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TLDR : Daddy hits me because he loves me. So basically the smartest thing a company can do is not listen to its customers (those bastards). I give you the bell of lost souls :lol:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/04/editorial-gw-doesnt-need-to-listen-to-us.html


Here's a great article posted by crevab in the comment section about what can happen when a company does finally decided to listen to customers.




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Originally Posted by Ryan Dancey: the man, the myth, the legend
In the winter of 1997, I traveled to Lake Geneva Wisconsin on a secret mission. In the late fall, rumors of TSR's impending bankruptcy had created an opportunity to made a bold gamble that the business could be saved by an infusion of capital or an acquisition with a larger partner. After a hasty series of phone calls and late night strategy sessions, I found myself standing in the snow outside of 201 Sheridan Springs Road staring at a building bearing a sign that said "TSR, Incorporated".

Inside the building, I found a dead company.

In the halls that had produced the stuff of my childhood fantasies, and had fired my imagination and become unalterably intertwined with my own sense of self, I found echoes, empty desks, and the terrible depression of lost purpose.

The life story of a tree can be read by a careful examination of its rings. The life story of a corporation can be read by a careful examination of its financial records and corporate minutes.

I was granted unprecedented access to those records. I read the TSR corporate log book from the first page penned in haste by Gary Gygax to the most recent terse minutes dictated to a lawyer with no connection to hobby gaming. I was able to trace the meteoric rise of D&D as a business, the terrible failure to control costs that eventually allowed a total outsider to take control away from the founders, the slow and steady progress to rebuild the financial solvency of the company, and the sudden and dramatic failure of that business model. I read the euphoric copyright filings for the books of my lost summers: "Player's Handbook", "Fiend Folio", "Oriental Adventures". I read the contract between Gary and TSR where Gary was severed from contact with the company he had founded and the business he had nurtured and grown. I saw the clause where Gary, forced to the wall by ruthless legal tactics was reduced to insisting to the right to use his own name in future publishing endeavors, and to take and keep control of his personal D&D characters. I read the smudged photocopies produced by the original Dragonlance Team, a group of people who believed in a new idea for gaming that told a story across many different types of products. I saw concept artwork evolve from lizard men with armor to unmistakable draconians. I read Tracy Hickman's one page synopsis of the Dragonlance Story. I held the contract between Tracy and Margaret for the publication of the three Chronicles novels. I read the contract between Ed Greenwood and TSR to buy his own personal game world and transform it into the most developed game setting in history - the most detailed and explored fantasy world ever created.

And I read the details of the Random House distribution agreement; an agreement that TSR had used to support a failing business and hide the fact that TSR was rotten at the core. I read the entangling bank agreements that divided the copyright interests of the company as security against default, and realized that the desperate arrangements made to shore up the company's poor financial picture had so contaminated those rights that it might not be possible to extract Dungeons & Dragons from the clutches of lawyers and bankers and courts for years upon end. I read the severance agreements between the company and departed executives which paid them extraordinary sums for their silence. I noted the clauses, provisions, amendments and agreements that were piling up more debt by the hour in the form of interest charges, fees and penalties. I realized that the money paid in good faith by publishers and attendees for GenCon booths and entrance fees had been squandered and that the show itself could not be funded. I discovered that the cost of the products that company was making in many cases exceeded the price the company was receiving for selling those products. I toured a warehouse packed from floor to 50 foot ceiling with products valued as though they would soon be sold to a distributor with production stamps stretching back to the late 1980s. I was 10 pages in to a thick green bar report of inventory, calculating the true value of the material in that warehouse when I realized that my last 100 entries had all been "$0"'s.

I met staff members who were determined to continue to work, despite the knowledge that they might not get paid, might not even be able to get in to the building each day. I saw people who were working on the same manuscripts they'd been working on six months earlier, never knowing if they'd actually be able to produce the fruits of their labor. In the eyes of those people (many of whom I have come to know as friends and co workers), I saw defeat, desperation, and the certain knowledge that somehow, in some way, they had failed. The force of the human, personal pain in that building was nearly overwhelming - on several occasions I had to retreat to a bathroom to sit and compose myself so that my own tears would not further trouble those already tortured souls.

I ran hundreds of spreadsheets, determined to figure out what had to be done to save the company. I was convinced that if I could just move enough money from column A to column B, that everything would be ok. Surely, a company with such powerful brands and such a legacy of success could not simply cease to exist due to a few errors of judgment and a poor strategic plan?

