The gaming industry in general is having trouble attracting new players right now.
Prohibitive costs, archaic rulesets, balancing toward making the new stuff more powerful than the old stuff, the fact that you require in-person friends to play, and the fact that most of the meatspace gamers you'll find are complete jackasses.
I wouldn't touch a hobby game with a ten foot pole, and I think they're really fucking cool in concept.
Sorry Kazz, but I have to pick this apart.
Cost prohibitive? Yes, I'll grant you that one. Marking and the skyrocketing cost of tin / the insane cost of starting up plastics manufacturing contribute to silly costs. Varying degrees of evil on the part of the game company fill in the rest. There's also a tiny little wedge reserved for evil retailers who like to add $10 to certain items for no reason at all.
Archaic rulesets? If I'm reading this right, it just means the rules are very old? I don't understand if you're trying to imply they're not fun as a result. 40k Has been around quite some time, and while the rules are little obtuse in spots, they aren't bad and
can be fun. Warmachine is newer, learned a little from some of the failures of 40k/Warhammer Fantasy, but it follows a bunch of the same dice principles. Can I hit the target? How badly did I wound the target? Please clarify if I am missing your point when you say 'archaic'.
New stuff more powerful than the old is a marketing and motivator gimmick. They have to breathe new life into the game if they want to keep up their monthly sales figures. In a given setting you can only go through so many ideas before it gets a little absurd at how many unit types are available. This is kinda why M:TG started jumping worlds every set.
Now, the requiring in-person friends bit. Um. That's kind of WHY I play these things. Having to sit down with someone to play a game encourages better social habits.* They are not assholes as a majority, despite the stories I've cited in this thread. There are however, people who confuse the objectives of playing to win and playing to have fun. The guy who solely plays to win doesn't care who you are and just wants to make you another notch in his belt as he grinds his way to whatever prize the store offers tonight, so he can lord it over everybody. The guy who is entirely playing to have fun can have a tendency to complain if your army/deck has some structure to it so that it has good odds of winning, as compared to their setup that revolves around a 'fluff' or flavor theme that has no real strategy on it's own. The fun people are the folks who look for a fine middle ground. Play to have a good time, and win if you can. The real win is everybody having a chuckle at the end and having a fun memory of what took place. These people actually do exist, but with most any kind of social community, the only ones you tend to hear about are the ones that go out of their way to make themselves noticed. I refuse to accept the statement that the majority are
The nice folk are busy playing in the corner, hoping nobody notices them and doesn't try to associate them with the jerk.
EDIT: Jesus christ you guys are typing at the speed of light.
*Not in any way research backed, just personal experience.