Blood, Dice and Darkness.

An interesting and relatively illuminating interview with the old hand, particularly enjoyed the detailing with the Lord of the Rings franchising.

“The model design for Warhammer had started to get overblown,” he said.

“The models started to get big and came with too many parts. The number of pieces and the size of design are key factors in the cost of production, and there was a lack of discipline that meant the models were becoming less profitable.

“When I did Lord of the Rings I redefined the miniatures to be 28mm again. I took them down in size and had single-piece models. That was part of the reason it was successful.”

---

“But the reason it became a problem for Games Workshop was that the sales divisions, which had been given a huge degree of autonomy and political power, suddenly found they had hugely overblown organisations. They had the staff, but none of them could actually sell anything – they were used to people just coming in and buying stuff. So the success of the Lord of the Rings ended up being a failure in the company’s eyes because they lost control of it, which always pissed me off.”

A very interesting interview.

He corrobarates a number of points that critics have made about GW.

I had that Charles Grant book too, but it has gone the way of all flesh, unfortunately.

“I was the head of the creative department, and they weren’t doing anything creative any more,” he said.

“The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with.”

It’s a game with a future, which I don’t think 40K is.

Wow.

Of course he's going to gak talk 40k. Has to make his game I literally heard about just now look good!

I think he does have a point in that I don't think 40K really has a "future" in the sense of a planned one. I think GW is now just throwing out every thing they can think of to keep the sales propped up, but not with any plan as to long-term survivability.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Of course he's going to gak talk 40k. Has to make his game I literally heard about just now look good!

That's really not the sort of thing he's done in the past. It's always been assumed/implied, but he's never actually come out and said "I left because the product's gak and they're all spankers" quote so explicitly before.

If it upsets your own personal view, do whatever it takes to reconcile this information with your own outlook, but this only really confirms the interpretation of events, finances etc that many have been arriving at for a few years now.

What does the future mean for 40K? They can add new units to the game, for instance Centurions and Knight Titan, they can upgrade old units like the Broadside and the Fire Warriors. They can introduce more colours of Space Marien.

They must be running out of potential areas for expansion. Forts, artillery, giant tanks, robots and aircraft are already included now. Maybe introduce boats?

The other thing of course is to keep fiddling with the rules to make people buy a new edition and codex every few years. This is not new in the sense of progress, of course.

The whole article seems to reinforce the concept that GW has no idea what the they are doing. Lots of interesting insights into the history and evolution of the company though, particularly for someone like myself who is newer to the hobby. Thanks for sharing!

Seven hells, that was intense. He really laid it all out. Kudos to the guy for being so forthright about everything.

It really strikes me, though, that luck was a major part in the company growing as successful as it has. To me, it looks like they had a few great, innovate ideas at the beginning that they've been coasting on ever since. For example, opening their own shops was brilliant... 30 years ago. Now, the world has moved on, but they refuse to.

It does seem to fit the conclusions that many have already arrived at through observation, other former employees and GW's own statements.

Brutal. And not at all surprising really.

How many years now since Rick left GW? In the years directly after he left he kept quite mum about things for a while after leaving, had to sign a waver or something was it?

He left in 2010.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
The thing is that all of GW's "name" designers have left in the past five or so years. Even our spiritual liege, Mat Ward.

“It was presented at the time as a merger,” said Priestley, “but really it was a takeover by Citadel.

“We even spoke at the time about changing the name of the company, but there were already about half a dozen Games Workshop stores, and we thought it would have been very expensive to have the signs repainted.

This is such a great metaphor for their current predicament: internally, they think of themselves as a modeling company, but they're so bound to the "Games Workshop" name that they can't shake the perception that they are a game company first.

(and also something about making small-minded accounting decisions at the expense of the health of their business. Like not wanting to spend the money on repainting signs, when the name on that sign totally misrepresents the company.)

The part that hit home for me:

“For the customers, these guys were the big brother they always wanted,”

The people who ran the stores, they loved what they did and they took the time to show you anything you wanted on the hobby.
They were social hubs.
How can GW differentiate themselves?
Just go back to their roots, it was rather innovative: an inclusive environment that gave attention to the kids.
Gaming coffee houses are getting popular around here.

So, they are a collectable trinket company... kinda sad.
I will always be grateful (to what seems to be more the old guard) for GW making modeling and hobby craft exciting and fun with an easy way to meet like-minded people.

It is sad that Kirby's group cannot see what made it great: being inclusive to it's customers.

There is great for customers on one hand and great for shareholders on the other.

The trick is how these two things interact.

It's so surreal to have lived through the last 20 years of that article, knowing it's all true and I felt those things as a lowly consumer. Feels good after all the white knighters telling me how wrong myself and others were, to have such a big name in the company echo many things from that time.

The most telling part?

"Unplugged Games approached Games Workshop regarding this article. The company declined to comment."

I don't know how they could comment, other than to grudgingly agree.

“To me the background to 40k was always intended to be ironic”

That's something I've really missed about 40k and the reincarnation of WHFB.

Everything now is always super serious business, it's like the new designers completely missed out on the original jokes. Looking at the lore for AOS vs. the original WHFB, it's background written for (and by?) 13-year-olds going up against something that knows what it is and embraces it.

 Talizvar wrote:
The part that hit home for me:

“For the customers, these guys were the big brother they always wanted,”

The people who ran the stores, they loved what they did and they took the time to show you anything you wanted on the hobby.
They were social hubs.
How can GW differentiate themselves?
Just go back to their roots, it was rather innovative: an inclusive environment that gave attention to the kids.
Gaming coffee houses are getting popular around here.

So, they are a collectable trinket company... kinda sad.
I will always be grateful (to what seems to be more the old guard) for GW making modeling and hobby craft exciting and fun with an easy way to meet like-minded people.

It is sad that Kirby's group cannot see what made it great: being inclusive to it's customers.

Nailed it. They've coasted on the momentum of the social element of their early success. Unfortunately they are starting to really feel their move away from engaging and supporting a community around their games.

Really interesting article (although sure I have read bits of it before?)

I'd actually heard the same thing about Rick in the final few years, he was essentially promoted and sat in a room not really able to do anything creative. Ultimately I guess he got bored and left! Even though I have heard it was very strange for the other staff there, simply because he had always been there.

Accolade wrote:

“To me the background to 40k was always intended to be ironic”

That's something I've really missed about 40k and the reincarnation of WHFB.

Everything now is always super serious business, it's like the new designers completely missed out on the original jokes. Looking at the lore for AOS vs. the original WHFB, it's background written for (and by?) 13-year-olds going up against something that knows what it is and embraces it.

Definitely agree, it gradually lost the tongue-in-cheek side and became far too po-faced and serious.

Crazyterran wrote:Of course he's going to gak talk 40k. Has to make his game I literally heard about just now look good!

Well.. if some kid has gone off the rails a bit, the one person that you could never criticise for having an opinion about that is his father.

The other thing of course is to keep fiddling with the rules to make people buy a new edition and codex every few years. This is not new in the sense of progress, of course.

I was going to say, that's been the way of things for at least 15 years now, probably a bit more.

You wouldn't mind if it was genuinely in the interest of producing a better or more balanced game, but I think that has long since gone out of the window.

 Azreal13 wrote:

“I was the head of the creative department, and they weren’t doing anything creative any more,” he said.

“The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with.”

It’s a game with a future, which I don’t think 40K is.

Wow.

I second that WOW! In the past he has skirted around out right slamming them, but left it a bit implied. This time, he just laid it out.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
It's so surreal to have lived through the last 20 years of that article, knowing it's all true and I felt those things as a lowly consumer. Feels good after all the white knighters telling me how wrong myself and others were, to have such a big name in the company echo many things from that time.

That's sort of "normal" though. When you speak out against something like GW people will generally assume you are saying those things as a sort of petty revenge and they can't be true.

After all, how can a company exist if it isn't being run well? That's a simplification, but IMHO that's the thought-line people use.

I've heard many times people criticizing online companies like GW (and others) that I've worked for and so far what I've heard has been pretty much spot on, as negative as they were.

But, hearing it from a "personality" in the industry can lend weight to criticism (or to propaganda) depending on the circumstance.

 Accolade wrote:
Everything now is always super serious business, it's like the new designers completely missed out on the original jokes. Looking at the lore for AOS vs. the original WHFB, it's background written for (and by?) 13-year-olds going up against something that knows what it is and embraces it.

Maybe that's due to the trend of realism we've been experiencing in movies and TV for the last few decades. Everything has to be realistic and believable these days, there's little "wiggle room" for fiction.

When you create anything in sci-fi and fantasy these days, they have to be grounded in reality as if it could really work. Everything has to be explained. Things also seem to be more homogenized now as well.

I kinda miss the good 'ol days of sci-fi/fantasy.

great read!!!

how ironic that the birth of Warhammer and 40K were as sales vehicles for the miniatures...
kinda makes those of us who go on and on about the minis not look so crazy...

in that vein, it is interesting to note that Bryan got it right, by making it feel like the customers were in on the fun, and Kirby has done a complete 180, and made many of the customers feel like they are despised walking wallets...
it's a shame really, because he did a good job through the 90's...
i wonder if the bankruptcy scares in that decade snapped him, and made him crazy...
he's definitely gone full Scrooge McDuck in the last decade...

thanks for the link, Eirikr...

cheers
jah

 jah-joshua wrote:

how ironic that the birth of Warhammer and 40K were as sales vehicles for the miniatures...
kinda makes those of us who go on and on about the minis not look so crazy...

Though it certainly is interesting that 'enticing people to buy more than one model at a time' was the original impetus to develop what was one of the first fantasy/fiction mass battle games in the market, Priestley wasn't exactly stellar about how that particular business angle ended up entrenching itself in the corporate culture:

Rick Priestley wrote:“The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with.”

 Xca|iber wrote:

 jah-joshua wrote:

how ironic that the birth of Warhammer and 40K were as sales vehicles for the miniatures...
kinda makes those of us who go on and on about the minis not look so crazy...

Though it certainly is interesting that 'enticing people to buy more than one model at a time' was the original impetus to develop what was one of the first fantasy/fiction mass battle games in the market, Priestley wasn't exactly stellar about how that particular business angle ended up entrenching itself in the corporate culture:

Rick Priestley wrote:“The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with.”

i don't disagree with him, either...
alienating many previously loyal customers, by making them feel that the rules don't really matter, is not a good move...

cheers
jah

-

 jah-joshua wrote:
great read!!!

how ironic that the birth of Warhammer and 40K were as sales vehicles for the miniatures...
kinda makes those of us who go on and on about the minis not look so crazy...

Not quite sure you've quite got the concept there.

They developed the games to motivate people to buy more minis, because people buying them just to paint or for RPGs only bought them in singles or small numbers.

WHFB and 40K were very effective at this.

They've started trying to make themselves more about "collectibles" and less about games, more and more people have decided against playing their games/as much, and their sales have started to drop off.

Ergo the established best method for GW to sell the most minis, historically (and, logically, still being the case,) is to concentrate on the games side and let them generate sales of the models needed.

It was established 30 years ago that trying to sell models in small numbers to people wasn't viable as a means of sustaining GW, which makes their attempts to pursue that business model now even more lunatic.

@Az: it's called 'tongue in cheek:, my good man...
i got the concept, and agree with you, as shown by my response above to Xcaliber...

i have never once said that i agree with GW's business moves over the last decade or so, and especially over the last five years...
just because i like most the work that the studio produces, and buy the products i like, doesn't mean i think that the business model is great...

so, to make it very clear, i have no problem admitting that GW, as a business, have gone off the rails...
looking at the new Horus Heresy box sat in front of me, though, i find it hard to support anyone's assertion that they don't still produce some quality products...

cheers
jah

-

 jah-joshua wrote:
@Az: it's called 'tongue in cheek:, my good man...
i got the concept, and agree with you, as shown by my response above to Xcaliber...

i have never once said that i agree with GW's business moves over the last decade or so, and especially over the last five years...
just because i like most the work that the studio produces, and buy the products i like, doesn't mean i think that the business model is great...

so, to make it very clear, i have no problem admitting that GW, as a business, have gone off the rails...
looking at the new Horus Heresy box sat in front of me, though, i find it hard to support anyone's assertion that they don't still produce some quality products...

cheers
jah

Tongue in cheek is very difficult to detect when it more or less conforms to your usual stated POV, just sayin.


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And it looks fairly convincing right now that quality models without quality games only gets them so far, and that may not be far enough.

@Bottle: love it!!!

@Az: i would have thought that the winky and smiley would have conveyed the tone a bit, but i guess not...
still, there is truth in all humor...
i am in this for the minis, after all...

again, that doesn't mean that i can't agree with you on the business perspective...
i do think Kirby is a madman, and that something needs to change in order for the company to have a long healthy future...
like i said, though, the Horus Heresy BaC box seems to be getting a good reception, as a game, and a set of models...

it's not all doom and gloom...

cheers
jah

Fantastic read, some powerful stuff in there.

The problem is that they had a stable of awesome creative people lead them to great succes in the 90's and early 2000's, and they have been coasting on that inertia for about 15 years.

The problem is that inertia like that eventually fades, and all those people are now gone, with noone present to actually do anything great like that to keep things going or inject new energy, just lots of re-treading.

Revitalizing things like the Specialist games could do that, but I would be worried that it would just be more digging into repeating what made them great, but without the type of energy that created such a thing in the first place.

The GW of today is eerily a parallel to their own invention, the techpriests of 40k, keeping things running through repitition but without grasping exactly how those things were invented in the first place by the "Ancients" in their "Golden Age".

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The GW of today is eerily a parallel to their own invention, the techpriests of 40k, keeping things running through repitition but without grasping exactly how those things were invented in the first place by the "Ancients" in their "Golden Age".

I like that, I think that's actually a pretty spot on analogy.

I love the idea of the company deciding where to put GW stores based upon the Football league table.

It is sad that Rick was basically bored into leaving GW, but luckily it has led to the creation of Beyond The Gates Of Antares. It is interesting that the LOTR game was basically a way to head off other potential miniature/game producers. Maybe it just delayed the inevitable in that there are seemingly now more miniature games companies and manufacturers than ever before.

 AegisGrimm wrote:


The GW of today is eerily a parallel to their own invention, the techpriests of 40k, keeping things running through repitition but without grasping exactly how those things were invented in the first place by the "Ancients" in their "Golden Age".

Brilliant! the irony still exists

It's very cynical to say Rick Priestley is "trash talking" GW because he's got his own game to promote.

Everything he says about GW is true and has been corroborated by other interviews from other ex-GW staff, by the historical record, and by user experience which DakkaDakka members have often commented on -- the GrimDarking(TM) of the Tau and Orks, for example. This is all relevant to customers' interests.

Time will tell if the new SG division produces anything better than a rehash of old products. To be fair, a lot of the old games would sell well again if GW can spruce them up to 21st century standards.

Basically it sounds like he's just confirming what everyone else was already saying, marketing & sales took over GW, model & scale bloat kicked in big time as a result, and the actual creative background part & rules functionality that drive everything is being slowly strangled...

AegisGrimm wrote:The problem is that they had a stable of awesome creative people lead them to great succes in the 90's and early 2000's, and they have been coasting on that inertia for about 15 years.

The problem is that inertia like that eventually fades, and all those people are now gone, with noone present to actually do anything great like that to keep things going or inject new energy, just lots of re-treading.

Revitalizing things like the Specialist games could do that, but I would be worried that it would just be more digging into repeating what made them great, but without the type of energy that created such a thing in the first place.

The GW of today is eerily a parallel to their own invention, the techpriests of 40k, keeping things running through repitition but without grasping exactly how those things were invented in the first place by the "Ancients" in their "Golden Age".

To be honest, change sometimes is not a bad thing. Those great names of the 80s and 90s were great. But often, as you get older. Creativity dries up too. Or you get bored, and frankly need to do something new. It's as true for them as you or I, Having them onboard now is not necessarily a recipe for success. and if we are being honest, if a lot of those 80s and 90s products came out now, they wouldn't last - we've moved on.

I also think that it's a bit short sighted to say 'they were great, the current crop of writers aren't anywhere near as good'. It's edging on the 'things were better in my day' nostalgia fallacy. The current writers are good, but you have to remember that they are constrained within a corporate structure that has developed and solidified over the last fifteen years against the interests and freedom of the design studio. The design studio doesn't call the shots. The view from the top is they're a promotions division for a toy company. The writers don't necessarily have the time or the 'space' to 'be creative'. Give them that space, and they'll do a good job, the problem is kirby isn't interested in that kind of 'risk' - hence 'mKe me more space marines'! The problems with the corporate culture here is that rather than blue sky thinking that can lead to innovative games and ideas, Often it's deadlines, design briefs and limited resources coupled to existing 'proven' games along with individuals tied to 18month or two-year contracts meaning very little job security unless you're above the glass ceiling in the company. In other words, don't rock the boat, or you're out on your arse. And this is a small industry - you get black listed by gw (and I remember rumours of them having a 'black book') and your ability to work in a tiny industry will be severely curtailed. So it's a lot more complicated than 'designers of days gone by were better'.

Kilkrazy wrote:
Everything he says about GW is true and has been corroborated by other interviews from other ex-GW staff, by the historical record, and by user experience which DakkaDakka members have often commented on -- the GrimDarking(TM) of the Tau and Orks, for example. This is all relevant to customers' interests.

There is nothing wrong with grimdarking the tau. The problem was getting didn't grimdark them, they grimdorked them with silly mind worms, space bugs and ridiculous new suit models. A clever grim dark approach would be to have the tau truly witness the horror of the 40k-iverse and struggle to reconcile the practicalities of that horror wit their idealism of their ideology. Ie to they hold their torch up as a beacon of light and hope and a better future for all, or do they use it to burn everything else to the ground? That struggle would be interesting.

As for orks, I think the fifth edition codex got them perfectly, just the right mix of utter savagery, barbarism and black orky comedy (I still chuckle with the idea of orks coming down with a bad case of exploding 'ead). IMO second ed comedy orks were frankly too silly to be anything other than a bad joke,

While your arguments have some value, the fact is that GW management didn't let the creatives do their jobs, and didn't Grimdarken the Tau in n interesting way.

As a consumer I am mainly interested in the results rather than the process.

It is an interview that is not exclusively with Rick Priestly, but also has John Stallard in it.

It illustrates a few points, who were the key decision makers, unsurprisingly not Kirby and not his accounting department, I am shocked Rick had to fight the bureaucracy and make a diplomatic suggestion to get the LOTR licence in the company, not surprised the accounting department got all the glory for this happening.

Overall it is in line with what everybody else who have left GW has said and in line with the view the more balanced commentators of GW have.

No surprise were there is smoke there is fire.

I think his most commented line here 40k having no future stands, admittedly it has enough future (and GW has enough fat) for this is to not be the case, but, given the current direction the prediction is quite believable.

Yes, he does make a "competing game" but I don't think he badmouths his previous company.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only marketing.

At some point in the early 2000s, Games Workshop managed to forget or suppress the significance of the words 'Games' and 'Workshop' in their company name.