I made several trips to TSR during the frenzied days of negotiation that resulted in the acquisition of the company by Wizards of the Coast. When I returned home from my first trip, I retreated to my home office; a place filled with bookshelves stacked with Dungeons & Dragons products. From the earliest games to the most recent campaign setting supplements - I owned, had read, and loved those products with a passion and intensity that I devoted to little else in my life. And I knew, despite my best efforts to tell myself otherwise, that the disaster I kept going back to in Wisconsin was the result of the products on those shelves.

When Peter put me in charge of the tabletop RPG business in 1998, he gave me one commission: Find out what went wrong, fix the business, save D&D. Vince also gave me a business condition that was easy to understand and quite direct. "God damnit, Dancey", he thundered at me from across the conference table: "Don't lose any more money!"

That became my core motivation. Save D&D. Don't lose money. Figure out what went wrong. Fix the problem.

Back into those financials I went. I walked again the long threads of decisions made by managers long gone; there are few roadmarks to tell us what was done and why in the years TSR did things like buy a needlepoint distributorship, or establish a west coast office at King Vedor's mansion. Why had a moderate success in collectable dice triggered a million unit order? Why did I still have stacks and stacks of 1st edition rulebooks in the warehouse? Why did TSR create not once, not twice, but nearly a dozen times a variation on the same, Tolkien inspired, eurocentric fantasy theme? Why had it constantly tried to create different games, poured money into marketing those games, only to realize that nobody was buying those games? Why, when it was so desperate for cash, had it invested in a million dollar license for content used by less than 10% of the marketplace? Why had a successful game line like Dragonlance been forcibly uprooted from its natural home in the D&D game and transplanted to a foreign and untested new game system? Why had the company funded the development of a science fiction game modeled on D&D - then not used the D&D game rules?

In all my research into TSR's business, across all the ledgers, notebooks, computer files, and other sources of data, there was one thing I never found - one gaping hole in the mass of data we had available.

No customer profiling information. No feedback. No surveys. No "voice of the customer". TSR, it seems, knew nothing about the people who kept it alive. The management of the company made decisions based on instinct and gut feelings; not data. They didn't know how to listen - as an institution, listening to customers was considered something that other companies had to do - TSR lead, everyone else followed.

In today's hypercompetitive market, that's an impossible mentality. At Wizards of the Coast, we pay close attention to the voice of the customer. We ask questions. We listen. We react. So, we spent a whole lot of time and money on a variety of surveys and studies to learn about the people who play role playing games. And, at every turn, we learned things that were not only surprising, they flew in the face of all the conventional wisdom we'd absorbed through years of professional game publishing.

We heard some things that are very, very hard for a company to hear. We heard that our customers felt like we didn't trust them. We heard that we produced material they felt was substandard, irrelevant, and broken. We heard that our stories were boring or out of date, or simply uninteresting. We heard the people felt that >we< were irrelevant.

I know now what killed TSR. It wasn't trading card games. It wasn't Dragon Dice. It wasn't the success of other companies. It was a near total inability to listen to its customers, hear what they were saying, and make changes to make those customers happy. TSR died because it was deaf.

Amazingly, despite all those problems, and despite years of neglect, the D&D game itself remained, at the core, a viable business. Damaged; certainly. Ailing; certainly. But savable? Absolutely.

Our customers were telling us that 2e was too restrictive, limited their creativity, and wasn't "fun to play'? We can fix that. We can update the core rules to enable the expression of that creativity. We can demonstrate a commitment to supporting >your< stories. >Your< worlds. And we can make the game fun again.

Our customers were telling us that we produced too many products, and that the stuff we produced was of inferior quality? We can fix that. We can cut back on the number of products we release, and work hard to make sure that each and every book we publish is useful, interesting, and of high quality.

Our customers were telling us that we spent too much time on our own worlds, and not enough time on theirs? Ok - we can fix that. We can re-orient the business towards tools, towards examples, towards universal systems and rules that aren't dependent on owning a thousand dollars of unnecessary materials first.

Our customers were telling us that they prefer playing D&D nearly 2:1 over the next most popular game option? That's an important point of distinction. We can leverage that desire to help get them more people to play >with< by reducing the barriers to compatibility between the material we produce, and the material created by other companies.

Our customers told us they wanted a better support organization? We can pour money and resources into the RPGA and get it growing and supporting players like never before in the club's history. (10,000 paid members and rising, nearly 50,000 unpaid members - numbers currently skyrocketing).

