nah … 3D printing may be good, but it’s not quite at the level you could sell such a printer at a non specialist store and expect people to succeed at their first print. The 3D print file collection websites are however slowly but surely settling on a standard format that just works.

The middle to high end printers are getting there, but it is far from ‘plug&play’ for the uninitiated.

I think the answer is to GW’s invulnerability is much much simpler.

They represent something that is ‘good enough’ for a lot of their customers.

It’s the McDonalds of wargaming.

Us geeks don’t like it in the same way that a hobby chef won’t like the entire McDonalds concept.
And that’s because we know there’s better stuff out there and we’re willing to do the work to get there.

For most folk GW’s products are ‘good enough’

Part of that may be ignorance (due to how widespread GW’s products are), but … we as hobbyists need to understand that not everyone is going to have the standards we have set for ourselves.

GW didn’t die when they killed off the old world, despite fans burning their games.

And lets’ not forget the last time GW’s dominance was threatened … was when a little game called X-wing was released.

It was a proper threat (even pushing GW out of the top of most sold games for a short while) and it was made by a company that had the means to do a world wide release while benefiting from an IP that was insanely popular.

The only problem was that the market that Xwing tapped into never evolved into a community.
The kind of people that bought that starter set never were going to be big gamers or collectors.
Although FFG might have capitalized on the collectors’ gene by having a more predictable release schedule, the fact is that they quickly ran out of things that entry level fans for the Starwars franchise would want to own.

But as a hobby with gaming potential ? nah …
Like the Nintendo Wii the audience they attracted were never going to commit to anything beyond that initial wow-factor.

I’d also argue that our hobby doesn’t give immediate rewards. It doesn’t have the instant-gratification that videogames have.
(and this was why Xwing also worked … it was playable out of the box, no complex rules, pre-painted minis, … it was closer to a boardgame. It may be why it just worked, but it was also its’ achilles’ heel.