I believe GW are trying to get their mojo back. This shows in the recent flurry of new releases -- Assassination, AoS and Battle of Cattle. This means they have published more new games in the past six months than in the prior 15 years.

If they can marry creativity and design to modern production techniques and reconnect with customers, this will be a new golden age.

I do not think that is difficult, from the many interviews I have read, GWs issue is neither resources or manpower, its political in nature and centers around the power the accounting has over everything and probably they have enough political power within the company to throw the blame to everybody else but them for their bad decisions.

A more interesting thing I have seen is the following, the Dicetower a well known boardgame review site had an AOS presentation, which would raise an eyebrow from me and boardgame brawl another boardgames review site had a review of the assassins boardgame, the interesting thing in both is the following, both hinted GW send them the review copies, which would be a massive shift of how they do things.

Wow, he sounds so bitter !

 Kilkrazy wrote:
While your arguments have some value, the fact is that GW management didn't let the creatives do their jobs, and didn't Grimdarken the Tau in n interesting way.

As a consumer I am mainly interested in the results rather than the process.

That's kind of what I was saying kilkrazy...

But I do find the process as interesting as the results.

Just wait, Rayvon.

You'll understand it one day.

And this is a small industry - you get black listed by gw (and I remember rumours of them having a 'black book') and your ability to work in a tiny industry will be severely curtailed.

I would have thought being blacklisted by GW would be a boon in some parts of this tiny industry.

Kilkrazy wrote:
I believe GW are trying to get their mojo back. This shows in the recent flurry of new releases -- Assassination, AoS and Battle of Cattle. This means they have published more new games in the past six months than in the prior 15 years.

If they can marry creativity and design to modern production techniques and reconnect with customers, this will be a new golden age.

If they're putting out a flurry of bad products that sell poorly (I just saw an email trying to convince me that some kinds of Assassination bundles were the perfect Christmas gift) then I'd say it sounds a bit more like TSR's last days.

The interview, yeah. As ever, Rick offers up some insightful things, but manages to sound like an auld grump in the process.

(That's little a, little g. No reference to our Auld Grump!)

 jah-joshua wrote:
@Bottle: love it!!!

the Horus Heresy BaC box seems to be getting a good reception, as a game, and a set of models...
it's not all doom and gloom...

True but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, BaC seems to be more of a fluke as GW managed to follow that up with chaos horseys at £15 each and an overlord thingy that costs as much as BaC

To be honest, change sometimes is not a bad thing. Those great names of the 80s and 90s were great. But often, as you get older. Creativity dries up too. Or you get bored, and frankly need to do something new. It's as true for them as you or I, Having them onboard now is not necessarily a recipe for success. and if we are being honest, if a lot of those 80s and 90s products came out now, they wouldn't last - we've moved on.

I also think that it's a bit short sighted to say 'they were great, the current crop of writers aren't anywhere near as good'. It's edging on the 'things were better in my day' nostalgia fallacy. The current writers are good, but you have to remember that they are constrained within a corporate structure that has developed and solidified over the last fifteen years against the interests and freedom of the design studio. The design studio doesn't call the shots. The view from the top is they're a promotions division for a toy company. The writers don't necessarily have the time or the 'space' to 'be creative'. Give them that space, and they'll do a good job, the problem is kirby isn't interested in that kind of 'risk' - hence 'mKe me more space marines'! The problems with the corporate culture here is that rather than blue sky thinking that can lead to innovative games and ideas, Often it's deadlines, design briefs and limited resources coupled to existing 'proven' games along with individuals tied to 18month or two-year contracts meaning very little job security unless you're above the glass ceiling in the company. In other words, don't rock the boat, or you're out on your arse. And this is a small industry - you get black listed by gw (and I remember rumours of them having a 'black book') and your ability to work in a tiny industry will be severely curtailed. So it's a lot more complicated than 'designers of days gone by were better'.

Well, that's not exactly what I meant. While GW's does not necessarily "need" Paul Sawyer (aka Fat Bloke from old White Dwarf), Rick Priestly, etc, but they need people who can do the same for them nowadays for them to stay big as a company.

They need some visionaries that can think farther outside of the box that "we can increase profits on Dire Avengers by 100% if we drop the model count in a box by half but keep the price the same-brilliant!"

 Rayvon wrote:
Wow, he sounds so bitter !

No he doesn't. He sounds like every other ex or even current employee that has spoken out. All of their stories paint a similar picture of GW behind the scenes. And it aint pretty.

Rick wrote:“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Amen to that. Our group has said that for years. It's a shame it was true.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:

Rick wrote:“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Amen to that. Our group has said that for years. It's a shame it was true.

I think what is most interesting is the part of the interview just before that quote.

Both games [Necromunda and Gorkamorka] met with a positive reaction from players, but according to Priestley they led to a crisis within the company – now headed by Tom Kirby, Games Workshop’s former general manager, who led a management buyout that saw Bryan Ansell depart in 1991.

“Tom had to borrow a lot of money to buy the business,” Priestley said. “That meant we had to grow the company very quickly.

“I thought that one way to do that would be to expand the product line, so you’d have Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, then this series of games that would let you explore the universe at a much closer, more detailed level.

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The financial scare spooked management, Priestley said, leading to a change in Games Workshop’s culture.

“The appetite for new games just disappeared,” he said.

“But I have to say that this was not due to the concept being wrong, I think it was due to them not having the sophistication to manage the stock or manage the new sales divisions that had been created.

So, we lost the Specialist Games because...GW didn't do the market research to determine how many they needed to produce in other markets so they lost money on over producing? Today, instead they underproduce and lose out on money they could have made had they done the market research.

Yeah, imagine how many people are buying fantasy warband skirmish games like Frostgrave and Song of Blades/Heroes because they feel that particular game strikes even the slightest bit of their nostalgia for Mordheim. Now imagine if they could just buy Mordheim outright from a store. All the material could be re-printed, with existing plastics to use for the game (and some still being produced that were originally created for Mordheim, and could be re-packaged back to their original form!)

Or the near- million dollar kickstarter for Dropfleet Commander, when GW has plastic and pewter molds and pre-created gaming material already paid for years ago that they could just truck out again, in an era of decently high interest in space games, especially fleet-scale ones.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Yeah, imagine how many people are buying fantasy warband skirmish games like Frostgrave and Song of Blades/Heroes because they feel that particular game strikes even the slightest bit of their nostalgia for Mordheim. Now imagine if they could just buy Mordheim outright from a store. All the material could be re-printed, with existing plastics to use for the game (and some still being produced that were originally created for Mordheim, and could be re-packaged back to their original form!)

Or the near- million dollar kickstarter for Dropfleet Commander, when GW has plastic and pewter molds and pre-created gaming material already paid for years ago that they could just truck out again, in an era of decently high interest in space games, especially fleet-scale ones.

The hurdles to overcome are stuff that we know won't jive with the new environment. For mordheim or necromunda what really made it cool and accessible was the paper terrain. Hawk wargames has shown you can still include high quality paper terrain in a starter box, but gw marketing could take issue. This is the same marketing department putting out $700 terrain sets for aos, something they marketed as accessible and scalable.

The other consideration is their stores allowing people to actually play the smaller scale games. It could take valuable gaming real estate away from the weekend's usual apoc no terrain clusterfeth But I do recall GW not allowing people to play dreadfleet or space hulk very quickly after release.

This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Yeah, imagine how many people are buying fantasy warband skirmish games like Frostgrave and Song of Blades/Heroes because they feel that particular game strikes even the slightest bit of their nostalgia for Mordheim. Now imagine if they could just buy Mordheim outright from a store. All the material could be re-printed, with existing plastics to use for the game (and some still being produced that were originally created for Mordheim, and could be re-packaged back to their original form!)

Or the near- million dollar kickstarter for Dropfleet Commander, when GW has plastic and pewter molds and pre-created gaming material already paid for years ago that they could just truck out again, in an era of decently high interest in space games, especially fleet-scale ones.

The hurdles to overcome are stuff that we know won't jive with the new environment. For mordheim or necromunda what really made it cool and accessible was the paper terrain. Hawk wargames has shown you can still include high quality paper terrain in a starter box, but gw marketing could take issue. This is the same marketing department putting out $700 terrain sets for aos, something they marketed as accessible and scalable.

The other consideration is their stores allowing people to actually play the smaller scale games. It could take valuable gaming real estate away from the weekend's usual apoc no terrain clusterfeth But I do recall GW not allowing people to play dreadfleet or space hulk very quickly after release.

Yeah I remember when they did that, only reason I own Dreadfleet is because it was bought for me and I have gotten some play out of it.
Space Hulk I had little interest in and once I found out I couldn't play it in store (really my only area for gaming at the time) I walked away from buying it and bought a doll dress instead (I'm dead serious).
It's a really pretty dress though.
When I buy a game I expect to actually be able to play it, not have it sit on a shelf. That's what dolls are for, and I still bring them into the woods for fun photos.
More then a miniature can do sans game.

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Curious how shifting to free PDF downloads affected things.

Just watch, they'll release the old specialist games as "Battlefleet Gothic Classic", "Necromunda Classic", "Gorkamorka Classic". Same models, same rules, but prices updated for the 21st century.

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Yeah, most of the rest of the article was basically what I was expecting, but that one kind of surprised me. Over printing for foreign language markets killing specialist games was really not what I was expecting to have been the cause for their demise.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Yeah, most of the rest of the article was basically what I was expecting, but that one kind of surprised me. Over printing for foreign language markets killing specialist games was really not what I was expecting to have been the cause for their demise.

When i worked for GW in Memphis the warehouse crew would throw out entire pallets of foreign-language product frequently. It just didn't well well enough.

 Cleatus wrote:
Just watch, they'll release the old specialist games as "Battlefleet Gothic Classic", "Necromunda Classic", "Gorkamorka Classic". Same models, same rules, but prices updated for the 21st century.

If the ending prices (before SG were pulled completely) are any indication, that will likely be the case.
WarMaster blister packs went from $8 each when they came out around 2000 to double that and more in about a 12 year period.
They did similar price increases for Epic but at least those were newish model designs.ame price it's not as much

It really sounds like it was Tom Kirby's heavy borrowing to buy the company that nearly did it in. It set the pace (and indebtedness) GW had to compete against that really has only been exacerbated with time.

Kirby also took the company public, which diluted his ownership but brought in lots of money and a load of shareholders he had to keep happy.

Thus it was a double-edged sword. The new money paid off the debts and gave them cash for expansion, but the new ownership created a different kind of demand on the company.

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

GW take the view that everything they do needs to make money in itself. That's why, for example, they run events and charge for entry, rather than paying to attend popular wargame shows like Salute.

This is good in one way because obviously you want to make a profit, but it's bad in another way, which is that you lose the opportunity to market your products to a different audience.

Obviously actual products need to make a profit, that is why you make them. But the problem with French Gorkamorka wasn't the game in itself, it was the serious cost overrun of producing too many copies for the market.

That is a problem with GW's Marketing Department, which actually is a bit otiose to mention since they don't have one. And that is the root of their problems.

However, translation work now costs at least 60% less than it did in the late 90s, and GW have got their production and supply chain working much more efficiently, so there should not be strong objections to making foreign versions of games, especially the kind of boxed game that needs much less rulebook than 40K.

Have to agree with Rick on the overly complex model problem.

Even Forgeworld suffers from it, although they seem to understand that games sell models not the other way around. I recently bought a pair of Kheres Assault Cannons from them and holy feth they're ridiculous. They shows a lack of knowledge (or maybe interest, or maybe both) about the limitations of the product they produce. Six very thin circular tubes that make up the gun that are very easily bent and very hard to bend back into perfect shape. And then, even if you do manage that, assembling the thing without six pairs of hands is impossible. I ended up having to build a core of brass rods and greenstuff the cannon into place around it. It looks like a mess.

Why they couldn't just do a simple circular cannon with six protrusions from it that you could just slot in is anyone's guess. They probably built the model using brass rods and didn't even think about the result post-resin.

Keep in mind that this adds nothing to the final product and you start to see the problem here.

Hmmm, over-ordering product that sits on the shelves unsold? Sounds like TSR before they went under/bought by WOTC.

There's a point to be made about well crafted kickstarters with well defined reward points.

A well crafted Kickstarter campaign will conduct market research as it advances. It keys in to precisely how much of an item will sell in the given market to pretty exacting terms. It further gives the company a means of production already in place for additional ales after the Kickstarter has been fulfilled, thus increasing profits. A great example of well crafted Kickstarter campaigns resulting in tremendous market research allowing for future profits after fulfillment are the Reaper Mini Bones kickstarters.

Competing against that in the current niche market of tabletop wargames requires that a company do actual market research or get n the Kickstarter bandwagon itself to allow the Kickstarter campaign to do the market research for you. The problem for a publicly traded company like GW is, your investors would probably balk at Kickstarters, thus they need to begin actual market research or the changing landscape will obsolete them as a company.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Yeah, most of the rest of the article was basically what I was expecting, but that one kind of surprised me. Over printing for foreign language markets killing specialist games was really not what I was expecting to have been the cause for their demise.

Gorkamorka had come and gone before the 'Specialist Games' label had even appeared. Specialist Games as an entity with its own tab on the website didn't appear until the 2000s after Inquisitor was released, and all the smaller games went under it. Ithink just became a graveyard for them as the stock ran out over the next decade.

The obvious solution is just not to release non-English products for smaller ranges. Large as they are, Hasbro/Wizards doesn't do foreign language releases for non-core products, Modern Masters, From the Vault, and others are English only.

Having worked in market research in my younger days, as crucial as it can certainly be at times, it's often flawed and you get the sense by the questions being asked of what they want the answers to be. It's like polling, the framing of the questions are everything. Even if they did heavy market research I only see two scenarios, the first being it's dead on arrival because they'd be looking to get the answers they want simply to support current efforts, the second being they do it properly and what they learn is seen as a threat to kirby's way of doing things, which is a mix of David Miscavige and Donald Trump. His whole style is plain spoken brute that gets results.

From what we've gleaned over the last while in terms of the design process, it's quite evident that the rules are made for the models, and not the other way around. Try and imagine making starcraft and having it work with that kind of organization, zero communication between model design and the overall game design team. You'd end up with 3 wildly unbalanced factions. Putting the cart before the horse is insane for game design. No wonder we get the terrible balance and faction favouritism, there's no leadership, no plan, everyone is more concerned with keeping their jobs, Jervis Included.


GW's other problem is quantity vs quality vs consistency, or maybe we really did need the admech to be two crappy factions instead of an actual new codex faction. And then there's kauyon, which as a marine player I'm left scratching my head over. I mean sure, great, couple pages of rules with some broken stuff (thanks jervis) but other than that, why would I ever drop $90 if the supplements were already a terrible value. The bloat is devaluing everything in my opinion, rules and models. If your favourite band came out with a new album every week, the quality would drop, you'd also just stop caring.


Does anyone actually put a dollar value to GW missions at this point? It's the same problem, they went from supplements with a fairly defined concept like urban combat or planetary invasion to just pooping out missions on every other page in almost every book and publication. The fluff has been losing perceived value because the quality and consistency is non-existent, they still have plenty of talent writing for black library, but they'll also seemingly let anyone write for them and you have to be ready at any time for marketing to throw a wrench in there and have you pretend knights were involved in every battle ever, retconning to tighten IP whenever convenient, which is something even the casuals and the gw fanboys kinda start rolling their eyes at. Astra militarum is basically everyone's inside joke.


I made a post a few years back when someone brought me a recruitment flyer from europe http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/534173.page which genuinely shocked me, I thought it was satire for a moment . Glassdoor can confirm the "with us or against us" "if I ask you what colour snow is you better say black" vibe the company has. What I'm still in awe of is they screw their employees who end up passing that down the vibe to customers. I had ordered some bases into the local GW, when I went to pick'm up the store manager asked that, instead of just ordering at my leisure from the website I should order it in store, not for any benefit to me the consumer but so they could get the sale stat. I've worked in sales, I know it sucks to get other salesmen snaking your sales, I also know it sucks when you're competing against the company you work for., but this is a 1 person store. That's insane, That illustrates right there the insanity of GW, the manager handles all these interactions with customers and they won't see any of it represented in the metrics used to judge performance. This also leads to them asking ridiculous things of consumers, like doubling our driving time to and from gw so that staff will benefit from a sale stat. That's the culture it breeds, assuming the consumers work for them. Ludicrously short sighted.


It's like kirby watched Glengarry Glen Ross and thought if the hard sell worked for high end real estate it must work for toys and games. It's not hard to imagine the difficulty in selling people on this hobby. I don't think I could sell a single one of my non gaming friends on 40k, and they have all the disposable income in the world. Even if they came to me with a general interest and enthusiasm for getting into the game, I still don't think it would stick, you really have to get'm young to keep them from what I've seen. I'm not someone who values collecting or display, if I stop playing, I see no value in my little dudes. Even mentioning that they're a gaming company is now somehow verboten. Baffling. To think you'd do all that over optics for a lawsuit.

It's a piece of piss to write a 'mission' and sell it for $5. It takes a bit of effort to write a supplement like Forts or Cities or Big Tanks, that has been thought through properly.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Gorkamorka had come and gone before the 'Specialist Games' label had even appeared. Specialist Games as an entity with its own tab on the website didn't appear until the 2000s after Inquisitor was released, and all the smaller games went under it. Ithink just became a graveyard for them as the stock ran out over the next decade.

Yes, I was using the term "specialist games" as the more generic moniker for "anything produced by GW and not 40k, WHFB or LOTR". It was just quicker to say "specialist games" than "everything not 40k/WHFB" and I figured people would understand

When GW created the label of specialist games, they were already dead.

privateer4hire wrote:

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Curious how shifting to free PDF downloads affected things.

I'm just thinking about the edition of Space Marine/Titan Legions that had cardboard cards for everything, including a random deck used for the combination of chaos abilities and greater daemon hit points. That's just not going to work out for an electronic version.

I know, for a while GW was producing free Japanese PDF versions for 40k and WHFB, then they started producing printed Japanese versions, and now the Games Workshop Japanese page is in English and the Japanese editions are the exceptions. Even looking at the Spain/Spanish version of the web page, there's stuff where they're just selling everyone the English version of the book and there's no translated electronic version.

So, I don't know. The thing is that those foreign language versions still cost money to translate. And when you have to translate every word in the game, that changes how you publish your games.

 solkan wrote:
And when you have to translate every word in the game, that changes how you publish your games.

With the weight of 7th that does seem like a daunting amount of translation. We've lost count of codex's and supplements.

Who is this Priestley guy? Just another GW hater!

Jokes aside, Antares maybe a better game but design wise it doesn't try to appeal to the GW crowd IMHO.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Of course he's going to gak talk 40k. Has to make his game I literally heard about just now look good!

Given the abject failure of his Kickstarter attempt to garner monies simply because "Rick Priestly", yeah, that's not surprising.

I wonder if GOA sells better than AOS.

