Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Who Says GW Is Losing New Gamers?

It seems that the 40k blog network is raging about how GW is dying and the evidence is that every time they go to their LGS, all they see is Warmachine/Hordes gamers and Magic players.  This then constitutes solid proof that they are right, and we as the internet collective audience are to believe them implicitly, feel sad for ourselves and sell our collection at Rogue Market.

Let me tell you a bit about my local gaming scene.  We have a fast-growing scene.  We've added lots of new players since our store moved into a larger location.  Some of these ended up dropping the game after a few months but others have stayed on and expanded their forces.  In the end, we're gaining more players than we're losing.  Even our Fantasy players have increased.  We're almost at the point that we need a bigger store.

There is not a single WM/H player at my store that I'm aware of (and I've been gaming at that store since near its inception).  They sell the product, and it used to be given equal billing to the GW stuff, but it's now been moved over to a smaller section while the GW section has expanded several times.  Perhaps there's some embittered ex-GW fanboy who buys the stuff but he must stay in his basement* struggling to glue together those metal paperweights because we never see him.**

Now that I have that irrefutable data, I need to go e-rage on some forum.

However, the plural of anecdote is not data.

*We actually don't have basements out here.  Stupid earthquake codes and all that.  How am I supposed to get my nerd credibility rating?


**Did I come down too hard on PP players?  Good.  I meant to.

4 comments:

  1. I hafta agree. Gaming at my FLGS is as strong as we players are. Every wednesday is a great time for 40K, friday for warhammer. One has to remember and hopefully be inspired by the old latin adage - the Man makes the Game....it is the fun we have with it that inspires others to join us and have fun....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Last tournament I went to there were 4 young gentlemen (13-15) out of 18 people. That's the first time I've seen something like that. Anecdotal evidence yes, but it's very positive.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Furthermore, isn't our national champion (the guy who won both the Nova and Adepticon) 17 years old?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I do have some WM stuff but ever since I moved from where I was living when I bought it with a few friends to try the game out when it first came out I have not been able to find 1 player. Good thing I have plenty of 40k to run with now I just need to get to my LGS more often.

    ReplyDelete