NagoyaHammer.com

I have been wondering. I believe a large part of GWs costs come from supporting their brick and mortar stores. but, are these worth keeping? Do they generate sufficient new customers to justify their costs? We were all new customers once. My question is: how did you get there?

My impression is that the situation is a bit different in the US than the UK, thanks to geographical bigness coupled with a smaller number of GW shops. Plenty of local gaming stores do carry GW stuff, but they tend to be a lot less aggressive about demoing and I wouldn't be surprised if it was easy to frequent a comics / gaming shop that carried the stuff and never get a pitch, especially if (as is all too often the case) the store's manager has terrible business sense and is only using the shop as a place to game with his buddies.

Of course, I got into the hobby before it was even so widespread - a friend of mine bought the Rogue Trader rulebook for some reason, we decided to split a box each of space marines and orks, and I never looked back. In college I hooked a lot of people into gaming, but there wasn't a store in town that both carried models and had gaming space at the time, so I don't think any of us would have stumbled into it on our own. I don't imagine my own story of getting into the hobby is anything like representative of the current state of affairs in the States, though.

The guy that got me in to 40k never even got into it himself we played like 2 games but he got like 6 of us into it an we all played for a few years... I really go into the game in Japan through Mixi...

When I was a kid, the boy across the road had some cool models that he had painted, (an epic Phantom Titan and one of the old metal ork buggies for 40k), but I never really knew what they were. Then my mum bought me and my brother Heroquest and Space Crusade for Christmas and we both started playing. Being the elder brother, I read the background and rules and I was hooked, plus I'd always liked making models and had lots of toy soldiers.
For my next birthday I got Space Hulk and the following Christmas I got Space Marine (the first version). Then GW opened a store near my home town and I started going there regularly. If there hadn't been a store I doubt I would have bought much since the toy stores in town only carried the boxed games and not the individual models.
When I was about 16 I stopped playing as the only people I played with kinda lost interest. Most of my stuff was sold at car boot sales/flea markets.
When I was 19 and at University, I had some days when I had a lot of time to kill. My university was near the center of town so I would often go and browse round the local PC/DVD stores. One day I was bored having been to all my regular haunts when I wound up near the GW store. I went in for a look and that got me hooked again.

From the age of 7 the list of board games probably runs something like this

Ghost Castle (MB), Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs, Chess, Escape from Atlantis, Game of Life, Go for Broke,

then Talisman, Heroquest followed by Space Hulk and Space Crusade.

I guess it was an organic process. The GW games had a good collaboration with MB games who were one of the main board games designers for kids back in the 80s.

The urge to play fantasy battle and fantasy role play came about from a love of Tolkien books plus I wasn't that good at Football so we formed a games group in the library at lunchtime during Primary school days.

Whats changed? eek.

LGS here. didn't get demoed but liked the minis and took home some of the pamplets in my backpack. A friend of mine saw the pamplet and he and his father played. Got to use the fathers chaos dwarfs to smash my friends high elves. ah good times.

with me, it was AGP introduced me to it, altho i had previously played heroquest. After that, I got a couple of my mates into it, so we had a wee group of 4 regulars, plus various friends of AGPs and mine that dabbled from time to time. I think because we had a fairly regular group, we didnt need the support of a LGS or a GW so much.

Sorry to show ignorance but what is AGP or LGS?

Oh lets not forget the Fighting Fantasy books were a big introduction to rpg and gaming for a lot of people.

AGP is Andrew G Paul, my mate, and member of this here illustrious forum. So ubiquitous is he in the gaming world that he has become an acronym

LGS is Local Gaming Store. i.e. a gaming store which is not a dedicated GW store. e.g. Yellow Submarine in Nagoya, or Ikeda-san's new place.

Fighting Fantasy was something that got me into fantasy, for sure, but i dont think it affected my move into gaming. Unlike many (i suspect) i got into 40k before i got into warhammer fantasy, and i never really got into roleplaying of any type until you corrupted me with you Chthulu-ite ways

WD 122 (Feb 1990) in a WH Smiths.
Fighting Fantasy books.
HeroQuest and Space Hulk.

Actual brick and mortar stores had very little to do with my introduction to the hobby.