As you may know, GW has recieved a bit of criticism over the last few weeks [/understatement]
Some of that was from me! Hence, I sent a letter to Mark Wells (GW CEO) which I have copied here:
Spoiler:
Dear Sir,
It is with regret that after 23 years of loyal custom I feel compelled to cease purchasing Games Workshop product and look for alternatives elsewhere. Despite the abiding appeal of your games and the settings thereof, I can no longer support a company whose business decisions are so flagrantly to the detriment of their customers.
I appreciate that Games Workshop is a business and must make a profit. I further understand that as a publicly traded company, you have an obligation to your shareholders – but if your decisions (designed it seems purely to prop up short term profit margins) lead to the alienation of your customers and a continuation of the falling sales volume you have experienced for many years, then I see no long term future for the company.
It is a fact – and one that you and your colleagues have stated publicly – that you rely on the goodwill of your customers to advertise your product through word-of-mouth recommendation, yet your actions often indicate nothing but contempt for the hopes and expectations of those customers, as examples:
1. Your ‘Specialist Games’ range has clearly become a dumping ground for games that you no longer wish to support yet are unwilling to remove from sale in spite of repeated claims to the contrary.
2. An inability (or simple refusal) to write balanced and tightly-worded rules to reduce disagreements between players and to facilitate better tournament play, justified by the tired trope that players can create house rules for anything they don’t like – despite the fact that having better rules in no way prevents the creation of house rules by those inclined to do so.
3. A release schedule which consistently leaves some factions without an update for entire editions of their associated game and many units having rules but no representing models.
4. Spates of ‘Cease and Desist’ orders issued by your legal department to companies who are in many cases filling in the blanks left by your release schedule. A classic case of trying to deal with symptoms rather than cause.
5. Paranoid levels of secrecy regarding new releases and increasingly heavy-handed attempts to thwart the release of information, as if having people excited about forthcoming releases and spreading the word about them is somehow detrimental to sales.
Your most damaging decisions, however, have come with price. Like-for-like prices have risen almost 600% over the last 25 years, despite the UK inflation rate running at 160% over the same period. The growth of your company should have led to economies of scale, particularly when associated with a move to cheaper casting materials – first with plastic and most recently with ‘finecast’ resin. However, whilst your plastic kits are cheaper than the metal equivalent of those models, they remain twice (if not more) as expensive as comparable multi-part 28mm plastic kits made by your competitors. In contrast your ‘finecast’ kits are more expensive than their metal equivalents and are receiving worryingly bad reviews from independent sources with regards to their casting quality.
Your latest round of price increases, coupled with the change to ‘finecast’ has led some products to receive an effective 30% price rise – in the current economic climate people simply cannot afford these kinds of increases.
Finally, the embargo on independent retailers shipping outside of the EU has made the hobby prohibitively expensive for many in the affected territories, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. Your public statements regarding independent retailers are frankly offensive – surely all avenues that allow people to participate in Games Workshop’s games and other hobby activities are of benefit as this will grow your customer base? The notion that somehow buying from an online retailer is damaging to ‘the hobby’ is absurd. If it is not economically viable to run Games Workshop stores in certain territories, why not work with local independents or gaming clubs to raise the profile of your games? Simply trying to force people to pay prices they cannot afford will lead to fewer customers and hence less of the ‘local support’ you claim to cherish.
The culmination of all these decisions has reached a head in the last fortnight and has given rise to an outpouring of feeling I have never experienced before. To try and get a measure of the mood of the gaming community I conducted an online poll through the ‘dakkadakka.com’ website (one of the leading online forums for discussion of Games Workshop products) which garnered 565 responses over a 5 day period with the following results:
106 people (18.76%) stated that they had already ceased buying Games Workshop products before the latest price rises, with a further 94 people (16.64%) saying that they would no longer buy in the future.
66 people (11.68%) stated that they would make one last purchase to complete existing projects but would make no further purchases whilst 167 people (29.56%) said they would remain as customers but would spend less in the future than they presently do.
116 people (20.53%) stated that there buying habits would remain unaffected with just 16 people (2.83%) planning to increase their future spending.
In summary 35.40% of customers who responded to this survey will no longer spend money with you, 41.24% will spend less than they had otherwise planned with only 23.36% spending as much or more than before. Whilst an individual letter can be ignored, surely these figures should make you aware of the depth of feeling against your decisions?
In closing, I wish to extend an olive branch. It remains my firm belief that Games Workshop can regain the custom of those like myself who have decided that we can no longer support the company and are looking instead at wargaming pastures new, but only if it is willing to change and truly willing to address the needs and concerns of its customers. I and many others would be happy to engage with you and work with you to overcome these problems, but you must open the door for us to walk through.
Regards,
To which I recieved the following response:
Spoiler:
Thank you for your letter in which you described your concerns regarding Games Workshop’s strategy. You raised a number of issues and I will do my best to address them.
First, as for our product releases and rules, the last thing we are trying to do is treat our customers with contempt. Quite the reverse. Come down to Nottingham and talk to us if you have any doubts on that score. When Jervis says he will speak to anyone regarding their concerns, he is serious about that. I see him most weeks in Bugmans having coffee with experienced customers like yourself to learn what your suggestions are.
The simple fact is that we cannot possibly make everything that every customer wants as there is a limit to how much our Studio can design or our factory make. We have to make choices about what products we release and when. Specialist games is a good example. We would love to have another go at one of these, but there are other exciting projects that we have to deliver first.
That’s not to say they will never be revisited, as we showed with Space Hulk, it’s simply a case of priorities. That’s why we keep them in the range, so that at some time in the future we have the option to come back to them. We are not trying to be disrespectful to fans of these games, many of whom will love the other new stuff we do as well. It’s just that they are not top of the list right now.
As for the legal action we take against infringers, I don’t think we have any choice. They have taken, without our permission, intellectual property which our design teams have taken years to develop and have used it for their own commercial purposes. That is clearly morally and legally wrong. If companies want to make product using our intellectual property then they should approach us for a licence, like Fantasy Flight Games have. Provided they meet our quality standards and our minimum royalty requirements, then we will consider them. But they can’t simply steal from us and expect us to ignore them.
As for secrecy about new releases, what we have found is that the more secret we keep things, the more excitement there is about a launch. Space Hulk was a great example of this, as was Finecast. Some people love to know in advance what is going to happen, of course. But as you point out in your letter, we are a commercial organisation. And what we have learnt is that the more information that is leaked in advance, the weaker the launch. The more secret we keep it, the bigger the launch. We are not being paranoid, it just makes sense for us to do it that way, nothing more than that.
Next let me deal with price increases. We review our pricing each year. In doing so we take into account the costs of designing and making the product, raw material costs, support costs such as staff salaries and rent for our Hobby Centres and of course any quality improvements we have designed into the products.
All of these costs have increased in recent years, particularly raw material costs such as tin and plastic which have increased far faster than our retail prices. The reason that we have been able to absorb much of this cost pressure is that we are constantly investing in technology and training to deliver greater efficiency in our manufacturing and design processes. We have also worked hard to keep our staffing to a minimum in all areas, from hobby centres to production lines to offices.
However, the one area where we will not compromise is quality. Every miniature we have released since you started in the hobby has delivered an improvement in quality. Our plastic sets, paints, scenery and hobby products are incomparable compared to then. I’d argue that our product quality has improved at a far faster rate in recent years than our prices.
Finally, I’m not seeking to offend anyone when I say that European trade accounts have not invested in growing the customer base outside Europe. I’m simply stating the facts. If we had not taken action to enforce our European trade terms, they would have continued to undermine the very accounts you suggest we work with to support clubs in places like Australia and New Zealand.
Those local Australian and New Zealand accounts have worked hard over the years to build up their customer base by word of mouth and running events. As have our Hobby Centres which have recruited tens of thousands of customers through introductory activities, painting lessons and beginners programmes. It’s because we want to have a vibrant customer base in Australia in twenty years time, that we are taking legitimate action now to support local accounts and Hobby Centres.
Hopefully that helps to explain the reasons for each of the decisions we’ve made. I’m sorry that at the moment you are unhappy with us. It certainly wasn’t our intention to upset you. What I hope comes across is that whenever we are faced with difficult choices at Games Workshop, we always seek to do the right thing for the long term. That may make us unpopular with customers from time to time.
However, we believe that the choices we have made will enable us to keep making fantastic miniatures and games with outstanding service from local accounts and Hobby Centres. And, if we keep doing that consistently well over time, in the long term there will continue to be a great Games Workshop for current and future customers to enjoy.
Yours sincerely
Mark Wells
First, apologies for the wall of text but I thought I would be doing a disservice to those interested by paraphrasing what he had to say. As to my feelings?
Well, I have to say I am impressed to have a personal reply - certainly not something I expected, but it is clearly not a standard letter as it addressed everything I said point-by-point. I think I was misinterpreted slightly with regards to copyright infringement - I was pointing out that if GW had done its job properly to start with then aftermarket bits companies would not have arisen in the first place but reading back I don't know if I made that clear enough.
As for the biggies:
All price rises are justified because the quality is universally better... Secrecy works - it made the release of Space Hulk and Failcost the successes they were... oh wait Specialist Games are not being ditched 'in case we go back to them later, like Space Hulk'... err, SH was never a Specialist Game and had been officially out of print for years before the splash 3rd edition. Australia and New Zealand need protecting from those evil European traders or the hobby will disappear down under... what the ?
Games Workshop always takes decisions for the 'long term'...
I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
EDIT: Now, since you people quoting me on the 8th-9th page can't be bothered reading the entire thread before attempting to start a flame war, here's what I posted on the 5th page.
Brunius wrote:
Mr Mystery wrote:
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
In short? They don't. Plus, GW have larger overheads. But you know, don't let facts get in the way of your bile, will you?
Sure, I won't let facts get in the way of my bile.
It seems to me that they are content to offer an olive branch with one hand and kind words and continue to undermine the true nature of the hobby and continue to alienate their customer base with the other. I actually went into my GW Bunker for the first time in months yesterday and was literally floored by the prices...over twenty dollars for a rune priest is absolutely ridiculous. Granted my level of income is low to say the least, what with paying for school and other activities, I feel forced to finish off the armies I have and be thankful I started the hobby back before these increases, but I will not be starting any new projects with any GW projects.
Point by point, but sadly, the one I wanted to see addressed the most was your request for a tighter rules set. You hit the nail on the head: better rules doesn't mean people can't house rule whenever they want.
For me personally, that has always been the largest issue.
Props to Mark Wells for the reply.
Cannot say I agree with all of it, but without the data like he has (I assume) I cannot argue with that (but the poll seems to agree that his arguments are not stopping ill feelings)
This letter seems to me to have been written by a corporate Chav with an overblown ego who reckons he doesn't have to pretend that he cares what the customers want. Oh well, I'm off to pick up that new Warmachine expansion. Anybody wanna buy a Tyranid army, cheap?
I have seen similar letters from Mr Wells that were sent to other people who had sent in letters of complaint. The response may well be personal in that he addresses specific points but it is very much a from letter in that the rebuttals presented are exactly the same and the same wording as other letters sent to customers.
Those local Australian and New Zealand accounts have worked hard over the years to build up their customer base by word of mouth and running events. As have our Hobby Centres which have recruited tens of thousands of customers through introductory activities, painting lessons and beginners programmes. It’s because we want to have a vibrant customer base in Australia in twenty years time, that we are taking legitimate action now to support local accounts and Hobby Centres.
