Size of the Player Base (Interested Audience)

I tend to track the size of the readership of this blog. You get quite good analytics on individual posts to see which type of posts attract an audience and which are just a bit "meh".

The single biggest change with the content of this blog over the past year has been the switch from WHFB to KOW as the primary focus. Audience figures started to decrease midway through the End Times releases and that trend accelerated in the blackout period between the release of Archaon and the announcement of Age of Sigmar.

The weekly audience views settled around 5000-7000 mid last year prior to AoS. Over the past 4 months or so, and with the focus on Kings of War, they have averaged between 4500-5000.

Part of the previous audience came to see links to new GW releases and for the past half year I've made a conscious effort not to shill for them. I still think GW makes good models - though I'm not greatly enamoured with the style of the Fantasy releases and the 40k releases have been pretty uninspiring (a Tau transformer looks pretty much the same regardless of size, while a marine is a marine is a marine). But I'm not inclined to promote a company that treats its existing customers as appallingly as GW did theirs.

Kings is an interesting game to cover. There are a lot less releases and the quality of the Mantic models generally will not reach my purchase hurdle. I appreciate the price differential but suggest there may be some false economy given the additional prep time. As such I haven't felt comfortable promoting their figures.

List building is interesting to a point. However there is a lot less customisation in the game and you don't have to be Einstein to know putting Caterpillar on a cavalry horde or +1 to wound on an archer horde is a good idea - though there are people on forums who think such a move was a technological triumph akin to landing a man on the moon.

The blog tries to hit a variety of Kings' subjects - hobby, list, event, rules, tactics - but it is evident that the interested audience is much smaller than was the case for WHFB. I'm hopeful that I can post enough interesting material over time that it generates a loyal following and return visits to the blog. A lot of this will be predicated on how well the game grows. Locally, and internationally, the Fantasy player base is fragmented and a lot of people have leaked to new games - sci-fi, steampunk, WW2 etc.

I am always interested in feedback as to what interests the readers and which posts they enjoy.

Posted with Blogsy