Our customers were telling us that they want to create and distribute content based on our game? Fine - we can accommodate that interest and desire in a way that keeps both our customers and our lawyers happy.

Are we still listening? Yes, we absolutely are. If we hear you asking us for something we're not delivering, we'll deliver it. But we're not going to cater to the specific and unique needs of a minority if doing so will cause hardship to the majority. We're going to try and be responsible shepards of the D&D business, and that means saying "no" to things that we have shown to be damaging to the business and that aren't wanted or needed by most of our customers.

We listened when the customers told us that Alternity wasn't what they wanted in a science fiction game. We listened when customers told us that they didn't want the confusing, jargon filled world of Planescape. We listened when people told us that the Ravenloft concept was overshadowed by the products of a competitor. We listened to customers who told us that they want core materials, not world materials. That they buy DUNGEON magazine every two months at a rate twice that of our best selling stand-alone adventures.

We're not telling anyone what game to play. We are telling the market that we're going to actively encourage our players to stand up and demand that they be listened to, and that they become the center of the gaming industry - rather than the current publisher-centric model. Through the RPGA, the Open Gaming movement, the pages of Dragon Magazine, and all other venues available, we want to empower our customers to do what >they< want, to force us and our competitors to bend to >their< will, to make the products >they< want made.

I want to be judged on results, not rhetoric. I want to look back at my time at the helm of this business and feel that things got better, not worse. I want to know that my team made certain that the mistakes of the past wouldn't be the mistakes of the future. I want to know that we figured out what went wrong. That we fixed it. That we saved D&D. And that god damnit, we didn't lose money.

Thank you for listening,

Sincerely,

Ryan S. Dancey
VP, Wizards of the Coast
Brand Manager, Dungeons & Dragons

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Those comments. So many delusional apologists The Most Noble and Honourable Order of GW White Knights are there in full force.

That was brilliant.

I have never understood some people's almost fanatic devotion to GW. Do they make great models? Yeah, I think so for the most part. Do they have an enriched universe? Again, I'd say yes. But they have many bad features, from the way they utilize the rules cycles to force customers to buy models, to offering less and less content per dollar with both miniatures and rules, to having some downright shady business practices.

But no matter what they do, people jump up and scream you down for daring to insult the venerable GW. I wouldn't be surprised in the guy who wrote "Spots the Space Marine" got death threats from these people. It's as though GW can do no wrong, and I guess in that regard GW *has* really become more like Apple- their customer base may have diminished considerably, but a lot of what is left is the absolute faithful who will not hear word nor thought that would accuse their product as not being the absolute best.

It's a little terrifying sometimes, considering we're talking about plastic miniatures.

I read your first line. I larfed.

I read the BoLS editorial. I facepalmed.

I read that article posted by Crevab. Only one thing to be said in response to that.

Oh no that article is stupid 40k is still the bestest game ever and GW makes the bestest stuffs.

GW is diverse?

40k, that fantasy game, books for those games, and a specialty model company for those same games and books? That's hardly diverse by any stretch of the imagination. Hell, Spartan Games is more diverse and they're a fraction of the size.

The whole article is pretty weak and feels like its reaching for any reason to pardon GW. The comments were pretty gold too.

Crablez, cool article about D&D/TSR. In recent news about a company listening to feedback, Valve rolled out paid mods for Skyrim and within 24hrs had pulled it back after mass backlash.

Anyone who thinks GW shouldn't be taking notes from the community is deluding themselves.

It's clickbait guys.

That's the only way the editor let that article through was because he knew it would cause a fervor and draw crowds of clicks to hit their ads.

Best thing to do? Not click it.

Honestly, what that post made me ask myself is why the heck do I ever go to BOLS? They offer virtually nothing beyond 40k. I finally made my way over to Beasts of War and, low and behold, they've got a lot of everything!

So, thanks for that BOLS. Now go back to telling yourselves you can each make up financially for the infidels who have left 40k. They will rue the day!

WayneTheGame wrote:
Those comments. So many delusional apologists The Most Noble and Honourable Order of GW White Knights are there in full force.

Why do you hate fun?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Accolade wrote:
I have never understood some people's almost fanatic devotion to GW. Do they make great models? Yeah, I think so for the most part. Do they have an enriched universe? Again, I'd say yes. But they have many bad features, from the way they utilize the rules cycles to force customers to buy models, to offering less and less content per dollar with both miniatures and rules, to having some downright shady business practices.