Way it's going I'll be surprised if they have this customer base at all in 10-15 years. If the prices weren't stupid people wouldn't bother with the two week wait to ship it from across the world and go to these FLGS which seem to be quite uncommon and work by providing more than just GW as they have to keep to the crazy GW prices here which are probably pretty detrimental to these independent stores. They don't need to be lowered to the point where they are really cheap, just balanced more with their overall global pricing. One step at a time really.
The main reason they were probably able to reach those numbers were that they had a monopoly here for a fair while, but now that they don't the market may slip away from them.
LunaHound wrote:K phew, it wasnt just dejavu then >.<
Nope. I'm sure a sufficiently motivated person could find other letters that Mr Wells has sent - there was one posted in General Discussion a couple of weeks ago, I seem to remember.
In response to the reply - it seems to be pretty political. More of a "Well, let's just gloss over the facts with some pretty words to make us look better."
LunaHound wrote:K phew, it wasnt just dejavu then >.<
If it werent beer'o'clock I would search the forums ofr the previous letter threads...
filbert wrote:
LunaHound wrote:K phew, it wasnt just dejavu then >.<
Nope. I'm sure a sufficiently motivated person could find other letters that Mr Wells has sent - there was one posted in General Discussion a couple of weeks ago, I seem to remember.
My brain stops working after 11pm, but if im not mistaken that specific thread is no more than 2 weeks old.
I tried looking it up but the wall of text killed me xD
LunaHound wrote:K phew, it wasnt just dejavu then >.<
If it werent beer'o'clock I would search the forums ofr the previous letter threads...
filbert wrote:
LunaHound wrote:K phew, it wasnt just dejavu then >.<
Nope. I'm sure a sufficiently motivated person could find other letters that Mr Wells has sent - there was one posted in General Discussion a couple of weeks ago, I seem to remember.
My brain stops working after 11pm, but if im not mistaken that specific thread is no more than 2 weeks old.
I tried looking it up but the wall of text killed me xD
Someone needs to create the Death by Wall of Text Demotivational...
okay, he definately avoided answering to your points. He is counter-arguing without responding to any issues you have mentioned, and it was pretty clear to me that you are accusing GW of leaving blanks that were their own fault for having been exploited.... He pulled a classic PR stunt of touching on your points without dealing with them. I cannot say I am at all impressed, this has done as much to damage GW in my eyes as the past few years' price increases.
And i was not aware Dark Eldar were also a specialist game... because the models that go into Space Hulk are, aparantly, incompatible with 40 k........... gotta love that... Hell, LOTR is a specialist game: its already dead, when have they realeased anything on it??? It is to all intents and purposes dead... a great pick-me-up when the movies came out, a segway both ways: from film to gaming to their main lines, and excitment for their main customer base of a new line of product. beyond that though, its clear its a dead line.... on the upside, its not likely to change. (i do not mean it is dead in the sense nobody plays it, but in GWs eyes....)
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AvatarForm wrote:
LunaHound wrote:
AvatarForm wrote:
LunaHound wrote:K phew, it wasnt just dejavu then >.<
If it werent beer'o'clock I would search the forums ofr the previous letter threads...
filbert wrote:
LunaHound wrote:K phew, it wasnt just dejavu then >.<
Nope. I'm sure a sufficiently motivated person could find other letters that Mr Wells has sent - there was one posted in General Discussion a couple of weeks ago, I seem to remember.
My brain stops working after 11pm, but if im not mistaken that specific thread is no more than 2 weeks old. I tried looking it up but the wall of text killed me xD
Someone needs to create the Death by Wall of Text Demotivational...
mmm, had not seen the similar responses and am now feeling less well disposed towards Mr Wells than I was - do you think they have so many complaints about the same things that they can afford to have a 'cut-and-paste' bank depending on people's letters?
I find that prospect horribly likely to be true
There was indeed a lot of artful dodging (although in fairness he was hardly likely to say "You know what, you're right about everything and we'll crack on with those changes right away!") but I am tempted to write back, thanking him for his letter and pressing him on all the stuff he failed to answer.
So, you get a response, and don't like what you hear, so the guy is a witch?
Erm.....PROFIT!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
In short? They don't. Plus, GW have larger overheads. But you know, don't let facts get in the way of your bile, will you?
Without doubt their pricing in exorbitant: prices have risen here in Australia despite our dollar rising strongly in value compared to both the USD and the pound. Consequently, I can buy a ForgeWorld Grey Knights Dreadnought for less than it would cost to buy an ordinary plastic GW Dread. Make sense?
But not that this is of concern: I haven't even been to a GW shop for years, regardless of the additional services they offer. I just want my mini's, I'll teach myself to paint and play at home with my friends, not with people I don't know. So why should I have to pay extra for these services I am not interested in? GW's new policy makes it quite alot more difficult to source cheap (read: reasonably priced) Warhammer models. I've compared our prices to those in the UK and elsewhere.....everything is about 1/3 more expensive (after conversion) to buy in Australia (and we have less sales tax!). And no longer being able to buy from the many wonderful independent stockists in the UK is to everyone's loss. It looks like Ebay is the only real choice for me now.
BTW: FWGK Dread: ~46 pounds ($70.50 AUD), inc. postage.
Compared to GWSM Dread: $74 AUD (I remember when these were $55 or something, and they have hardly changed the model)
Ie, if you buy from GW in Australia, you are a fool. Hell, the way this is going, I may actually end up buying all my mini's from FW...
Mr Mystery wrote:So, you get a response, and don't like what you hear, so the guy is a witch?
Erm.....PROFIT!
Nope, it's unsatisfactory because Mr Wells responded with a copy and paste letter that didn't address any of the points raised in the original letter, and because the base reasons for GW acts are also unsatisfactory no matter how you word it. Embargoes on NH retailers to "protect the Australian community" is idiotic at best.
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
In short? They don't. Plus, GW have larger overheads. But you know, don't let facts get in the way of your bile, will you?
In short, many manufacturers still price their products a lot lower with significant overheads. Gw raising prices is a short term profit tactic to please their share-holders. In five years, they wont be happy as sales will have decreased to sufficiently cripple GW profit margins.
But hey, you're a GW apologist, there's no arguing with you. I'm afraid you're a lost cause if you can't see that what GW is doing will destroy them.
Oh dear. you didn't actually read the response, did you?
GW, dependant on bricks and mortar stores to promote and recruit. European sellers, due to the exchange rate, can offer cheaper. Thus, Bricks and Mortar suffer. This affects recruitment, GW do something about it. This makes perfect sense, and rather scuppers the 'short term' gibberish people keep banging on about.
Define 'many manufacturers' please. Because there is no competition the size of GW, with anything like their overheads.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, and you might want to look up 'apologist'.
An apologist re-interprets facts. Which is very much more your side of the table I fear. Plus, no doubt it's much easier to chuck around epithets than actually attempt to engage with someone, no?
So it makes perfect sense that 10 Tactical Marines cost £40.50 instead of something more around the £23.00, cause it costs more than the product's sale value itself in these overheads?
Shouldn't that be sort of an alarming figure for most companies? Perhaps signaling to them that they may be using a rather inefficient system that appears to be draining money. I'm not expecting the same price here more around maybe 5-10 pounds more to cover this.
I did, hence why I find it unsatisfactory. Firstly, it's the same reasons they've used in the past, which I didn't find were acceptable to start with, secondly, many others have received suspiciously similar responses, hence it's a typical copy-paste PR stunt to avoid actually answering the points raised, and likely admitting the reasons aren't exactly good ones. GW, dependant on bricks and mortar, true. European sellers offer GW products cheaper and have a high demand simply because the prices in Australia are ridiculous. The market was how it was due to these European sellers making the products affordable. Currently, they WILL lose sales as people won't buy a box of terminators at double the price they sell them for in the UK. Essentially, they're strangling the market. It's maybe the only long-term move GW has made recently, but it's not a good one. Price rises are short term solutions, there;s been a fair few over the years. I retract 'many' as there aren't really that many. There are a few. Mantic jumps out immediately. Apologist - –noun 1. a person who makes a defense in speech or writing of a belief, idea, etc.
That's you. You're defending GW and that's fine, but I don't agree with anything you say as it's skimming over the obvious downfalls of GW 'solutions'.
Yet who is writing these letters? People like you and me, Interweb Mooks.
Sorry if this sounds overly aggresive, but exactly why should the CEO of a market leading company give two hoots what business advice we offer? We don't have the experience, or anywhere near the knowledge. We can only speak from a purely personal point of view. Whilst it's great that Calvin actually wrote in (something I've been advocating for a long time, rather than just anonymous online whinging) it is utterly unreasonable to expect anything but a token response, and whether you agree or not, what he got was more than token.
And again, it strikes me that it's not so much that he avoided points, as people just plain don't like the response, well, see above. Sadly our opinions are uninformed, and don't really matter a great deal. I fear Calvin's opening mistake is to state that he's out, then list the reasons.
Think Dragons Den. They give their feedback, THEN declare they're out. Otherwise, your attempt as discussion simply becomes a statement, and as with most statements they veer into the realm of being rhetorical. And on the (loose) subject of Dragons Den, I bet should one of the Dragons write concerns to them, they'd get a more considered response, because unlike us, they too are successful buisness people, and thus actually know what they're on about.
These "Interweb Mooks" are also GW customers, that should at least garner some respect.
It doesn't take a business expert to see what GW are doing. Sure, you're going to respond by saying that I'm not one hence why I'm uninformed, which isn't exactly true. I'm informed by the posts of people with experience in economics, and I understand and agree with what they say.
Exactly, we don't like the response because we don't agree with the reasons behind GW's moves regardless of who or where it comes from or how it's worded.
I agree to an extent, he should have done what you said, perhaps they would have taken a little more thought about what he said. However, if they just see a wall of criticism they aren't going to take it seriously anyway. GW is of the mind that a few customers writing in represent only those few customers. What Calvin did was give them statistics, however inaccurate and novel they may seem, coming from an internet forum. It should have given them at least an over-view of how people are reacting.
Except Forums are not a good place to garner statistics.
Trust me, GW have access to more feedback than you think. And even in the post above, there is the impression that no matter GW's reasoning, it doesn't matter because your mind is already set. How then can the enter into any kind of discourse?
I agree, it's not THE best place to garner statistics from, but the results shouldn't be ignored regardless. True, there's some inaccuracy, but the results speak for themselves.
Sure they have plenty of feedback, but they don't listen to a lot of it. My mind is set, just like you said. What could possibly change my mind? Either GW changes what it's doing, tall order I know but that's what's needed for a lot of people. Or, they come out, write a long, thoughtful explanation of what they are doing, admit some mistakes and at least look like they listen to what people are saying. Sure, they respond to some people, but it's skimming over the issues.
Thing is, even if they did that, self professed 'experts' (and lets face it, on the Interwebs, you have to take a lot of things at face value) will rush in and vomit up opinion masquerading as fact all over it.
They genuinely cannot win. They answer, they get called liars/fools or both. They don't answer, and they're arrogant cretins for not listening.
They simply cannot go onto a public forum in the way we can to discuss, for the very same reasons. For instance, I work in Customer Service, and I have to tell people stuff they don't like, but they have already agreed to (Car Insurance to be precise) and then they get all shirty with me, over the phone. And why do they get shirty? Because the know I'm not allowed to say *anything* back. I would dealy love to tell several Policy Holders 'oh just shut the feth up and listen would you, you bellend. It's on your fething policy, which you agreed to. If you didn't read it before signing it, then you're a dick. Either way tosspot, you can either cough up your excess, or I'll close off your claim'. But I can't, and I wouldn't. Ditto GW. They cannot tell customers everything, because there are those who would tempt, erm...a rather stricter response. And sadly the nuggets of genuine feedback, get drowned out amongst the general clamour and cat calls. How exactly do you engage with that in a productive manner?
