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 Ahtman wrote:
Because something is decided and discussed beforehand doesn't keep it from being cringe worthy or poorly executed, of which this interview came off as both; no comedian bats 100% even at the top of their game. "Just trying to entertain" doesn't excuse it as coming across poorly.

Yeah, pretty much my thoughts on this. I'm not sure if the bar is that low for some people when it comes to mentioning non-mainstream stuff like tabletop wargaming, but this was definitely not a good showing by any means. If you think Henry Cavill being an outward fan of it will change anyone's perceptions of this kind of hobby, let's just say that it's like thinking that men crying in public will become seen as openly accepted if a few Hollywood actors like Henry or Dwayne Johnson do it.

 Snord wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
And yeah, "Have you heard of Dungeons and Dragons? Sort of like that, but different" is how you explain this stuff to normies. I usually don't talk about my hobbies to people not because I'm ashamed, but because I just can't be bothered, but when pressed, that's how I do it.

It's funny that this is the way to introduce Warhammer to the uninitiated. There was a time when it was more likely that laypeople were more likely to know about wargaming than role-playing games, and you would explain D&D by saying 'well, it's a kind of wargame, but everyone is on the same side".

Yes, folks, I am that old...

So nobody had the faintest idea of what you were talking about is what you're saying?

Charax wrote:
Oh look it's another sneering, condescending git asking if it's "like D&D" because that's the only frame of reference anyone has apparently.

Better than how GW shops used to introduce the game 'it's like chess'.

Because when I think of perfectly balanced games with simple rules that have endured for thousands of years...

I think of Warhammer.

Considering that D&D is a skirmish game pretending to be an RPG, that's a fair comparison.

I guess you also just get used to people being aware only of the pretty bad, outdated titles for each tabletop game genre, whether it's D&D, MTG, Warhammer or Monopoly. These games are just the most popular because they are the most popular, in kind of a vicious circle. How mamy people use these as synonyms for the entire genre? How many players of these games never think of trying anything else?

Nope, not watching that

IGDAF what the "General public" thinks of wargaming or 40K. If this subculture gets overtaken by mops and sociopaths in time, well, it was going to happen anyway..

As a few others have said, Cavill is going to take every opportunity he can to talk about 40K because he's exec producer on that 40K TV project. And at this point, he's just trying to get the thing greenlit. A project like that can spend YEARS in development hell.

So of course he's going to try to leverage his celebrity to keep it in the public consciousness and build fan support. I don't think he gives one gak about being teased about being a nerd and neither should anyone else.

 gorgon wrote:
As a few others have said, Cavill is going to take every opportunity he can to talk about 40K because he's exec producer on that 40K TV project. And at this point, he's just trying to get the thing greenlit. A project like that can spend YEARS in development hell.

So of course he's going to try to leverage his celebrity to keep it in the public consciousness and build fan support. I don't think he gives one gak about being teased about being a nerd and neither should anyone else.

Yeah, Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon is NOT helping his case either!

I hate sensationalism as much as the next guy, but since Femstodes (to be clear, not touching that specific topic here) my YouTube feed has been flooded with "HENRY CAVILL THREATENS TO LEAVE AMAZON SERIES FOR WOKEISM" and "GW STOCKS IN FREE FALL, EVERYONES RETIRING".

Is there any credit to that? or is there something actually going down with GW/Henry?

There's zero credit to that, it's clickbait algovomit titling because that's how YouTube forces people to get views.

One person is retiring and sold a big chunk of their stock. Which will cause stock to devalue as a big chunk returns to the market. So the stock will dip for a while; people will buy it up fast and it will settle down again. It's just the stock market being the stock market.

And yeah as Platuan said - youtube right now 100% rewards clickbait titles and videos. It freaking thrives on them right now and that has led many creators down that pathway just to survive and generate views. When a clickbait video gets you vast numbers of views and clicks its very very hard not to do them every so often just to keep your channel getting noticed for your regular content.

It's really sad to see the hobby being used as a platform by opportunistic YouTubers, culture warriors and other bottom feeders.

Who's retiring? Anyone we would know/care about?

Rachel Tongue, the CFO. Someone who will have been very important in the company's decision-making, but not a 'face' of the business.

She also announced she was retiring in January, and she’s been with the business for 27 years, so there’s nothing in the whole ‘CFO unhappy with female Custodes and retiring’ crap being spewn about.