The original abject failure at least got Antares talked about a lot on DakkaDakka. There is a long-running thread on the current version of the game, which has many posts for and against all aspects of the project.

One can only assume that DakkaDakka members who have never heard of Gates of Antares must be recent joiners and don't read the news forum.

As regards translation costs, they are a lot more reasonable now that in the 1990s.

One point is to keep the amount of text to the minimum. I would imagine new Specialist Games should not need reams of background fluff included. If the rules are kept to the size of AoS or Space Hulk, the translations will be a fairly minor part of the project costings.

In some ways it is a weakness of GW that they feel they have to try to ram every game into the 40K/AoS background with loads of fluff.

It's interesting to me that going to monopose small scale was a Rick Priestly idea. It's one of my favourite things about the LOTR range.

I hate assembly and I like true-scale to my minis, so it was godsend to me. I got so much more done when I didn't have the awful assembly stage waiting for me, promising to turn my dudes into oddly posed puppets because I suck at posing.

I was disappointed to see the component count in LOTR stuff climbing with the Hobbit releases, even if it did result in more dynamic poses. GW advertise the number of components as though it's a feature these days.

If Priestley's saying that SG nearly bankrupted GW last time around, then how are things going to be different this time around?

Logic suggests that GW will probably do limited runs, and that a lot of people who were jumping for joy at SG's revival, may be left bitterly disappointed...

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
If Priestley's saying that SG nearly bankrupted GW last time around, then how are things going to be different this time around?

Logic suggests that GW will probably do limited runs, and that a lot of people who were jumping for joy at SG's revival, may be left bitterly disappointed...

Well according to Rick it was overproducing for foreign markets that did it, maybe GW think they have a better idea now.

He's not saying that. He's saying that bad marketing made foreign language editions of SGs unprofitable, and that when Kirby took over the company and went public, the management started to slash costs by canning the SGs.

I agree with you that future SG releases are likely to be fixed print runs. It's much better for GW to accurately estimate they can sell say 10,000 English Blood Bowls, and another 10,000 split between French, German, Italian, etc.

The key is for GW to make accurate forecasts. This is where they failed in the late 1990s, and with Dread Fleet. Arguably they failed with Space Hulk too, and badly underestimated.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
He's not saying that. He's saying that bad marketing made foreign language editions of SGs unprofitable, and that when Kirby took over the company and went public, the management started to slash costs by canning the SGs.

I agree with you that future SG releases are likely to be fixed print runs. It's much better for GW to accurately estimate they can sell say 10,000 English Blood Bowls, and another 10,000 split between French, German, Italian, etc.

The key is for GW to make accurate forecasts. This is where they failed in the late 1990s, and with Dread Fleet. Arguably they failed with Space Hulk too, and badly underestimated.

So essentially, all those people who pinned their hope's on SG (if that recent thread is anything to go by) are going to be very disappointed?

And to think that the naysayers shot me down in flames for saying that

Why can't they just do limited production runs annually?

i.e. "In 2015 we sold 10,000 copies of Space Hulk. In 2016 we'll print 12,000 copies."

etc.

I don't understand why they decide to stop selling popular products. They did this with a lot of those limited edition terrain kits. They've already made the molds, so why not keep on producing them every year, but just be a little cautious to make sure they don't over produce?

In fact they do this with the massive Smaug model for the Hobbit SBG. It frequently sells out, then comes back a few months later. Or is that not the same thing?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
He's not saying that. He's saying that bad marketing made foreign language editions of SGs unprofitable, and that when Kirby took over the company and went public, the management started to slash costs by canning the SGs.

I agree with you that future SG releases are likely to be fixed print runs. It's much better for GW to accurately estimate they can sell say 10,000 English Blood Bowls, and another 10,000 split between French, German, Italian, etc.

The key is for GW to make accurate forecasts. This is where they failed in the late 1990s, and with Dread Fleet. Arguably they failed with Space Hulk too, and badly underestimated.

Making forecasts or predictions. This is where market research comes should come in.
Not sure if they make limited market research now?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
He's not saying that. He's saying that bad marketing made foreign language editions of SGs unprofitable, and that when Kirby took over the company and went public, the management started to slash costs by canning the SGs.

He (Rick) didn't say that, simply that the over produced for foreign markets and that made the company lose its appetite for making new games, never stated a reason such as bad marketing. There's a lot of reasons you might overproduce on something.

We should probably be careful about the language we use as well, specialist games as GW invented the term weren't canned until recently, Rick was talking about not creating new games, which is separate to the canning of SG's more recently.

-

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Why can't they just do limited production runs annually?

i.e. "In 2015 we sold 10,000 copies of Space Hulk. In 2016 we'll print 12,000 copies."

etc.

I don't understand why they decide to stop selling popular products. They did this with a lot of those limited edition terrain kits. They've already made the molds, so why not keep on producing them every year, but just be a little cautious to make sure they don't over produce?

In fact they do this with the massive Smaug model for the Hobbit SBG. It frequently sells out, then comes back a few months later. Or is that not the same thing?

Runs are limited to a sweet spot between unit cost, anticipated sales and storage/time lag between manufacture and anticipated sale of all the products.

You idea of 12k units a year for however many years would see the initial run sell out mega quick with not enough units to meet demand. This might kill interest in the next years run on top of the naturally lowered interest after release any way.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
He's not saying that. He's saying that bad marketing made foreign language editions of SGs unprofitable, and that when Kirby took over the company and went public, the management started to slash costs by canning the SGs.

He (Rick) didn't say that, simply that the over produced for foreign markets and that made the company lose its appetite for making new games, never stated a reason such as bad marketing. There's a lot of reasons you might overproduce on something.

We should probably be careful about the language we use as well, specialist games as GW invented the term weren't canned until recently, Rick was talking about not creating new games, which is separate to the canning of SG's more recently.

He doesn't say it in words because he doesn't need to. It's implicit in the nature of business. The key reason a company would overproduce is because the marketing department makes an inaccurate optimistic forecast of how many they will be able to sell.

Ah ok, I misunderstood you, I thought you meant bad marketing as in poorly communicating with the customer rather than poorly forecasting, I guess that's part of marketing too.

However it could also have been deemed not financially viable to produce a wider range of products for foreign markets at the level they were expected to sell. Otherwise surely they would just reduce expectations and not produce as much instead of cutting it entirely.

 solkan wrote:


I'm just thinking about the edition of Space Marine/Titan Legions that had cardboard cards for everything, including a random deck used for the combination of chaos abilities and greater daemon hit points.

I have that Chaos Boon deck sitting on my desk as I type. Loved that edition.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Ah ok, I misunderstood you, I thought you meant bad marketing as in poorly communicating with the customer rather than poorly forecasting, I guess that's part of marketing too.

However it could also have been deemed not financially viable to produce a wider range of products for foreign markets at the level they were expected to sell. Otherwise surely they would just reduce expectations and not produce as much instead of cutting it entirely.

That's right. Communication with the customer is a two way flow, well, a circle in a way.

Marketing seeks to understand what customers want to buy, and channel this info to design and production. When products are developed, Marketing informs and hopefully excites customers to generate orders.

GW Marketing ought to have been able to work out that there weren't enough potential customers for the foreign editions of GorkaMorka and so on. Then they could have told Design and Production to produce no foreign versions or to cut the cost on them somehow. Or perhaps thay could have run some major promotion in France, to generate more orders.

Since GW really have nothing resembling marketing, maybe the smartest move would have been to sell English versions in those countries and had the translation available as a download. Even when GorkaMorka was released, there was an internet.

Maybe that's how they'll handle the new SG stuff.

I must admit GW has been rather self-fulfilling as of late to me: other than the models I do not see much all that compelling to buy.

I hope specialist games can at least shine-up some old games that still have some game design spark. Updates to old models could be a great thing.

Might as well leverage what they have chosen to be good at now.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

So essentially, all those people who pinned their hope's on SG (if that recent thread is anything to go by) are going to be very disappointed?

And to think that the naysayers shot me down in flames for saying that

As the originator of that thread I don't think that anyone was pinning their hopes on whatever it is that GW is going to be doing with the former SGs, I'm most certainly not. It is simply a possible sign of change for the better at GW towers.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Why can't they just do limited production runs annually?

i.e. "In 2015 we sold 10,000 copies of Space Hulk. In 2016 we'll print 12,000 copies."

etc.

I don't understand why they decide to stop selling popular products. They did this with a lot of those limited edition terrain kits. They've already made the molds, so why not keep on producing them every year, but just be a little cautious to make sure they don't over produce?

In fact they do this with the massive Smaug model for the Hobbit SBG. It frequently sells out, then comes back a few months later. Or is that not the same thing?

Agreed. I wish they would issue another run of the Stormclaw box set. It sold out the first day on the website. There are a few copies floating around eBay, etc., but seriously -- why not issue another print run when the first sells out?

That was article was a great read. Thanks for forwarding it on, Puffin!

I see that he didn't like the move away from 28mm and the transition from single-piece to complex miniatures. As much as I like Rick Priestly and what he did for one of my favorite hobbies, I personally disagree with both of these sentiments -- I like the introduction of larger units, maybe because I have more than a thousand 28mm models painted already, but also because it combines some of the fun aspects of scale models into the miniature wargaming hobby.

Also, in 28mm, I highly prefer the more complex units over the single-piece or snapfit sculpts. Again, possibly because I've done a ton of single piece models, but also because I just marvel at how they "open up" the model and allow wide spaces between things like the cloak and the body or arms and wires.

I'm totally with him on the LoTR thing, where they built up a lot of staff over something they knew would fade with the movie excitement, and then got stuck with a big infrastructure. Personally, I think Rick Priestly will be happier in a smaller company driven more by creative types and doing what you want to do, rather than by sales and stakeholders, which is something I can most definitely sympathize with.

 Talizvar wrote:
I must admit GW has been rather self-fulfilling as of late to me: other than the models I do not see much all that compelling to buy.

I agree with you, to a large extent. But models have always been 90% of my hobby spending anyhow I mean, there's models, the occasional rules, some magazines, and some consumables (like paint). But models are the lions share of where the money goes, and what I get most excited about.


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 Cleatus wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Why can't they just do limited production runs annually?

i.e. "In 2015 we sold 10,000 copies of Space Hulk. In 2016 we'll print 12,000 copies."

etc.

I don't understand why they decide to stop selling popular products. They did this with a lot of those limited edition terrain kits. They've already made the molds, so why not keep on producing them every year, but just be a little cautious to make sure they don't over produce?

In fact they do this with the massive Smaug model for the Hobbit SBG. It frequently sells out, then comes back a few months later. Or is that not the same thing?

Agreed. I wish they would issue another run of the Stormclaw box set. It sold out the first day on the website. There are a few copies floating around eBay, etc., but seriously -- why not issue another print run when the first sells out?

I think the thought process is something like this -- they don't want to inventory the product, so whatever they make, they want to ensure it's sold. Whatever their run size is, they want to make sure that at the point they make it, there will be enough demand to sell out. The only way they can achieve this is to wait a few years before printings, so the demand builds up -- from new players, people who want another box, etc.

Stormclaw and Deathstorm weren't really the same thing. I think they were just ways to get rid of tons of extra sprues that weren't moving, personally Like standard Terminators... Also, but not improving the rules of those units (a great deal of stuff iin the 2 boxes were models with pretty crappy rules), it doesn't take away sales from anything else, either. It's not like you're going to make an army out of genestealers and forego buying that Hive Tyrant, no matter how many they give you, right?

 Xyxox wrote:
Since GW really have nothing resembling marketing, maybe the smartest move would have been to sell English versions in those countries and had the translation available as a download. Even when GorkaMorka was released, there was an internet.

Maybe that's how they'll handle the new SG stuff.

Products are produced in other languages than English? Why would someone do such a thing? Seems like a waste of money.

 Talys wrote:
That was article was a great read. Thanks for forwarding it on, Puffin!

I see that he didn't like the move away from 28mm and the transition from single-piece to complex miniatures. As much as I like Rick Priestly and what he did for one of my favorite hobbies, I personally disagree with both of these sentiments -- I like the introduction of larger units, maybe because I have more than a thousand 28mm models painted already, but also because it combines some of the fun aspects of scale models into the miniature wargaming hobby.

There was never anyting stopping players from having absolutely massive armies (save budget), even back in the days when the game didn't require it. In 3rd Ed, even though GW didn't produce titans and superheavies themselves, all the hard core enthusiasts had the armorcast ones, lovingly painted. The super fan players had that famously unweildy metal thunderhawk that you got for ordering the Space Marine chapter. IMHO, larger units, and by extension larger armies as the norm provide a barrier to entry which harms the hobby more than grows it.

 Talys wrote:
Also, in 28mm, I highly prefer the more complex units over the single-piece or snapfit sculpts. Again, possibly because I've done a ton of single piece models, but also because I just marvel at how they "open up" the model and allow wide spaces between things like the cloak and the body or arms and wires.

No argument that the multiparts are very dynamic, but considering the unit price that GW sets, and the volume required, I'm not sure the barrier to entry that they pose is healthy for GW. If I were a new player, after the "reasonable" deals present in the AoS starter, and the 40k/30k starters, paying $40-50 for an additional squad, let alone one dude is one heck of a rude awakening. Sure, Gaunt Summoner is cool, but IMHO, he's not $50cdn cool. I wonder how many Archaons they're going to sell at $200cdn... (Don't forget that you'll need to buy a Citadel carry case to transport your valuable investment and protect your paint work!!!!)

 Talys wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:
I must admit GW has been rather self-fulfilling as of late to me: other than the models I do not see much all that compelling to buy.

I agree with you, to a large extent. But models have always been 90% of my hobby spending anyhow I mean, there's models, the occasional rules, some magazines, and some consumables (like paint). But models are the lions share of where the money goes, and what I get most excited about.

I find myself increasingly more into the other camp.
It used to be all about the models for me and then I wanted a way to play with them so tabletop was an awesome fit.
Now I like my game more than the models (but it sure helps!).

I am finding many of the models oversized and that every model is a hero rather ... tiring... does that make sense?
It is harder for me to turn a blind eye since they do not represent some cool thing they do on the tabletop that is turning into so much derp.
I almost need to justify the "Movie Space Marine" list being dragged out: http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/at/2011/6/moviemarines-01194024.pdf

I have found Bolt Action rather refreshing for getting those little guys made and painted.
Just getting into touching up the various FFG Armada and X-wing models for fun.

Everyone has their own taste, what esthetics they are drawn to.
I am still quite proud of some paint jobs of GW models I have done and I have MANY more still to do.
I think this is the longest time I have gone (longer than 6 months.... Skitarii release?) and have not bought a single GW model.

I think his comment on the miniatures is the most professional and pragmatic I have heard for the models.

What he said is, he does not like the scale creep (not bigger models, but models getting bigger) and feels that the cool factor of multipart models is not enough to offset the cost of manufacture and barrier of entry for newcommers due to complexity.

And indeed the LOTR models were good in scale and achieved nice detail with few parts making them great for newcomers.

 Pacific wrote:
Definitely agree, it gradually lost the tongue-in-cheek side and became far too po-faced and serious.

Depends. Do you consider things like Murderfang the Murderdreadnought with murderfist from planet murder who murder people to satisfy his murderlust, or Santa Space Wolf in his anti-grav sleigh tracted by wolf because WOLF WOLF WOLFY MCWOLF to be serious or tongue-in-check?

 Bottle wrote:
Somewhere in France there is a warehouse piled high with Le Gorc au Morc :p

It was Gorkamorka even on the French translation, sorry .

@keezus - I totally hear what you're saying about barriers to entry. The way I see it, 40k as GW envisions it, and as most veterans enjoy it, is a hobby that not only ultimately costs hundreds of dollars, but also hundreds upon hundreds of hours to have a nice looking army. Or even an *assembled* army. It definitely requires a high level of dedication, which is something that won't appeal to a lot of people for many reasons.

My newest faction -- Blood angels, ironically, my first faction from 25+ years ago -- is one year in the making so far, with hundreds of hours spent, and I'm probably only about halfway to playable. Most of these models aren't planned for play until late 2016 or 2017. I get that this isn't for a lot of peeps (but I do spend more time on each model than most, too).

In contrast, AoS requires very little dedication, but it is a tough game to play with total strangers in pickups and not the easiest thing to arrange tournaments for.

In the days of Ral Partha minis and chainmail we bought miniatures that were instantly ready to play (you didn't even need to attach them to bases), and maybe painted them years later. Old warhammer/40k was not much different, and although it was expensive, it didn't have the time element, which I think is a barrier to many.

I think that WMH (or xwing) follows this pattern much more closely, and irs emphasis on pickup and tournament play make it more attractive to some.

I do not think it makes 40k or AoS superior or inferior -- just different, and appealing to a different sort of nerd

Oh, also, when I meant bigger, I didn't mean more models (though that is true too); I meant physically bigger, from dreadnought sized to the size of scale model kits to Gundam and larger. I enjoy those kits because as much as I love 28mm, I've painted so darn many of 'em through the years, and there's rarely something that is truly exceptional and different in the cleverness of its sculpt and pose, like the admech Dominus, or the lantern-bearing winged Prosecutor (neither of which are really 28mm anyways).

 Talys wrote:
I think that WMH (or xwing) follows this pattern much more closely, and irs emphasis on pickup and tournament play make it more attractive to some.

At the risk of going a little OT, WMH is getting horribly bloated. The game IMHO very badly needs a MK2.5 or possibly a straight up MK3.

 Talys wrote:
Oh, also, when I meant bigger, I didn't mean more models (though that is true too); I meant physically bigger, from dreadnought sized to the size of scale model kits to Gundam and larger. I enjoy those kits because as much as I love 28mm, I've painted so darn many of 'em through the years, and there's rarely something that is truly exceptional and different in the cleverness of its sculpt and pose, like the admech Dominus, or the lantern-bearing winged Prosecutor (neither of which are really 28mm anyways).

As a modeller and a conversion enthusiast, the new models really do excite the creative part of my brain. The prices on the other hand has pushed GW out of my hobby budget due to poor "hobby value" for my dollar. $40-50 per character is almost within $10 for Malifaux crew box or an Infinity starter. PP too as of late has become a bit rich for my blood, especially since I don't play regularly anymore. From a pure painting perspective, we really are spoiled for choice in this golden age of hobby products. Lots of amazing non-gaming miniatures are available from makers like Andrea Minatures, Nocturna Models, Fernando Ruiz among others... Wyrd and Kingdom Death plastics are really fantastic as well. GW really needs to take a real hard look at themselves if they think they sit upon the untouchable pinnacle of collectible miniatures. I think Rick Priestly is right about GW being lost in their business model, and the longer that GW is willfully blind to their actual market positioning, the worse off they are going to be.

 Talizvar wrote:

I am finding many of the models oversized and that every model is a hero rather ... tiring... does that make sense?

I gave up on 40k as a game when 3rd was released although in that time I have built 3 armies as modelling projects. A Catachan infantry Company using the 2nd ed metals that I bought when they were new, a Marine army using stater set minis mostly bought from Ebay and a Death Guard army with Traitor Guard allies also bought from Ebay/converted from stuff I already owned. Aside from a few Forge World odds and ends (The Death Guard Sorc and some Heresy Missile launchers) GW received no money from me what so ever.