But no matter what they do, people jump up and scream you down for daring to insult the venerable GW. I wouldn't be surprised in the guy who wrote "Spots the Space Marine" got death threats from these people. It's as though GW can do no wrong, and I guess in that regard GW *has* really become more like Apple- their customer base may have diminished considerably, but a lot of what is left is the absolute faithful who will not hear word nor thought that would accuse their product as not being the absolute best.

It's a little terrifying sometimes, considering we're talking about plastic miniatures.

It's a well known fact that analytical thought is tool of waac gamers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vermis wrote:
I read your first line. I larfed.

I read the BoLS editorial. I facepalmed.

I read that article posted by Crevab. Only one thing to be said in response to that.

Spoiler:

PWNED

Yeah crevab's post made my day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blacksails wrote:
Crablez, cool article about D&D/TSR. In recent news about a company listening to feedback, Valve rolled out paid mods for Skyrim and within 24hrs had pulled it back after mass backlash.

Anyone who thinks GW shouldn't be taking notes from the community is deluding themselves.

Yeah, I can understand the apprehension. It didn't help that gabe newell had to answer for valve mods basically censoring decent ala gamergate's early reddit days. In defense of gabe newell he wasn't thrilled to find out about censuring of posters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vertrucio wrote:
It's clickbait guys.

That's the only way the editor let that article through was because he knew it would cause a fervor and draw crowds of clicks to hit their ads.

Best thing to do? Not click it.

It's an ok source for second hand news, the opinion on the other hand, very rarely is there much I agree with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vertrucio wrote:
It's clickbait guys.

That's the only way the editor let that article through was because he knew it would cause a fervor and draw crowds of clicks to hit their ads.

Best thing to do? Not click it.

The thread is really more about an example of a bad article vs a good one, bols is what it is.

BoLS is the Buzzfeed of the miniature wargaming world. Their 'breaking news' is just sourced from other sites, often without any citations, and their editorials aren't worth the brain cell death count it takes to read them.

The sole reason to go to BoLS is the Friday 'Out of the Box' round up article to see all the cool, non-GW miniatures that came out recently.

 Accolade wrote:
Honestly, what that post made me ask myself is why the heck do I ever go to BOLS? They offer virtually nothing beyond 40k. I finally made my way over to Beasts of War and, low and behold, they've got a lot of everything!

So, thanks for that BOLS. Now go back to telling yourselves you can each make up financially for the infidels who have left 40k. They will rue the day!

Well they have been having some really nice batreps lately with fully painted models and terrain so there's definitely good content on bols, you just have to wade through a lot of projection and vitriol. It's always good fun to see if goatboy has learned then from than yet

You dont need their "ouf of the box" section.

Just use http://ttfix.blogspot.de/ for daily massive updates on new minis.

Anyone else remember when BOLS used to have loads of interesting articles, homebrew rules and different types of army? God, must be 8 or so years ago now.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Anyone else remember when BOLS used to have loads of interesting articles, homebrew rules and different types of army? God, must be 8 or so years ago now.

I don't mind the 40k centric stuff as much as the "blind shill" approach that Mr. Vela tends to use in all of his posts e.g. "Look at this new awesome thing from GW! Get your wallets ready boys! Get ready to buy buy buy!"

I have read that Dancey article many, many times - and posted links to it more than a few.

There are parallels, not only to GW, but also to WotC during 4th edition D&D. (During the lead up to 4th edition, WotC stopped listening to their fans. The result was the shortest lived edition of D&D to date.)

Sometimes being the 500 pound gorilla means that the gorilla gets beaten up by three 75 pound chimps.

The BoLS article on the other hand... oi! Next up, how to bury your head in the sand for advanced students!

The Auld Grump

Thanks for reminding me why I never check out BoLS.

Original article not written by anyone that has studied economics or marketing at even the most basic of levels one presumes.

The comments section underneath is blocked for me at work unfortunately (fortunately?!) although that letter from Ryan Dancey was well worth reading.

 Pacific wrote:
Original article not written by anyone that has studied economics or marketing at even the most basic of levels one presumes.

The comments section underneath is blocked for me at work unfortunately (fortunately?!) although that letter from Ryan Dancey was well worth reading.

Unfortunately if you want a laugh, fortunately if you don't want to read people saying how GW does listen (faster codexes yo!) or how the internet is just whiners and they shouldn't listen to it at all.