Even this letter, which was written to one person, is now being critiqued, with no way for the author to respond. That's hardly fair. Why not follow it up with another letter, stating that you weren't satisfied by the response, rather than just sticking online?
Mr Mystery wrote:GW, dependant on bricks and mortar stores to promote and recruit. European sellers, due to the exchange rate, can offer cheaper. Thus, Bricks and Mortar suffer.
Which is fair enough, in itself. The answer, though, is not to try to pretend that the internet doesn't exist.
Times change. Smart businesses change with them, rather than trying to re-wind the clock to a time better suited to their chosen business model.
If GW (the company that actually makes this stuff in the first place) can't compete locally with businesses that buy their product from GW, then they need to find some other way of bringing money into their stores.
Some of that 'supporting local gaming' that Mr Wells keeps babbling on about would be a good start.
When it comes to Oz, I do agree the need to sort out the exchange rate. But what exactly should those B&M stores do? Set up their website? They're still buying at a higher cost than UK ones (well, one assumes). So that's a bust, as you need significant investment, and you still haven't tackled the problem. Indeed doing this could force you under.
So GW do something to benefit the local traders. If GW were half as mercenary as they make out, why would the do anything? Product still shifts, the still get their cut. Kind of flies in the face, no?
And oddly, how do you adjust the exchange rate, thus automatically adjusting prices, without pissing off the people who bought your product in the weeks running up? Do I agree that GW should avoid this action? Not especially, but surely you can see why they might have done this? One could even say that tinkering with the exchange rate then brings up the problem of how often do you do it? Every week, every year? Would that muck people about? Piss them off even more? I dunno, as said before, I'm just a Mook like everyone else. But think of it this way. You're saving up for a nice new army. You finally have the cashmonies to buy it, and boom, exchange rate adjustment, and suddenly you cannot afford it anymore. Or worse, you bought it the week before, and then the adjustment hits, and you've spent money you didn't need to.
It's a tricky situation, and GW have made their choice. I don't think anyone here has enough knowledge to say with certainty whether any alternative was better.
Well its a obvious copy paste and to be honest I feel bad for the fella at GW that has to compose these letters over and over again... I'm willing to bet they have tons of letters to reply to and the fact that they do take the time to answer is good IMO.
As for the content of the reply well I do disagree with some of the points but hey their company heir philosophy, if they are happy with the way sales are going who I'm I to disagree...
I don't know if you're missing the point but, a lot of people don't think the reasons for GW are satisfactory in the first place, regardless of how it's worded or which person it comes from. Sure, it puts GW in a position where the can't respond to all the criticism, but in my opinion, they haven't even really tried, and it comes across as arrogant. Some half-assed copy and paste response that skims the issues isn't going to cut it for me personally. For the record, I'm in the process of typing a response to Mark Wells letter.
So GW do something to benefit the local traders. If GW were half as mercenary as they make out, why would the do anything? Product still shifts, the still get their cut. Kind of flies in the face, no?
.
Yeah like you said " not enough knowledge"... you are assuming product is in fact shifting and that GW OZ doesn't make the cut a lot fatter for GW if they buy OZ only...
I tell you this much if GW made this embargo is not because of the hobby health but rather because of the money they are not collection from GW OZ... Thinking otherwise is out of touch with GW actions.
You know what's even more scary about all this? In Europe is were GW is losing the biggest percentage of sales and if you add to the fact that the main biggest EU online stores are selling to OZ and now they are forbidden to do so... we can be alarmed of the real low number of EU sales in the future.
So GW do something to benefit the local traders. If GW were half as mercenary as they make out, why would the do anything? Product still shifts, the still get their cut. Kind of flies in the face, no?
.
Yeah like you said " not enough knowledge"... you are assuming product is in fact shifting and that GW OZ doesn't make the cut a lot fatter for GW if they buy OZ only...
I tell you this much if GW made this embargo is not because of the hobby health but rather because of the money they are not collection from GW OZ... Thinking otherwise is out of touch with GW actions.
You know what's even more scary about all this? In Europe is were GW is losing the biggest percentage of sales and if you add to the fact that the main biggest EU online stores are selling to OZ and now they are forbidden to do so... we can be alarmed of the real low number of EU sales in the future.
Which doesn't take into account any other factor. As I've said before (not in this thread though) there's a lot of changes being made in terms of training etc behind the scenes, and from what I've seen (hardly representative before anyone gets clever) it is working. Even though I don't work for them anymore, not comfortable going further on the boards, but happy to gibber away on PM.
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iproxtaco wrote:I don't know if you're missing the point but, a lot of people don't think the reasons for GW are satisfactory in the first place, regardless of how it's worded or which person it comes from. Sure, it puts GW in a position where the can't respond to all the criticism, but in my opinion, they haven't even really tried, and it comes across as arrogant. Some half-assed copy and paste response that skims the issues isn't going to cut it for me personally. For the record, I'm in the process of typing a response to Mark Wells letter.
And serious props to you for doing so matey. It's a lot more productiive that complaining on Dakka!
Mr Mystery wrote:Oh dear. you didn't actually read the response, did you?
GW, dependant on bricks and mortar stores to promote and recruit. European sellers, due to the exchange rate, can offer cheaper. Thus, Bricks and Mortar suffer. This affects recruitment, GW do something about it. This makes perfect sense, and rather scuppers the 'short term' gibberish people keep banging on about.
Define 'many manufacturers' please. Because there is no competition the size of GW, with anything like their overheads.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, and you might want to look up 'apologist'.
An apologist re-interprets facts. Which is very much more your side of the table I fear. Plus, no doubt it's much easier to chuck around epithets than actually attempt to engage with someone, no?
Sadly this isn't 1995 anymore and hasn't been for a long time, what I find amusing about GW claims that onlines retailers taking advantage of exchange rates is its exactly what GW is doing, I mean if GW kept their prices steady when it didn't go in their favor I would actually be inclined to buy this line, they don't, they raise the prices, really its a case of pot keetle black.
Mr Mystery wrote:GW, dependant on bricks and mortar stores to promote and recruit. European sellers, due to the exchange rate, can offer cheaper. Thus, Bricks and Mortar suffer.
Which is fair enough, in itself. The answer, though, is not to try to pretend that the internet doesn't exist.
Times change. Smart businesses change with them, rather than trying to re-wind the clock to a time better suited to their chosen business model.
@iproxtaco - As I'm writing my response to Mark Wells today, could I ask are you thinking of writing about specifics mentioned in his letter to me or a more general complaint?
I don't want any potential dialogue to be bounced on an accusation of rabble-rousing!
@Mr Mystery - I like how you say that someone with a business background will be taken seriously without knowing my background. For the record I work in the commercial department of a company 10 times the size of GW (based on current share prices) and my views on what would make GW better are not based on internet blethering or fanboi wishlisting.
I was going to contact you on the same matter. My intention was to simply complain about the response, that they were dodging the problem and that it was a typical Copy/paste response, not to go into the specifics. It will be more politely put of course.
No, but what has that got to do with the price of fish (or plasticrack in this case)?
You said you work in customer service in said insurance company, not underwriting. Ergo I would not necessarily expect you to have any underwriting knowledge.
I said I worked in the commercial department and deal every day with cost and sales, contract t's & c's, overheads, etc. which is pertinent to a discussion on GW's corporate strategy and pricing policy.
Except GW are a fairly unique beast. A manufacturer with it's own chain of stores, selling a hobby.
Also skip, worth noting you didn't mention your experience in your letter. Would it have made a difference? I dunno, but it might have illicited a different response. Though of course, not a good one to open up with.
Perhaps it's better not going into why you are qualified too deeply. Simply putting that you have experience in a similar field so believe you are able to comment.
As the first letter wasn't offering any suggestions (a concious choice on my part) then any mention of my experience would have been tangential at best.
I understand what you mean about GW being unique, but the basic principles of profit and efficiency are universally applicable, it's just the specifics that differ between businesses. I'd be happy to go through their books with a fine toothcomb but I doubt they'll let me
I wouldn't want to look at their books. The sheer mind-numbing retardation you would likely find would make you punch your hand through your skull when you face-palm so hard.
Chimera_Calvin wrote:As
As for the biggies:
All price rises are justified because the quality is universally better... Secrecy works - it made the release of Space Hulk and Failcost the successes they were... oh wait Specialist Games are not being ditched 'in case we go back to them later, like Space Hulk'... err, SH was never a Specialist Game and had been officially out of print for years before the splash 3rd edition. Australia and New Zealand need protecting from those evil European traders or the hobby will disappear down under... what the ?
Games Workshop always takes decisions for the 'long term'...
Back to the drawing board, methinks.
Its called damage control. WOTC did the same/similar things during 4e rollout/GSL debacle. Especailly at the form.anger/wall of flames when they canceled Dragon and Dungeon magzines in print
-edit- A lot of their arguement hinges on their inability to please everyone. They claim it is impossible, so in their mind, it relieves them of any need to try.
To quote the wisdom of Homer Simpson: "Trying is the first step towards failure".
The simple fact is that we cannot possibly make everything that every customer wants as there is a limit to how much our Studio can design or our factory make. We have to make choices about what products we release and when.
This is the one that got me... The reason that people want these things is that you've made the new rules for them, it's -very- poor planning, to do so when you can't fill the need.
Mr Mystery wrote:
In short? They don't. Plus, GW have larger overheads. But you know, don't let facts get in the way of your bile, will you?
Not trying to troll here, but I question if they really have a larger percentage of overhead relative to the amount of product they make. They almost certainly have more employees, both retail and R&D, then say, Privateer Press, but they only so a significantly larger volume of sales. On a per model basis, I can't imagine the percentage of overhead cost to be significantly different than someone like PP.
Moreover, per the last several earning statements, they've been cutting overhead (reducing staff levels, closing stores) in order to return to profitability. Wells claims GW grows their business via brick and mortar interactions, which then immediately generates some congitive dissonance. So, you're returning to profitability by cutting your long term growth potential and you're issuing a dividend? That seems... odd.
Mr Mystery wrote:GW, dependant on bricks and mortar stores to promote and recruit. European sellers, due to the exchange rate, can offer cheaper. Thus, Bricks and Mortar suffer.
Here's the problem with your assessment: Aussie folks can STILL order directly from GWUK, at a cheaper price(but not cheaper then the european seller, but cheaper then brick and mortar Aussie stores). That right there invalidates GW's thought behind the move. Their trying to cut out only certain parties, not fully protect B&M stores.
Bottomline ladies and gentlemen, is that market forces are the best controller of prices. pour example.
"greater competition = More competitive prices"
This applies for certain ranges or commodities, Imperial Guard can be substituted for say PIG- IRON models or other 28mm models.
Flames of War is a perfect example of this, as BF cannot IP or trademark, Copyright 15mm Panzers and Models.
If you want to play SPACE MARINES, well frankly you've had it, as nothing out there resembles them for a damn good reason. Because simply, GW are protecting their most valuable IP and i personally would too. If you designed something from scratch and it became popular and another company came along and ripped it off, well you'd be outraged.
I think the price comes from the dominance of GW, but not in a beliigerant way. They dominated the scene and brought it to the world, but with the internet and greater diversity of content model suppliers and model items they are losing out to compeititors.
I would love to do some Blue Sky's Thinking, get involved in their business model and change it for the 21st Century.
1. A couple of larger regional stores in larger more densely populated areas would be better. Close 90% of the Stores, lose the staff, retain the good ones (Brutal but this is capitalism).
2. Use savings to reduce Staffing and Retail expediture and reduce overheads. Use savings to reduce costs and therefore Consumer prices reduce.
