2008 Silicon Dragons Miniatures Survey - Results

[Joe Kutz]

2008 Miniatures Survey Results

Mostly done, mostly cleaned up and ready for viewing. I noticed that I still have a few typos to clean up, and I also seem to have used an older version of the commented form for what I published (eyes and brain are too screwy right now to find the correct version). Anywho, take a look see to see how others voted.

 

[supervike]

Well, I find the results very interesting.

I\'m surprised at the lack of partcipation from CMoN.

I\'ve participated in both years worth.

What are your plan for the survey? Is it just a curiousity or part of a strategic marketing plan?

 

[Wren]

Regarding the participation - I\'d imagine lots of people are members of multiple locations and just happened to get to the survey through a different one before seeing it on CMON? Or maybe it says something about CMON being more of a second home/destination than a first? I clicked through to the survey from Reaper, but I keep pretty current with CMON too.

Very interesting results, thanks for posting the results in such detail! Looks like a lot of my miniature compatriots need to broaden their board game horizons beyond Monopoly though!

 

[Corvus]

What I find very interesting is the amount of people who say they rely on a painting service to get their miniatures painted. In my direct environment (local gaming stores etc) this is still considered as a rarity...

nice pile of numbers, thanks

 

[War Griffon]

To be honest this is the first I have seen about a pole either this year or last year.
I think that looking at the top two of peoples location i.e. 69% in the US and 20% in the UK there seems a hell of a lot of difference between the two in way of the gap and when you compare this to maybe the site that people heard of the pole from, top one being TMP then maybe this is the explanation for that gap, it is a very long time since I paid a vist to TMP.

 

[Dragonsreach]

Well as always I\'m very sceptical about surveys as in general they ask \'loaded\' questions.
If I remember correctly I wouldn\'t take part in this because it required you to sign up and that is something I\'m loathe to do when it seemed to be part of a marketing survey. (Been caught like that before).

 

[squidders]

Corvus aside from people like me who just collect minis the same as any other person might collect paintings or sculptures, many peoples only reason for having minis is to game with them.

While loads of people enjoy painting, it\'s still just one aspect of the gaming hobby generally.

As to why so many more people in the US than the UK... well, probably a lot to do with the US having a population of 300million and the UK having 61million... as for the rest of the countries, maybe the questions were in english and the others had truble reading them and couldn\'t be bothered to translate and answer.

Still interesting though.

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by War Griffon
To be honest this is the first I have seen about a pole either this year or last year.

Me also.

Einion

 

[Joe Kutz]

I\'m surprised at the lack of partcipation from CMoN.

As mentioned by other people, I am going to say that the participation has a lot to do with where it was first posted. For various reasons I staggered the posting on various sites as opposed to announcing it on all of them on the same day. Many people that I talked to during follow up conversations mentioned that they did in fact see it on other websites, just that they saw it first on one of the larger news related sites.

What are your plan for the survey? Is it just a curiousity or part of a strategic marketing plan?

No real plans for it on my part, just personal interest. Other people may in fact use it for other stuff - but not me.

What I find very interesting is the amount of people who say they rely on a painting service to get their miniatures painted. In my direct environment (local gaming stores etc) this is still considered as a rarity...

It got a more detailed write up in the final version (which is lost on a USB key or lap top hard drive for the time being) but, by and large older (30-45 years old) miniature hobbyists tend to like the painting services compared to younger or much older.

Very interesting results, thanks for posting the results in such detail! Looks like a lot of my miniature compatriots need to broaden their board game horizons beyond Monopoly though!

To be fair to the rest of your compatriots - the results for that weren\'t exactly comprehensive. Since it was a write in I had to compile all the results by hand. Most people listed 3 or more games that they played - something like 4000 different answers...most of them spelled wrong or using abbreviations or some form of short hand. As opposed to breaking it down into a more detailed listing like I did for RPG or wargames rules...I summarized the mess.

That question (and the one regarding computer games) were both tossed in at the last minute at the recommendation of a game producer in order to get an idea of what is going on in those two areas with miniature hobbyists. Next years survey will be a bit more precise.

 

[Wren]

Board gaming is my other hobby/passion. There are just so many weird, fun and interesting games out there that I\'d love to see people have more exposure to. But while some board gamers are a bit snotty about games like Monopoly or Munchkin, my feeling is people should play whatever they enjoy.

I think it was valid to include some questions on board and computer gaming, as there\'s a lot of crossover, and you have a company like Privateer Press putting out a card game last year, the appeal of Fantasy Flight\'s games to mini gamers and so on.

 

[freakinacage]

interesting reading

 

[Corvus]

Originally posted by Joe Kutz

What I find very interesting is the amount of people who say they rely on a painting service to get their miniatures painted. In my direct environment (local gaming stores etc) this is still considered as a rarity...

It got a more detailed write up in the final version (which is lost on a USB key or lap top hard drive for the time being) but, by and large older (30-45 years old) miniature hobbyists tend to like the painting services compared to younger or much older.

probably because relying on a painting service is so expensive