Planned Obsolencence In Gaming

In tech a term that is being thrown around more often is the concept of planned obsolescence, the planned life of an item before it breaks or is incompatible, which in turn spurs the consumer to want to purchase another. Over the years I have also seen this play out in the tabletop gaming world.

For those of us who can remember the transition from 40k 2nd edition to 3rd or Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition to 6th were welcome changes which simplified cumbersome rules and made for streamlined game-play. Although some of my minis were getting phased out because of the change I eventually came around to seeing that there were overall improvements being made.

Alas, my Squat army was no longer welcome in 3rd edition

For the most part from 40k 3rd to 4th edition, which was about a ten year period there were no major overhauls. Notably, if you played Chaos Space Marines you had to purchase two codices in that time frame to stay relevant. A few of the other major armies also had new codices released during 4th edition, but many of the 3rd edition supplements were usable between editions.

I am mainly focusing on 40k because it has been the most popular of GWs core games in the United States for as long as I can remember. I also recall the frequency in edition overhauls after 4th edition was phased out. With each overhaul came a whole new set of supplements that each had a limited life along with the new edition. At one point when I was very deep into the hobby and playing in lots of events I wanted to have nearly all of the supplements, but I started to grow weary of repeating this cycle every 3 or 4 years. I not only feel this way for all of Games Workshop core game lineup, but I feel this way about Flames of War, and Dungeons and Dragons. Just an aside; I found it easier to reject having to always buy a whole new set of books for D&D because as the GM I was able to find a group willing to play in a 2nd edition Greyhawk setting.

My old Dark Elf beastmaster on manticore. Still on a square

Understandably, any of these game developers need to make a profit to keep their business growing, but I think there could be a fine balance struck between making your older editions incompatible vs stagnation. With Age of Sigmar, although I felt that GW through the baby out with the bath water to solve an IP issue, they did do something right with making the core rules available for free. Not only this, they made a game that was far less cumbersome to play, albeit with some flaws that have been worked out over time. Handing off the upcoming Old World setting to Forgeworld was a smart move and I look forward to dusting off some of my old Warhammer models that I didn't want to re-base.

I believe that we as consumers of these products can exert some pressure to get what we want and not just eat what's put before us. I would encourage more gamers to be skeptical about just picking up the next edition unless you feel it's worth it. There is nobody forcing your gaming group to buy into the newest and shiniest product. A smart company will realign if enough people reject the direction they are going.