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Games Workshop – Downloadable Content

Posted on May 18, 2010 04:16 pm by Thor

Kumui and I have chatted about this at great length over the years and it’s not a new topic by any means. Should GW make their rules and/or codices freely available? Yes, they should.

First of all I feel it would dramatically increase GW’s sales for a few reasons. If you’re just starting 40K (I’m rolling with 40K here but applies to any of their games in principle), then you’re faced with having to pick up the big rule book at a current cost of $57.75, assuming you don’t buy Assault on Black Reach. Now you need to figure out what army you want to play but what material do you have to make that decision? Well, you can flip through the rule book and see what armies visually appeal to you, which I feel is crucial since you have to enjoy the aesthetics of an army to spend all that time modeling and painting, but that’s about all you have to go by initially. There are countless resources on the internet to get information on a particular army but many of those resources tend to be geared towards the veteran player and much of that information would be lost on a new player. GW’s site has some information you can gleam from it regarding their armies but you really aren’t going to get all the information you need to make an informed decision. So, eventually you buy a codex and spend another $30. Now you’re into the hobby for $87.75 before you’ve even bought a single miniature to use. I don’t know about you but I feel that’s a reasonable investment, let’s call it $90, and you can’t even play the game yet.

So now you go out and buy a battle force or various box sets to assemble your army and spend a few hundred more. A lot of players don’t stick with their first army because they bought it being uninformed and found it’s not really their style. Now you have to buy another codex, more models and do it all over again and hope your second army really fits you. Maybe this is GW’s diabolical plan all along, keep their customers in the dark so they spend more cash when they become more informed to correct their previous uninformed decisions.

Here’s how I see it. If you’re initial investment into the hobby is minimal then you’ll see more people try it out, no brainer right? If you can get the rules online and the the codices free then you know what you’re getting into before you’ve spent a dime and there’s your draw. Right now new players get into 40K typically because a friend plays, or maybe Dawn of War (PC game), sparked their interest. I really don’t see people stumbling into 40K and saying, “I just thought I’d drop $90 to see if the game was worth me putting more money into”, do you? By making rules and codices free you in turn draw interest to the game from people who have been put off by the price tag of the initial investment as well as people actually stumbling upon the game. Friends can tell their buddies about the game and point them to the site to check it out and everything they need to know is right there. So, minimal up front investment equals more potential players.

Secondly, the money “lost” by not having people purchase rule books and codices will be gained through miniature sales. That $90 you didn’t have to spend on reading materials is $90 you’ll likely pump into your army of choice. Now for $90 you can have a battle force set and a playable army instead of two books. Of course if you find you enjoy the game then you’ll put more money into it. When you have more people trying out the game because it’s cheap to get started then you’re going to gain a larger player base and a larger player base means more people spending money. These are people spending money that otherwise would not have. Now, veteran players often have multiple armies, I have three and you know what? I’d have more than three armies if I didn’t have to spend $30 just to read up on it. Of course the more armies I own the more money I’m going to spend.

I propose that GW takes the mini-rulebook and make that a free download and continues to sell the big rule book, and also sell the mini one. If I want the fluff, the pictures and stuff then I’ll buy the big rule book, and as a fan of 40K I will do just that even with a free version of the rule book. The free one would be rules only, no fluff, no cool images, just the nitty-gritty, what the mini-rulebook is you get in Assault on Black Reach. I’ll also buy the mini one so I have a physical rulebook to carry around with me easier than the large one. Not everyone would go this route but I’m positive that people are still going to buy physical copies of the rules to carry around rather than spending $70 on printer ink to print it out. The same for codices, take the army listing area with units and costs and make that the free version online, though they’d have to include the special rules too that are generally found in the fluffy parts of the codex. Continue to sell the full version of the codex and people will buy it even with it being free for the same reasons as the rulebook.

There will of course be exceptions to all this, the people who only buy models and never spend a cent on a rulebook or a codex, but there will also be the influx of new players who are trying the game for the first time and get hooked. The latter I feel would far outweigh the former.

About Thor

I began playing 40K in 2006 and have been an avid player and hobbyist since then. Blogging has become my outlet for all those random thoughts regarding the game.
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  • http://theporkster.blogspot.com/ Porky_Poster

    I agree with you, and I do think GW will eventually be forced to go this way because of the amount and quality of rival sources on the net.

    I can see a couple of downsides though.

    If the rulebooks sold less physical copies, the run would be lower and the production cost higher, and this might translate into higher retail prices too. It might lead to the complete death of physical copies, or expensive collector’s editions only.

    Also, the lack of artwork and general flavour in a stripped-down online version could fail to grab the attention. It might be that GW has to go all or nothing with freely-available materials.

    Neither of these is enough to undo the strength of the central idea, but the change would involve risk and that could delay it.

    Regardless, excellent post! This was definitely worth linking to and I hope the movers and shakers are reading it too.

    • http://creativetwilight.com/ Thor

      They could always do something like print on demand to maybe offset the cost you’re talking about. There’s no reason they couldn’t do full fledged digital versions too, which you’d pay for, whereas the stripped down ones would be free.

      I see your point though, those getting the stripped ones won’t have that fluff to hook them in, however most of those who get into these games are doing so as a result of friends, which no doubt have blabbed on about fluff already to them. It’s not a replacement of course, second hand information, but they’ll know it’s there and available even if it’s not the hook that gets them playing.

      • http://theporkster.blogspot.com/ Porky_Poster

        I like the idea of print on demand. I’d actually expect they’ve got various plans worked up already, to put into action when the time comes, including this.

        You’re right about concept and background materials too. Even the site the rules would likely be downloaded from has this of course and the models themselves reflect it. They could also include some of the material anyway, as a teaser.

        • http://twitter.com/InDavesLife Dave G

          I tried to post this earlier, but Disqus bailed on the 2nd.

          I like the idea of going digital. I actually switched my last work over to a paperless system for a large portion of their jobs.

          Nothing would stop you from having full colour and fluff digital versions, but maybe old salts could purchase cheaper fluff-less versions.

          What I think GW needs to get into is an online web based army list generator. Every Codex (or for a little more) you could get a code that would “activate” an army in the army builder. For free, you could build and print armies, but it wouldn’t display rules/gear/stats, just names and point values. It would enforce legal lists and GW could see just how much interest there actually is in list building.

          The only problem with going digital is I can see a problem where gamers no longer carry their rules, and more arguments break out. Or, heaven forbid, as bringing printed rules to games becomes acceptable, people start doctoring and modifying their rulebooks.

          • http://creativetwilight.com/ Thor

            As to the list builder, I doubt we’d see it. GW once had such a program, though not web based, and it died years ago. I used it at the time but they stopped updating and supporting it around the time the last Eldar codex was released. Great idea but I don’t think GW will bother with it.

            To your last paragraph, hah! Man, there are guys now at the LGS who don’t even own a rule book and half of those who do fail to bring it in anyway.

            Anyway, smarter players would pay the small cost to have a place print off the PDF for them so they have a reasonably good physical copy of the rules. Well, that’s what I’d do as it would be cheaper than using my own ink. Some guys I know bring in laptops to the shop now so they can use their Army Builder and I imagine those same guys would have the rules in PDF loaded on it too.

            As to doctoring up the rules, eh, it’s possible of course but it’s possible to do now with the erratas and FAQs but you don’t hear about it. The reason is that it’s free and we all have them so we know damn well when someone is screwing with us. It’s like the guy who constantly twists rules in his favor against the unknowing. It will work against some but not against most.



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