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[Trekkin]

That got me thinking, though.  They have so many fans which "only" play the video games.  I wonder how much thought they've put towards a digital version of the actual tabletop game.  There are obvious problems from a business standpoint, but Magic had similar problems and seemed to do okay.

They've put one thought towards it: it would mean people buying less paint and plastic, so it will never happen. It's the same reason Nintendo doesn't sell PC-based emulators for their games. The rulebooks and the models and to a lesser extent the paint are all supposed to be useless without each other so that the sunk cost fallacy drives people to purchase more of them; it's the razor/razorblade model but with forced obsolescence in the form of power creep and new editions of things.

As far as GW is concerned, the whole Warhammer 40,000 apparatus -- the Black Library, the video games, the rules themselves -- exist to push more minis out the door. They've almost certainly looked into a way to require the physical purchase of minis to unlock video game units and been deterred by the idea of piracy; I'd say they might have predicted players would go into a frothing rage at being forced to pay GW prices for very limited DLC, but a review of GW's decisions to date suggests they're okay with that.

So no, there will never be an official virtual tabletop version of 40k, because GW sees that as a net loss.

[nenjin]

Just to add to the above, think about the amount of jobs and business relationships outside of game design and art that would affected by a digital 40k offering. Their game stores, distribution, warehousing, marketing....I mean, if GWS wanted to slash their entire infrastructure and make the switch over to digital entirely, they could probably actually profit handsomely from it. But it would mean divesting themselves of decades of retail space and presence they've built up. Any half move in to the digital space would undercut what is still the core of their business. And I dunno that the "digital board game" space is profitable in the way the physical hobby space is.

One thing I'll always remember is an old game shop owner talking about physical hobbies work. Doesn't matter if it's 40k or model trains. Physical hobby gamers are kind of a captive audience. Wargamers doubly so. 40k war gamers, tripley so because they want the 40k universe specifically. Customers like that will stomach a lot from their peddlers. Granted you get a lot of high quality material, but seriously, it seems like anything more than a casual board game starts at $60 and only goes up from there.

Video gamers, on the other hand, can find plenty of replacement goods under the heading of "video game." And I'd tend to think they're more reactionary and even more vocal. Video game culture right now is about talking to developers and publishers and communicating and that's not something GWS has ever done well. They shut down most places for fans to talk to them, in fact. If they were directly responsible for producing video game versions of table top 40k and pulled the kind of shit they do in the physical hobby space....

1. They'd already been in good company with how a lot of publishers are behaving these days.
2. Players would still go completely apeshit on them because of their long history of gouging their customers.

Like, Cyanide making Blood Bowl three times over and charging full price for each one (with tons of teams as DLC) is the kind of thing I'd expect GWS to do on a regular basis with any video game they're directly producing.

[scriver]

What about CA making Total War: Warhammer thrice over and charging full price for each one +DLC?

Nah, that would never happen

[Andres]

it's the razor/razorblade model

?

[Trekkin]

it's the razor/razorblade model

?

It's a business model apocryphally invented by Gillette. In the original example, you sell people a razor cheaply and sell them razor blades; even if the blades are more expensive, they will want the blades for which they already have the razor, since buying a competitor's razor would cost more than a new blade. Over time, you make more money selling them razor blades than you would have by selling them the razor at a more normal price.

It's not a perfect fit here since every part of the hobby is expensive, but the same general principle applies: plastic & paint moves rulebooks so rulebooks can move plastic & paint. Every time GW comes out with a new rulebook, people want to buy a copy so they can use their existing minis; every time that rulebook makes a new mini better, they want to add that mini to their army. It's all connected so you feel like not spending more money wastes the money you've already spent (this is the sunk cost fallacy), and thus people spend thousands on plastic, paint, and books. It would be more expensive per unit fun to jump ship entirely, especially if not everyone wants to do so at once, so people keep on spending.

[milo christiansen]

Except it gets harder and harder to rope new people in, until your cash slowly dries up, then goes away suddenly when people still playing falls past critical mass.

I would love an electronic tabletop. There is no way I could afford to buy models, but I could swing a new computer game.

[Trekkin]

Except it gets harder and harder to rope new people in, until your cash slowly dries up, then goes away suddenly when people still playing falls past critical mass.

I would love an electronic tabletop. There is no way I could afford to buy models, but I could swing a new computer game.

The sunk cost fallacy does tend to work both ways, yes, and trap people into selling primarily to people who have already been trapped into buying. I'm not defending it as the best way to sell games, just pointing out that it's how GW sells their game.

I'd love an electronic tabletop too, but as long as GW owns 40k it won't happen.

[Tack]

I'd often thought of starting one and new units would probably be a P2W system even on digital so eh.

