Some thoughts on the next Blood Bowl box set (OTT Blog)

[whitehot]

I had some thoughts on the next Blood Bowl box set release...

https://oneturntouchdown.com/2020/05/02 ... geon-bowl/

[DinoTitanedition]

Just read your article, so here's my 2 Cents: Dungeon Bowl is very niche within a niche. It does not make sense saleswise. It also doesn't seem to be more applicable than for one match in a hundred compared to regular BB games. The old guard doesn't play anything else than LRB...well....mostly...a very stereotypical statement at that point, but let's exagurate a bit, eh?

Why is Blitz Bowl so popular?

Blood Bowl, as much as I love it, is an old, old game, with clunky and slow mechanics compared to other games nowadays. This tells you a lot about classic tabletop games at that point, because when I first bought BB, it had the reputation of being "uncomplicated" compared to those.

Blitz Bowl on the other hand is fast and simple. A new Blood Bowl edition would have to draw new players. The old folks mostly play only the LRB version of it anyways. As a company you don't lose much here. Aside of buying a team here and there (if not from thrid party copyright infringers) the "old players" do not really matter anymore. They simply do not generate earnings and that is what a company needs if it is to survive.

So IF there will be a new edition, it would make most sense if the ruleset gets reworked to be slim and the game a lot more fast paced, even for casual players. How can that be done? Don't ask me. I'm just saying that, if you want to attract a different audience than the usual nerds and grognards, the game has to change essentially and that is what we all kind of fear - it might be a huge improvement, it might be a huge setback. From the point of view of a company, the new edition would have to be "a good deal" to at least make some of the older customer layer buy the new edition. Eventually some of them might accept a new lean rules version.

Now, before people start throwing the stones...

No, this is not meant to be a rant, I just threw some facts into the room. You can accept it or don't, I do not judge and I'm okay with any opinion.
Yes, I like the game a lot, but hands down...I've maybe played four games in total last year, up to today. It eats a lot of time.
No, I do not play on tournaments (anymore).
Yes, I consider myself to be a casual player managing leisure time in balance with everyday life. You know...kids, wife, job, and so on.
Yes, I believe the Blood Bowl community to be somewhat "special" even amongst the tabletop players in general. And that I think of in both ways, positive AND negative.
Yes, I will of course go on hobbying Blood Bowl - I have always loved Football and always loved Fantasy. So I feel pretty much to be the target audience. Wouldn't mind a drastic rule change at all, due to that.
Yes, I would be willing to see a chunk of the Blood Bowl players break off with a new rules edition. I've seen it before with AoS, and I thought AoS did a good thing for the community. There is more players than in WHFB ever before and believe that it could be the same effect in BB.

Allright. Open fire

[spubbbba]

Why is Blitz Bowl so popular?

How popular is Blitz Bowl, do we have any figures on the sales of the main boxed set compared to normal Blood Bowl?

The main game has lasted years and proven to be pretty successful. When it was re released, GW struggled to keep up with demand. We also have the Cyanide game which has done ok for itself over the years. It's hard to say how well Dungeonbowl would do, the last time that came out was in 2nd edition, though there was set of rules published in a white dwarf many years back. If it was given a complete revamp with well though out mixed teams then i'd be interested to see it.

[DinoTitanedition]

How popular is Blitz Bowl, do we have any figures on the sales of the main boxed set compared to normal Blood Bowl?

For exact numbers you'd have to check out the annual business report of GW. Comparing that to a game that has been out 30 years longer...I don't know if that is a realistic approach though. There's tons of factors to be taken into account for a realistic stat. Which version of BB, average sales in a year and which year, as for example in 2010 there was no BB boxed game - so the sales in that year would equal zero. Long story short, maaaany things to be considered. But feel free to sum up those infos, you can be sure you'd have at least one interested reader in me.

As for popularity, I'm going here with my totally subjective gut feeling. The fact that people try to buy it in countries where it isn't available, or that people (i.e. in Germany) often say they like it better than classic BB and bought it instead of the "full version" tells me it has something that appeals to non or non regular BB folk. If we're talking about "success", that again is a different story. If it sold more than expected, than it was/is successful. With the second edition being on it's way, I'd hence that is the current state.

Dungeon Bowl had been out as a digital version if I remember correctly, no? Also from Cyanide. Numbers on that can be checked in the individual sales stats in Steam. If I remember correctly, there is even a time horizon that can be set to check.

[Saebelsultan]

But feel free to sum up those infos, you can be sure you'd have at least one interested reader in me.

I feel the nececcessary data should be provided by the one who proclaims a thesis. At least that's how it's usually done, right?
Anyhow, as you stated, feelings cannot be trusted. In my fairly large active community of BB players I know only a handful that play Blitz Bowl (which is readily available where I live). The rest sticks to Blood Bowl (and of course a whole host of other games, because we are all collectors). That telles me the complete opposite to what you experience.

[DinoTitanedition]

I feel the nececcessary data should be provided by the one who proclaims a thesis. At least that's how it's usually done, right?

But I do not proclaim a thesis - as you surely have read whitehot's article, I simply picked up his thought, that Blitz Bowl seems more popular than expected. I am completely comfortable with my gut feeling and neither was it me asking for a statistic - so it's not my obligation to prove or disprove something by numbers.

