[Ikarus]

Tabletop Gaming News Playing to your core fans

Playing to your core fans

Editorial

Recent rumours about the next edition of 40K have got me thinking about 40K and what Games Workshop can do to bring in new gamers. The reason being that the reactions from 40K gamers regarding the changes that have been posted (rumoured changes of course) have been quite dramatic and for me the potential tweaks to the 40K rules have really left me uninterested.

I am a huge fan of the 40K universe. It is flawed, weird and at times nonsensical but I lap it up as if it were ambrosia. And yet each year sees my cache of 40K figs dwindle. I have recently sold or traded three painted 40K armies and the remainder of my Space Marines are left simply because I hope to use them in a sci-fi variant of the Weird WWII rules I am working on. So why, if I love the background and the models, for this game so much am I not an avid 40K gamer?

Obviously enough, the reason is the game itself. I think its tragically flawed and despite several serious attempts to play 3rd and 4th edition versions of the rules I find myself in a position where I am intrigued by the news of a 5th edition of 40K but I know that I won’t be interested in the final product. Why? The reason is that GW has fallen into a trap the plagues a lot of content producers, playing to the desires for an existing audience.

You can see this in video games most dramatically. The first game in a franchise is widely accessible to most gamers but the more sequels that come out, the more the developers cater to fans and the less accessible the game becomes. This has even spread to entire genres of games. 2D shooters and fighting games are notorious for being unplayable unless you are a longtime fan of the game style.

I think that Games Workshop has the same problem with the 40K game. The Third Edition of the rules was a reaction to the unbalanced game style of the Second Edition. Fourth Edition appears to be nothing more than a fix for the problems in the Third Editionand this, if rumours are correct, seems to be the case with the new fifth edition that has “fixes” for game situations that came about due to issues in the previous version. “Gamey” rules added to fix “gamey” situations in the system that shouldn’t be there in the first place. For me, Third Edition was notorious for being a system where you played the game instead of playing a tactical situation. I think Fourth Edition cleared this up somewhat in terms of the LOS, assault and shooting rules but not enough to leave me feeling that I often lost games simply because my opponent knew the rules better and knew how to take advantage of them.

At some point, Third Edition in my opinion, someone at GW should have hit the reset button on the game and redeveloped it from scratch. The core system is fatally flawed and continuing to patch and fix it means that all you will do is continue to cater to your existing audience and not have the ability to grow your market. If someone didn’t like Fourth Edition how are they going to like a patched version of it?

This won’t happen though. We all know it. A “reset” of the 40K game system is never going to happen but that doesn’t mean that GW can’t do something to bring in other types of gamers into the 40K universe.

Now before I begin to sound like some sort of alarmist we are of course discussing a situation whereby the 500lb gorilla that was 40K is now “only” a 450lb gorilla. 40K isn’t in any danger of disappearing but with Games Workshop’s current financial position and the possibilities for growth you’d wonder why there hasn’t been more effort to create a game that will appeal to a larger audience. New sales are still new sales and its not as if the company is in a position where it can afford to ignore potential new markets.

So why isn’t there a serious effort to create a skirmish variant for 40K? Not Kill Team or Combat Patrol but a serious stand-alone skirmish system, with consistent official support, that uses the existing codexes with gameplay aimed specifically at small games with 10 - 20 troops and a vehicle. Why did GW pull the plug on Specialist Games and stop producing and supporting excellent games like Epic and Warmaster? Why isn’t GW producing 40K themed board games like the old Armageddon board games they recently released as free downloads? Warhammer Quest sells for obscene money on eBay, why not rerelease it and make some of that cash for GW instead of for eBay?

Games Workshop makes some fun 40K kits. The Commander sets that they have for their armies are great fun and who can resist the inherent fun of building a unit of Space Marines or troops from one of their other plastic kits. Why then do they seem to focus so intently on selling to a single market segment and forego increasing their sales by creating an opportunity for people to make a few small miniature purchases and become, in a small part, 40K gamers.

If you create a system whereby entry into your game requires a $300 - 500 purchase and 100s of hours of assembly and painting then you bare entry to anyone who doesn’t have the time, money or sufficient interest to come into the game. And if a man with a gaming room littered with 40K novels and army books from three different versions of the game isn’t interested in buying a 40K army then you have no hope of bringing in any other more casual gamers.

I am sure that there will be a lot of happy gamers who will see the changes in the next edition of 40K as a good thing but I think that GW should learn something from Apocalypse. There are a lot of opportunities for different types of 40K gaming experiences and GW can make money from them if they would only stop focusing so much on their existing audience. Fifth Edition will probably be a success and a great game for existing players but GW needs to start looking for other ways to expand their sales and their audience and reworking the same ruleset time and time again isn’t the way to do it.