3. Enlarge the online system and provide a BITS/ Parts service. Wouldn't cost more than 10 Shops to Run staff and Operate! Could be operated out a dedicated building in the Nottingham Site.
4. Consider 3rd Party Developer rights, Chapter House makes good Space Marine Pauldrons, bring them in house. Instead of Enemy, make them an Ally. Make them sign a Clause that they can only develop accessories/upgrades/parts for Core ranges not alternative whole miniatures/ models. Same with Bases, Terrain etc. You could even go so far as to mass produce Normal marines and people can buy upgrade sprues from GW or 3rd parties.
5. Consider use of Franchaise Stores or FLGS Support e.g if a FLGS has 50% of Shop floor/shelf space dedicated to GW material they are entitled to certain discounts or financial support. Call it Subsidised Store retention or something, why pay for a full store when you can have half the sales space of one for considerably less than 50% Cost. Appoint a couple of Store inspectors to keep the FLGS inline.
6. Split the Studio, WARHAMMER 40K + WARHAMMER = Classic Studio WARHAMMER HISTORICAL = Historical Studio OTHERS = Specialist Studio. Jervis Johnson does not need his fingers in every "Game" Pie. Let the next generation get hold of this stuff. Generating Content should be in the Companies best Interest, everyone collects at least 2 Armies.
7. Vallejo make good paints...Does GW still need too? Equally what about terrain? what about everything else? ARMY PAINTER stuff? There is lots of stuff out there why fight over the crumbs under the table. It's unnecessary.
Lets consider that GW produce their own Models, Paints, Materials, Games, dedicated Hobby Shops. They are a victim of there own success, they got us all hooked and with the internet we have taken Wargaming in all it's forms in many different directions. They continue to operate expensive shops, with high staffing costs, high venue costs and such, these expenses need to be re-couped.
Many smaller companies are small operations, they are cheaper by a considerable margin because they don't have highstreet dedicated shops, and sales staff, or their own paint ranges, spray paints, boards, terrain, massive vehicles, Reading Materials, books, Video Games.
GW should concentrate on their core job, generating Game Systems and models.
iproxtaco wrote:I was going to contact you on the same matter. My intention was to simply complain about the response, that they were dodging the problem and that it was a typical Copy/paste response, not to go into the specifics. It will be more politely put of course.
If you ask the same questions of the same person you will get the same response.
For example Kilkrazy has already said this, I am saying it again. Are we copying and pasting?
I'll look forward to your Copy Pasta whine thread in a few weeks.
Credit to a busy man for taking the time to respond. If anyone was expecting him to say "sorry you're quite right we will enact the changes you suggest imediately" then you are having a laugh.
Personally thought that MW's letter addressed most of the points raised well and in as much detail as a letter will allow.
C_C the tone that your original points raised suggest that you were going to be pretty hacked off no matter what response you got. Do you think that the time used to write the letter was worth it?
I think that you did well to get a response, especially considering that you made it clear in the first paragraph that you woldn't continue to be a customer. To me this shows GW ina slightly better light. (still not paying RRP though!)
So GW do something to benefit the local traders. If GW were half as mercenary as they make out, why would the do anything? Product still shifts, the still get their cut. Kind of flies in the face, no?
.
Yeah like you said " not enough knowledge"... you are assuming product is in fact shifting and that GW OZ doesn't make the cut a lot fatter for GW if they buy OZ only...
I tell you this much if GW made this embargo is not because of the hobby health but rather because of the money they are not collection from GW OZ... Thinking otherwise is out of touch with GW actions.
You know what's even more scary about all this? In Europe is were GW is losing the biggest percentage of sales and if you add to the fact that the main biggest EU online stores are selling to OZ and now they are forbidden to do so... we can be alarmed of the real low number of EU sales in the future.
Which doesn't take into account any other factor. As I've said before (not in this thread though) there's a lot of changes being made in terms of training etc behind the scenes, and from what I've seen (hardly representative before anyone gets clever) it is working. Even though I don't work for them anymore, not comfortable going further on the boards, but happy to gibber away on PM.
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iproxtaco wrote:I don't know if you're missing the point but, a lot of people don't think the reasons for GW are satisfactory in the first place, regardless of how it's worded or which person it comes from. Sure, it puts GW in a position where the can't respond to all the criticism, but in my opinion, they haven't even really tried, and it comes across as arrogant. Some half-assed copy and paste response that skims the issues isn't going to cut it for me personally. For the record, I'm in the process of typing a response to Mark Wells letter.
And serious props to you for doing so matey. It's a lot more productiive that complaining on Dakka!
Their margins are substantially higher with direct sales in the region vs. cheaper margin sales to Euro discounters. Its essentially attempting to employ monopolistic practices.
Copy & Paste responses mean consistency. If you and I had both written a letter and received different responses (even in the slightest), how hard do you think the collective panties would be knotted then?
In another thread, someone compared GW to an abusive husband.
I'd venture it's the opposite. No matter what they do, certain people will always have a bone to pick. And you know, I kind of envy them. I mean, I wish the only concern in my life was little plastic soldiers and the company that makes them. Now, if you don't mind, and seriously, if it's not suddenly become a Dakka crime, I'm off to enjoy the hobby I've sunk a considerable sum into.
Chimera_Calvin wrote:Well, I have to say I am impressed to have a personal reply
Don't know why people are harping on about this cut and paste thing and getting on Chimera's back about it.
He acknowledged the fact that Wells at least had the decency to reply.
What is worth discussing is the content of the letter.
Flashman wrote:As to the content, I guess we have official confirmation of GW's current belief that total secrecy equals = £££ on release day rather than ££.
Personally, I really can't wrap my head around how this works, but I would love to see comprehensive sales data that supports it.
Makes sense to me. I mean, they've got the data, right? This is a corporation with a duty to their shareholders to make a profit. They're run by professional business people. If he says that their data indicates that more secrecy yields a better launch, why would he lie? What do they have to gain by taking the less rewarding path?
WotC experiences the same thing. They attempt to squash any non-controlled source of rumours about new M:tG releases. They leak specific cards on their site, and to partner sites, with each release, but they go after people who have divulged more than they want known just as much as GW has.
I too would be interested in seeing comprehensive sales data. But I understand that this is an unreasonable request. No company in their right mind simply opens their books to their customers. No one.
The simple fact is that we cannot possibly make everything that every customer wants as there is a limit to how much our Studio can design or our factory make. We have to make choices about what products we release and when.
This is the one that got me... The reason that people want these things is that you've made the new rules for them, it's -very- poor planning, to do so when you can't fill the need.
Not only have they made rules for them while lacking models, they make them very important parts of the armies (thunder wolves and tervigons as the leading 2 problem units). I understand not wanting to make models for options you don't think will be too important or will be a weak sell, but making rules for a model that would sell in droves yet denying reason to make it (and suing companies that fill this important need? It's absurd. I would like to use different words than "absurd" here, but site rules prevent me from doing so.
I've been quite busy with work, but with a free summer coming up, I'll be taking the time to write, edit, and proofread (with a fine toothed comb) a letter to Mr. Wells. I will also be taking some of Mr. Mystery's (I believe it was you, apologies if I misuse your name with another user) advice and not start out by saying that I am leaving, but rather start out with a positive comment: gaming with the company for the past ten years, loving the new detail (orcs and goblins, dark eldar, various other models) and then lead into my concerns-they will be addressed as concerns, not complaints. I will finish with the sadness that I feel I can no longer put vast quantities of money (I only buy at a steep discount now) into a hobby that does not perform to its customers' expectations. Not just mine (I'm not that arrogant, despite some peoples' opinions that I may be), but the majority of the community.
Well, firstly thanks to Chimera for sharing this letter, it was good to read and good to know.
I don't really care about the copy paste issue, I agree with the consistancy. However, I do disagree that keeping releases secret will improve excitement. When I saw that metal was replaced by finecast by opening my white dwarf, I wasn't excited but I just thought "oh what?".
If I had known earlier, omitting all the defects, then maybe it would have been better.
I'm just not sure about their reasons for actions, but don't blame the lone guy, blame the entity that is the company.
The art of writing a letter is a sadly dying art. I reccomend anyone with a genuine beef they'd like to discuss write in. It's the single most productive medium possible. They even trump e-mails, because in an odd way, e-mails are too instant. A letter, because you have to print it, then post it, encourages a slower time. I think we've all had an instance of the ill-considered e-mail reply. Letters suffer from this less, as until it's the pillar box, it's not too late.
Mr Mystery wrote:Got purely anecdotal. Worked for them for the Nid launch, and without the book we promoted purely on the coolness of the models.
For my store at least, bigcashmoniesinthetill.
Conversley round here the Nid codex release around here was pure epic FAIL. Simply due to the lack of codex. In the weeks leading up to the release the manager at the time was constantly asking, nay, begging the regular forum goers for info he could tell his customers about the codex. No-one was willing to buy certain units units until they had seen their rules.
In the letter Mark Wells uses Space Hulk as example of how total secrecy works, but...
a) it was the worst kept secret ever and
b) who's to say that something like nostalgia or the highly limited release didn't play a bigger part in the high sales
The easiest mistake when interpreting data is attributing a outcome to something that appears related, but it is actually due to something else entirely.
But then the splash release of a brand new product wouldn't have worked as well. (I think I just spoke bollocks. Apologies. I'm sure it's relevant, but I'm not quite convinced)
I dunno man, but I trust GW knows what it's doing a helluva lot more than we do.
To be fair while the Spulk release was guessed I don't think that any actual product info was out there prematurely.
When the final show was done I seem to remember allot on otherwise cynical mouths hitting the floor. I may be misremembering this but if this is how Mark Wells/GW have interpreted it then it goes along way to explaining some things.
All of this seems fairly evident as an attempt at protecting turnover. In the numbers GW works in a 5% holding back spending for 6 months while the wait for X to be released could influence their figure unduly. No one like having their forecast turn out to be incorrect.
notprop wrote:To be fair while the Spulk release was guessed I don't think that any actual product info was out there prematurely.
When the final show was done I seem to remember allot on otherwise cynical mouths hitting the floor. I may be misremembering this but if this is how Mark Wells/GW have interpreted it then it goes along way to explaining some things.
Hmm... if they're expecting the same amount of sales as this release...
Just a couple of points to rise from the Mark Wells letter.
As for the legal action we take against infringers, I don’t think we have any choice. They have taken, without our permission, intellectual property which our design teams have taken years to develop and have used it for their own commercial purposes. That is clearly morally and legally wrong. If companies want to make product using our intellectual property then they should approach us for a licence, like Fantasy Flight Games have. Provided they meet our quality standards and our minimum royalty requirements, then we will consider them. But they can’t simply steal from us and expect us to ignore them.
This 'stealing' is alleged since there's an ongoing court case pertaining to this matter. The matter is not clearly anything.
All of these costs have increased in recent years, particularly raw material costs such as tin and plastic which have increased far faster than our retail prices. The reason that we have been able to absorb much of this cost pressure is that we are constantly investing in technology and training to deliver greater efficiency in our manufacturing and design processes.
Costs of tin and plastic, Really? Polystyrene costs about £1300 a tonne. Anyone care to do some maths there with a box of plastic Space Marines. Since GW no longer produce models using tin, the price of tin is irrelevant.
Space Hulk was released in September. The first I heard about it was on BoLS in February of the same year, and I know others had heard about it prior to that.
All the secrecy did was get GW staff threatened with sacking should they discuss it with anyone.
I dunno man, but I trust GW knows what it's doing a helluva lot more than we do.
I would not advise putting your shirt on it.
Really? You think GW is going to hand the controls over to a bunch of geeks on the interwebz so you get the chance to do things better?)