Some gems:


There's more good ones, but I'm tired

Dancey seems like a champ.

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Original article not written by anyone that has studied economics or marketing at even the most basic of levels one presumes.

The comments section underneath is blocked for me at work unfortunately (fortunately?!) although that letter from Ryan Dancey was well worth reading.

Unfortunately if you want a laugh, fortunately if you don't want to read people saying how GW does listen (faster codexes yo!) or how the internet is just whiners and they shouldn't listen to it at all.

Some gems:

Spoiler:

Basically argument #1 says it all. GW can't listen to customer arguments, because basically everybody plays different and prefers different armies.

GW listens to what the community says. Then they very wisely ignore it. Let's be honest with ourselves, we have a difficult community that is never satisfied with anything.
Henry Ford famously said, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse."

So that part of the community (the customers) that are currently HAPPY with the game... are they just wrong; and it's THEM that GW should ignore?

This community literally cannot agree on ANYTHING. By it's nature it's an entitled and entirely ridiculous customer base to please; but the point is they are not, have not, ever been unified in what they desire.

Some of these smaller games that are starting from scratch with strong online communities might be doing things very right - by that cannot work for GW now.

GW isn't the bad guy the haters make them out to be. They have great products, good rules, fun games, comparable prices and the best customer service in the industry. All the other systems everyone cites as being better have flaws too or are way smaller scale and simpler.

This one is really good, a reply to the TSR article:

Very interesting. And a really good example of why Games Workshop is still a strong company, and why TSR is dead.
Dancey talks about listening to the customer, but a lot of the evidence is around sales, inventory reports, old stock, inefficient or non existent management accounting information. Also, forgetting core business, and not understanding what your customers want and are willing to pay for.
Contrast this to GW:
- Sales are by volume probably down, but by dollar it is largely stable
- Does GW have stock sitting around from the 80's or 90's that is not moving but priced at full retail value? Unknown but given that with a few rare exceptions all the models on sale currently are less than 10 years old, and many have gone out of stock before re supply I would suggest unlikely
- The fact that Games Workshop does limited edition strongly suggests they know exactly what profit they want out of a product, and have the information to enable them to do that, which points to an efficient system
- Forgetting what their customers want? Problem with looking at internet fora / comments sections is the self selecting nature of the participants, and the small numbers making it difficult to pull valid interpretations out. However, I would suggest you don't run a niche business for 40 odd years without some tools to find out what the people actually spending money on your product want

I'm saying there are a lot of people that like apocalypse style games or want to use those types of models in their games and that trying to claim that one knows everyone's mind by claiming "us" is all of us is not valid.

While you may hate GW and wish to hold a revolution against them for whatever reason, there are more than enough people that are content with what they are getting and everyone's value system is very different from each other.

Lords of War are not Apocalypse. And they are optional, Just like Allies, Formations, Unbound, Fortifications or anything else that has your panties in a bunch. No one is forcing anything on you.

O wait sorry silly me. You are right your way is the only one true way to play 40K.

Badwrongfun! BADWRONGFUN!! BADWRONG FUUUUUUNN!!!!!1!1!!!!!!1

There's more good ones, but I'm tired

Thanks for posting those (or not! )

I thought I would never read comments as ill-informed (and unintentionally hilarious) as those that accompany a news article on the Daily Mail website. Turns out I was wrong!

Jesus wept, you have to hope the families of these people keep them away from charismatic, long-haired individuals that tell them to throw away their shoes and come to live with them in a great 'family' on a Pacific island..

The only reason I ever go to Bols is for the rumors. Most other articles are click bait. Like this one.

The only legitimate point that the article makes is that, even with all the mistakes GW makes, they are still top dog in the miniature gaming market; even with all the new competition, the fact remains that many people (including me) still love to play their game. People have been predicting the fall of GW for years, yet they still manage to muddle through. The only way I see GW going bankrupt is if someone comes along with a product that is a complete revolution and dominates the market.

Loved the letter from Wizards. Goes to show why they're the top sellers in most game stores: they listen to their customers' feedback. GW just seems to run along on gut feeling and a completely misguided sense of "balance".

Also, for the OP: abuse jokes aren't funny.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
The only reason I ever go to Bols is for the rumors. Most other articles are click bait. Like this one.

The rumors posts are click bait as well.

 pretre wrote:

 TheNewBlood wrote:
The only reason I ever go to Bols is for the rumors. Most other articles are click bait. Like this one.

