The Gamers Journey.

A Very Upset Berserker.

Some time ago i was accepted onto the Games Workshop store managers course but for one reason or another it didn't work out and i decided to stay in the job i had so i never fully became a GW employee. During that whole process i learned some very interesting things about the company and how they inteact and view their players. One of the best happened during a chat with my interviewers at GW headquarters in Nottingham.

I was explaining my hobby past and how i had stopped playing at a point and then come back to the hobby and both interviewers smiled. They then explained to me that GW knew the hobby journey that most enthusiast take and for the majority it can be predicted.

For ease ill refer to us as "Gamers". The GW analysis was as follows.

1. Gamer discovers the GW hobby and starts collecting via a box game or through White Dwarf magazine and this usually happens around the time the Gamer starts high school. They either get into the hobby and commit or they leave and are gone.

2. Gamers that do commit then become loyal customers and are enthusiastic about the hobby which spreads over various gaming systems and even then to other companies and products.

3. Gamers then reach the age of 15, 16 and 17 and discover the opposite sex, drinking, pubs and clubs and even drugs. This is usually the point the Gamer drifts away from the hobby with Gamers who go on to university generally stopping all together.

4. Ex Gamer re-discovers the hobby which has sat dormant. The Ex Gamer is now an adult and around the age of 21 - 25 and has left higher education, has a job and gotten over the drinking and drugs and has started to settle. The Gamer returns.... Usually with a vengeance. The Gamer now has a steady income and can look to "more" and "bigger". Forge World.

5. Gamer has reignited his hobby and is fully back on track but now a partner is in the picture and then comes kids. Gamer has no time for gaming any more and the hobby stops....again.

6. The kids are growing and eventually the Gamer comes back as time becomes more available.

Nipples.

The whole thing is a solid description of my interaction with this hobby. GW expect Gamers to leave for a large gap during the transition into the adult world but the second come back can happen quite fast like in my case. I was away for 11 years the first time and then only out for 2 years when i had a child. however it can happen when the Gamers kids are old enough to discover the hobby for themselves which then sparks the interest of the Gamer who can now share the experience with their children.

Both GW and myself understand that this is not canon. plenty of gamers have never left and some leave and never come back but there is a very solid pattern for the player base and GW were and i think still are confident that during the life of a gamer they will "get them" 3 times.

The Axe Is A Replacement.

As for myself. I left the first time around 17 years old. I moved to Newcastle in England and had a good job with more money than i knew what to do with and i found out that i loved whiskey. eventually i found other entertainments too and distractions but the friends i made in Newcastle were hobbyists just like me. We didn't meet via gaming it just happened that i discovered they were into roleplay and mostly Epic and WFB.


This didn't stop me from ditching the hobby however. Actually we all drifted and left together. But one night sitting in my friends house we got out the paint and i painted a dwarf berserker. I didn't know it at the time but I wouldn't touch another miniature for 11 years.

Eventually i came back. It started as a small thing where me and a friend agreed to build a small force each for a trip down memory lane and that would be it. HA....

Finally Looking Good.

Most of my minis were long gone. Given away or just lost. I had a few left at a friends house in his loft along with rule books and the like but i still had with me that berserker. He had suffered though. The original paint job was chipped badly and his axe was broken. I dunked him in stripper for 5 mins and he was clean again, fixed his axe with a replacement from an undead sprue and sorted a base. I never got round to painting him again as time had come to stop my hobby again due to another little berserker who needed more of my attention.

Anyway, i promised myself that when i picked this all up again as i have done, That berserker would be in the first 5 things i painted. As it turns out he is number 2.
I decided to avoid the original paint job which was dark and he had a Saltire tattoo, which is the reason i kept him i think. i was very pleased with that paint job. I started fresh and here he is.