Lol, it would be good though. Put Dakka in the boardroom and see what happens after a week HMBC would have a new Codex Chaos Marines (the ice cream edition) at the printers by coffee break on Monday morning.
Mr Mystery wrote:Exactly as much as they ever are?
In another thread, someone compared GW to an abusive husband.
I'd venture it's the opposite. No matter what they do, certain people will always have a bone to pick. And you know, I kind of envy them. I mean, I wish the only concern in my life was little plastic soldiers and the company that makes them. Now, if you don't mind, and seriously, if it's not suddenly become a Dakka crime, I'm off to enjoy the hobby I've sunk a considerable sum into.
You mean in your thread where you made the insinuation that the customer is at fault for all of GW's recent announcements?
And for what its worth, no, if GW started operating in a manner that recognised and respected its customer base, its customers would not always find a bone to pick. By all means go off and enjoy your hobby; all anyone on these forums wants to do is enjoy their hobby. The vast majority of people are only as outspoken as they are because of how much they love 40k, and it irks them to see the presiding company run itself into the ground in such a brutal manner.
Flashman wrote:As to the content, I guess we have official confirmation of GW's current belief that total secrecy equals = £££ on release day rather than ££.
According to Wells, you sell most, when everyone is surprised that you are still selling and not dead yet I call this anti-marketing to artificially lower sales and revenue.
Flashman wrote:In the letter Mark Wells uses Space Hulk as example of how total secrecy works, but...
a) it was the worst kept secret ever and
b) who's to say that something like nostalgia or the highly limited release didn't play a bigger part in the high sales
I suggested a Space Hulk rerelease for 5 years as the best possible introductory game.
I knew about the release 2.5 years in advance when Harry spilled the beans. I still bought two because the product was fine.
It sold well, because the market was underestimated at least tenfold even with abyssmal marketing and distribution.
I give up. I truly give up. There is no discussion to be had on these boards, just the same old mindless drivel vomited up, page after page after page.
Luna. Go read the entire thread, rather than just seizing upon a single comment...
Kroothawk wrote:
It sold well, because the market was underestimated at least tenfold even with abyssmal marketing and distribution.
Yup, the amount of potential returning gamers GW had to turn away that I saw at my own local due to SH being sold out. People had heard about it a few days/weeks after the release on more "mainstream" forums (i.e. not Wargaming), came into GW looking to reinvigorate a bit of nostalgia and maybe even get back into the game, only to find out it is not for sale.
The biggest kick in the teeth was several GW stores had copies of it lying around as overstock and they all at one point got sent back to Warhammer World where they were put on sale there.
Really? You think GW is going to hand the controls over to a bunch of geeks on the interwebz so you get the chance to do things better?)
Read it again Mikhaila, Where did anyone seriously suggest they would?
We get it that you are an ace entrepreneur and us mere mortals have no business sense, but that does not necessarily mean that the shambles currently in charge at GW are any better than the geeks on the internet.
Really? You think GW is going to hand the controls over to a bunch of geeks on the interwebz so you get the chance to do things better?)
Read it again Mikhaila, Where did anyone seriously suggest they would?
We get it that you are an ace entrepreneur and us mere mortals have no business sense, but that does not necessarily mean that the shambles currently in charge at GW are any better than the geeks on the internet.
Erm, I think yes...as your constant assertation that it's badly run is well, utterly uninformed, by your own admission?
Mr Mystery wrote:
Erm, I think yes...as your constant assertation that it's badly run is well, utterly uninformed, by your own admission?
GW ARE badly run though, I believe the cliche of piss ups and breweries comes to mind. They are consumed by their own hubris, and this will be their downfall.
I half expected to hear that you received a years supply of shampoo or a sprue of finecrap as a reply.
Great job on that letter. Well written, well worded, and got your points across to the discussion. Way to go.
It was a standard talking point PR reply.
As for the "Drivel" comment, it is interspaced with plenty of apologist talking points with no basis of facts, so it isn't all bad. Agood discussion and Calvin gave them plenty of chances to discuss the issues, but like Goebbles said-
1. Propagandist must have access to intelligence concerning events and public opinion.
2. Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority.
a. It must issue all the propaganda directives.
b. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale.
c. It must oversee other agencies' activities which have propaganda consequences
3. The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action.
4. Propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action.
a. By suppressing propagandistically desirable material which can provide the enemy with useful intelligence
b. By openly disseminating propaganda whose content or tone causes the enemy to draw the desired conclusions
c. By goading the enemy into revealing vital information about himself
d. By making no reference to a desired enemy activity when any reference would discredit that activity
5. Declassified, operational information must be available to implement a propaganda campaign
6. To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.
7. Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be true or false.
8. The purpose, content and effectiveness of enemy propaganda; the strength and effects of an expose; and the nature of current propaganda campaigns determine whether enemy propaganda should be ignored or refuted.
9. Credibility, intelligence, and the possible effects of communicating determine whether propaganda materials should be censored.
10. Material from enemy propaganda may be utilized in operations when it helps diminish that enemy's prestige or lends support to the propagandist's own objective.
11. Black rather than white propaganda may be employed when the latter is less credible or produces undesirable effects.
12. Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige.
13. Propaganda must be carefully timed.
a. The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda.
b. A propaganda campaign must begin at the optimum moment
c. A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness
14. Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans.
a. They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses
b. They must be capable of being easily learned
c. They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations
d. They must be boomerang-proof
15. Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events.
16. Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level.
a. Propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat
b. Propaganda must diminish anxiety (other than concerning the consequences of defeat) which is too high and which cannot be reduced by people themselves
17. Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration.
a. Inevitable frustrations must be anticipated
b. Inevitable frustrations must be placed in perspective
18. Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
19. Propaganda cannot immediately affect strong counter-tendencies; instead it must offer some form of action or diversion, or both.
Because, after all, we're talking about- "The Hobby".
Just had a conversation with an ex-employee from GW:
aparantly, they were instructed to sell 10 monoliths when they first came out, over the next year. Every store world-wide had to sell 10 each, that way, in the first year the moulds/machines/sculptor would have "paid for themselves". And when we got talking I realized he WAS right, it IS hard to do, because how many Necron players frequent a shop and buy from there? And how many then would have the money to drop on a single monolith, never mind two...
... so anyway, THERE is GWs problem: no long-term sights AT ALL. If an investment is measured in the span of a year, and not longer, its very easy to see their skewed math. They don't give two gaks about customer loyalty, they care about stupid johns who will drop their wallets at the tip of a hat for their product. Once the initial excitment blows over, release the next line to keep them enthused and forget about the last one... Also a small wonder then that few people field painted armies....
Erm, I think yes...as your constant assertation that it's badly run is well, utterly uninformed, by your own admission
erm, definitely not.
I at no point said anyone of us could run GW efficiently. I merely made an off the cuff remark to the effect that the incumbent managment at GW are useless. That is an opinion which you may or may not agree with but I am still entitled to express it.
I have no faith in the previous or current bunch of nanas in Westminster, but that DOES NOT presume to suggest that I would be able to fulfil the role myself.
Now where is the evidence that the company is well run? The current decisions they have made and falling sales suggest otherwise. The fact that they are hacking off customers suggests theat something is remiss, and no the "people always moan at GW" nonsense won't hold.
Really? You think GW is going to hand the controls over to a bunch of geeks on the interwebz so you get the chance to do things better?)
Read it again Mikhaila, Where did anyone seriously suggest they would?
We get it that you are an ace entrepreneur and us mere mortals have no business sense, but that does not necessarily mean that the shambles currently in charge at GW are any better than the geeks on the internet.
Erm, I think yes...as your constant assertation that it's badly run is well, utterly uninformed, by your own admission?
So in your own opinion how would you say they are run? good? ok? average? crap?
Heres the thing, if they actually had a clue what they were doing why are sales dropping from year to year? is it the price? is the its rules system putting people off? is it a combination of the two, should they not be doing market research to actually fine out what the problem is rather than covering up the fall in sales with price rises? Is it good buisness to at the same time as rising you prices, switch to a cheaper material, create a trading embargo? Its not something you do all at the same time if you have to do it at all, it really is a PR mess that now GW has to try and clear up, if they handeled it correctly most of this would have gone away by now. I can honestly say this is the longest period I can remember people bitching about GW.
Grot 6 wrote:
Mr Mystery wrote:But at no point was said letter a discussion. It was a series of statements.
Exactly what sort of reply would you expect to that?
whatever.
I'm not going to play internet tit for tat with you.
Way your acting here you'd think that YOU were Mark Wells or something. Calvin writes the letter and all the sudden you take over the thread.... LOL
Mr Mystery wrote:Your genuine, comparative and factual evidence please?
I am really not one for forum mudslinging as it were, but Mr Mystery every thread that shows up like this seems to turn into you taking a stance of well there GW so they have to know whats best....right guy's? No one here has said that they can do better at running the buissness then Mr. Wells, no one has said they have all the answers. We are all voiceing our displeasure with the current situation and what we think may be a better option(you call it whining i call it being disapointed in something that i love and want to see do well).
Yes GW is a buissness and they need to make money and no a buissness does not "owe" us there loyalty, they owe it to there share holders. But than again this is not a ordinary buissness in a ordinary market. The hobby market IS very customer driven and as they themselves have said they need our word of mouth advertising to help them grow as much as they need anything else. With that said there is data saying they are strugling ie, made a profit but at lower sales volume of higher prices while cutting employees and stores across the board to show that profit. So Mr. Mystery you continually ask us for evidence to support the idea that what they are doing is bad buisness and we show you, you still say well there GW they know whats best. We say they are falling right now and without some changes they will fail(we don't know if they will make these changes but past history is the best judge of future performance) and you still say there GW they know best. So now i ask you Mr Mystery will you please just let us continue our wishlisting for a better future of what is a great hobby setting and not turn these threads into a name calling flame fest.
Apologies for bad spelling,grammar and general wall of texness.
LOL, a company must be in a very unpleasant place if they get so many complaints they can afford to build a library of stock responses to copy-paste into every letter they get.
GW is being run perfectly as a machine to fund the personal wealth of it's management. During the good years, they load up on millions in bonus money. During the bad years, they load up on stock options while the market hates their stock. Then cut costs and raise prices and eek out a profit. Then they exercise their options and pay a dividend to themselves.
What possible reason does Wells have for changing anything about how GW runs? He's freaking rich off of GW and how it has operated. Regardless of what happens to GW in the future, Wells, Kirby, et al, are all going to retire very, very nicely.
GW has been an amazing cash machine for the upper management of GW. Why would anyone change anything if they were feeding at that trough?
frozenwastes wrote:GW is being run perfectly as a machine to fund the personal wealth of it's management. During the good years, they load up on millions in bonus money. During the bad years, they load up on stock options while the market hates their stock. Then cut costs and raise prices and eek out a profit. Then they exercise their options and pay a dividend to themselves.
What possible reason does Wells have for changing anything about how GW runs? He's freaking rich off of GW and how it has operated. Regardless of what happens to GW in the future, Wells, Kirby, et al, are all going to retire very, very nicely.
GW has been an amazing cash machine for the upper management of GW. Why would anyone change anything if they were feeding at that trough?
I dunno man, but I trust GW knows what it's doing a helluva lot more than we do.
I would not advise putting your shirt on it.
Really? You think GW is going to hand the controls over to a bunch of geeks on the interwebz so you get the chance to do things better?)
Lol, it would be good though. Put Dakka in the boardroom and see what happens after a week HMBC would have a new Codex Chaos Marines (the ice cream edition) at the printers by coffee break on Monday morning.