[Kot]

I can easily see them imitating "full-real" experience by selling ingame paint buckets which you can apply only a limited amount of time to your units, also all models could have a lot of alternative-interchangeable parts, kinda like LEGO. I can bet they could tie-in the game with real world, with main game giving you core rulebook and each Codex being it's own DLC, also providing you with a PDF for tabletop and vice-versa, their physical copies also providing you access to the game and DLC, with maybe special unit parts and models available to people who buy stuff like White Dwarf, maybe minor flavour armies, like Imperial Armour, alternative gamemodes, etc.
Basically, long story short - allowing you to play stock armies (like, featureless Ultramarines, no-name Imperial Guard, etc) for the price of the base game and at least one DLC of choice (unless some army would be included in the base game, or maybe first army being free), with a lot of cosmetic parts for your units. To be honest, it would be fucking glorious for GW, because they could cut down heavily on production costs (only initial production cost + server upkeep as opposed to actual real life figurines). A lot of people would REEEEEEEEEEEEEE, of course.

There's also the option of going full Skylanders and only giving you ingame units you actually own as miniatures.

[LordBaal]

What GW might do is an augmented reality plataform for the TT. That way buying the figurines could provide a videogame like experience out of this world.

Think on the holografic chess from Star Wars.

[Archibald]

Hello! I am relatively new to 40k universe (although I know a thing or two about the factions thanks to the wiki). I got introduced thanks to the games (the "Space Marine" TPS, the chess one and Dawn of War) but for the tabletop game I don't know much. Anyway, I just wanted to ask few things.

1) I heard that there are also books based on the story. So my question is, can the books be found outside of UK?

2) What are your thoughts on the game "Inquisitor Martyr"?

3) One more thing that I kinda don't understand. I read on the wiki (the 4chan one) that 40k used to be the "Fantasy Battle IN SPACE". Why was that changed?

[Reelya]

The books are available anywhere you can get Warhammer stuff, (*or books in general thanks Trekkin). However, I hear hear tell that many of them are badly written. TSR's Dungeons and Dragons novels had the same problem. They hire people to mass-produce novels set in the game's world. You just can't expect most writers-for-hire to be as good as the well known sci-fi/fantasy authors, so reading the warhammer or D&D novels can be disconcerting because of how fan-fictiony they can be in quality. Ask around about which writers are the best ones and don't expect all "Warhammer" brand novels to be equally good.

The last one is just because 40K came out of another game "Warhammer Fantasy Battle" so the marketing originally stated that "it's like this other thing, but in space". That wasn't needed once it became it's own established brand.

[Trekkin]

Hello! I am relatively new to 40k universe (although I know a thing or two about the factions thanks to the wiki). I got introduced thanks to the games (the "Space Marine" TPS, the chess one and Dawn of War) but for the tabletop game I don't know much. Anyway, I just wanted to ask few things.

1) I heard that there are also books based on the story. So my question is, can the books be found outside of UK?

Yes. There are ebooks of them on the Black Library website. If bookstores still exist in your area, paper copies can probably be found in the sci-fi/fantasy section.

[LordBaal]

Hello! I am relatively new to 40k universe (although I know a thing or two about the factions thanks to the wiki). I got introduced thanks to the games (the "Space Marine" TPS, the chess one and Dawn of War) but for the tabletop game I don't know much.

Hi and welcome!

Anyway, I just wanted to ask few things.

Sure, shoot.

1) I heard that there are also books based on the story. So my question is, can the books be found outside of UK?

There are a TONS of books, I'm pretty sure you can get them almost everywhere with amazon (phiscal and electronic copies), Itunes and other such services, then there's TPB and other shady stuff, but I encourage you to ask around for what you might like and buy those. Personal tip: Try to stay away from anything made by Matt Ward or C.S. Goto.

2) What are your thoughts on the game "Inquisitor Martyr"?

Don't really know, haven't played/seen playgame of it. Not much free time for me lately.

3) One more thing that I kinda don't understand. I read on the wiki (the 4chan one) that 40k used to be the "Fantasy Battle IN SPACE". Why was that changed?

It still is, to some degree. In the past most factions where just WHFB factions with frickinlazerbeams and spaceships throw at them... now days they tend to be more subtle and while the conceptual roots of most races can still be tracked down to the fantasy counterpart, they have much more distance today. It was to be expected actually, they started with basically a scifi copy of the fantasy setting and worked from there, fleshing out details and leaving fantasy concepts behind.

But then there's NECRONS, which used to be not so much Tomb Kings recyled IN SPACE!!! but more like terminator recyled IN SPACE!!!. Then they became almost exactly Tomb Kings recyled IN SPACE!!!.

[Archibald]

The last one is just because 40K came out of another game "Warhammer Fantasy Battle" so the marketing originally stated that "it's like this other thing, but in space". That wasn't needed once it became it's own established brand.

Didn't that piss off the fandom? I mean, telling the fans one origin story only to retcon it and say "nope, it is something else" is kinda unfair. Also, isn't that a bit risky for the business?

Also, thanks for answering LordBaal and Trekkin.

Lord, I know I ask too much now, but what is the deal with this Matt Ward and C.S? I know from 4chan wiki that Matt used to "fanboy" the Ultramarines. But I don't really know much else.

Also, yeah Necrons! Or how 4chan refers to them as "space egyptians". Although, why are they so feared by every other faction? I know that they are super strong and that "they come out of the damn walls", but like with Ward, I don't know else.