There are 3 main reasons for this, firstly the sheer unsupportable cost of everything, the changing aesthetic and the increasing focus on large 'cool' models. If GW produced a quality product at a reasonable price and along the same lines as their output from the late 90's (suitably modernised) then I would still be buying stuff from them, even if their rules were still gak. As it is though I haven't bought so much as a paint pot from them since they stopped selling Ogryn flesh.

@Silent Puffin?: Well, we all find some point where we decide to move-on to something else, you found yours.
Changes made for the sake of trying to get more money than an actual improvement can be a bit wearing as well (or at least being crass and making no attempt to hide the fact).

@keezus: Yes, I think that is what worries GW (if anything) is if we compare the same amount of money for what we can get elsewhere and the "quality" of the GW product does not measure up to the comparable quality/quantity of a competitor product or other hobby expenses.

I just saw the new X-wing box game in a toy store no less with a nice folded heavy duty cardboard display with the contents there for anyone to try... talk about increasing accessibility to gaming.

@puffin & talivzar - definitely, 40k/aos is very pro-hero, IMO. These are worlds of heroes, immortals, and gods, after all, so if straight out firepower per square inch of table space is going to excite you, goblins and peasants will never be a match for Gods and 10,000 year old veterans that have been around half the galaxy. When you read the fluff, too -- no group of mere humans would dare to contest one of the Custodes. It's also a game setting where bigger is badder.

Not that there isn't a place for MSU, or a way for MSU to win . But part of it is also GW's strategy of extracting more money out of veterans -- you're just not going to sell vets a ton more basic grunts to replace their old basic grunts.. It's much easier to sell these people (who want to add to their already large army of grunts) a bigger robot or a bigger tank or a new must-have hero.

@keezus - I've heard the same about WMH, but I have barely played the current edition, so I can't really speak for myself. I just find myself drawn to the cool new hero models from PP, but there is no way to field them, so what I'm left with is an expensive set of shelf ornaments that were fun to paint

For Wyrd, I'm just not into 95% of what they make. Nothing wrong with their stuff, but steampunk meets horror is just not my thing, so I buy just stuff that looks straight SciFi or fantasy, generally that has a cool weapon, which isn't much.

I have to agree with Rick, 40K is going down the gakker. The blatant power creep, attempts to force the purchasing of new units, terrible game structure, inflated model counts and complete total and utter lack of balance are only becomng more and more noticeable. AoS is not doing any better either, even at my FLGS which is pro GW a lot of fantasy veterans (including myself) have turned elsewhere and as of this moment in time there are only two players. On a side note though Mordhiem has seen a boom in popularity.
And then there are the models. The ones that GW release may be well moulded and very crisp but they look terrible. Take those new chaos knoght thingies - they resemble children's toys. The trend towards this more.... I dont know, childish/video gameish style has really shown and the 40K ones have not been any better. And if that was not bad enough they want HOW MUCH?! for them (£60 for three? Screw you GW).

Long story short, Rick is right. And I hate to say this but as a long time fan of Games Workshop I am leaving this sinking ship.

“When I did Lord of the Rings I redefined the miniatures to be 28mm again. I took them down in size and had single-piece models. That was part of the reason it was successful.”

I simply cannot take anything he says seriously if he believes this.....


If that is success id hate to see failure!@


His whole "one piece models are superior to multi piece"


I mean really... wow, ok you can think that, but Id say you are wrong... one piece models are horrible to paint, hard to get details in, and mono pose... Ive painted GW models for over 14 years and the plastic kits just feel so damn nice to paint, especially in pieces, you can tell they were designed with the modeller/painter in mind.


Its one of the reasons why WMH models annoy me, so many mono pose models, and 90% of the models I really want to paint, Ill never get to use as I can only bring one caster at a time. Lots of the grunts in WMH range from terrible-ok, with the occasional really nice sculpt, but for the most part they are tedious to paint and lacking in visual appeal.


Pretty much every third party company out there, puppets war type stuff wyrd/scibor, and so on, have great models too! they are almost always as or more expensive then GW's, but never really get the amount of flak GW gets for its prices.

 easysauce wrote:

“When I did Lord of the Rings I redefined the miniatures to be 28mm again. I took them down in size and had single-piece models. That was part of the reason it was successful.”

I simply cannot take anything he says seriously if he believes this.....


If that is success id hate to see failure!@

But it was successful for several years while the movies were still current, at least in the UK. You seem to have a skewed perception of history.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 easysauce wrote:

“When I did Lord of the Rings I redefined the miniatures to be 28mm again. I took them down in size and had single-piece models. That was part of the reason it was successful.”

I simply cannot take anything he says seriously if he believes this.....


If that is success id hate to see failure!@

But it was successful for several years while the movies were still current, at least in the UK. You seem to have a skewed perception of history.

No it was not, models sold for a short while, but no one played the game... might be a different case where you are specifically, but around here AOS is more popular then LOTR ever was... its still a running joke with staff and customers alike just how much of a waste of retail space LOTR was. Most people I talk to see LOTR as the worst move the company ever made.

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Not a surprise - it bears depressing similarities to what brought about the fall of TSR.

Market research is an up front cost and it is easy to think that you don't really need it, after all, you know your customers, right?

Thus, we have Kirby boasting that GW avoids that cost, because it is 'otiose in a niche market'.

The Auld Grump

 easysauce wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 easysauce wrote:

“When I did Lord of the Rings I redefined the miniatures to be 28mm again. I took them down in size and had single-piece models. That was part of the reason it was successful.”

I simply cannot take anything he says seriously if he believes this.....


If that is success id hate to see failure!@

But it was successful for several years while the movies were still current, at least in the UK. You seem to have a skewed perception of history.

no they were not, models sold, but no one played the game... might be a different case where you are specifically, but around here AOS is more popular then LOTR ever was... its still a running joke with staff and customers alike just how much of a waste of retail space LOTR was.

America is not the centre of the universe. GW is a British company, the SBG did very well over a short period in Britain. Ergo its fair to say it was successful.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 easysauce wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 easysauce wrote:

“When I did Lord of the Rings I redefined the miniatures to be 28mm again. I took them down in size and had single-piece models. That was part of the reason it was successful.”

I simply cannot take anything he says seriously if he believes this.....


If that is success id hate to see failure!@

But it was successful for several years while the movies were still current, at least in the UK. You seem to have a skewed perception of history.

no they were not, models sold, but no one played the game... might be a different case where you are specifically, but around here AOS is more popular then LOTR ever was... its still a running joke with staff and customers alike just how much of a waste of retail space LOTR was.

America is not the centre of the universe.

Good thing Im not an American or from America then mate... Im a 1st gen immigrant from england living in a commonwealth country with the queen on its money, so if me being british is the requirement for having an opinion, then its worth just as much as yours.


LOTR was never played, never had any staying power at all... if the models sold for LOTR in a few years are "success" in your mind, then why are the many more models sold over a longer period of time for 40k not also "success"

THe company rick was with changed, hes obviously a bit bitter and not all people like change, I for one LOVE that 40k is more grimdark then uber silly, not everyone thinks that way and that is ok.

Nationality has nothing to do with it. You're missing the point.

Do you or do you not live in North America? (The continent, not the country).

The fact that the SBG wasn't popular in your own area does not negate the fact that it was very popular and successful in other areas.

LOTR was never played, never had any staying power at all... if the models sold for LOTR in a few years are "success" in your mind, then why are the many more models sold over a longer period of time for 40k not also "success"

I didn't say that. Of course 40K was successful, and more successful than LOTR - which, as a movie tie in product was always going to be short lived. But the fact that it was short lived does NOT change the fact that it was successful over that period.

Please don't use straw men.


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I for one LOVE that 40k is more grimdark then uber silly, not everyone thinks that way and that is ok.

If Murder McMurder the Murder Dreadnought with Murderclaws from the planet Murder is your idea of GrimDark, I'd hate to see your idea of silly.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Nationality has nothing to do with it. You're missing the point.

Do you or do you not live in North America? (The continent, not the country).

The fact that the SBG wasn't popular in your own area does not negate the fact that it was very popular and successful in other areas.

LOTR was never played, never had any staying power at all... if the models sold for LOTR in a few years are "success" in your mind, then why are the many more models sold over a longer period of time for 40k not also "success"

I didn't say that. Of course 40K was successful, and more successful than LOTR - which, as a movie tie in product was always going to be short lived. But the fact that it was short lived does NOT change the fact that it was successful over that period.

You are the one who brought up (rudely) nationality like im some self centered yank who dismisses any non america centric ideas... dont bring it up yourself if it doesnt matter.

If you are going to try to argue it was sucessfull because in your local area it was, for a short time, then you have to accept that the converse is also true, that it was sucessfull where you live does not negate the fact that it was hugely unsuccessful in other areas.

One is being removed from GW stores, one is not. Just look at the tournament scenes for the three games and its clear which game lagged behind significantly.


If you set the bar so low for success for LOTR you have to admit that 40k/fantasy succeeded even more, ergo rick is incorrect in his assertation that what people want is more of LOTR style games/models

Since we both know 40k/fantasy is more sucessfull, then it just shows rick is off base with his assertions that LOTR is what people want more then 40k.

There is room for both styles after all... not mutually exclusive by any means

Didn't GW's annual reports show huge LOTR sales for the 3-4 years of the movies?

It may not have been a successful game, but people bought the product, in huge numbers. It was, by any definition, a success as a product line.

I think it's success was due to, you know, being miniatures for LOTR movies, not due to the decision to scale them down.

I lived in the Chicagoland region during the entire run of LoTR in GW. I visited five different GW shops regularly during that time. It was tough getting up a game of anything other than LoTR when the movies were coming out in those stores because the tables were always taken up with LoTR.

 easysauce wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 easysauce wrote:

“When I did Lord of the Rings I redefined the miniatures to be 28mm again. I took them down in size and had single-piece models. That was part of the reason it was successful.”

I simply cannot take anything he says seriously if he believes this.....


If that is success id hate to see failure!@

But it was successful for several years while the movies were still current, at least in the UK. You seem to have a skewed perception of history.

No it was not, models sold for a short while, but no one played the game... might be a different case where you are specifically, but around here AOS is more popular then LOTR ever was... its still a running joke with staff and customers alike just how much of a waste of retail space LOTR was. Most people I talk to see LOTR as the worst move the company ever made.

Then you talk to some very strange people.

Locally, LotR did about a hundred times better than AoS seems likely to see. (I am being literal there - not exaggerating for the sake of hyperbole. LotR sold in Waldenbooks - and sold well.)

As for seeing failure... I am pretty sure that AoS does indeed qualify, in spite of your blanket approval for the game.

Your not liking LotR does not make it a failure.

Your liking AoS dos not make it a success.

I did not especially like LotR - the game was too simplistic for my tastes. But it did make a decent introduction to the hobby.

My not liking AoS is only a symptom of why the game is a failure - with that failure being summed up with 'it just does not sell all that well'.

If enough people liked the game, then my not liking it would not matter a jot - but there are enough people that dislike it, for largely the same reasons, that, on a local scale at least and national from most reports, that it is flagging mere months into its lifespan.

There are excellent games out there that I do not like - I cannot stand Dreadball - but my good lady is at the top of the league, and loves the game.

There are terrible games that I really enjoy - Black Death is a card game about the Bubonic Plague, a bit like Nuke War....

But when enough people dislike a game, and for similar reasons, the game is a failure, even if I personally really like the game.

The Auld Grump

Who said I liked AOS?

them's fighting words

I just stated it was more popular already then LOTR ever was around *here*.

The fact, and my point, remains that whatever success LOTR did or did not have, it is

A: gone now

and

B: was not due to scaled down mono pose models.

 easysauce wrote:
You are the one who brought up (rudely) nationality like im some self centered yank who dismisses any non america centric ideas... dont bring it up yourself if it doesnt matter.

I brought it up because you were insisting that the games popularity or lack thereof in America/Canada/wherever is the only barometer by which it can be judged.

If you are going to try to argue it was sucessfull because in your local area it was, for a short time, then you have to accept that the converse is also true, that it was sucessfull where you live does not negate the fact that it was hugely unsuccessful in other areas.

Thats what YOU were doing. Are you just parroting my own posts back at me now? YES, it was probably unpopular in the USA. But unpopular =/= unsuccessful. You yourself admitted that it sold well, even if it wasn't played very much. My point was, GW is a British company. The SBG did well in Britain, well enough to justify retaining the LOTR licence for the better part of two decades. Ergo its fair to say it was a success overall, even if it was a qualified and temporary success.

One is being removed from GW stores, one is not. Just look at the tournament scenes for the three games and its clear which game lagged behind significantly.

So what?

The SBG is making a moderate resurgence in Europe thanks to the dedication of the independent community , and the community is growing with several new tournaments across Europe despite the lack of support from GW. At this rate it'll end up like Blood Bowl - unsupported, with most of the range OOP, but a dedicated hardcore community.

Is the Age of Sigmar tournament scene growing? Is it in a healthy state?

The reason Age of Sigmar isn't being removed from shelves is because its only just been released, its still brand new. The bigwigs in GW don't yet want to admit they made a mistake - they're in denial and doubling down. Give it another 2 or 3 years and I wouldn't be surprised if AOS gets a re-launch (Warhammer 9th ed? AOS 2nd Ed?) or gets marginalized in favour of 40K.

If you set the bar so low for success for LOTR you have to admit that 40k/fantasy succeeded even more, ergo rick is incorrect in his assertation that what people want is more of LOTR style games/models

Since we both know 40k/fantasy is more sucessfull, then it just shows rick is off base with his assertions that LOTR is what people want more then 40k.

I'm not talking about Rick Priestley and his assertions, I'm disagreeing with your opinion that the SBG was an abject failure overall because you personally did not see it played very much in your own area.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 easysauce wrote:


The fact, and my point, remains that whatever success LOTR did or did not have, it is

A: gone now

No, thats not at all what you were saying. You were outright denying that the SBG was ever successful.

B: was not due to scaled down mono pose models.

That at least I can agree with. The game was popular because it was tied to a wildly popular movie franchise, was a well written game quick to learn, with cheap miniatures and a small skirmish scale that did not require huge expensive armies which meant a low barrier to entry.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
As a personal anecdote...The LOTR SBG is what introduced me to miniature wargaming ~2003 at the age of 12. I was at a christian youth camp, when a friend got out his Return of the King starter set and played a game with me. I was hooked from that moment on and have been playing for the 12 years since.

I started 40K during 5th Ed in ~2008, and played it for a few years...but by the time 6th Ed came out I was already disillusioned. I haven't played 40K since 2012. I've now gone back to LOTR SBG, attend 2 - 3 tournaments a year, and have even begun adapting my miniature collections to run a D&D 5e campaign at my local club (which gives me an excuse to collect even more of the LOTR range before it goes OOP).

I have no regrets.

-

 Polonius wrote:
Didn't GW's annual reports show huge LOTR sales for the 3-4 years of the movies?

It may not have been a successful game, but people bought the product, in huge numbers. It was, by any definition, a success as a product line.

I think it's success was due to, you know, being miniatures for LOTR movies, not due to the decision to scale them down.

The game appealed to a new target demographic - fans of the Lord of the Rings films (myself included). These people weren't GW veterans, they may not even have been wargamers. The SBG introduced this new demographic to wargaming in general, and to the rest of Gamesworkshop's product lines. For 5 years I played only the SBG, but I DEVOURED White Dwarf, every last page. I loved reading battle reports, and painting guides, and conversion corners for Warhammer 40K, Fantasy and especially Necromunda (which was sadly already on its way out).

I've always perceived the phlegm filled vitriol directed against the SBG over the years as sour grapes from Warhammer fans who were bitter that resources were being devoted to a game that they didn't personally want. GW got fat and rich off the back of Lord of the Rings, and was able to invest those profits back into the company and expand its Warhammer lines.

Ingrates.

LOTR was never played, never had any staying power at all... if the models sold for LOTR in a few years are "success" in your mind, then why are the many more models sold over a longer period of time for 40k not also "success"

2004 remains GW's best year, both by sales and operating profits... BEFORE adjusting for inflation. Doing so makes it look truly exceptional. They really should have more of those "unsuccessful" years.

Stayng power - who cares? That money paid for the CAD design and tooling gear that made those high quality 40k models possible. It also paid for a doomed expansion of their North American shop chain, which we don't talk about.

My experience of LotR is very different from yours. Did my teacher training about that time - you could tell the day that Battle Games in Middle-Earth came out because there were literally dozens of small boys running around school clutching the magazine or sprues of figures. I ran a school club for the two years I was in training and it was ridiculously popular - again, a couple of dozen kids attending week in, week out, in a school of 400 was pretty impressive.

Like the game or not, the combination of the full game and the magazine DID draw in a lot of kids on the back of the movie. Like them or not, the simple models DID get lots of kids playing and buying minis. The sales and profits prove it. I also recall one GW article saying that about 350,000 sets of Uruk Hai had been sold - or 7,000,000 figures... Movie series ended, customers left - that was a failure on the part of GW to anticipate it and act to retain customers.

I've always maintained that GW somehow contrived to build a really sophisticated intro package to draw in new blood (and Battle Games in Middle Earth in newsagents + movie advertising were central to the game's success) and the suits never even knew what they had, never made any effort to build on it. All you hear about is "the bubble", like it was some unexpected force of nature.

LEGO launched - launched - its successful LotR line in 2012, in anticipation of The Hobbit. In the same spring, GW killed its LotR line by doubling the price on ten year old boxes. Lessons learned from the first movie triogy - none.

GW would not be as big as it is today were it not for the LOTR SBG. People who are bitter about its existence are historical revisionist ingrates.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
GW would not be as big as it is today were it not for the LOTR SBG. People who are bitter about its existence are historical revisionist ingrates.

As you pointed out earlier, people were unhappy with the game when it came out too. It was pretty heavily promoted, to the extent that GW promotes anything.

The game itself was fine, but nothing special. the problem was that the first three years all had starter boxes full of mooks, when nearly all the scenarios (and scenarios were all you could play) involved the heros.

Fair enough. I came in towards the end with ROTK in 2003.

But GW had to promote it heavily. It was a licenced game. That licence cost them a lot of money which they had to recoup by guaranteeing the game was successful. I'd say the risk paid off.

For the Hobbit? Not so much. That was incompetently handled.

FWIW: LotR sold insanely well around here. Lots and lots of games for years after the movies had come out, actually. And I know a lot of guys who came for LotR and stayed for WHFB/40K as well (though I'm glad to say most have moved on to better systems now ) - the influx of new customers it created was a huge boon to GW around here.

I came for LOTR, dabbled in 40K, then went back to LOTR and began broadening my horizons. I run D&D games with my LOTR figures. And I've got WIP armies for SAGA and This Is Not A Test.

