When it comes to people who are joining Warhammer as a hobby, let's say that it's someone who buys their first Combat Patrol. What do you think is the critical window where they become a lifetime hobbyist, or drop off and stop doing Warhammer? Is it three months, six months?

That’s a  good question. Since I only talk to the ones that actually stay, I don't know at what point the drop-offs actually happened, but I meet quite a lot of hobby-interested people that want to be players, but they have a hard time actually getting started. They buy the miniatures, they buy the paint, they start painting, but for the next step to actually get into gaming, it can take some time before they find the right time and place or people.

In this hobby's life cycle how long do you think they stay before stopping to actively participate in the hobby—coming, buying, playing, painting, and showing up? Is there some sort of a churn or dropout rate? And when they leave, if they do, why do they leave?

So I think there's a large gap of people that are between 20 and 40 years who were gamers when they were young. There's this huge gap where they are not—there's no time for games or no energy. And then when the kids are old enough and the career is in order, you come back to the hobby because there's more hobby time, and you can just as well start playing Warhammer again as doing some typical adult hobbies like golf or other boring hobbies. So I would say that there are quite a lot of returning players that are between 40 and 45 years who come in and say that it's been 20 years, but now they want to play Warhammer.

So out of the people who paint, play, and hang out at the stores and do Warhammer, how many of those are the ones who are not really attached to the IP, do you think?

I think it can be quite a large part of them that never read any Warhammer books or don't play the video games. They're just into the game and they like the models and the painting, but they're not invested in the actual IP. It could probably be like 50% or something. I myself am in that category. I really like the game, I really like the models, I like to paint them, and I have a strong attachment to the IP, but I'm not into the lore in such a way that if I quit playing, I would still read the books just to keep attached to the lore. I don't think I would do that. It's the game that is the focus part for me.