 ImAGeek wrote:
She also announced she was retiring in January, and she’s been with the business for 27 years, so there’s nothing in the whole ‘CFO unhappy with female Custodes and retiring’ crap being spewn about.

Indeed. There is also a conspiracy being peddled that GW is being forced to become more 'woke' because Black Rock allegedly controls it. Black Rock has about 5% last time I looked; even if it went up a bit, it's hardly a controlling stake. The 'wokeness' thing is similarly unfounded. As a business, GW would be deluded if it thought that t it can continue to rely on a customer base the consists of the same straight, white male (nerds) who initially designed and played Warhammer. Given that their business model requires constant churn, and that most of their profits come from newer players, they have to adapt to a more diverse customer base ('diverse' in the sense that Warhammer players are an increasingly broad mix of races and genders). That inevitably means adding diversity to the models. It started a while back, with more representation of non-white skin tones, then the increased inclusion of female sculpts. And there really wasn't much adverse reaction - in fact players seemed to embrace it. The female Cadian heads, for instance, were very popular. It's the supposed change to the Custodes that's triggered this tirade of real or performative outrage. I'm not sure why; it might be because the Custodes are perceived as exclusively musclebound men. Even if it is a change, GW's fluff isn't holy writ - its a grab-bag of ideas that was thrown together very quickly to sell the original RT models, and has been revised as necessary ever since. It really doesn't justify the hysteria. And whatever the fluff currently says, there is nothing to stop you from having all-male or all-female Custodes in your army - no rational person will give a s**t.

As for Henry Cavill - I know he has a reputation as a stickler for the lore, but I think he's smart enough to know that GW's lore is malleable, and that what will matter is successfully evoking the feel of the WH40k universe. I dount that he's thinking of bailing on the project over something as silly as this. Amazon's success in bringing Fallout to the screen should also encourage him, although it slightly stole WH40k's thunder by presenting a grimdark future with a satirical undertone (it even had dudes in power armour).

 Platuan4th wrote:
There's zero credit to that, it's clickbait algovomit titling because that's how YouTube forces people to get views.

Indeed. Who was it that put a photo of the dude on his Youtube thumbnail and titled it something like "Painting Henry Cavill's army!" to draw clicks to their Custodes painting video?

 Snord wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
She also announced she was retiring in January, and she’s been with the business for 27 years, so there’s nothing in the whole ‘CFO unhappy with female Custodes and retiring’ crap being spewn about.

Indeed. There is also a conspiracy being peddled that GW is being forced to become more 'woke' because Black Rock allegedly controls it. Black Rock has about 5% last time I looked; even if it went up a bit, it's hardly a controlling stake.

It also points to a misunderstanding of how companies like Black Rock and Vanguard (similar business with a similar stake in GW) work. They're investment firms that have huge, diverse portfolios. They have no interest in getting involved in any of the businesses they hold shares in. In most cases the very reason they have such large holdings in a company is because it is being well run and is therefore attractive to investment firms. If that's no longer the case they'd simply divest, most likely gradually so as to not take too big a loss in one go.

I think this "controversy" is not really relevant to the Amazon deal at all. It's a small change to a small faction that may not even be slated to appear on-screen in any of the 40k projects currently in their early stages. Even if there are Custodes on-screen it will be so far in the future I suspect this whole issue will have been largely forgotten by then and it'll be pretty non-controversial if it does happen.

Ah yes, those infamous paragons of leftist activism... investment bankers.

Slipspace wrote:
I think this "controversy" is not really relevant to the Amazon deal at all. It's a small change to a small faction that may not even be slated to appear on-screen in any of the 40k projects currently in their early stages. Even if there are Custodes on-screen it will be so far in the future I suspect this whole issue will have been largely forgotten by then and it'll be pretty non-controversial if it does happen.

I only mentioned that because (1) there were a couple of YouTube vidoes that claimed that Henry was dropping out of the Amazon deal because of the Custodes 'scandal', and (2) I wanted to link my rant to the actual topic

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
Ah yes, those infamous paragons of leftist activism... investment bankers.

Black Rock's CEO allegedly pushes a 'woke' agenda. If he does, I am sure it's only to maximise Black Rock's profits, but that's what the internet says.

Part of the whole ‘Blackrock pushing woke/DEI’ thing under the surface is just another antisemitic conspiracy theory, whether the people buying into it are aware of that or not.

That train is never late...

 ImAGeek wrote:
Part of the whole ‘Blackrock pushing woke/DEI’ thing under the surface is just another antisemitic conspiracy theory, whether the people buying into it are aware of that or not.