Part of the reason why LotR was so big in the Netherlands was because of that bi-weekly magazine that included the odd mini's and paints allowing you to slowly build up armies and learning to play the game at the same time.

For what it is worth, I am seeing a few people in my local group that are mixing LotR elves with the Mantic Elves and a few Ral Partha Fantasy Armies figures for their Elf armies.

It is kind of weird - the proportions of the Mantic Elves bears very little semblance to that of the LotR elves... yet they seem to fit right in....

The Auld Grump

 Polonius wrote:


As you pointed out earlier, people were unhappy with the game when it came out too. It was pretty heavily promoted, to the extent that GW promotes anything.

The game itself was fine, but nothing special. the problem was that the first three years all had starter boxes full of mooks, when nearly all the scenarios (and scenarios were all you could play) involved the heros.

YMMV - I thought it was a pretty decent game. It really is a game of heroic combat+mooks, as you say. As for the metal heroes... Battle Games in Middle-Earth often had them on the cover. Or, you know, Boromir is the one with the black shield (I still do that...). Scenarios - count your points, line 'em up, knock 'em down, maybe something fancy like defending a house or bridge, or a treasure hunt. Not difficult.

Of course BGiME also had scenarios... and the rules... and painting guides... and IMHO better terrain-building articles than WD at the time. BGiME was a very, very smart move and had a lot of quality material in it.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
For what it is worth, I am seeing a few people in my local group that are mixing LotR elves with the Mantic Elves and a few Ral Partha Fantasy Armies figures for their Elf armies.

It is kind of weird - the proportions of the Mantic Elves bears very little semblance to that of the LotR elves... yet they seem to fit right in....

The Auld Grump

Elves with dwarfism? Oh the irony.

Momotaro wrote:

LOTR was never played, never had any staying power at all... if the models sold for LOTR in a few years are "success" in your mind, then why are the many more models sold over a longer period of time for 40k not also "success"

2004 remains GW's best year, both by sales and operating profits... BEFORE adjusting for inflation. Doing so makes it look truly exceptional. They really should have more of those "unsuccessful" years.

Stayng power - who cares? That money paid for the CAD design and tooling gear that made those high quality 40k models possible. It also paid for a doomed expansion of their North American shop chain, which we don't talk about.

In the time period in which LoTR was popular, it probably made more money than the vast plurality of other games do in their entire existence. I agree with you in terms of the staying power. Not every game needs to last for decades, though of course, I'm sure no company minds this!

I think that there is a nostalgic desire for Games Workshop to return to the type of company it was when it was small and scrappy AND the dominant wargaming company. But that time can never be again, because the top 3 games (40k, X-Wing, WMH) are already much bigger, profit machines than GW was three decades ago. They can't concurrently be massive miniature tooling powerhouses and the innovative small shop (like Dreamforge). Sure, there are small and scrappy companies, and if you like those, you should support them: but they're not going to be a dominant company today, they won't be any time soon, and in order for them to become an ecosystem played by a lot of people and well-stocked in stores, they'll need to produce a product that will make them the kind of money that WMH, X-Wing and 40k generate -- at which point, they probably won't act like a small, scrappy company anymore.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

Elves with dwarfism? Oh the irony.

Exalted!

easysauce wrote:
I mean really... wow, ok you can think that, but Id say you are wrong... one piece models are horrible to paint, hard to get details in, and mono pose... Ive painted GW models for over 14 years and the plastic kits just feel so damn nice to paint, especially in pieces

I've been painting for roughly the same amount of time, and appreciate a well-turned one-piece model.

To be frank some of the 'posing' in more recent WFB kits is not much to write home about. Especially if you want some of those scale-creep pituitary sufferers to line up on 20mm bases.

you can tell they were designed with the modeller/painter in mind.

Well, there's the problem.

Bolognesus wrote:FWIW: LotR sold insanely well around here. Lots and lots of games for years after the movies had come out, actually. And I know a lot of guys who came for LotR and stayed for WHFB/40K as well (though I'm glad to say most have moved on to better systems now ) - the influx of new customers it created was a huge boon to GW around here.

BrookM wrote:Part of the reason why LotR was so big in the Netherlands was because of that bi-weekly magazine that included the odd mini's and paints allowing you to slowly build up armies and learning to play the game at the same time.

Yeah they killed it when they came out with the overpriced hobbit set they thought they could milk the movie hobbit fans just as the GW fans, well that backfired. If they had made it cheaper and put some effort in it, they could have made a bundle.

 Vermis wrote:

easysauce wrote:
I mean really... wow, ok you can think that, but Id say you are wrong... one piece models are horrible to paint, hard to get details in, and mono pose... Ive painted GW models for over 14 years and the plastic kits just feel so damn nice to paint, especially in pieces

I've been painting for roughly the same amount of time, and appreciate a well-turned one-piece model.

To be frank some of the 'posing' in more recent WFB kits is not much to write home about. Especially if you want some of those scale-creep pituitary sufferers to line up on 20mm bases.

I've been painting GW miniatures for close to 20 years now and non-GW stuff for longer and I prefer a good monopose model made from 1 or 2 pieces. It's all subjective, there is no wrong, it's naive to not understand why some people might prefer the monopose LOTR models. Especially compared to many of the multipart models that come out at the same time which were posable in an infinite number of derpy poses.

The nice thing about monopose models is they can be given a sense of flow. Even a lot of the current GW multipose models lack that.

But yeah, LOTR was a big success. Their profits were high, the models were good AND cheap and the game was being played. Locally it displaced 40k and WHFB as the most played games.

Two part, snap fit models are certainly easier for new hobbyists, who seemed to be the driving force behind LOTR being quite possibly the most successful product line GW ever had.

 Talys wrote:

I think that there is a nostalgic desire for Games Workshop to return to the type of company it was when it was small and scrappy AND the dominant wargaming company.

If GW don't rediscover what they were doing right when they were "small and scrappy" they won't be dominating wargaming for very much longer.

Regarding LoTR being dead - GW still appear to be recruiting for new staff for it:

http://jobs.games-workshop.com/2015/11/13/middle-earth-writer-nottingham-uk/
http://jobs.games-workshop.com/2015/11/13/middle-earth-model-designer-nottingham-uk/

 Talizvar wrote:
The part that hit home for me:

“For the customers, these guys were the big brother they always wanted,”

The people who ran the stores, they loved what they did and they took the time to show you anything you wanted on the hobby.
They were social hubs.
How can GW differentiate themselves?
Just go back to their roots, it was rather innovative: an inclusive environment that gave attention to the kids.
Gaming coffee houses are getting popular around here.

So, they are a collectable trinket company... kinda sad.
I will always be grateful (to what seems to be more the old guard) for GW making modeling and hobby craft exciting and fun with an easy way to meet like-minded people.

It is sad that Kirby's group cannot see what made it great: being inclusive to it's customers.

Very much this, that whole section shows an awareness that seems totally missing from the company today:

Where other gaming companies had been content to sell their products through independent retailers, Games Workshop opened its own network of stores dedicated solely to selling the company’s own products. Sales director John Stallard was in charge of the strategy.

“We always viewed the stores as our advertising spend,” he said.

“They’re hugely expensive things to run, but they served as our billboards, our place on the high street and our primary recruitment tool. Really, they were recruitment stations with a shop attached.

“When you’re doing something something as wacky as a huge toy soldier game with goblins, it can be a bit of a tough sell. But when people can see how glorious it is, see the beautifully painted armies and all these people hooting and hollering and rolling dice, it gives you an instant idea of how much fun it is.”

The company’s expansion plan was unconventional, but effective.

“We just looked at the top division of the English football league,” Stallard said.

“We thought that if a town was big enough to support a top level football team, then it was big enough to support a Games Workshop store.

“After that we got a bit more clever. We looked for towns that had a Marks & Spencer [an up-market British department store chain] and an Early Learning Centre [a group of toy shops with a largely middle-class clientele]. We thought: ‘Well, they’ve done their research, they know where the good locations are.'”

Games Workshop stores were more than just shops – they were social hubs. They hosted events, ran tournaments and provided a place for players to share their interests. They played grunge and indie rock, and their staff were avid Warhammer players themselves, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the games they sold.

“For the customers, these guys were the big brother they always wanted,” Stallard said.

“And if you look at what the stores achieved, it’s an extraordinary success story. To have young people – primarily boys – taking up a hobby that requires so much reading in the teeth of the computer games industry, it’s just remarkable.”

Reducing that to the sad little one-man-store affairs that permit gaming only grudgingly and regard the idea of being a social hub with the same kind of creeping horror an arachnophobe regards a bathtub full of tarantulas was an act of vandalism IMO.

Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

 Rayvon wrote:
Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

Didnt Pete Jackson have a hand in requesting the Perrys be put on the project as well as stating what scale they should be.

 Vermis wrote:

I've been painting for roughly the same amount of time, and appreciate a well-turned one-piece model.

With ya there V. Theoden with his sword in the air (one-piece metal) remains one of my favourite figures.

The LotR plastics are not perfect - a number dealt with the undercut problem badly, by leaving blank bits on the side of the figures. But they worked and, as with all things, some are still decent, some have not aged well, and others were poor even in 2003.

The modern snapfit/monopose models that GW makes are amazing. OK, a couple of pieces, but the Dark Vengeance Chaos models and the Mirkwood rangers are great figures.

I'd like to think there was room in the company for both multi-part AND simpler models..

 easysauce wrote:
Its one of the reasons why WMH models annoy me, so many mono pose models

Yeah it's sad .
Thanksfully, some of their release, despite being monopose, are at least multipart, so it is possible to convert them a bit.

 Rayvon wrote:
Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

Hard to say now. Battle Games in Middle-Earth was certainly ridiculously popular, and it's a matter of record that many LotR gamers didn't make the jump to GW's other games after the movies stopped. Why is a good question - more expensive is one possibility, more complex is another (both games and models). Nobody knows - including GW.

The Hobbit movies were equally successful, but the GW game flopped. Again, it's hard to say why. The company did everything differently second time round - expensive models, no advertising or models outside GW. Speaking for myself only, the prices killed it, but many other factors had also changed - the messy release schedule and ugly movie designs couldn't have helped, and tabletop gaming looks very different now with lots more options.

Heck kids' spending patterns must have changed - maybe the Hobbit Kingdoms game app scratched the "battle gaming" itch this time round...

Momotaro wrote:
The Hobbit movies were equally successful, but the GW game flopped. Again, it's hard to say why. The company did everything differently second time round - expensive models, no advertising or models outside GW. Speaking for myself only, the prices killed it, but many other factors had also changed - the messy release schedule and ugly movie designs couldn't have helped, and tabletop gaming looks very different now with lots more options.

Return of the King won 11 Oscars. Battle of 5 armies was nominated for one.
Return of the King took $1.120 billion at the box office (1.45 if that isn't adjusted for inflation, which I doubt it was but wikipedia didn't say).
Battle of Five armies was only $956 million.

I don't think the Hobbit was anywhere near as successful as the Lord of the Rings.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Momotaro wrote:
The Hobbit movies were equally successful, but the GW game flopped. Again, it's hard to say why. The company did everything differently second time round - expensive models, no advertising or models outside GW. Speaking for myself only, the prices killed it, but many other factors had also changed - the messy release schedule and ugly movie designs couldn't have helped, and tabletop gaming looks very different now with lots more options.

Return of the King won 11 Oscars. Battle of 5 armies was nominated for one.
Return of the King took $1.120 billion at the box office (1.45 if that isn't adjusted for inflation, which I doubt it was but wikipedia didn't say).
Battle of Five armies was only $956 million.

I don't think the Hobbit was anywhere near as successful as the Lord of the Rings.

85% as successful from those figures

I feel kind of confused on my own response to LOTR.
First big book I read was the Hobbit in about grade 3.
These stories have been around most of my life and a part of it.
I bought only one miniature of the line (Legolas) only because my wife likes the character and I made a diorama for her (she keeps it on her desk at work).
Never bought another miniature.
I have played the strategy computer game!
But never played any of the tabletop games and never saw it played.

My best guess is that I grew up with the books, I had my own idea of how the characters looked back then.
The movies are glorious mind, but seems not enough for me to want miniatures of the characters seen on the screen.
So yeah, maybe people around my generation "missed the boat" and that is why it seemed "unpopular" to us but for the younger generations it was great.

 Polonius wrote:
Didn't GW's annual reports show huge LOTR sales for the 3-4 years of the movies?

It may not have been a successful game, but people bought the product, in huge numbers. It was, by any definition, a success as a product line.

I think it's success was due to, you know, being miniatures for LOTR movies, not due to the decision to scale them down.

Not only that, but the stuff was everywhere.

Barnes & Nobel, Borders, and even Wal-Mart, Target, and Toys-R-Us stocked the starter sets for LOTR. Barnes & Nobel and Borders would also have a number of the plastic boxed sets and the Lord of the Rings paint sets.
Borders and Toys-R-Us expanded from stocking just the LOTR stuff at the time and also had Assault on Black Reach and the WFB starter.

It was crazy whenever those two places had deals.

 Rayvon wrote:
Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

There is something to be said for having an appropriate level of complexity. There's absolutely no reason for there to be multipart Mordor Orcs with 12 head options (both helmeted and unhelmeted), pouches, stowage, severed heads, 10 weapon options, 10 shield options, running legs, crouching legs, 20 arm options etc. IMHO, this would be a needless level of complexity. The parts would either be chunkier to make assembly easier, or remain truescale and be very fiddly. The posing would be more awkward to make the "multipart-multipose" work, and the resulting kit would need a lot of work to make them "on-model" for the film look. This direction would have been an expensive and inappropriate design choice and I feel that GW did the right thing going with well sculpted mono-pose. GW's current obsession with multipart, 2 (or 3 in 1) kits and uber-detail leads to a lot of sculpting compromises and I feel that a lot of GW kits suffer from this.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Definitely agree, it gradually lost the tongue-in-cheek side and became far too po-faced and serious.

Depends. Do you consider things like Murderfang the Murderdreadnought with murderfist from planet murder who murder people to satisfy his murderlust, or Santa Space Wolf in his anti-grav sleigh tracted by wolf because WOLF WOLF WOLFY MCWOLF to be serious or tongue-in-check?

I get a strong 90's comics vibe from GW now, in that the concepts were probably honestly thought of as edgy and gritty by the creators (and 13-year-old boys), but to everyone else, they just seem like self-parody.Everything, in concept and sculpt, is just more and more XTREME, to the point where it's just deafening. Space Marines in power armour--inside bigger power armour. (DUDE!) Chaos always had skull iconography, but now they've got so many skulls, they're bursting out from the inside (WICKED!). These aren't your dad's Slayers, these are FyreSlayers who are, like, literally burning with rage (SWEET!).

I can easily imagine FyreSlayer and Murderfang teaming up in the epic BloodBound crossover, to fight the mega-villain Omnicide.

The Hobbit films were less successful, the games and figures were a lot more expensive, the games arguably were less good in themselves, and GW didn't advertise them.

GW essentially relied on repeat custom from LoTR buyers. Whether they were veterans or the many who clearly abandoned LoTR in the mid-2000s, as shown by sales figures, all the above factors would also count against the success of the game.

That said, LoTR reportedly is a good system, the figures are nice and true to the films, and it's good that GW are continuing to support it.

As regards metal versus resin versus polystyrene, mono-pose versus multi-pose versus one-piece versus multi-part, there is no single format that can satisfy every customer, and it's good that there is so much choice on the market these days.

 jonolikespie wrote:

I don't think the Hobbit was anywhere near as successful as the Lord of the Rings.

We're still talking about multi-billion dollar, multi-year film franchise with saturation media coverage, toys everywhere and an advertising spend that dwarfed GW's entire budget. It's not like they tried to make a toy line out of some low-budget indie film.

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Talys wrote:

I think that there is a nostalgic desire for Games Workshop to return to the type of company it was when it was small and scrappy AND the dominant wargaming company.

If GW don't rediscover what they were doing right when they were "small and scrappy" they won't be dominating wargaming for very much longer.

Eh, no matter how bad they screw up, they've got years before they stop being dominating. They'll first stop being the majority of tabletop games played/sold in stores (likely true already in alot of places)... a few years after that they'll stop being the biggest game sold/played. It's a long road paved with lots of yellow messed up bricks but I have faith in GW being able to stay the course. For every step forward like BaC, there are two steps back like AoS.

 warboss wrote:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Talys wrote:

I think that there is a nostalgic desire for Games Workshop to return to the type of company it was when it was small and scrappy AND the dominant wargaming company.

If GW don't rediscover what they were doing right when they were "small and scrappy" they won't be dominating wargaming for very much longer.

Eh, no matter how bad they screw up, they've got years before they stop being dominating. They'll first stop being the majority of tabletop games played/sold in stores (likely true already in alot of places)... a few years after that they'll stop being the biggest game sold/played. It's a long road paved with lots of yellow messed up bricks but I have faith in GW being able to stay the course. For every step forward like BaC, there are two steps back like AoS.

That part has been true of Australia for a year or two now, and we've always been a year or two ahead of you yanks in price rises. Interesting times ahead for GW methinks.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Interesting times ahead for GW methinks.

If by "interesting" you mean "really bad," I agree.

 Elemental wrote:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Definitely agree, it gradually lost the tongue-in-cheek side and became far too po-faced and serious.

Depends. Do you consider things like Murderfang the Murderdreadnought with murderfist from planet murder who murder people to satisfy his murderlust, or Santa Space Wolf in his anti-grav sleigh tracted by wolf because WOLF WOLF WOLFY MCWOLF to be serious or tongue-in-check?

I get a strong 90's comics vibe from GW now, in that the concepts were probably honestly thought of as edgy and gritty by the creators (and 13-year-old boys), but to everyone else, they just seem like self-parody.Everything, in concept and sculpt, is just more and more XTREME, to the point where it's just deafening. Space Marines in power armour--inside bigger power armour. (DUDE!) Chaos always had skull iconography, but now they've got so many skulls, they're bursting out from the inside (WICKED!). These aren't your dad's Slayers, these are FyreSlayers who are, like, literally burning with rage (SWEET!).

I can easily imagine FyreSlayer and Murderfang teaming up in the epic BloodBound crossover, to fight the mega-villain Omnicide.

I was shocked that in Dreadfleet (I being the only regular where I live to own one) didn't have a classic skull island, yes it had islands made of skulls but I mean the classic pirate skull island.
Missed opportunity, I mean that whole game was a missed opportunity.
Still enjoy it, though it was the last GW model purchase I've made (what a way to go out on lol).
I did feel their over the topness worked a bit better on a game like that, the over the top Pirates of the Caribbean thing they had going on.


