despite being great miniatures. In order to make much money as a miniature manufacturer, you have to be relatively generic with your stuff, an approach that doesn't fit GW's need to control its IP so badly they tried to rename a bunch of fantasy tropes.

This middle ground isn't working. They can't convert to a miniatures-only company, especially given that they refuse to be generic. So they need the games to sell their miniatures. And while they have games, they're competing with other games. If someone's not playing AoS, they're likely not going to buy GW fantasy miniatures. (Note I said "likely," as there's always exceptions.)

Yeah, AoS doesn't have any real way to determine an actual winner and loser, which makes it iffy as a game, but it's still considered a game and, as such, competes with other games.

[Mr Mystery]

Gonna have to disagree on the IP background stuff.

I'm currently up to date on all the books and novellas etc, and so far it's all solid.

In particular, Chaos are explored beyond 'kill you for my gurd'. The Nurgle stuff in particular is superb. Yes it currently remains Stormcast heavy, but that's where the narrative is for now - and yes I'm assuming it will move on in due course.

But consider Warmachine. When I first got into it, I found the background....either achingly generic, or non-existent. However that is going all the way back to the book after Prime, when the game was in its infancy. Now I've not been interested enough since then to give it further attention myself, but I understand it's background has expanded and improved somewhat - so like all things, it takes time to develop.

To say it's a weak IP one month into launch is rather premature, no?

[Erik Setzer]

To say it's a weak IP one month into launch is rather premature, no?

No, it's honest.

I'm not saying it will remain ill-defined. But the point made was, in a nutshell, that the lack of any real defining fluff presents a blank canvas to work on. Well, if a blank canvas is what's wanted, there's plenty of those around. If the background becomes fully defined, there's less leeway. You can always find a corner of the background to work in your army's fluff, but, again, you can do that with any game, so it's not unique to AoS alone.

For the moment, though, it's honest to note that there are just two "fleshed out" factions, and some are outright missing or barely mentioned so far. They'll be there in the future (presumably), but we're not talking about some theoretical future when the canvas will be less blank.

I'd disagree on it being "all solid," but that's the difference between my seeing some flaws in GW and you being a person who fires up the cash cannon whenever they release something new. We could debate that all day, and it'll result in nothing more than some troll coming along to declare me as an anti-GW hater because I don't go with the viewpoint that everything GW is the best thing ever. (It's also not really relevant to this topic.)

[Mr Mystery]

Elves have been mentioned, as have Dwarfs - there's snippets about them in Quest for Ghal Maraz.

As for my opinion - I don't find any mileage in discussing stuff I'm not enthused about, or stuff I utterly loathe. That's not the same as being mindlessly happy with any and all offerings. I'm not massively enthused about Armada - but I don't go on and on about it. I'm disappointed at what happened with Warhammer Forge - but I don't go on and on and on about it like a broken record. There's plenty at work that pisses me right off on a daily basis - and I'm only vocal about that to my team's manager, and I try to be as constructive and evidence based as I can be.

The rest is....odd. You've initially disagreed with my premise, then gone on to explain how you actually do agree with it.

As with any game, AoS isn't for everyone. Opinions on the background will of course vary, as they do in all forms of literature. That some like to denigrate it on a regular basis is truly baffling to me. I don't get the motivation behind it. It's not going to change anyone else's mind, and nobody really cares all that much if you don't enjoy something they do, because your lack of enjoyment has no relation to their enjoyment. This isn't something like smoking. You're not in danger of passive-enjoyment of something you're not terribly fussed for.

But I'm guessing you or others may be tempted to challenge me to name stuff I'm not fussed or fond of that GW has done. Well, for one time only (because as I said, I see no mileage discussing such things)...

1. Death/hiatus of Specialist Games. Specifically BFG and Epic. I'd prefer for them to still be available.
2. Until Mechanicus came out, I was very 'meh' about 40k. I'd seen it all before, and played it all before.
3. Black Library novels (Gotrek and Felix in particular) not being quite canon. Example - Gotrek jobbed Throgg. Throgg then shows up in Middenheim where he kills Sigvald
4. End Times glossing over anyone not Empire or Elf for the most part. Ogres, being my favourite army barely got a look in, and when they did, suddenly in the thrall of Orcs. Big old 'meh' to that.

But you wouldn't know it - because complaining online is, to me, a completely pointless exercise. It is what it is, and no amount of online complaining is gonna change that. To my mind, one might as well complain that water is too wet, or ice is too cold.

[Auticus]

I don't get the motivation behind it. It's not going to change anyone else's mind

Several motivator points actually to consistently bashing a product:

1) to hurt the company by driving away potentially interested customers. makes the person feel that they are avenging (for lack of better word) their emotional attachment.

2) to attempt to change peoples' minds to side with their stance (see #1) to also better help with #3

3) to motivate the company to bring back the product that they have emotional attachment to. By themselves not likely but if they have crusaded enough to sway enough people, the thought is the more people raging, the louder they are raging, the higher the chance that the company will respond positively to what they want

4) to recruit or "push" people to a different system that the person dropping consistent negative comments actually likes, because gamers like to play systems with a large community... the larger and more vocally happy the community the more perceived as being "#1" and more validating.

Some people will complain, and I think thats fine. Typically if a person is just angry and doesn't really have an agenda, they will complain for a short while and go away. The ones that chronically complain are either super critical of everything and just complain about many things, or they are pushing an agenda.

Plenty of motivation to repeatedly go to fan sites to drop bombs because it works. Not 100%, but there are enough examples where repeated and chronic complaining gave people their way to be for many a legit tactic in getting what they want.

[Mr Mystery]

I don't think it does work.

Want someone to try a game you enjoy? Enthuse about that game. Having repeated pops at a different game just makes me think you're a bit of a phallus, and maybe have too much time on your hands.

Take the demise of 8th Ed. Still got all my books, and because bases don't matter in AoS, I'll procure square bases for any future purchases, meaning I can field a given force in either system.

I don't get people taking personal offence at the actions of GW. Nor do I understand how someone can claim to know better how to run it when their own experience of running a similar company is non-existent. Truly baffling is confusing hindsight with foresight. The worst examples are to be found on dakkadakka. Their complaint points are entirely mercurial. Demand GW does A. GW does A. WHAT DID THEY DO THAT FOR, EVERYONE KNOWS EVERYONE WANTED B.

Seriously. What's the point? If you're that ****ing full of commercial wisdom, go use your clearly genius level intellect with your prophetic blessings, play the stock exchange, make a stack of cash and buy the ****ing company out.