"A quick look at depreciating value" Topic

I haven't been up to too much in the hobby workshop, but Von's post at a Year of Frugal Gaming about how you get let fewer points in army lists for the same miniatures got me thinking. So I broke out a GW book from 1998 and did two side-by-side comparisons to see what kind depreciation has occurred over the past thirteen years.

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Question to consider is that do kids have more money to spend now than in 1998 to offset the costs?

Going by link they had £1.76 GBP but now they have £6.25 GBP link so in both cases parents must have topped them up!

Any economics students / practitioners here that can help compare costs vs inflation?

Andrew
Mini site: 2mmblog.blogspot.com

You should include the cost variable.

Not only have the points values decreased over time – but the cost in order to get to that same army list has increased significantly. Normalize the list to say a 2000 point army, and the costs have increased exponentially (far and away above inflation).

good point Scoutll

In the mid 90's I did a rough calculation of dollars-to-points costs for 40K & WHFB, and it was around 10 cents per point. Afraid to know what it is now….

Question to consider is that do kids have more money to spend now than in 1998 to offset the costs?

Minimum wage for me back in 88' was $3.15 USD an hour. Whats it now, close to $7.50 USD an hour?

Chuck

It is a little weird how this all works out. A basic human in Warhammer Fantasy still has a base cost of around 5 points. They were 5 points in 2nd Ed (earliest set I have) and are around 5 or 6 points now.
Granted those 5 points only included the "hand weapon" and now include some armor or shield or special weapon type.
But still basic humans haven't altered much in points.
This of course refers only to Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Tinyminis, you might be right.

I remember Imperial guard being 5pts a man, then 6pts then back to 5pts, though several editition of 40K.

40K Imperial Guard

1996: 9+Sergeant 100 pts Need to find my catalog…but I think it was around $20 USD for 20.
2003: 9+Sergeant 60 pts $35 USD for 20 figures
2008: 9+Sergeant 50 pts $29 USD

So…

2008: 5 pts per figure for $2.90 USD per figure
2003: 6 pts per figure for $1.75 USD oer figure
1996: 10 pts per figure for $1.00 USD per figure

Inflation from 1996 till now would put the cost per figure at $1.38. The actual price change is over twice that. The figures are also half the points cost so in order to field a comparable army, you need twice as many figures. In other words the cost of an Imperial Guard army has actually increased by 400% since the Second Edition Codex.

Which is why I am glad that I got most of my stuff back in the early to mid 1990's.

It would take well over $10,000 to replace what I have today.

Just for fun, I did one more army list (Eldar) and got the worst incidence of depreciation yet: 47%

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Just for fun, I did one more army list (Eldar) and got the worst incidence of depreciation yet: 47%

Keep in mind as well, the Eldar book is still from 4th Edition. By the time the 5th (or 6th) Edition Codex hits the shelves, you will probably be able to count on that being even worse.

This is great in that, although fun to know, the price per figure or point is not the most important item here. The point value per figure is a great indicator because it demonstrates a way to increase revenue in addition to raising price points on figures. It's almost like manipulating currency (in this case figures) to make it cost more to exchange (in this case, dollars, pounds, euro, etc.)

I swear, there's a PhD dissertation in games workshop alone.

That's an interesting analysis – thanks!

Much of this cost increase can be attributed to GW's transition from a small cottage industry to a listed company.

Rental costs for GW shops
Cost for subsidising White Dwarf (quite enormous)
Dividends paid out to shareholders (GW now driven to maintain certain levels of profit and that means squeezing customers til they scream(.

Now you know what you are paying for.

Very interesting. Thank you.

And this is not facebook (or whatever it is where you press that "like" botton.)

Much of this cost increase can be attributed to GW's transition from a small cottage industry to a listed company.

The problem of course is that that happened in 1994 – and all the data we provided happened after the fact.

Most of GW's price increases can be pointed back to management being largely schizophrenic in their planning.

In the past 10 years or so – they have set out to attempt a half dozen or so dramatic (and very expensive) cost savings techniques. When you do that – you end up never seeing any cost savings and only cut into the bottom line…repeatedly and deeply.

If it were only the things that you had mentioned – they would not have needed to increase prices much at all (thinking back on other companies that I deal with who had gone through similar growth – most of their prices stayed in line with inflation or have actually went down).

I'm very put off by the price raises, but there is one aspect of points depreciation that bears mentioning. Each successive version of 40k has become more streamlined. Some of the points depreciation may be related to having a ruleset that allows you to play larger battles in the same (or less) amount of time.

I think it's a pretty fair statement that a 1000 point game from 2nd Ed. 40k would take as long or longer as a 1250 point game of 5th edition. This despite the fact that you might well have nearly double the number of figures on the board.

One thing I have heard from game store staff is that the drive toward larger games is driven not only by sales numbers by the demands of the players.

Perhaps "We have me the enemy and he is…"

I think boiling it all down to cost per point really just sucks all the fun out of gaming in general. I can't begin to put a price on all the fun I have had (and will continue to have) with all my GW stuff, not to mention all the historical models I have bought since I found that branch of the hobby.

I don't know, newer editions are often said to be quicker, but I've never noticed.

Last time I did a big battle for Rogue Trader, it was bigger than anything I'd ever done in 4th edition (the edition at the time) or 5th since. We didn't count points, but given that one side was made up almost entirely of mansized robots with power armor and boltguns (super elite, hero-ish infantry, for a larger number of points… probably like 60 per) and both sides were then filled out by a mixture of marines, hero characters, and Eldar (all of which are like hero characters in their own right, in RT era), as well as multiple tanks, walkers, and a few support squads of regular humans with heavy weapons…. it was a LOT of points. Even with point depreciation (which wouldn't translate well, as these were mostly statted by us or from the original rule book, not army lists), it only took about 3 and 1/2 hours to come to the point where one side- the side with the robot infantry, surprisingly- surrendered.

Frankly, I think the meaning of the term 'streamlined' was twisted to mean something more along the lines of 'points devalued.' On the other hand, that RT game was played with 3 players on each side…. so that did speed things up a bit.

Still: the points were made smaller to increase the number of models required. If it was truly for streamlined play, then they couldn't simultaneously raise the price of miniatures… there's a reason that 3000 point games are getting rarer.

Inflation from 1996 till now would put the cost per figure at $1.38. The actual price change is over twice that. The figures are also half the points cost so in order to field a comparable army, you need twice as many figures. In other words the cost of an Imperial Guard army has actually increased by 400% since the Second Edition Codex.

And the actual cost to play the game has went up even more since you need about 1.5 times the figures to play the same sized (point cost) battle.

That's true, assuming you want to pay the same sized battle.

While points cost per model havhe dropped, points for battles have upped pretty dramatically as well. In 3rd ed, 1500 points was the norm for 40k, and 2000 for WHFB. Now its 1850-2000 for 40k, and 2500 for WHFB.

Most of that is driven by the tournament scene, but there is no reason at all that you have to play at those levels.

It is just as much fun to play at lower points (and I won't touch Apocalypse with a ten foot pole).