Imperial Assault seems to be going through a slowed release cycle after what seemed to be a reliable 1 Big Box/1 Small Box/ Handfull of Blister Waves annual trend. And ultimately, like almost all games, it will eventually die.
But is it there yet? Has interest in this dungeon crawler/skirmish game waned so badly that it's no longer popular enough to be justified as supported?
I decided to take a look at search engine trends to see how popular Imperial Assault seems to be in general, and to see if its popularity seems to be on its way out. Greanted, this is a relatively simplistic view of the process as I'm only really looking at a single search item term (Star Wars Imperial Assault) on a single search engine (Google), but I think this can still show us at least the general shape of the issue at hand. I'm hardly a statistics person, but if you want to see me continue on wild conclusions based on graphs, you're in the right place.
What you see here is a graph of Imperial Assault's apparent search trends over the last few years. That first big peak, the one marked, is December 2014- the release of the Core set. The second peak is December 2015, and the third is December 2016. I'd note that while both of those bumps presumably refer to Return to Hoth and Jabba's Realm respectively, they may also be bolstered by occurring near an actual Star Wars film's theatrical release.
Here is what the entire history of IA would look like when placed on this graph, with Big Box releases (red), Small Box Releases (Yellow) and Blister Waves (Purple).
That's pretty obviously not good. We're sitting roughly where we generally are at between big box releases (seems that Small Boxes and Blister Waves tend to have less of an effect) and still HotE had almost no effect on getting IA out of its funk. So, I'd say its fair to say that Imperial Assault is losing a bit of its fanbase.
However, consider this abysmal graph:
No, that's not a depiction of the average child star's career, but is actually the trends for the term "Magic the Gathering" since 2004. Again, some obvious flaws with this graph (not the least of which the fact that "MTG" has become a more common way to reference the game since then) but I think it's interesting to consider, since Magic is considered to be such an immovable pillar.
Just for kicks, here are some other topics I threw around.
There's the trends for the term "X-Wing Miniatures Game" over the past 5 years. Granted, much like Magic, I'm sure that the game's title among fans has been abbreviated over time, but it also seems like general interest in that has waned pretty badly, too.
Then, there's Star Wars Destiny, which despite my personal vendetta against FFG doing a CCG, I must congratulate on for doing relatively well for itself so far.
Speaking of games I have a vendetta against, check out Star Wars Legion- seemingly steadily on the rise, though I'm curious to see what this graph will look like post release:
Finally, and perhaps most interesting of all, is the term "Star Wars" itself. As a fan, I feel like I've been Star Wars mode 24/7 for the past few years, but it's easy to forget that the rest of the world moves on pretty fast. Here's the term for Star Wars for the past five years:
There's this huge buildup and spike with The Force Awakens, but you can barely even see Rogue One register on the graph.
So honestly, I think that Imperial Assault is losing traction, but didn't we already know that? Ten waves in, I don't anyone expected it to be as popular as it was in 2015 and 2016. But is it dead? Well, I don't think it has to be. But it needs its fans to keep it alive, so keep playing, keep buying, and keep competing in tournaments. If you love the game, keep it alive with your own interests.
May the Force be with you!
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- Thomas
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