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 Rayvon wrote:
Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

When I started becoming aware of GW Lotr was still coming out, heck the Two Towers had just come out when I started playing and I was swept up in it all (and as well as being 12 years old) I both loved the movies, the books and the models were cheaper.
The starter set was like 75 dollars, which compared to the 40k one of 120 or so (and having far more models) it was an easy choice.
Average box sets ran like 22 dollars (that low for 24 models, from something I knew and loved, easy choice) I actually bought things back then, mostly Lord of the Rings because it was cheap and GW still had dedicated nights to various games back then so I could turn up Monday and be guaranteed a game.
It went for a good while, I had a Hobbit army (which I still own) which was... interesting on the battlefield to say the least.
I've not played the game in a good few years, don't know anyone who bought any of the Hobbit stuff, the starter set is too much, and while I like the Goblins (I want to use them as Ghouls in KoW) they're too expensive. The cheap alternative no longer.
They're not worth being on par, price wise with 40k.
When War of the Ring came out it got a tiny return, like people actually played it a little, though I didn't, not being able to with my Hobbits and it quickly went away.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That said, LoTR reportedly is a good system, the figures are nice and true to the films, and it's good that GW are continuing to support it.

The core of the rules found its home in the now defunct Warhammer Historical range, where most of their games (Legends of the Old West and the like) used the same system to great effect.

 Rayvon wrote:
Lord of the rings sold because it was lord of the rings, not because he made the right style minis.

Mini style was definitely part of it, it's impossible to say how large of a part of it.

LotR was cheap and I'm sure the simplistic models is part of what allowed them to do that. Many of the infantry kits were 12 models to a smallish sprue so a box could be 2x identical sprues to give you 24 models. And at 24 models you don't really notice that there's 2 of each model in there anyway. Good value and much easier to put together a force (I'm sure a lot if not most new WHFB and 40k players fall flat on their faces when they discover just how long it's going to take them to assemble and paint all those models).

That value is part of what made LotR popular, the lack of value in The Hobbit is part of what made that a flop.

Also the more realistic proportions I'm SURE brought in some customers even if it pushed some of the WHFB fans away. It was the LotR models that first made me realise how derpy the rest of GW's range actually looked And I don't think it really hurt them if some fans stuck with WHFB or 40k instead, all the money is going to the same place in the end as long as they didn't quit GW completely.

 warboss wrote:

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

 Talys wrote:

I think that there is a nostalgic desire for Games Workshop to return to the type of company it was when it was small and scrappy AND the dominant wargaming company.

If GW don't rediscover what they were doing right when they were "small and scrappy" they won't be dominating wargaming for very much longer.

Eh, no matter how bad they screw up, they've got years before they stop being dominating. They'll first stop being the majority of tabletop games played/sold in stores (likely true already in alot of places)... a few years after that they'll stop being the biggest game sold/played. It's a long road paved with lots of yellow messed up bricks but I have faith in GW being able to stay the course. For every step forward like BaC, there are two steps back like AoS.

Years? Maybe, but the long road will have a roadblock called the investors at some point. Unlike most in this industry, GW are publicly traded. As soon as they stop being the biggest game sold, the investors will look for the company to be sold out. If that doesn't happen, the investors will start dropping the stock and a hostile takeover becomes likely.

A hostile takeover by.... whom?

As much as I love gw models, gw makes a microscopic amount of profit relative to its share price, and those profits have a very low ceiling in its core niche (wargaming minis). There is nothing that gw could do to increase the profitability of that niche by a factor of 5 or 10 or 20, because the market isn't big enough and it's not going to get big enough. They can't charge an order of magnitude (factor of ten) more for models, and even if they owned 100% of the market and everybody loved them, they'd sell, what, only three times more stuff at most. So what does that leave? IP for movies and video games.

But strike the last one, because licensing ip for videogames is already practically free (look how little they charged relative to how many video games came out), so it's way cheaper to just license it than buy GW.

We've already had the movie discussion many times

The smart thing to do if the stock price craters is for insiders who already made their tens of millions to buy it back, and ultimately turn it back into a private company. Then, they can do what they want for a decade or so then go public again and make tens of millions again. Rawr.

 Talys wrote:


The smart thing to do if the stock price craters is for insiders who already made their tens of millions to buy it back, and ultimately turn it back into a private company. Then, they can do what they want for a decade or so then go public again and make tens of millions again. Rawr.

...oh my God.

It all makes sense now. The nonsensical business decisions...the meteoric price rises...the turning out of old customers and horrendous PR...they're subverting them from within, joining the foe and even going so far as to tear down an ancient pillar of the company as part of a secret plot to restore the old order.

Tom Kirby is a member of the Alpha Legion.

I think GW is actually a terrible company to have made public, although I won't dispute that it was highly profitable for a small number of people.

It really doesn't make sense as a public company because the whole reason you become public is that you want more capital to expand your business -- for example, acquiring competitors, or expanding into other areas. But GW doesn't want to do any of that, and it doesn't even know what to do with the profit it does make (it just returns it to shareholders). Basically, they have all the downsides of being a public company, like having to show people their books and being stuck with all the regulatory overhead, without having need of any of the potential advantages.

The only thing GW got out of going public was an exit strategy for its founders -- which is a good reason for the founders, but not a great reason for the company or investors.

GW results would be published whether they were public or privately owned.

Your assessment that GW is a bad company to float makes no sense given that it has bee run profitable as such for nearly two decades, caries decent capital and pays dividend.

The yearly reports have often said as an investment anyone looking to the a quick buck would do we to look elsewhere as the goal of GW is sustainable growth over many years. They must know the limited nature of their niche and proceed accordingly. Basically they are like any other small to medium sized UK company.

Think Talys is dead on with that one, think the majority of complaints that people level at GW are due to the policies they follow from being a publically owned company.

Have to say it probably wouldn't be the case if they were still privately owned, and not having to think of share-holders with every decision that is made.

 notprop wrote:
GW results would be published whether they were public or privately owned.

Why? Privately owned companies do not publish their results, generally speaking. Certainly, none of GW's competitors do

 notprop wrote:
Your assessment that GW is a bad company to float makes no sense given that it has bee run profitable as such for nearly two decades, caries decent capital and pays dividend.

As a private company, it would make more money, and pay higher dividends to its shareholders. Just talk to any broker and ask them, "why should I take my company public?". They'll tell you the main reasons are for liquidity (the ability to cash out) and to raise capital. The other reasons -- like being able to attract top employees because they can own a piece of the pie and become billionaires if they get in early -- don't really apply to GW.

 notprop wrote:
The yearly reports have often said as an investment anyone looking to the a quick buck would do we to look elsewhere as the goal of GW is sustainable growth over many years. They must know the limited nature of their niche and proceed accordingly. Basically they are like any other small to medium sized UK company.

I'm not arguing that GW stock is a terrible buy, or that it's overpriced. It's okay. However, it's not going to make anyone huge bucks, because although it's a decent business, it has a very low ceiling due to a small market. Therefore, it makes it a terrible target for a hostile takeover. Because if you're going to go to all that effort (and risk), you want a much more significant potential payout.

Going back to when GW went public -- which is only an academic exercise, because it's already happened -- I'm saying that the only reason it went public was for founder liquidity, despite anything the stock promoters said back then. History has proven that despite them being a successful business, they won't ever rake in hundreds of millions of profit, unless they basically go into another line of business in which they currently possess no competency (the entire market for miniature wargames isn't worth hundreds of millions of profit a year on the manufacturing end, and there's no plausible way to grow it to the point where it is). Again, hindsight is 20/20, and it's perfectly fair that at the time GW went public, investors had another view of its potential, and now, it is what it is: a reasonably performing, relatively stable and profitable stock.

GW would be more exciting as a stock if it decided to leverage the advantages of being a public company, raise a hundred or two hundred million dollars, and do something exiting and risky that could potentially make it a billion dollars every year -- because that's what you can do as a public company, that is generally impossible as a private company (unless you have an extremely wealthy benefactor).

 Talys wrote:

 notprop wrote:
GW results would be published whether they were public or privately owned.

Why? Privately owned companies do not publish their results, generally speaking. Certainly, none of GW's competitors do

Private limited companies (here in the UK anyway) are required by law to submit accounts and a report annually to Companies House. Everything is searchable online. They're not required to make the investor reports that public limited companies have to, but they're not without oversight - a bankrupt can be disqualified from being a Ltd company director. You won't get as much information out of the submitted accounts as you would for a public limited company either, but it does exist.

Any company in the UK with Limited (Ltd ) after its name only exposes the company officers to limited liability in the event of a company failing. Public limited companies use the abbreviation PLC. With a more basic company structure, like Sole Trader, the company owner is personally liable for ALL company debts.

It's not compulsory to create a Ltd company, but if you don't want to lose your house and don't mind a bit of paperwork, limited status is the way to go.

 Elemental wrote:
I get a strong 90's comics vibe from GW now, in that the concepts were probably honestly thought of as edgy and gritty by the creators (and 13-year-old boys), but to everyone else, they just seem like self-parody.[…]
I can easily imagine FyreSlayer and Murderfang teaming up in the epic BloodBound crossover, to fight the mega-villain Omnicide.

You think they were serious with Murderfang?
It's hard to say.
It's hard to get anything about how GW people think though, so…

Momotaro wrote:

 Talys wrote:

 notprop wrote:
GW results would be published whether they were public or privately owned.

Why? Privately owned companies do not publish their results, generally speaking. Certainly, none of GW's competitors do

Private limited companies (here in the UK anyway) are required by law to submit accounts and a report annually to Companies House. Everything is searchable online. They're not required to make the investor reports that public limited companies have to, but they're not without oversight - a bankrupt can be disqualified from being a Ltd company director. You won't get as much information out of the submitted accounts as you would for a public limited company either, but it does exist.

Any company in the UK with Limited (Ltd ) after its name only exposes the company officers to limited liability in the event of a company failing. Public limited companies use the abbreviation PLC. With a more basic company structure, like Sole Trader, the company owner is personally liable for ALL company debts.

It's not compulsory to create a Ltd company, but if you don't want to lose your house and don't mind a bit of paperwork, limited status is the way to go.

Wow. So, if I incorporate a 3-person company in the UK, I need to make available to the entire world, over the Internet, all of my revenues and costs? That seems extremely uncompetitive internationally, as that is certainly not the norm in most countries, including EU countries. I've operated limited liability incorporated companies in Germany, Switzerland, China, South Korea, the USA, Taiwan and Canada -- and I assure you that although for tax purposes you must submit such information, it is remains confidential.

Perhaps there is a UK equivalent to North American Reporting companies, which is a class of private company that exceeds a certain number of shareholders (around a hundred) and is subject to regulatory oversight. Even then, you can avoid it by simply bundling some of the shareholders (eg these 70 shareholders own shares of company A, which is only 1 shareholder of company B.

I would truly be shocked if ALL incorporated entities in the UK had to make public their financials; what foreign ibvestor would want to do business there?

Be shocked.

The only distinction is that in order to get the full accounting information for a Ltd company you need to make a request (or pay a subscription, I don't remember) and the amount of information publicly available is limited to a few key pieces such as turnover, names of Company Officers etc..




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It's perfectly reasonable as in return for protecting your personal assets, you're obliged to provide the information to potential investors or creditors who will themselves be taking a potential risk by dealing with you.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Be shocked.

The only distinction is that in order to get the full accounting information for a Ltd company you need to make a request (or pay a subscription, I don't remember) and the amount of information publicly available is limited to a few key pieces such as turnover, names of Company Officers etc..




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It's perfectly reasonable as in return for protecting your personal assets, you're obliged to provide the information to potential investors or creditors who will themselves be taking a potential risk by dealing with you.

Not on the rest of the world ;D For example, GmBH in Germany or a Ltd/Inc/LLC in North America has no such issue. Otherwise, we'd all know what privateer press did last year. So are companies like Darksphere NOT incorporated?

Incidentally, in north America, everything bigger than a guy operating out of his garage has significant advantages in incprporation, with almost no downsides. It's also impossible to have disproportionate ownerships by multiple parties without an incorporation structure, and where there is multiple ownership, it doesn't make sense to have an owner be responsible for more than their investment in the company, if they have nothing to do with its operation.

In hindsight, I guess I'm happy I never had to run something out of the UK

On the monopose thing, I really think it's easy for those who like multipart kits to feel that they are the "norm", but there are probably quite a lot of people who don't really enjoy assembly or conversions. (I'm one of them!)

I've been getting a lot more hobbying done since I switched to mostly monopose for my minis, because I get to skip the least exciting stage for me. That's why I buy box after box of LOTR plastics. The undercuts and so on don't bother me.

But the Hobbit, well, it's problem was price. The kits were actually really nice, and I picked up a few of them, but the price was just too much, even for me. I'm a big fan, and I haven't even bought the Escape From Goblin Town starter set yet.

 Talys wrote:

Not on the rest of the world ;D For example, GmBH in Germany or a Ltd/Inc/LLC in North America has no such issue. Otherwise, we'd all know what privateer press did last year. So are companies like Darksphere NOT incorporated?

Dunno, there's no legal obligation to become Ltd, you can be a sole trader with a turnover of millions, but, being a matter of public record, you can go look?

What happens in the rest of the world is utterly irrelevant, GW are a UK company, if they reverted to a private company, these are the rules they'd need to abide by.

Doesn't seem to have impacted the UK's position in the global economy overmuch.


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Here we go, Darksphere..

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07016318/filing-history

Mantic

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/06770093

@Az - am I missing something? These tell you almost nothing of the company, relative to what you must disclose as a publically traded company. As a public company, you must tell the general public (your potential investors) everything that you tell your actual owners (shareholders) who aren't involved in the operation of the business, and you must disclose actual financial statements that indicate how profitable you are, what your revenues and costs are, how much your cashflow changes, what capital equipment you own, what investments you made, and so on.

Revealing that is a huge disadvantage (compared to not revealing it) because competitors can make business decisions based on what you must disclose.

Knowing who the shareholders and officers and dorectors are, capital contributions, etc. is not harmful to the business, generally (or that helpful to the competition).

It could just be my phone, but I couldn't see how profitable Mabric was Las year, for instance (not all the pages would load).

I've submitted annual returns for a limited company. They have to cover the basics, like balance sheet and P&L.

I haven't had to do one, nor studied up on company accounting and law, since the mid-2000s.

The weird thing about reading this is that I really like the product GW has been putting out. I figured with the new CEO and bringing back Specialist Games and short/limited runs meant that they had their back office in order and they were planning on competing with a broad range of products again. Which has me slavering because I am in love with the new plastic kits. Putting together some odd Drop Pods, for example, had me wondering just how easy they would be to put together using the technology and design put into, say, the 2014 Assault Squad.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've submitted annual returns for a limited company. They have to cover the basics, like balance sheet and P&L.

I haven't had to do one, nor studied up on company accounting and law, since the mid-2000s.

Well sure. Everyone has to for tax purposes. But can someone else that you don't authorize get a copy of it? That's the crux of it.


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Nomeny wrote:
The weird thing about reading this is that I really like the product GW has been putting out. I figured with the new CEO and bringing back Specialist Games and short/limited runs meant that they had their back office in order and they were planning on competing with a broad range of products again. Which has me slavering because I am in love with the new plastic kits. Putting together some odd Drop Pods, for example, had me wondering just how easy they would be to put together using the technology and design put into, say, the 2014 Assault Squad.

You're not alone -- I love the new plastic kits too, and I'm sure, so do a lot of other people. I think sometimes it's hard to differentiate between people who just don't like the new product and people who just don't like the new, less friendly price tag.

A lot of it is how you perceive the kit, and what you want to do with it. I think the more time you plan on working on it, the more value you associate with the model (because, after all, your own time has some value too). So if I'm only going to spend 1 hour on a model, I would want to spend less on the model than if I were going to spend 30 hours on it, because in the latter case, it's more important to me that the model be as close to perfect as possible. To take it to an extreme If I plan to spend 500 hours on a competition grade model, the actual price of the model becomes nearly irrelevant -- would I pay $50 to get the perfect axe for that competition model? You betcha. But if it's going to be a grunt that I'm going to spend 30 seconds to drybrush, I want that part to be about $0.05 (or some little fraction of a kit that's good for some sorts of other things).

 Talys wrote:
@Az - am I missing something? These tell you almost nothing of the company, relative to what you must disclose as a publically traded company. As a public company, you must tell the general public (your potential investors) everything that you tell your actual owners (shareholders) who aren't involved in the operation of the business, and you must disclose actual financial statements that indicate how profitable you are, what your revenues and costs are, how much your cashflow changes, what capital equipment you own, what investments you made, and so on.

Revealing that is a huge disadvantage (compared to not revealing it) because competitors can make business decisions based on what you must disclose.

Knowing who the shareholders and officers and dorectors are, capital contributions, etc. is not harmful to the business, generally (or that helpful to the competition).

It could just be my phone, but I couldn't see how profitable Mabric was Las year, for instance (not all the pages would load).

No, you couldn't see how profitable Mantic was, because you clearly missed the bit in the filing that explained that they were below the threshold for detailed filings. I've no idea what that threshold is any more, but smaller companies only have to publish a truncated report.


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Whereas larger firms, such as these guys..

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/00229606/filing-history

Or GW Ltd, which is a subsidiary of GW PLC but apparently still have to satisfy the same filing criteria as any other Ltd company, file a full report.

I really don't think it's the massive disadvantage you're trying to paint it as, any company that's likely going to be big enough to be making the sort of strategic decisions you're talking about are going to be in the same boat. It's been this way since forever, and I've never once heard anyone bemoan it.

@Az - I gave my accountant a phone call out of curiosity.

European Union limited liability companies, including those in the UK, both public and private beyond the sized of SMBs (small and medium sized businesses), must now publish their annual reports including financials, so you're absolutely right. They actually need to publish less than North American counterparts, but both private and public companies have this requirement. There are some exemptions for small and medium sized business, but GW wouldn't come remotely close to either.

In a huge chunk of other jurisdictions in North America, South America, and Asia, most privately held limited liability companies don't need to tell anyone other than the government much of anything.

What a difference!

Edit - sure, if you were GW, wouldn't you like to see the books of Privateer Press and Fantasy Flight Games? They don't have to show *anything* because they're privately held companies in the US. It's certainly not a disadvantage not to have to show anyone your financial statements.


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Edit #2 -

@Az - You know, that Mantic listing actually lets us deduce a few interesting things! First off, it's filed for a small company exemption for abbreviated accounts. That means that ALL of these criteria must be met - sales below £6.5, balance sheet total below £3.26m and less than 50 employees.

Also, it's larger than a micro-entity, so at least one of the following must be true: its sales must be greater than £632k AND/OR its number of employees must exceed 10. The micro-entities also require a balance sheet total not to exceed £316k -- it does, but by so little that they'd just knock it off the inventory or write off some plant equipment to stay a micro-entity keep the benefits of that category, if that were the case.

you can also draw whatever conclusions you want with their short term liabilities growing much more quickly than their cash and receivables - receivables stayed flat, cash went from 525k to 672k, while, debts went from 733k to 1,293k -- a massive jump On the other hand, it is offset by long term debts dropping from 415k to 122k. We don't have the reasons why (no notes), and are many plausible, good reasons for this, and reasons why this might not be of any concern. On the other hand, I would guess (perhaps incorrectly) based on their cash and short term debt year-over-year that their revenues did not significantly grow in 2014 to 2013. It's possible, for example, they sold a lot more, but were less generous with credit; and didn't re-invest a lot of their profits into assets, but rather paid it out either in the from of wages, higher expenses, or dividends.