And I'd make sure the codex was only availabe as part of a 200.00 set that came with squads of each 6-9 man squads of each flavor of chaos. New sculpts of all the chaos legions and offshoots, each squad in their sacred number. Then you'd all go crazy trying to trade with each other to fill out your mono-god armies, and GW would be packing the money to the bank, and I'd get a cookie for making the investors happy. If it failed, I'd blame HBMC.
Honestly a letter was written, to that a letter was received. I like that a well written letter was composed - OP you're the bomb for doing it in the first place and for sharing your endeavor with us.
That being said I don't know how much a second letter is going to do. The main points for me on this thread are...
Some people believe GWs actions as good and/or necessary. Some people do not. I do not.
frozenwastes wrote:GW is being run perfectly as a machine to fund the personal wealth of it's management. During the good years, they load up on millions in bonus money. During the bad years, they load up on stock options while the market hates their stock. Then cut costs and raise prices and eek out a profit. Then they exercise their options and pay a dividend to themselves.
What possible reason does Wells have for changing anything about how GW runs? He's freaking rich off of GW and how it has operated. Regardless of what happens to GW in the future, Wells, Kirby, et al, are all going to retire very, very well.
GW has been an amazing cash machine for the upper management of GW. Why would you change anything if you were feeding at that trough?
Sadly enough he makes a great point. The cynic in me totally agrees. How far does GW sink before the vampires let loose of the neck? I wonder if Kirby and Wells would each take a 100k paycut to hire some sculptors? Nah probably not.
The funniest thing I read in this thread was someone equating the Space Hulk success in sales due to some sort of nostalgia factor. Umm using that logic all GW stuff should sell well. Codices especially - seeings how long they are between updates.
The training points that were brought up were notoriously out of place too. I understand training ultimately saves money. But who the hell are they training that matters certainly not the sculptors, painters or rules lawyers....(Ya know the people they need more of). Can't train a sculptor to be save GW money.
Anyways my thoughts are scattered on this. I'm glad OP actually got a response from Wells. But honestly sending counterletters isn't going to do much besides making you feel better. I think they've already played their turn.
I dunno man, but I trust GW knows what it's doing a helluva lot more than we do.
I would not advise putting your shirt on it.
Really? You think GW is going to hand the controls over to a bunch of geeks on the interwebz so you get the chance to do things better?)
Lol, it would be good though. Put Dakka in the boardroom and see what happens after a week HMBC would have a new Codex Chaos Marines (the ice cream edition) at the printers by coffee break on Monday morning.
And I'd make sure the codex was only availabe as part of a 200.00 set that came with squads of each 6-9 man squads of each flavor of chaos. New sculpts of all the chaos legions and offshoots, each squad in their sacred number. Then you'd all go crazy trying to trade with each other to fill out your mono-god armies, and GW would be packing the money to the bank, and I'd get a cookie for making the investors happy. If it failed, I'd blame HBMC.
It's hard to tell if you're kidding or not here, but I'm going to assume it's a joking response and laugh. Also, not just 6-9 man squads, but also multiples of those numbers (6, 12, 18/7,14,21/8,16/9,18). That would be fair. The fluff-lovers would go ape-dung!
I dunno man, but I trust GW knows what it's doing a helluva lot more than we do.
I would not advise putting your shirt on it.
Really? You think GW is going to hand the controls over to a bunch of geeks on the interwebz so you get the chance to do things better?)
Lol, it would be good though. Put Dakka in the boardroom and see what happens after a week HMBC would have a new Codex Chaos Marines (the ice cream edition) at the printers by coffee break on Monday morning.
And I'd make sure the codex was only availabe as part of a 200.00 set that came with squads of each 6-9 man squads of each flavor of chaos. New sculpts of all the chaos legions and offshoots, each squad in their sacred number. Then you'd all go crazy trying to trade with each other to fill out your mono-god armies, and GW would be packing the money to the bank, and I'd get a cookie for making the investors happy. If it failed, I'd blame HBMC.
It's hard to tell if you're kidding or not here, but I'm going to assume it's a joking response and laugh. Also, not just 6-9 man squads, but also multiples of those numbers (6, 12, 18/7,14,21/8,16/9,18). That would be fair. The fluff-lovers would go ape-dung!
Half kidding, half remembering the fun of the first fantasy plastics box that came with stuff for like 6 armies and we all traded stuff around.)
If I was put in charge of GW I'd have a goal of making you all so happy you dumped every bit of cash to me. Since I'd also be obliged to abuse you, I'd have to come up with warped marketing schemes that drove you insane but you couldn't resist. Imagine a big box of 100 plastic Chaos marines with one squad of each power or flavor, with sculpts like what they did for spacehulk, and a spiffy new Codex dedicated to the individual legions, and incorporating Daemons and old favorites like Lost and Damned. Slap a 200.00 price tag on it, (300 in Canada, 400 in Australia, of course), and then kick back to watch the internet explode.)
I'd go nuts over that! And I think most of us would. I can honestly say, I'd spend MORE money if items were less expensive and I could get more for my buck. Now I spend very little each month on warhammer (maintenance costs). If GW went back down, to say...Mantic costs (like they used to be) I'd spend an arm and a leg on my current income. I'm sure I'm not alone here. Also, since I go on the road a lot, I REALLY need to find time to visit your store Mikhaila. I need to know first though, do you have a parking lot that will support a LARGE, 30-35ft long vehicle?
timetowaste85 wrote:I'd go nuts over that! And I think most of us would. I can honestly say, I'd spend MORE money if items were less expensive and I could get more for my buck. Now I spend very little each month on warhammer (maintenance costs). If GW went back down, to say...Mantic costs (like they used to be) I'd spend an arm and a leg on my current income. I'm sure I'm not alone here. Also, since I go on the road a lot, I REALLY need to find time to visit your store Mikhaila. I need to know first though, do you have a parking lot that will support a LARGE, 30-35ft long vehicle?
Main store is in a mall. We've got parking for about 500 vehicles that size.)
Spent today taking delivery on 2.5 tons of slatwall and putting it up on the walls of the new store. We'll be moved up there by Dakkacon on the 8th. (And I'll need some games and beer by then!) We're going from 2100 to 5500 square feet. That's a lot of store to fill with games. Time your arrival for after we move.)
H.B.M.C. wrote:Space Hulk was released in September. The first I heard about it was on BoLS in February of the same year, and I know others had heard about it prior to that.
All the secrecy did was get GW staff threatened with sacking should they discuss it with anyone.
Yeah. That secrecy sure 'worked'.
Along with which, it was a unique case in that it was something that people had been clamouring for for a decade, and that GW decided to release as a limited run. So yes, even if it had been kept a secret up until release (which it most certainly wasn't) it would have done well. But that's hardly proof that more normal releases will benefit from the same sort of nonsense.
By contrast, we have had people over the years state that they had lost patience waiting for something, anything, to be released for their army and were just dumping the game and moving on as a result. Finding more of that sort of thing happening seems to me to be the far more likely result of GW keeping everything they're working on under wraps than any appreciable boost in sales.
Lycaeus Wrex wrote: And for what its worth, no, if GW started operating in a manner that recognised and respected its customer base, its customers would not always find a bone to pick.
Then explain why people always complain constantly like they do about GW about Private... Battlefr... Corvus Be... Mant...
H.B.M.C. wrote:Space Hulk was released in September. The first I heard about it was on BoLS in February of the same year, and I know others had heard about it prior to that.
All the secrecy did was get GW staff threatened with sacking should they discuss it with anyone.
Yeah. That secrecy sure 'worked'.
Along with which, it was a unique case in that it was something that people had been clamouring for for a decade, and that GW decided to release as a limited run. So yes, even if it had been kept a secret up until release (which it most certainly wasn't) it would have done well. But that's hardly proof that more normal releases will benefit from the same sort of nonsense.
By contrast, we have had people over the years state that they had lost patience waiting for something, anything, to be released for their army and were just dumping the game and moving on as a result. Finding more of that sort of thing happening seems to me to be the far more likely result of GW keeping everything they're working on under wraps than any appreciable boost in sales.
I'd have to agree, I know of a few DE players who didn't just " abandon ship" because "leaks" about upcoming DE releases kept them hopeful they'd get tossed a bone some time soon.
And for what its worth, no, if GW started operating in a manner that recognised and respected its customer base, its customers would not always find a bone to pick. By all means go off and enjoy your hobby; all anyone on these forums wants to do is enjoy their hobby. The vast majority of people are only as outspoken as they are because of how much they love 40k, and it irks them to see the presiding company run itself into the ground in such a brutal manner.
Couldn't agree more. Once you understand the logic behind and the reasons for the decision making that has taken place recently, everything else falls into place. Anyone not sure about it should read about the stock ownership of GW, and of how the spate of spending cuts and price increases was motivated entirely in order to generate a dividend payment. That's where the profits went - meanwhile the development division has been cut, stores have been reduced to one man, and obviously far less was spent on the introduction of Finecast than needed to be (hence the atrocious quality control, unforgivable for a company that should be the torch-bearer for the industry).
Sales are falling, and profit margins were maintained by cuts that will severely curtail the ability of the company to turn those falling sales around. It's painful to bear witness to, but GW is not being handled well at all. It's motivations, chiefly those of Wells and Kirby (who received a sizeable amount of money thanks to said dividend payment), are not those of the hobbyists who are now shouting so loudly as a result.
Except it's supposed to happen in the next white dwarf. Which the store received today here. And that only shows the next month, so already I'm a month ahead. Just pointing out the lack of secrecy, don't let me get in the way of the bile, itll ruin my shoes
Sergeant Horse wrote:Except it's supposed to happen in the next white dwarf. Which the store received today here. And that only shows the next month, so already I'm a month ahead. Just pointing out the lack of secrecy, don't let me get in the way of the bile, itll ruin my shoes
Don't worry about the bile, you seem adept enough at the soft shoe shuffle to avoid it.
But bile or not, two months notice is still pitiful.
I am reading this and i am shocked at the outright arrogance of many people on this forum. Running a large international, publicly traded company is not easy. To think you can do better because you have read a few things on the internet and have a few opinions (however suggestions and ideas are to be commended) is pretty out there especially when there are Professional Administrators, Business Managers and Graduates running this operation. However all I am hearing is irrational drivel backed up by loose facts or hearsay that decends into contempt and sarcasm when posters cannot discuss (read again discuss) or backup their claims. If you have an issue with GW do what I do, download their annual report and other items under the FoI act.
Taking cheap-shots at Mr Well's, whilst amusing (Chibi you cheeky little monkey ) is being interpreted as a slur on his character, and is effectively declaring open season on character assissination. Everyone needs to be more objective, less irrational, stop fanning flames of discord and making this issue emotive. Alot of the opinions here are based on personal preference or in some cases more disturbingly the Conspiracy element saying that GW is an Evil corporation and is stupid and irrational. Seriously guys most of us on this forum have IQ's far beyond the average and we sound like a bunch of children. Lets raise the bar of this discussion a bit and see if we can come up with a more comprehensive business argument rather than the "I WANT THIS NOW!!! GW ARE RUBBISH, SERIOUSLY DO THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!" level of arguement that we are currently at.
iproxtaco wrote:I was going to contact you on the same matter. My intention was to simply complain about the response, that they were dodging the problem and that it was a typical Copy/paste response, not to go into the specifics. It will be more politely put of course.
If you ask the same questions of the same person you will get the same response.
For example Kilkrazy has already said this, I am saying it again. Are we copying and pasting?
I'll look forward to your Copy Pasta whine thread in a few weeks.
Credit to a busy man for taking the time to respond. If anyone was expecting him to say "sorry you're quite right we will enact the changes you suggest imediately" then you are having a laugh.