Um, how is it antisemitic? And how's it a conspiracy theory when it's true?

 ShadowsAndDust wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Part of the whole ‘Blackrock pushing woke/DEI’ thing under the surface is just another antisemitic conspiracy theory, whether the people buying into it are aware of that or not.

Um, how is it antisemitic? And how's it a conspiracy theory when it's true?

Because I’ve literally seen people post diagrams of things like ‘every single aspect of Blackrock is Jewish’ and tying that in to the current ‘controversies’. It’s just a more ‘polite’ way of saying Jews are pulling the strings.

 ShadowsAndDust wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Part of the whole ‘Blackrock pushing woke/DEI’ thing under the surface is just another antisemitic conspiracy theory, whether the people buying into it are aware of that or not.

Um, how is it antisemitic? And how's it a conspiracy theory when it's true?

Because it's not true, at least in relation to Blackrock's investment in GW. The Blackrock CEO may well be pushing some kind of agenda, but they have absolutely no say in the day-to-day running of a business they've invested in, especially at the level of investment they have in GW. That's just not how any of this works. Hence, conspiracy theory.

Antisemitic is a bit of a stretch, though. It sort of ties into the whole "who controls the banks" conspiracy theories, I guess.

Often you find that when a person buys into one conspiracy they will more readily buy into others as well. Which is how a lot of conspiracies can end up crossing the lines over multiple ones for some followers.

Which with the internet means that they can spread that and suddenly X conspiracy is also linked to Y and to Z and its all Lizardpeople ruling our brains or something

Slipspace wrote:

 ShadowsAndDust wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Part of the whole ‘Blackrock pushing woke/DEI’ thing under the surface is just another antisemitic conspiracy theory, whether the people buying into it are aware of that or not.

Um, how is it antisemitic? And how's it a conspiracy theory when it's true?

Because it's not true, at least in relation to Blackrock's investment in GW. The Blackrock CEO may well be pushing some kind of agenda, but they have absolutely no say in the day-to-day running of a business they've invested in, especially at the level of investment they have in GW. That's just not how any of this works. Hence, conspiracy theory.

Antisemitic is a bit of a stretch, though. It sort of ties into the whole "who controls the banks" conspiracy theories, I guess.

So you are telling me, that a major shareholder that also runs a fund with what was it 10.3 Trillion $ has no more influence than the average shareholder? No and it's also not verifyable (hint it is, check their own anual releases, as soon as Blackrock and vanguard show up GW implements a head for diversity and a steering group)

If Blackrock has 5% of GW shares that means 95% of GW shares are held by other parties. That means it doesn't matter if Blackrock has a Trillion or 10Trillion in the bank - they aren't paying GW with that money.

They are a big firm but a minor shareholder and with minor shares in GW to influence GW.
Unless you can prove that they've done the thing Batman did in the film and used a bunch of sub-firms to invest in so that they might have a total number of shares much greater, just spread over subfirms.

 ImAGeek wrote:

Because I’ve literally seen people post diagrams of things like ‘every single aspect of Blackrock is Jewish’ and tying that in to the current ‘controversies’. It’s just a more ‘polite’ way of saying Jews are pulling the strings.

Then those people are antisemites, but that doesn't mean the fact that Blackrock is pushing social engineering is antisemitic.

Anyway I think we've gotten a bit off topic here. Maybe this discussion should continue in another thread?

 ImAGeek wrote:
Part of the whole ‘Blackrock pushing woke/DEI’ thing under the surface is just another antisemitic conspiracy theory, whether the people buying into it are aware of that or not.

I invite you to read directly from their website about their policy goals and the money they commit to spend furthering those goals:

https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/about-us/social-impact/advancing-racial-equity

https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/about-us/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/commitment-to-dei

They explicitly say they want to impact public policy, advance DEI policies and outline how they plan to do so.

It isn't a conspiracy to take them at their word (and look at their actual spending).

Yes, maybe GW is bizarrely excluded from these pressures. Timing doesn't really line up, but hey, believe what you want and roll out the tired "Hey! It is an Antisemitic Conspiracy to believe that they want to do the thing they explicitly say they want to do and then actually spend their money doing!" defense.

I have no clue what share of Blackrock is Jewish nor do I care. Why do people tie Blackrock with Judaism? Is the CEO Jewish? I assumed he was some form of WASP.

I'm still not sold on this newfangled notion that "diversity, equity, and inclusion" are sinister forces plotting our destruction.