Interesting stuff!

The accounts are also filed so far in arrears as to be near worthless from a commercial viewpoint, knowing what my competition did in their 13/14 FYE is going to be of limited use in planning my 16/17 strategy unless the market is incredibly static. GW knowing what PP did nearly 2 years ago is going to be of limited insight.


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As for Mantic, I agree that they're not the financial player that one could perhaps casually assume given their apparent place relative in the market.

Very interesting, as a new player who has seen all these things and heard people talk of the "glory days". This gave me some very interesting insight into the past.... And hearing all that from the creators of the game and one of the founders of GW... Wow.

 Talys wrote:

A lot of it is how you perceive the kit, and what you want to do with it. I think the more time you plan on working on it, the more value you associate with the model (because, after all, your own time has some value too). So if I'm only going to spend 1 hour on a model, I would want to spend less on the model than if I were going to spend 30 hours on it, because in the latter case, it's more important to me that the model be as close to perfect as possible. To take it to an extreme If I plan to spend 500 hours on a competition grade model, the actual price of the model becomes nearly irrelevant -- would I pay $50 to get the perfect axe for that competition model? You betcha. But if it's going to be a grunt that I'm going to spend 30 seconds to drybrush, I want that part to be about $0.05 (or some little fraction of a kit that's good for some sorts of other things).

This is why I don't get up in arms about the prices, even though I'm on a strict budget. A $40-60 (CAN) unit box will probably last me anywhere from 10-25 hours for modelling and painting, without even factoring in playing. That's quite a lot of hobby and personal enjoyment bang for the buck, in my opinion. I also love that once painted, the miniatures exist forever for me to look at and enjoy. I have other hobbies that are completely consumed in one go and show no finished product once over. The hobby time I get out of good GW plastic kits justifies the price tag for me. Crap models in bulk even for a great price are no use to me and won't fill up my hobby time because I want to spend time with things I find valuable.

FireSkullz2 wrote:
Very interesting, as a new player who has seen all these things and heard people talk of the "glory days". This gave me some very interesting insight into the past.... And hearing all that from the creators of the game and one of the founders of GW... Wow.

Dude, check out any of the rulebooks before 6th, before they forced apoc on everyone. Check the terrain section in the 5th ed book, there's like actual terrain rules in there. The game really has gone downhill for a lot of vets, a lot of the people I played in prior editions have moved on on account of just how much gw has changed sadly.

 Da Boss wrote:
On the monopose thing, I really think it's easy for those who like multipart kits to feel that they are the "norm", but there are probably quite a lot of people who don't really enjoy assembly or conversions. (I'm one of them!)

I like monopose for bulk armies (like my IG and Eldar):
1. minimal prep to assemble speeds getting dozens of models on the board faster; and
2. true 3-D undercuts look better - something you can't do in plastic without more and more parts.
3. weight - the vast bulk of my monopose is metal, and that heft is nice.

For machines and large models, I like multipart plastic. Much lighter, and easier to build big, without fear of gravity death.

That said, I think Priestley claiming that his input on models being "true" 28mm being a key reason for LOTR SBG success is typical Priestley arrogance, and consistent with why GoA died when the funding premise was "because Priestley"..

 Talys wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've submitted annual returns for a limited company. They have to cover the basics, like balance sheet and P&L.

I haven't had to do one, nor studied up on company accounting and law, since the mid-2000s.

Well sure. Everyone has to for tax purposes. But can someone else that you don't authorize get a copy of it? That's the crux of it.
.

Yes, people can get the company accounts and annual returns. It costs £1 at Companies House.

You can get all the detail on any company from an number of financial services companies. I for example use Dunn & Bradstreet.

Information is updated as accounts are submitted (not 2ys old?). I ordinarily use this to adds the strength of companies (and Clients for that matter) before conducting business with them.

This information includes gross and net assests, profits, turnover, principle owners/shareholders and directors (and their other associations), corporate linkages, average payment settlement, current/previous court injunctions etc. Of course all of this is already assessed and the reports with indicators for financial strength, probability of failure etc.

Business trade here on the basis of honesty or at least the appearance of it so not a competitive disadvantage at all.

 Talys wrote:
A lot of it is how you perceive the kit, and what you want to do with it. I think the more time you plan on working on it, the more value you associate with the model (because, after all, your own time has some value too). So if I'm only going to spend 1 hour on a model, I would want to spend less on the model than if I were going to spend 30 hours on it, because in the latter case, it's more important to me that the model be as close to perfect as possible. To take it to an extreme If I plan to spend 500 hours on a competition grade model, the actual price of the model becomes nearly irrelevant -- would I pay $50 to get the perfect axe for that competition model? You betcha. But if it's going to be a grunt that I'm going to spend 30 seconds to drybrush, I want that part to be about $0.05 (or some little fraction of a kit that's good for some sorts of other things).

I can't agree with this. Based on your own formula of: "hobby value" is a function of hours spent / cash value - a cheap model would still provide more value than an expensive one. Value is different things to different people. Value is highly dependent on the hobby budget of each person. While it is technically true that every hobbyist working on a conversion has a mental preparedness to spend more to achieve their vision - the amount of increase is limited by the amount of real world budget they are willing to put towards the project and the hobbyist's mental predisposition as to what is too much! The amount of time they are ready to sink into the project is irrelevant!

On a side note: (Personal aesthetic opinion only): Regarding competition painting. If I were going to spend the time painting a model for a competition - outside of Golden Demon which requires GW models, I'd be hard pressed to pick a GW product as my subject matter as the buy-in price is too high, and GW's slavish adherence to chunky heroic scale aesthetics (i.e. giant hands, chunky body proportions) is increasingly jarring when viewed against a field full of true-scale models.

-edit2-

GW's retraction of all hobby events back to the UK is a problem as well. I'm not a regular con attendee, but GW's official presence at Gencon in the exhibit hall was anemic and painting entries using their products only made up a small proportion of the entries. There was a decent sized area in the gaming hall for 40k/Fantasy, but I don't think this was organized by GW proper. This might be different at other shows however.

 Talys wrote:
<snip>But GW doesn't want to do any of that, and it doesn't even know what to do with the profit it does make (it just returns it to shareholders). Basically, they have all the downsides of being a public company, like having to show people their books and being stuck with all the regulatory overhead, without having need of any of the potential advantages.
The only thing GW got out of going public was an exit strategy for its founders -- which is a good reason for the founders, but not a great reason for the company or investors.

Actually this is a really handy way for the major shareholders such as Kirby to pay themselves through dividends.
I will have to dig a bit but I am pretty sure they actually took out loans to have enough cash on-hand to then hand-out dividends so they are VERY important so why else "just return it to shareholders"?
It is a fantastic way to pay yourself and take less of a tax hit since it is a less taxed means of income.
It is the only way stripping down the company and not making any real investment for the future makes any sense: they just want payment in the short term until "someone" is ready to retire and sell his stock and has no need of the inflated dividends.
Feel free to poke holes in this theory, it has held water for me for a couple years.

@Keezus - hmmm. Maybe I didn't describe it the right way, though I do get what you're saying.

If I'm painting a group of 50 grunts and spending 2 hours each on them, I will spend less money on each of those models than I would for the single model I plan to devote 100 (or more) hours on. If a unique weapon from another box, or a special shoulder pad, or a different head would make that model better, I wouldn't hesitate to spend an extra $20 or $40 to buy another kit and shelve everything but the one part -- because after all, I'm going to spend 98 more hours on the model, and I want it to express my imagination rather than be the product of what I can get for $5-$8.

In terms of cash value / hours spent value ratio, it's true that a cheaper model gives you better value no matter what, but happiness has to enter into that equation somewhere, and the ratio does get better as the hours spent goes up, because at some point, the number is so small that I really don't care. For instance, $50 / 100 hours = $0.50 / hour; $10 / 100 hours = $0.10 / hour. To me, whether I pay 50 cents or 10 cents each hour to derive enjoyment really makes zero difference. Even if one of the alternatives was free, I'd rather spend $0.50 each hour to complete something that I really loved, rather than to spend it on spare parts that I just had on the shelf.

In terms of picking the model you want to pick and the aesthetic that you like, well, of course, if you don't like GW models, you shouldn't spend anything at all on them They can't have it both ways, right? Either they attract the customers who like the heroic scale aesthetics, or the customers who like more "normal" types, and it's obvious which side of the fence they planted their flag.

 Crablezworth wrote:

FireSkullz2 wrote:
Very interesting, as a new player who has seen all these things and heard people talk of the "glory days". This gave me some very interesting insight into the past.... And hearing all that from the creators of the game and one of the founders of GW... Wow.

Dude, check out any of the rulebooks before 6th, before they forced apoc on everyone. Check the terrain section in the 5th ed book, there's like actual terrain rules in there. The game really has gone downhill for a lot of vets, a lot of the people I played in prior editions have moved on on account of just how much gw has changed sadly.

It is rather painful to look back on 5th rules, there is some detail there that is noticeably lacking in the later editions.
I do admit I did like them trying to get all the special rules listed better in the 6th edition but much was lost in the process and the ally team-ups was just messy.

Ah well, I am prejudiced due to having played heavily since 2nd edition (read back a bit in Rogue Trader).
I agree that something is lost with GW, they were more than willing to try out new rules and make mini-games for the fans to try-out and see if they have anything to them worth considering.

Engagement with the company providing the goods creates and bond/relationship with customer.
The GW these days seems to like keeping the customers at arm's length and just offer stuff to us and give no venue for feedback (unless we buy or sell shares).

 Talizvar wrote:

Ah well, I am prejudiced due to having played heavily since 2nd edition (read back a bit in Rogue Trader).
I agree that something is lost with GW, they were more than willing to try out new rules and make mini-games for the fans to try-out and see if they have anything to them worth considering.

Heh. My "favorite era" of the game was our custom, binder-sized rules for non-umpire play of Rogue Trader and second edition, but that's simply because I was in high school/college then, and 40k was brand new and different. Despite my enthusiasm for it then, if I took the same rules and type of models (increasing their quality to today's technology) and dropped it into 2015, I'd never even consider the game. Much in the same way that if a game came out today that was like original MtG, I'd think it was ridiculous, even though it was loads of fun back then, stupid cards, perfect combinations and all that allowed you to win without the other person ever having a turn, or ante.

@Talys: Happiness or customer satisfaction is different for different people. I look at it two ways:

1. Value added through multiple use: i.e. cool mini + game! This has been eroded as of late due to the increase in price for the "cool mini" and the general indifference by which GW treats their "game". ergo: value decreased over time.

2. Value added through artistic expression: i.e. cool mini +cooler! This is a bit more nebulous since it boils down to personal satisfaction and/or the purpose behind +cooler your "cool mini". It might be to enter a contest, it might be a business endeavor (pro-painting), it might be for self-relaxation. The amount of "value" one derives is entirely tied to the purpose. If you are a hard boiled exec, you might consider mini-painting some sort of therapy, and therefore, it's worth "unlimited" money. This is different to a starving artist who is trying to break into the pro-painted ranks and needs to watch their budget, even on the most ambitious projects.

 Talys wrote:
In terms of picking the model you want to pick and the aesthetic that you like, well, of course, if you don't like GW models, you shouldn't spend anything at all on them They can't have it both ways, right? Either they attract the customers who like the heroic scale aesthetics, or the customers who like more "normal" types, and it's obvious which side of the fence they planted their flag.

I don't mean to be contrary, but if GW's rules writing wasn't pants, they'd be maintaining a captive audience buying their models regardless of whether they liked the aesthetic or not! I own tons of models for "gaming" who's aesthetic I don't like... (I'm looking at you... full Protectorate of Menoth Army)... so while aesthetics are very important to those who are only hobbyists/painters... for anyone who also falls into the gamer camp, aesthetics are no longer the only (or the most important) factor!

-edit- to clarify my previous post: I think for competition painting, painters are painting for the judges... so in a way, this informs one's aesthetic choices to a degree. If a certain thing is in vogue (NMM, texture, TMM, freehand etc.), you can bet your bottom dollar that entries will strive to include them. I'm not really speaking so much of my own aesthetic choices, but where the industry in general is going, and what kind of models I've seen entered in open competition. There's awesome GW stuff... I'm actually really tempted to buy a box of Ogryn for fun... If they were $45 I would not have bat an eyelid... but they're not. They're over that $50 mental barrier I have for throw-away projects.

 Talizvar wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:

FireSkullz2 wrote:
Very interesting, as a new player who has seen all these things and heard people talk of the "glory days". This gave me some very interesting insight into the past.... And hearing all that from the creators of the game and one of the founders of GW... Wow.

Dude, check out any of the rulebooks before 6th, before they forced apoc on everyone. Check the terrain section in the 5th ed book, there's like actual terrain rules in there. The game really has gone downhill for a lot of vets, a lot of the people I played in prior editions have moved on on account of just how much gw has changed sadly.

It is rather painful to look back on 5th rules, there is some detail there that is noticeably lacking in the later editions.
I do admit I did like them trying to get all the special rules listed better in the 6th edition but much was lost in the process and the ally team-ups was just messy.

Ah well, I am prejudiced due to having played heavily since 2nd edition (read back a bit in Rogue Trader).
I agree that something is lost with GW, they were more than willing to try out new rules and make mini-games for the fans to try-out and see if they have anything to them worth considering.

Engagement with the company providing the goods creates and bond/relationship with customer.
The GW these days seems to like keeping the customers at arm's length and just offer stuff to us and give no venue for feedback (unless we buy or sell shares).

One of the ways that smaller companies can shine, in comparison to larger ones.

On the Reaper forums there are people that argue with the official spokesperson - and he argues back.

I have had a question on the Paizo forums answered by the CEO of the company! (And Paizo is not a tiny company.)

With Mantic, Ronnie does a lot of the talking.

All three are excellent examples of a company engaging their audiences.

And, for what it is worth, I do not blame the accountants for what is happening to GW - Reaper is majority owned by accountants. (Pugh has done a few videos on Youtube about how the company got started, what's worked in the past, and what is likely to work in the future. He is a bean counter that really enjoys what he is doing, and the result has been a healthy company with a happy relationship with its customers.)

The Auld Grump

I'm more with Talys - if I need to spend more time on generics (IG Guardsmen), that's not as good. Better to spend the time on showcases (Eldar Wraithknight!).

 Talys wrote:
[
I'm not arguing that GW stock is a terrible buy, or that it's overpriced. It's okay. However, it's not going to make anyone huge bucks, because although it's a decent business, it has a very low ceiling due to a small market. Therefore, it makes it a terrible target for a hostile takeover. Because if you're going to go to all that effort (and risk), you want a much more significant potential payout.

You're missing out on the assets. Namely, a set of chain stores all over the country, a familiar brand name, and a dedicated HIPS facility. If I was a dedicated raw plastics company looking to expand further down the chain, or a toy company looking to expand onto the high street, it would be a logical place to start looking if the share price dived low enough.

What GW should consider is branching out, if they had any sense. Expanding into other toy/game lines, integrating backwards into plastics production, or acquiring a greater market share by buying into similar firms such as Hornby, etc. There's plenty of scope for GW to expand if you view things from a more corporate/business angle. But as things stand, their primary shareholder is Mr Kirby, who is completely risk averse, and only interested in things that can expand his share price/dividend payments in the short term. That's why GW have taken such a static consolidatory approach to business for such a long time. Not to say that businesses shouldn't have consolidatory periods (or they expand too fast and crash and burn), but GW hasn't done anything innovative since they first took on the LOTR license. And in attempting to safeguard a certain level of profitability, they've just ossified.

Mr Rountree has picked things up again slightly of late, but we've yet to see if this is a new approach or just another death spasm on GW' corporate asphyxiation. Time will tell.

 Ketara wrote:
GW hasn't done anything innovative since they first took on the LOTR license.

Aside from Knights and End Times AOS, no, nothing innovative...

Why everybody else just happens to be making identically awesomely huge, detailed plastic kits for all of their gaming lines, advancing the storyline in signficant ways, and transitioning to radically streamlined rulesets. GW is following the pack of sames...

Well Warmachine and Infinity all advance the storyline as a matter of course, so that's not new.

As for AOS? I think, generally, innovation needs to improve on what it replaces, so not sure how "innovative" AOS is.

As for Knights? What, exactly, is innovative about them? There's plenty of other systems doing massive models, there's plenty of manufacturers doing substantially more advanced plastic kits. If you're trying to argue that they're the first wargame company to do a large, essentially monopose, kit in plastic? Well, OK, but I don't see that as much to get excited about, and given the existence of the DFG Leviathan, not even much of an achievement.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think you're mistaking "GW doing something GW haven't done before" with innovation.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Well Warmachine and Infinity all advance the storyline as a matter of course, so that's not new.

Just so we're clear, Infinity has not advanced their storyline at all. Seriously, nothing has advanced.

Campaign: Paradiso was more along the lines of something like Mont'ka/Kauyon, as the main rulebook and Human Sphere both had referenced the Paradiso Campaign before. It's why Croc Men were present in the main rulebook before Paradiso ever came out, despite being a unit formed from the remnants of a regiment that was decimated in the fighting for Paradiso.

The only thing they've done with their storyline was flesh things out and essentially make some revisions to bring the Tohaa in.

Additionally the book which WAS going to advance their storyline? It's been delayed no less than twice now, once with the release of N3 and now with the release of Human Sphere for N3.

WM and Inf look essentially similar to what has come before, not materially different from how 40k advances the timeline.

By definition, innovation is something new, and AoS is definitely new. For some, it's a clear improvement.

Nobody else is doing giant models in their games. Show me another gaming system selling something comparable to the IKT / WK / SS in WM / Inf / any other minis games, I'll wait. Second, the WK isn't monopose.

Third, the DFG Leviathan is awesome, but there's no game for it. When Wyrd / PP / Battlefront / make a comparably huge kit for their games, then you can talk.

Infinity isn't a £110 M international company.

Knights are not an innovation. They are another kit for 40K, with some rules.

End Times was not an innovation, it was a campaign for WHFB with some more kits that had some rules.

AoS isn't an innovation, it's an amalgam of 40K and WHFB, with simplified rules.

An innovation would be new board game with completely different rules. Dread Fleet, Assassinorum and Battle of Cattle are innovations. Not massive leaps forward, but something at least new to show for the 15 years of design work since LoTR was released.

A better innovation would be a worldwide campaign for 40K or AoS that had a strategic storyline that was affected by the results sent in by players. Controlled by a secure app, which authenticated your identity to prevent cheating, and allowed you to vote for where the results of tactical battles would translate into strategic gains.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
GW hasn't done anything innovative since they first took on the LOTR license.

Aside from Knights and End Times AOS, no, nothing innovative...

If those are "innovations" to you, then here's a shovel so you can get that bar out of the ground.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Nobody else is doing giant models in their games. Show me another gaming system selling something comparable to the IKT / WK / SS in WM / Inf / any other minis games, I'll wait.