Personally thought that MW's letter addressed most of the points raised well and in as much detail as a letter will allow.
C_C the tone that your original points raised suggest that you were going to be pretty hacked off no matter what response you got. Do you think that the time used to write the letter was worth it?
I think that you did well to get a response, especially considering that you made it clear in the first paragraph that you woldn't continue to be a customer. To me this shows GW ina slightly better light. (still not paying RRP though!)
Sorry, did you respond and tell me not to write much the same thing as OP? You clearly didn't actually read the post you quoted. My intention was to complain about the lack of quality in the response, and other responses given to other members of Dakka. I specifically said that I didn't want to go into detail. I also have no intention of creating another thread, simply posting in this one if I get a response, which is unlikely. Another thing, I would have been at least satisfied if he written a decent letter in reply, that goes into detail without skimming the issues, but the base excuses for their actions are the same, so no, that part I wouldn't have been happy with regardless. Frankly, I find it a little insulting that you assume that everyone who wants to complain is 'whining'.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
mwnciboo wrote:I am reading this and i am shocked at the outright arrogance of many people on this forum. Running a large international, publicly traded company is not easy. To think you can do better because you have read a few things on the internet and have a few opinions (however suggestions and ideas are to be commended) is pretty out there especially when there are Professional Administrators, Business Managers and Graduates running this operation. However all I am hearing is irrational drivel backed up by loose facts or hearsay that decends into contempt and sarcasm when posters cannot discuss (read again discuss) or backup their claims. If you have an issue with GW do what I do, download their annual report and other items under the FoI act.
Taking cheap-shots at Mr Well's, whilst amusing (Chibi you cheeky little monkey ) is being interpreted as a slur on his character, and is effectively declaring open season on character assissination. Everyone needs to be more objective, less irrational, stop fanning flames of discord and making this issue emotive. Alot of the opinions here are based on personal preference or in some cases more disturbingly the Conspiracy element saying that GW is an Evil corporation and is stupid and irrational. Seriously guys most of us on this forum have IQ's far beyond the average and we sound like a bunch of children. Lets raise the bar of this discussion a bit and see if we can come up with a more comprehensive business argument rather than the "I WANT THIS NOW!!! GW ARE RUBBISH, SERIOUSLY DO THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!" level of arguement that we are currently at.
Do you find it satisfying to be the "objective alternative view-point" guy? I wouldn't call it arrogance to criticize the obviously poor decisions. The fact of the matter is, no matter how much you may think people are behaving in a child-like manner, those people who are "fanning the flames of discord" have very good arguments, touched by hints of emotion, but asking people not to feel a certain way about something they clearly love is like asking a brick to swim. I would suggest you don't post another, like guy above, insulting message. No one is really acting like you think they are.
"GW ARE RUBBISH, SERIOUSLY DO THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!"
Personally I would like to see some evidence that they actually do know.
They show little evidence of being able to do so, other than "they are a niche market who can charge what they want because a loyal fanbase keeps begging for more."
They take a loyal fanbase for granted and show nothing but disrespect bordering on contempt.
GW management display a mindset that is exploitative. It is simply not good enough to say that that is the nature of business.
It is part of the fault of the long term customers that has brought this about for putting up with it but if any other company behaved like this towards its customers, would you keep buying their products/services?
Apologies if that is emotive, but as I have said elsewhere, I have never known another company behave like GW, so I have nothing else to base the experience on.
Mr Mystery wrote:Except Forums are not a good place to garner statistics.
Trust me, GW have access to more feedback than you think. And even in the post above, there is the impression that no matter GW's reasoning, it doesn't matter because your mind is already set. How then can the enter into any kind of discourse?
mwnciboo wrote:I am reading this and i am shocked at the outright arrogance of many people on this forum. Running a large international, publicly traded company is not easy. To think you can do better because you have read a few things on the internet and have a few opinions (however suggestions and ideas are to be commended) is pretty out there especially when there are Professional Administrators, Business Managers and Graduates running this operation. However all I am hearing is irrational drivel backed up by loose facts or hearsay that decends into contempt and sarcasm when posters cannot discuss (read again discuss) or backup their claims. If you have an issue with GW do what I do, download their annual report and other items under the FoI act.
Taking cheap-shots at Mr Well's, whilst amusing (Chibi you cheeky little monkey ) is being interpreted as a slur on his character, and is effectively declaring open season on character assissination. Everyone needs to be more objective, less irrational, stop fanning flames of discord and making this issue emotive. Alot of the opinions here are based on personal preference or in some cases more disturbingly the Conspiracy element saying that GW is an Evil corporation and is stupid and irrational. Seriously guys most of us on this forum have IQ's far beyond the average and we sound like a bunch of children. Lets raise the bar of this discussion a bit and see if we can come up with a more comprehensive business argument rather than the "I WANT THIS NOW!!! GW ARE RUBBISH, SERIOUSLY DO THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!" level of arguement that we are currently at.
GW is not like a normal company that sells products, it encourages people to invest a huge amount of time and some may argue, money in their products. This is fine, but people then have expectations with how the company is run. Having spent so much time an effort building up your forces, you can't simply jump ship if you are unhappy with what is going on.
I'm a keen amateur photographer and use Nikon kit. Although the glass can be expensive as well all the accessories that go with it, I don't have the same expectations as I do with miniature makers. If I don't like the cost of a Nikon lens I can look at a third party lens and use that. I don't have to use a Nikon battery or flash gun.
This would be the same with golf for example. If you usually use a certain brand of club or golfball, but decide to change, then great you can and you can still play golf.
GW's business model is more based on an addiction and they are the supplier. Which is why people get so vocal and wound up. You don't see this with historical gamers. They have the freedom to get their "fix" from anybody and if their usual supplier hacks them off they can go to someone else.
I like your level of argument, but I don't believe GW is anymore different than say DISNEY, LEGO or any other company where you can collect a series of items. We represent the Hardcore element of Wargaming we are generally not casual Wargamers.
I did point this out in a previous post that SM are IP specific where as Imperial Guard can be substitued for other mini's. Same with the various Orc, elf and dwarf ranges of Mantic etc giving you options. Scribor does some interesting models that are SM-esque and there are only a few mini's out there you could subsitute but they don't look like SM's because GW would quite rightly jump on them. A DYSON is a specific IP and Trademark item, other Vacuum companies cannot copy this design and call it a Dyson or copy it too closely even if they call it something else.
However if you want "Mickey Mouse" you buy Disney and if you want "Space Marines" you have to buy Games workshop. You will always pay a Premium for specific IP/ Branded products.
I think fundamentally this comes being unable to get IP specific models from other sources. You don't hear people complaining they cannot get Disney IP from another source? Furthermore you are comparing Golf (a sport) with Wargaming ( a hobby) no one Golf Company can claim IP over golf clubs, although specific designs and Graphite heads etc they could. It is not a fair comparison.
I would like to Address the Historical Game Issue too. The reason you don't have this problem with Historical games is that you cannot claim IP over history, It actually happened. So I couldn't claim IP for creating a 15mm Panzer IV, I can claim a version or design or specific manufactuirng technique or unique selling point. Equally Napoleonic Infantry, or Roman Legions I cannot claim IP on these.
However when you are buying things that are from a Fantasy World which never actually happened and is the creation of a Human Mind well thats perfect IP. Warhammer is great in this respect as JRR TOLKIEN had Elves and Dwarfs, Orcs, Goblins etc So GW cannot claim they invented them, only specific types High Elves, Dwarf Slayers etc. With 40k it's a problem because it is so out there, that they have the run on the IP.
That's the crux of the issue. They have invented a world that is great and has lots of flavour, but you are tied into it, so therefore people feel that they should be listened to. Rightly or wrongly gamers feel that the company is theirs.
It's no different to Sci Fi geeks. A universe is created, customers buy into it big time with time and effort. This universe is then able to grow due to their investment. Flip side is then the fans think they own it. Which you can argue they have a valid point. Without their devotion it wouldn't of succeeded. GW is in the same position. To be honest i don't think it would take too much to get some goodwill back, but do they really care?
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
In short? They don't. Plus, GW have larger overheads. But you know, don't let facts get in the way of your bile, will you?
Sure, I won't let facts get in the way of my bile.
Hmmm, you make a good point on the Goodwill element. I think the pricing is due to an outdated outmoded Business model. Company specific Shops are prohibitively expensive especially ground floor high street premises. To have a specialist Games store with a small demographic and core customer base (in comparison to the UK population as whole) have their stores next to Major highstreet retailers is a huge costly affair which ultimately drives up price. Read their annual report and look at the retail side.
GW should definitely look to diversify their VIDEO GAME licenses, with the 40K MMO coming that could be a Killer App for them with lots of tie in's and various items.
Consumer Research needs to be a focus, and should be run on the GW Website. With Daily Polls and Questions, this would not be hard and would result in the more common issues being put to the fore more quickly e.g. Chaos Space Marine Codex, Lack of models for certain ranges, lack of New codex for none Imperials.
I think what GW really needs is Leadership pure and simple. You need to provide a vision and deliver it, you need to understand your customers and keep them onside, fair prices is a key component as is quality and Customer service. In this respect I think GW needs a bit of coaching and mentoring, although i would counter they are 75% there, some changes to the retail side and a subsequent price reduction combined with a re-focusing on Game Systems (Specialist included) and miniatures and to stop releasing New Editions all the time, just finish the Codex re-vamps 1st.
Mr Mystery wrote:Your genuine, comparative and factual evidence please?
Their financial reports. The company's performance has essentially been sluggish in the past five years since the end of the LoTR bubble.
The ideas about rationalising the retail chain are good, though they came from the same people who created those problems in the first place by over-expanding off the back of the LoTR bubble. Make of that what you will.
The efficiency savings and regular, above-inflation price rises have compensated for a core problem which is a steady, drip-drip loss of sales. There is also a clear strategy of charging customers in Australia and Canada inflated prices. These ideas are not a long term solution, though.
The Hobbit will give GW a mini-boom for a couple of years however I feel that there are cracks in the core business model.
GW's glory days were actually the mid to late 90s, when they were able to expand size and revenues rapidly with a product offering which consisted of a range of games, not just WH/40K. I think they have deliberately gone away from that wider appeal and are too specialised in WH/40K which has an ever higher price barrier to entry. At the same time they seem to be driving away vets and fans who are a potentially valuable source of word-of-mouth promotion.
It's hard to make good decisions in business. Then again, isn't that why the top managers are paid about £400,000 per year?
It's no different to Sci Fi geeks. A universe is created, customers buy into it big time with time and effort. This universe is then able to grow due to their investment. Flip side is then the fans think they own it. Which you can argue they have a valid point. Without their devotion it wouldn't of succeeded. GW is in the same position. To be honest i don't think it would take too much to get some goodwill back, but do they really care?
I dunno... Every year at BOTCON, Hasbro shows the Transformers fandom a pie chart showing how many sales are really from the adult internet fandom in order to show us how insignificant we really are and it is a reality check why we don't always get our way. of course if you are 'reasonable' you see HASBRO gives us a ton of fanservice even though it is a franchise primarily for children.
I feel internet fandoms like to overestimate their worth to the company and act like buying product gives them a controlling stock option and decision making because they think every model is an investment. That is why you get an entitled fandom not based in reality sometimes, and HASBRO does a good job keeping us in our place when we get unreasonable. While I do think this product (warhammer) probably does have a larger chunk of its sales from the internet fandom than other products, I would not be surprised to find out that we provide less revenue and purchasing power than we all think we do. A ton of people who play GW games never log on to a internet forum and have no problem or no idea about half the things in Mark Wells letter. (and they don't care)
nkelsch wrote:I dunno... Every year at BOTCON, Hasbro shows the Transformers fandom a pie chart showing how many sales are really from the adult internet fandom in order to show us how insignificant we really are and it is a reality check why we don't always get our way. of course if you are 'reasonable' you see HASBRO gives us a ton of fanservice even though it is a franchise primarily for children.