On the other hand...did you ask people who only play Blitz Bowl and not Blood Bowl? Did you ask them if they wanted initially to pick up Blitz instead of BB? Have you looked past your local limited circle of players? Do you really believe that to be representative? Seems a bit like it lacks the level of precission you actually want from me - but hey...as I have also stated...I'm fine with an subjective opinion. I won't keep you from doing an academic research on that matter, but to me it seems there are more important things in life than BB Again, that's another subjective opinion - some people maybe do not have anything else in life than BB of course. I won't judge, we all have our time intensive interests and there's enough of them I do like too - just like BB.

Anyhow, as you stated, feelings cannot be trusted.

A different topic, but as someone who has studied statistics I'd like to add, neither can statistics. Classic example:

Somalia is one of the countries with the fewest amount of environmental pollution on the planet. It also has one of the highest rates of active piracy on the planet. Ergo, pirates must be good for the environment. Of course, the actual truth is, that companies don't want their precious ships to get sacked, so less ships are taking a route past Somalia. The actual reason is, that the environment is less polluted as there is less ships in that area. But statistically we've proven pirates to be a reason.

To sum it up...no matter how statistical it gets...it always needs a good portion of common sense to actually tell you something. Statistics can only narrow down a probability and at that point you can never say in what part of it you're actually moving (99% chance - who tells you that the one try you have isn't actually the 1%?). And this still doesn't exclude you might be mislead even by seemingly logical facts. You can find tons of proof of that in more modern examples like the financial, real estate or even the IT industry. In IT companies are driving the Big Data movement (Data Mining and management of it) currently, not taking into account, that the increased volume of data for statistical anylsis does also include a lot of trash data, that will most likely falsify results at some point in the future.

[spubbbba]

Are the sales figures split by games?

I thought that was usually kept secret by GW as it was difficult for us to know how well the games and individual armies were doing. The best I saw was a compilation of the best selling games, but that was only for independent stores in the US. From what I've heard sci-fi games are far more popular than fantasy compared to Europe.

I've also heard various rumours over the years that WHFB was really not selling much, and that marines made up a huge percentage of overall sales, but all these were anecdotes.

As DinoTitanedition mentions even having all the numbers might not tell you the whole story. Blitz Bowl might sell well initially as it is a cheap and self contained game, but if it doesn't have the re-playability then these might taper off. Whilst the old game has a well established player base who were keen for new models and interest from GW.

I think this is always a challenge with sales and why consumer feedback is so important.

[DinoTitanedition]

I have to admit, it's been a while since I've taken a look into the report, as I mostly played only BB from the GW games for like...the last two yearsish or so. But you're right, they've split it into their main categories, fantasy and scifi products. If you're a shareholder though, you should get a detailed report. 40K made about 45% of the revenue, aroud 12% were licenses, and...phew, I don't remember anymore. As I said, it's been a while.

Anyways, I second spubbbba's statement that more feedback from nonregular BB players would be interesting. Especially why they play what. I know what I like, but I'm one of the old geezers and the games I play are mostly well established for me.

[Darkson]

Dungeon Bowl had been out as a digital version if I remember correctly, no? Also from Cyanide. Numbers on that can be checked in the individual sales stats in Steam. If I remember correctly, there is even a time horizon that can be set to check.

It was (is?), but it was a stand-alone effort by Cyanide, and didn't have the publishing (and marketing) push that BB got (gets) from Focus.
It was also a bit of a dog's ear, with the rules and teams changed willy-nilly, in a totally unbalanced way (even compared to 'classic' DB).
Add in that a lot of people that commented on it couldn't get their head around the fact it was a separate development from BB, and moaned they couldn't import their team(s) from BB.

For this, and other reasons (for example, the server could be a bit hit'n'miss on whether it was up) the game never had a large online population, and as it didn't have a single player option, it pretty much died a death.
I'm not sure if the server is still up, but the Cyanide forum for it is gone.

[spubbbba]

Another thing I thought of to factor in is cross-sales.

For a while it looked like GW were dropping their less popular ranges/games and focusing on the best sellers. The trouble with that is eventually they'll end up just selling Marine tactical squads to 10 year olds, who'll lose interest in a couple of years and be replaced with the next set.
Whilst games like Necromunda or Blood Bowl will never match 40k, they do help garner more interest for the company as a whole. If you get someone in who likes skirmish games, they may be tempted to try other games or buy different models to use as stand in or conversions. These sales are very difficult to track, I've not played 40K or WHFB/AoS in over a decade, but have spent hundreds of pounds on both ranges of models over the past few years to convert into Blood Bowl players.


I remember the Cyanide Dungeonbowl game. They just took the rules from that WD article and brushed them up a bit. The big difficulty with the game was that first to score won, which could make it take a very long or short time. I think it needed something to help break that up, like event cards or really go for the wacky randomness.
The teams were also poorly thought out and they just tried to port over those based on 2nd edition with daft restrictions of positionals across 3 teams. What they should have done was made complete themed teams loosely based on the old versions. Make them work like underworld or pact, with maybe some animosity thrown in.