Second, the WK isn't monopose.

Third, the DFG Leviathan is awesome, but there's no game for it. When Wyrd / PP / Battlefront / make a comparably huge kit for their games, then you can talk.

There's not a lot of companies making those large models because, generally, it's a stupid thing to do in 28mm. GW's trying to shove models that belonged in Epic into the ever-increasing bloated system that is 40k.

I don't know why you would bring Battlfront into the picture, because they're a 15mm company. Wyrd won't do it because they're tiny and Malifaux is a skirmish game. And PP has the Colossals/Gargantuans.

Additionally the book which WAS going to advance their storyline? It's been delayed no less than twice now, once with the release of N3 and now with the release of Human Sphere for N3.

Nevertheless, it's something they're intending to do, and the very fact they've even thought about it still underlines the point that GW doing it isn't the least innovative, which was the point I was refuting.

I don't count fluff changes as innovations. Anyone can write a story. GW can and have commissioned many authors to write stories for 40K, but if they are a game company I expect them to produce new games.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


Nobody else is doing giant models in their games. Show me another gaming system selling something comparable to the IKT / WK / SS in WM / Inf / any other minis games, I'll wait.

WMH collossals came before Knights. (Model wise)

Mierce say high..







Automatically Appended Next Post:

By definition, innovation is something new

No, by definition, something innovative is something new that's never been done that way before. Hence we have words for "new" and a different word for "innovative."

Second, the WK isn't monopose.

No, but the "Knight" essentially is, which was your original comment. Wraithknight is an entirely different thing, but I'm still struggling to see the innovation?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nobody else is doing giant models in their games. Show me another gaming system selling something comparable to the IKT / WK / SS in WM / Inf / any other minis games, I'll wait. Second, the WK isn't monopose.

This really isn't a positive. I'm not doing Gundams for display, I'm doing fighters in an endless galactic war.

Wraith Knights are literally giant constructs. They're boring as all hell.

I think demanding a completely new game to call a company innovative is a bit of a high hurdle.

To me, the area in which GW has been most innovative over the last 10 years or so has been really expanding the size, complexlity, and level of detail in wargaming minis. Starting with the LOTR Oliphant, continuing the Baneblade/Stompa, and really reaching its peak lately, GW is making multiple massive plastic kits in a market where releasing a handful of plastic sprues a year is laudable.

That's genuinely innovative, at least in my book..

I wrote "Knights" as opposed to "Imperial Knight" specifically to include the WK, Stompa and SS models.

And the big plastics *are* innovative, given that nobody else was doing them in wargaming. Changing scale from squad-based is new and different. The Colossals don't count any more than the old Armorcast stuff.

Gw aren't really innovative, they are repetitive. They repeat what they do well and try to make it better each time. With 99% of the models they succeed, but it is just the old stuff remade. AoS has shown that, new worlds with the same characters, repetition. Rulewise, I guess improvement is in the eye of the beholder.

As long as they are making great kits though, there will always be a place for them.

 Polonius wrote:
I think demanding a completely new game to call a company innovative is a bit of a high hurdle.

To me, the area in which GW has been most innovative over the last 10 years or so has been really expanding the size, complexlity, and level of detail in wargaming minis. Starting with the LOTR Oliphant, continuing the Baneblade/Stompa, and really reaching its peak lately, GW is making multiple massive plastic kits in a market where releasing a handful of plastic sprues a year is laudable.

That's genuinely innovative, at least in my book..

Large plastic kits kitbashed into games unofficially by fans have been used in gaming almost as long as gaming has existed. Putting a corporate branding label consistent with the game they'll be used in isn't particularly innovative IMO. Even if it was actually an innovation to officially incorporate what folks were doing anyways unofficially then that "innovation" occurred two decades ago with resin (Armorcast) and almost a decade ago with plastics. At this point, it's at best a slow and steady iterative evolution as GW just tries to make it a smidge bigger each and every year with a proportionally larger price increase accompanying it.

But big plastics aren't actually making GW more money. I think RP's original point was that by going back to 28mm single pose miniatures the cost of the starter set was competitive in a toy/book store. This expanded GW's market considerably and, based on the records we have, was a high point for GW profitability.

GW's big plastics that everyone here seems to love may be innovative, but they're not expanding sales. LOTR, whether you love it or hate it, brought in a lot of new customers. Part of that was its simplicity (both for models and rules). GW's current innovations, however, aren't growing their business.

Big models in wargames aren't innovative. Firstly, it's not even a new idea. Secondly, to be innovative generally carries the connotation that it is more advanced or an improvement than what came before it, not simply "different". Most games simply choose not to have giant models for the sake of the game.

Having lots of big plastic kits in a wargame isn't innovative, big plastic kits have been around for decades and if your wargame is experiencing severe scale growth like 40k and AoS is doing then having big plastic kits in a wargame is simply a natural progression of the fact big plastic kits have always existed.

 Azreal13 wrote:

Additionally the book which WAS going to advance their storyline? It's been delayed no less than twice now, once with the release of N3 and now with the release of Human Sphere for N3.

Nevertheless, it's something they're intending to do, and the very fact they've even thought about it still underlines the point that GW doing it isn't the least innovative, which was the point I was refuting.

Honestly, until it actually releases?

I'm not holding my breath for it to advance the storyline.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Big models in wargames aren't innovative. Firstly, it's not even a new idea. Secondly, to be innovative generally carries the connotation that it is more advanced or an improvement than what came before it, not simply "different". Most games simply choose not to have giant models for the sake of the game.

Having lots of big plastic kits in a wargame isn't innovative, big plastic kits have been around for decades and if your wargame is experiencing severe scale growth like 40k and AoS is doing then having big plastic kits in a wargame is simply a natural progression of the fact big plastic kits have always existed.

We may just have different views of innovation, but if you look at 40k plastics from roughly 1989 (MKI Rhinos) through ~2005, the models slowly got larger and more detailed, but the difference between, say, the MK I Landraider and MKII landraider wasn't that huge. However, starting in about 2006, markedly larger kits started coming out, at least partially due to the switch to CAD sculpting.

I don't think innovation needs to be revolutionary or gamechanging. But I know if you look at a pick up and play night from 2005, you'd see mostly rhino sized vehicles, with the odd Landraider or Monolith. Now, nearly every army has at least one kit that's way bigger than even a landraider.

Way back when I first started playing 40k at the tail of 2E in the late 1990s, it was a lot smaller. The biggest model was the brand new Eldar Falcon, and a mk.1 Rhino was a rarity on the tabletop, to say nothing of a mk.1 Land Raider - almost all games were maybe a couple dozen footsloggers per side. Armorcast was a novelty, and you didn't actually play them on the tabletop outside very special events.

Now, a typical game of 40k expects multiple Knight-class models, each of which unambiguously towers over any of the older models. Things like the Stompa and Baneblade are simply HUGE, and armies feature few dozen to several dozen models. The game is dramatically larger, and GW has gotten players hooked into buying (and fielding) their bigger kits.

Polonius wrote:I think demanding a completely new game to call a company innovative is a bit of a high hurdle.

To me, the area in which GW has been most innovative over the last 10 years or so has been really expanding the size, complexlity, and level of detail in wargaming minis. Starting with the LOTR Oliphant, continuing the Baneblade/Stompa, and really reaching its peak lately, GW is making multiple massive plastic kits in a market where releasing a handful of plastic sprues a year is laudable.

That's genuinely innovative, at least in my book..

JohnHwangDD wrote:I wrote "Knights" as opposed to "Imperial Knight" specifically to include the WK, Stompa and SS models.

And the big plastics *are* innovative, given that nobody else was doing them in wargaming. Changing scale from squad-based is new and different. The Colossals don't count any more than the old Armorcast stuff.

Sorry, but to me, moving from 'making plastic model' to 'making slightly bigger plastic model' isn't really innovative.

Innovation is a slightly hard process to pin down in business terms, but usually it refers to producing a new product or changing a process in a radical way that hasn't been tried before (sometimes not by anybody, but not always). In terms of a business model, GW have knuckled down on their core market of 40K, and gradually abandoned their other product lines without creating any new ones. AoS was a last ditch attempt to revive Warhammer, and is a step in the right direction in terms of qualifying as innovation (hence my comments about Mr Rountree), but it's a last-ditch move of desperation caused by response to contracting customer base and revenue. In my eyes, that detracts somewhat from it's innovative qualities, as it's not something they're innovating by choice, but rather doing out of desperate necessity due to market pressures. YMMV.

Generally speaking though, as said, GW has not been innovative since LOTR. There's been no attempt to open up fresh wargaming markets (FFG beat them to the prepackaged prepainted game model that could have been expanded into general toy stores), there's been no reverse integration attempted, no attempts to expand into other related fields of industry, no new product lines (i.e. games) launched that weren't based on older ones, few and poor attempts to leverage strong IP into the gaming, television, and movie fields, and so on. For the most part, GW has squatted with the tried and tested revenue producers, cut anything that didn't support that model, and paid down all their debt.

Which is fine, up to a point. But as we've seen with their declining revenue\/turnover, they've failed even by focusing solely on those activities (from a financial sense). They're still making money, but not as much as they used to, and they're fast surrendering market share. That's not to adopt a 'The End is Nigh' attitude, but it is, I would say, an accurate summary of things up to 2015. They still have plenty of wiggle time and room to turn things around, and Mr Rountree seems to be making efforts in that direction. Under Kirby though? I would say that in terms of business, it's rare to see a publicly quoted company have ossify and turn inwards to such an extent as they did.

Which, if the article is accurate, has a very good reason. Namely, Kirby borrowed a shed ton of cash, and was terrified of screwing up. So the company became risk-averse to the extreme., Now Kirby has made his money, the company has paid down it's debt, and there's been a slight change in head management, I personally expect things to improve somewhat.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I wrote "Knights" as opposed to "Imperial Knight" specifically to include the WK, Stompa and SS models.

And the big plastics *are* innovative, given that nobody else was doing them in wargaming. Changing scale from squad-based is new and different. The Colossals don't count any more than the old Armorcast stuff.

Great, now compare those to Dreamforge Leviathans....yeah, Imperial Knights are crap. Now compare them all to nearly any large-scale Gundam kit; multi-part, multi-color, hundreds of pieces and 1/4 the price. Knights, whichever you choose, are not innovative in the least; multiple companies have been there for years if not decades. Using "wargaming" doesn't make the kit innovative, it's a goalpost shift on a tired old argument that people use to justify their personal preferences.

GW makes some nice kits but claiming that the techniques that they currently use or the kits they're making are innovative is just wrong.

 Ketara wrote:


Sorry, but to me, moving from 'making plastic model' to 'making slightly bigger plastic model' isn't really innovative.

The difference between the current landraider or defiler (both impressive kits in their day) and modern Imperial Knights, Wraithknights, etc. is more than slightly bigger. GW is using a new process in computer design to pack sprues tighter, with more bits, and thus able to make cost effective wargaming models that are two to three times larger. That's not "slightly bigger."

 agnosto wrote:
Great, now compare those to Dreamforge Leviathans....yeah, Imperial Knights are crap. Now compare them all to nearly any large-scale Gundam kit; multi-part, multi-color, hundreds of pieces and 1/4 the price. Knights, whichever you choose, are not innovative in the least; multiple companies have been there for years if not decades. Using "wargaming" doesn't make the kit innovative, it's a goalpost shift on a tired old argument that people use to justify their personal preferences.

GW makes some nice kits but claiming that the techniques that they currently use or the kits they're making are innovative is just wrong.

The dreamforge kits are awesome. And the company that made them required a kickstarter and years of prep time to create their kits. GW is churning out a similar sized kits regularly.

This ties into why the Gundam argument isn't that great, and why the models being for wargaming is actually a big deal (if perhaps not innovative). Gundam kits are marketed to a very large market, while wargaming models are geared towards a smaller market. It really is a big deal that you can get anything close to Gundam level size and articulation on a kit that's going to sell less than a tenth as many units.

Now, if the most innovative thing a company does over a decade is expand a current product line, that's worrying, but I just don't see 40k as being as creatively stagnant as some people here.

 Polonius wrote:

 Ketara wrote:


Sorry, but to me, moving from 'making plastic model' to 'making slightly bigger plastic model' isn't really innovative.

The difference between the current landraider or defiler (both impressive kits in their day) and modern Imperial Knights, Wraithknights, etc. is more than slightly bigger. GW is using a new process in computer design to pack sprues tighter, with more bits, and thus able to make cost effective wargaming models that are two to three times larger. That's not "slightly bigger."


.

Even if I surrender that point (which I don't), it makes little difference. For a publicly quoted company worth over a hundred million, moving to what is now a commonly used form of digital sculpting in the artistic industry is hardly a massive innovative achievement worth boasting about by big business/industrial standards. It hasn't stopped their revenue decline, it hasn't opened up new markets, and it hasn't massively economised old ones. If that's honestly the most innovative thing that can be pointed to, it speaks volumes in support of my point.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I wrote "Knights" as opposed to "Imperial Knight" specifically to include the WK, Stompa and SS models.

And the big plastics *are* innovative, given that nobody else was doing them in wargaming. Changing scale from squad-based is new and different. The Colossals don't count any more than the old Armorcast stuff.

Whoah there. Did anyone else get a head rush from those goalposts moving so fast?

So you don't count Colossals because reasons. M'kay.

 Ketara wrote:

Even if I surrender that point (which I don't), it makes little difference. For a publicly quoted company worth over a hundred million, moving to what is now a commonly used form of digital sculpting in the artistic industry is hardly a massive innovative achievement worth boasting about by big business/industrial standards. It hasn't stopped their revenue decline, it hasn't opened up new markets, and it hasn't massively economised old ones. If that's honestly the most innovative thing that can be pointed to, it speaks volumes in support of my point.

I agree, it's not a major innovation, and if it's the biggest thing you've done in a decade, you can expect to lose market share. I just reject the notion that innovation has to be earthshattering, because what games are all that revolutionary? A game like Kings of War is successful almost completely on execution, not because it's an innovative design. I'm assuming that it's most interesting mechanic, cumulative wounds/nerve testing, was filched from another game in the classical tradition. Privateer press nailed it with the fury/focus mechanic, but haven't really innovated Warmahordes all that much, yet the game grows due to good balancing. (I know that PP has other games, including IKRPG which I enjoy, but none of them have really shaken up the gaming community).

As an employee of a massive organization, I'll say this about GW adopting a new tool: getting legacy employees and managers to buy into a new practice or process is a big deal, at least for them. I wouldn't minimize the switch to nothing.

Imagine if GW placed their product as high end model kits only.
Not wargame models, just "highly detailed" models of the grim-dark future.
Then compare them to Gundam or any of those kits with metal barrels, photo-etched parts, cast to colour and pose able.

They would fail hands-down.

Yes, I know people can like their models but without purpose, without a living background they came from, the models look like some fascist's wet dream come to life.

 Polonius wrote:

The dreamforge kits are awesome. And the company that made them required a kickstarter and years of prep time to create their kits. GW is churning out a similar sized kits regularly.

This ties into why the Gundam argument isn't that great, and why the models being for wargaming is actually a big deal (if perhaps not innovative). Gundam kits are marketed to a very large market, while wargaming models are geared towards a smaller market. It really is a big deal that you can get anything close to Gundam level size and articulation on a kit that's going to sell less than a tenth as many units.

Now, if the most innovative thing a company does over a decade is expand a current product line, that's worrying, but I just don't see 40k as being as creatively stagnant as some people here.

What's that got to do with innovation? The one-man shop out-did a company worth over $100million, designed everything himself and wheeled and dealed to make his dream happen. Great for him. What's important here is that his design, from a strictly wargaming perspective, to stay within those goalposts, and implementation were/are innovative while I dare you to say that anything on the Imperial Knights was innovative...when they're what amounts to upscaled dreads down to the inability to walk correctly and certainly lacking articulated joints. Wraithknights are a bit better but they came along later. Mark was there first and his kit is still better than anything in plastic that GW makes today from a design perspective. I refuse to argue personal likes or aesthetics because that's subjective but the design is clearly, subjectively, superior.

You can argue the price of the Gundam all you like. Personally, most of the kits aren't my cup of tea but they exist and no amount of stretching the argument will make GW's kits any more amazing in comparison from a pure design perspective.

-

 agnosto wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I wrote "Knights" as opposed to "Imperial Knight" specifically to include the WK, Stompa and SS models.

And the big plastics *are* innovative, given that nobody else was doing them in wargaming. Changing scale from squad-based is new and different. The Colossals don't count any more than the old Armorcast stuff.

Great, now compare those to Dreamforge Leviathans....yeah, Imperial Knights are crap. Now compare them all to nearly any large-scale Gundam kit; multi-part, multi-color, hundreds of pieces and 1/4 the price. Knights, whichever you choose, are not innovative in the least; multiple companies have been there for years if not decades. Using "wargaming" doesn't make the kit innovative, it's a goalpost shift on a tired old argument that people use to justify their personal preferences.

GW makes some nice kits but claiming that the techniques that they currently use or the kits they're making are innovative is just wrong.

GW is innovative in terms of getting those kits onto the tabletop, where they can be played with. A Gundam kit will not play nearly as well.

 agnosto wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

The dreamforge kits are awesome. And the company that made them required a kickstarter and years of prep time to create their kits. GW is churning out a similar sized kits regularly.

This ties into why the Gundam argument isn't that great, and why the models being for wargaming is actually a big deal (if perhaps not innovative). Gundam kits are marketed to a very large market, while wargaming models are geared towards a smaller market. It really is a big deal that you can get anything close to Gundam level size and articulation on a kit that's going to sell less than a tenth as many units.

Now, if the most innovative thing a company does over a decade is expand a current product line, that's worrying, but I just don't see 40k as being as creatively stagnant as some people here.

What's that got to do with innovation? The one-man shop out-did a company worth over $100million, designed everything himself and wheeled and dealed to make his dream happen. Great for him. What's important here is that his design, from a strictly wargaming perspective, to stay within those goalposts, and implementation were/are innovative while I dare you to say that anything on the Imperial Knights was innovative...when they're what amounts to upscaled dreads down to the inability to walk correctly and certainly lacking articulated joints. Wraithknights are a bit better but they came along later. Mark was there first and his kit is still better than anything in plastic that GW makes today from a design perspective. I refuse to argue personal likes or aesthetics because that's subjective but the design is clearly, subjectively, superior.

You can argue the price of the Gundam all you like. Personally, most of the kits aren't my cup of tea but they exist and no amount of stretching the argument will make GW's kits any more amazing in comparison from a pure design perspective.

That's a fair point. Personally, I think that bringing a product to a new, niche, market is pretty innovative, especially when it's not just a one-off, but you can see it otherwise. The reality is, nobody is making plastic wargames miniatures at the size GW is, on a regular basis. That might be closer to leveraging your capital than innovation, but right now 40k and AOS are the only games that currently have a wide range of plastic kits larger than a tank.

I think the broader point is that there has been very little innovation from GW, which has led to the company leaving an obscene amount of money on the table.