Sisters seems to be a marginal Codex for various reasons, here's a couple off the top of my head, there are other and better reviews of the codex available:
- White Dwarf codex, which means that unless you read White Dwarf you're unlikely to ever see it, won't be up on the rack with other Codex's and so won't attract attention.
- Consensus is that most things are weaker (D6 Faith, Immolaters, removal of old units) and more expensive, with the exception of a few units.
- No big release of new models, none of the attention a release usually gets.
So we can probably all accept that this was a release they wanted to get out of the way and largely ignore.
There seem to be three kinds of really successful releases, ones which attract players to the army from within the existing pool of players, ones which attract new players altogether, and ones which do both.
Dark Eldar attracted players across from other armies, because it offered an interesting playstyle and the chance to field an army that wasn't Marines (whether Chaos, Regular, Blood Angels, Grey Knights, Dark Angels, Space Wolves or some other unspecified variety). LOTR attracted new players, because it connected wargaming to something already popular (LOTR) and attracted fanboys from that over into GW. Something like the New SM codex, which combined a successful varied army with a release that was the poster-boy of 40k would do both, attracting internal and external new players.
On one level, looking at these criteria for a good release, a marginalised Sisters of Battle might make sense. They don't seem unique, another Imperium army, with a lot of their old niche units in Grey Knights, with good guys in Power Armour already taken by 15 Space Marine codex's and the role of underdog non-super mutant taken by Imperial Guard.
On every other level, it doesn't make sense. Sisters of Battle offered something truly unique: the chance to play as girls. This might not seem significant in a game in which gender has next to no role in actual gameplay. But nearly ever game has been scrambling to offer the chance to pick your gender where possible, from MMO's where your characters looks are a cornerstone of the game, to stuff like Fallout where you play in first person as the default setting and never even see your character. The idea to let you play as what you want is fairly intuitive.
It breaks down the male dominance that prevails in 40k, remember when back when people used to say "there are no girls on the internet", that's been proven a lie as companies have worked to make their games more accessible. Does that work? I don't have any figures, but I bet WoW has more female players as a proportion of users than CS, and WoW offers the chance to play as women. That could be correlation not causality, there could be tonnes of reasons why, for starters they're completely different genres. But then again WoW has 11 million players, and with that success if they believe allowing different genders broadens appeal to girls, i'll go with it.
LOTR allowed GW to tap into a mass market; the number of people who liked LOTR as popularised by the films. Sisters offered an even bigger opportunity, a chance to tap into a market that is roughly 50% of the country, which from what i've seen is vastly under-represented in 40k and could have made some money.
As I said, I don't own a game store so maybe i'm missing something, but if I was running GW i'd have thought Sisters of Battle would be an excellent opportunity to draw in new customers and change the image of a pretty male game. But hey, i'd like to see a Codex: Salamanders, so I don't really mind if GW focus all their efforts on giving you choices of Marines in boxes.
GW does not really have great business sense. They did not convert the market from the LOTR. Why did it take so long for Dark Eldar to get updated? Because they did not sell well. Why did they not sell? Because the models were stupid looking and the rules old.
ReplyDeleteI knew GW was going to shaft sisters when I heard it was a WD codex. Sisters cannot become a main army without plastics but they would not invest the money in plastics for a WD codex. A female army is not going to bring girls into the player base who are not already interested.
I agree there's a lot of "Sisters don't sell because they're all metal and expensive, we won't make Sisters plastic because they don't sell well." kind of logic, which really isn't logic at all.
ReplyDeleteA female army won't bring in players who aren't already interested, but i'd guess it would help retain a higher number of players who are exposed to the game. If you don't hear about GW, you don't hear about GW and new releases barring massive adverts won't change that. The crucial difference is people who are exposed to the game in passing, a kid who's older brother plays the game, a boyfriend, a relative, are more likely to go into the game if it appeals to them. A viable female army that gets attention is likely to pull people into the hobby for whom playing a female army is attractive, in the same way a kid who walked past GW and saw the LOTR models was pulled in because he likes LOTR.
Unless people really dislike as a whole the idea of playing as girls (which seems unlikely, because companies strive to offer that option) a more diverse game is going to be more appealing to more people, simply because it coincides with things people already like.