The rumors posts are click bait as well.

Curse you Larry Vela!

Still, I think the article is useful, at least as a peek into the mind of a professional GW apologist.

Occasionally Bols has an editorial worth reading. Once every full moon, when Jupiter aligns with Mars, and Tzeentch wishes it so.

I needed a laugh, Wayne. And when I started reading those I did start to laugh. But by the last one I somehow ended up crying.

'GW shouldn't listen to customers because they all want different things' is something that particularly makes me want to bash my head against the wall. Yeah - some people want some attempt at balance, some people want a less crazy price tag on their mass-produced plastic minis, some want access to a complete army list without having to buy half of it in DLC, some want less rules churn that makes new problems rather than fixing old ones... Why, that's already four different things that people want! How ya gonna accommodate 'em all?

One thing that's certain, as GW continues it's noble quest to make a wargame that's perfectly tailored to left-handed half-Azerbaijanian iguana-breeders (with little concept of the value of injected polystyrene), the ranks of the chosen few are slowly but steadily dwindling. Those 'more than enough' players could turn into 'less than enough' with little warning, especially any kind of warning from GW. No amount of sticking your head in the sand is going to help matters then.

Funny how Dancey took the reins of a slumping game company and turned it's fortunes around by listening to the different things that gamers wanted, innit? Almost makes it seem like that would be a good, useful thing for a purposely deaf business to try.

 Vermis wrote:
I needed a laugh, Wayne. And when I started reading those I did start to laugh. But by the last one I somehow ended up crying.

'GW shouldn't listen to customers because they all want different things' is something that particularly makes me want to bash my head against the wall. Yeah - some people want some attempt at balance, some people want a less crazy price tag on their mass-produced plastic minis, some want access to a complete army list without having to buy half of it in DLC, some want less rules churn that makes new problems rather than fixing old ones... Why, that's already four different things that people want! How ya gonna accommodate 'em all?

One thing that's certain, as GW continues it's noble quest to make a wargame that's perfectly tailored to left-handed half-Azerbaijanian iguana-breeders (with little concept of the value of injected polystyrene), the ranks of the chosen few are slowly but steadily dwindling. Those 'more than enough' players could turn into 'less than enough' with little warning, especially any kind of warning from GW. No amount of sticking your head in the sand is going to help matters then.

Funny how Dancey took the reins of a slumping game company and turned it's fortunes around by listening to the different things that gamers wanted, innit? Almost makes it seem like that would be a good, useful thing for a purposely deaf business to try.

Very well said good sir. I know a number of people who are a bit upset that they purchased the skitarii dex only to find out they're essentially being trolled by gw.

At this point I don't know what people expect with GW though, that they'll change if we customers throw enough money at them?

It ends up being one of those "fool me once, fool me twice, three times...four tim-oh, new Adeptus Mechanicus!"

 Accolade wrote:
At this point I don't know what people expect with GW though, that they'll change if we customers throw enough money at them?

It ends up being one of those "fool me once, fool me twice, three times...four tim-oh, new Adeptus Mechanicus!"

I prefer the argument 'Fool me once, fool me twice, oh, look! Kings of War/Infinity/WARMACHINE/Deadzone/Bolt Action/Malifaux/Flames of War/Hordes of the Things/Dreadball [Circle As Appropriate]. No fooling!'

The Auld Grump

Maybe it's that 40k is so extreme and over the top that it's like going from a Burger King double whopper and all the fixin's to a finely done Risotto. The sensory overload of 40k dulls their senses to the better options out there.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Maybe it's that 40k is so extreme and over the top that it's like going from a Burger King double whopper and all the fixin's to a finely done Risotto. The sensory overload of 40k dulls their senses to the better options out there.

I'd normally say don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance but GW are an exception and so I think it is far more insidious than that. GW target younger markets than their competition because they think of themselves as a toy company. Once they have introduced those youngsters to their product though they have no interest in getting them into the hobby, they want them to become part of The GW Hobby(tm). GW push the narrative that they are the hobby in it's entirety and refuse to talk about or allow people in their stores to talk about other companies in the world making models. This creates hobbyists who have never encountered well balanced games, fairly priced miniatures or companies that respect (or even god forbid LIKE) their customers. These ideas become new and strange, which makes then scary. People cling to what they know and socialize with people who think the same, and that's how you get articles like this on sites like BOLS.