Hasbro has a much larger footprint than GW does. 4 billion in sales for 2010 with net revenue of around ten percent of that. It gets 33% of that from selling board games, card games, puzzles, ect..
Hasbro has invested in expanding its business (I don't like some of the things they do, especially to DnD and MtG....) but the point is is that it doesn't need to rely upon feedback and fan support for the product; but they have not pissed off their fanbase as much as GW has done it would seem (though some of their DnD and MtG has withered on the vine a bit, but MtG has made comebacks before).
That doesn't make it any better for any of us. Being a long-term customer, investing 1000s of pounds into playing the game, and having spoken to many people like me, and at least being a good acquaintance with the store staff, I at least feel like GW owes it's customer base, ie. the ones like me who support them long-term, at least a little bit of recognition, and their staff deserve some loyalty and respect from them too. Simply because we are a minority, if a vocal one, doesn't mean we shouldn't feel dis-heartened and frustrated with the company that we owe quite a lot of out enjoyment to.
WarOne wrote: but the point is is that it doesn't need to rely upon feedback and fan support for the product; but they have not pissed off their fanbase as much as GW has done
LOL... that is debatable... I have seen some epic multiyear wars that put some of the most heated threads on dakka to shame. The Movie franchise has been highly divisive. The only fundamental truth I know is no matter how angry people get, they still need their plastic crack and still forkout the cash, they just complain about it more. Hasbro releases a Starscream variant or something constructicon green, and people buy 7 regardless how angry they are.
I still think in the smaller GW franchise, we still overestimate our purchasing power and hence overestimate how much impact our feedback should have.
When you say that a lot of people are un-informed as they don't come on these forums to express their opinions, that's assuming they won't disagree with what GW has done when they're told about it. I would guess that the majority would be of the same mind as many people on this forum, that GW are making stupid decisions. Maybe our spending power isn't that significant, but GW sales figures speak for us. I would also say that a good deal of consistent criticism should be taken into consideration.
nkelsch wrote:The Movie franchise has been highly divisive.
There have been quite a lot of interesting things that Transformers has gone through over the years.
Beast Wars was the start. At first people were skeptical about animal transformations. Little did they know that those would be the glory days of the new Transformers once that series ended and became Beast Machines, followed by the Transformers Armada (got worse at time went on) series trilogy and Transformers Animated (ugh..).
The movies are not too terribly gacky, but they do have faults and are for the most part eye candy (when there is something to actually look at).
But by and large, GW continues to piss on their fanbase while Hasbro has at least tried to do something that people want to like, even if they hate it.
nkelsch wrote:The Movie franchise has been highly divisive.
But by and large, GW continues to piss on their fanbase while Hasbro has at least tried to do something that people want to like, even if they hate it.
But in both situations, both fandoms overestimate their power and make demands based upon the fallacy that they are a majority or at least has a large enough impact that they are entitled to pandering. I think every internet fandom has this to some degree. Give someone a platform they think they have the right to be heard and online communities accomplish this.
nkelsch wrote:The Movie franchise has been highly divisive.
But by and large, GW continues to piss on their fanbase while Hasbro has at least tried to do something that people want to like, even if they hate it.
But in both situations, both fandoms overestimate their power and make demands based upon the fallacy that they are a majority or at least has a large enough impact that they are entitled to pandering. I think every internet fandom has this to some degree. Give someone a platform they think they have the right to be heard and online communities accomplish this.
I'm relatively ignorant to the entire backlash of the Transformers movies, so can you tell me what did the fanbase do exactly to tell Hasbro about what they thought about the movies beside using the internet forums to vent their frustration?
Kilkrazy wrote:It's hard to make good decisions in business. Then again, isn't that why the top managers are paid about £400,000 per year?
I imagine the big wigs of GW are ideal candidates for the apprentice but taking that as a gauge I think its very hard for so many people to make a good business decision when they are trying to run something they have little knowledge or passion about, really you do need someone at the top has actually see GW as something more than "silly plastic toys" which is the impression I get from the pricing stratergy, I mean to guys at the top when they came in their proberly thought that had a gold mine, how could anyone pay so much for some lumps of plastic? I think this leads to mindset that people who buy them must be tapped/crazy so will pay whatever you decide to charge. You really need someone while a suit with a understanding of the market to be making the decisions, not some boots reject.
Kilkrazy wrote:It's hard to make good decisions in business. Then again, isn't that why the top managers are paid about £400,000 per year?
I imagine the big wigs of GW are ideal candidates for the apprentice but taking that as a gauge I think its very hard for so many people to make a good business decision when they are trying to run something they have little knowledge or passion about, really you do need someone at the top has actually see GW as something more than "silly plastic toys" which is the impression I get from the pricing stratergy, I mean to guys at the top when they came in their proberly thought that had a gold mine, how could anyone pay so much for some lumps of plastic? I think this leads to mindset that people who buy them must be tapped/crazy so will pay whatever you decide to charge. You really need someone while a suit with a understanding of the market to be making the decisions, not some boots reject.
Interesting. Perhaps that is the issue, they see themselves now in the same vain as Hasbro. If they do, that would be a problem for them as they would be forgetting that they are still a niche product. Hasbro, etel can get away with it, GW can't.
mwnciboo wrote:I like your level of argument, but I don't believe GW is anymore different than say DISNEY, LEGO or any other company where you can collect a series of items. We represent the Hardcore element of Wargaming we are generally not casual Wargamers.
I did point this out in a previous post that SM are IP specific where as Imperial Guard can be substitued for other mini's. Same with the various Orc, elf and dwarf ranges of Mantic etc giving you options. Scribor does some interesting models that are SM-esque and there are only a few mini's out there you could subsitute but they don't look like SM's because GW would quite rightly jump on them. A DYSON is a specific IP and Trademark item, other Vacuum companies cannot copy this design and call it a Dyson or copy it too closely even if they call it something else.
However if you want "Mickey Mouse" you buy Disney and if you want "Space Marines" you have to buy Games workshop. You will always pay a Premium for specific IP/ Branded products.
Do you REALLY want to get into the arguement of how Disney treats its customers, release information, and accessability to its products vs how GW does the same? Because GW will LOSE that arguement hands down.
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WarOne wrote:
Hasbro has invested in expanding its business (I don't like some of the things they do, especially to DnD and MtG....) but the point is is that it doesn't need to rely upon feedback and fan support for the product; but they have not pissed off their fanbase as much as GW has done it would seem (though some of their DnD and MtG has withered on the vine a bit, but MtG has made comebacks before).
Hasbro no. WoTC divison in regards to Dungeons and Dragons 4e release, well thats another story, inregards to pissing off its fan base.
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nkelsch wrote:
But in both situations, both fandoms overestimate their power and make demands based upon the fallacy that they are a majority or at least has a large enough impact that they are entitled to pandering. I think every internet fandom has this to some degree. Give someone a platform they think they have the right to be heard and online communities accomplish this.
looking over GW's finacial reports over the years, that might not be the case, ie- overestimate their power. TBH its folks like that that helped build GW up in the 90's.
Wolfstan wrote:Interesting. Perhaps that is the issue, they see themselves now in the same vain as Hasbro. If they do, that would be a problem for them as they would be forgetting that they are still a niche product. Hasbro, etel can get away with it, GW can't.
Well exactly, I think the main issue when the managment took over they really didn't understand why the company had become so succesful in the first place, in their minds it boiled down to kids buying toys, this is certainly very common train of thought, most people who see it and actually don't know what it is assume it just some sort of toy, I can remember when I was high school other kids would be like "Yeah I used to play that when I was a kid" (which was amusing looking back it coming from a 12-16 year old!), I think this also explains why they feel the need to dumb down the rules (this isn't to say removing clunky rules is bad). I you can only assume that the guys at the top feel that the rules in the past have been to complex for anyone under the age of 16 hence the "streamlining", this to meshows they don't understand the market, I started playing 40k during 2nd ed when I was 10-11 and I had no trouble understanding the rules (armour pen system was clunky), around came 3rd ed and they had stripped away everything that had made it interesting so I concentrated on fantasy. Same has now happened with fantasy, they have dumped it down to make it more appealing what not really understanding its not the rules so much that put people off, warhammer will never be as cool as 40k because it doesn't have massive thanks and loads of guys with big guns, so rather than try and appease the adult gamer with end up with 8th. Now we have this new expansion based around the most unbalanced and game breaking part of the game, not only that they make it domininate the game even more! I mean they had a chance here to actually make something really cool, seige rules, expanded campaign rulesbut no, monsters and magic
But your right, they do act like they are Hasbro, hell at times I think like they act like they are sainsburys charging over priced products for something you can buy down the road at half the price (Aldi/Iceland), in many ways they are actually like sainsburys, it's these high prices that have allowed other companies to pop up all other the placem they continue to ignore them and these companies continue to expand, unlike GW atleast GW has things like BOGOFS to try and entice you.
WarOne wrote:
I'm relatively ignorant to the entire backlash of the Transformers movies, so can you tell me what did the fanbase do exactly to tell Hasbro about what they thought about the movies beside using the internet forums to vent their frustration?
It went something like "Michael bay Raped my Childhood!"
Basically 'The fandom' didn't like the quality of the movies, the director of the movies or the toy athstetics and considering the core franchise for the next 5-7 years starting in 2006 was going to be the movies, people have been bitching ever since about how they won't buy the new toys, how HASBRO forgot who made them great and how they are destroying Transformers forever. Are they right? Well the main thing is, people can say what they hate, but people like to put thier opinions out there as "I hate this and because of this, the company is stupid and will fail. They should listen to me". It is disturbingly similar to the GW fandom even down to when peopel got all pissy when Hasbro sued KO makers and got them thrown off eBay. "If Hasbro released every reissue at all times available at retail, I wouldn't be forced to buy KO reissues! Hasbro has no one to blame but themselves for leaving holes in their toyline."
I think Hasbro was vindicated in the direction they took the franchise and despite some of the major fandom wars and complaints, they are doing just fine.
While GW seems to be doing 'ok' not great, everyone wants to claim credit that every financial problem is a direct result of thier personal gripe with no experience or evidence that it is related to that. 'Fandom knows best' is a disturbing trend on the internet and even if they are right once or twice, usually that is not the case overall. People want whatever benifits them personally even if it doesn't have a valid buisness case that can be supported without damaging the company.
Those local Australian and New Zealand accounts have worked hard over the years to build up their customer base by word of mouth and running events. As have our Hobby Centres which have recruited tens of thousands of customers through introductory activities, painting lessons and beginners programmes. It’s because we want to have a vibrant customer base in Australia in twenty years time, that we are taking legitimate action now to support local accounts and Hobby Centres.
Way it's going I'll be surprised if they have this customer base at all in 10-15 years. If the prices weren't stupid people wouldn't bother with the two week wait to ship it from across the world and go to these FLGS which seem to be quite uncommon and work by providing more than just GW as they have to keep to the crazy GW prices here which are probably pretty detrimental to these independent stores. They don't need to be lowered to the point where they are really cheap, just balanced more with their overall global pricing. One step at a time really.
The main reason they were probably able to reach those numbers were that they had a monopoly here for a fair while, but now that they don't the market may slip away from them.
But sure keep doing this.
I just wanted to chime in and say I laughed at the picture. I do that to everyone I know for many reasons.
iproxtaco wrote:These "Interweb Mooks" are also GW customers, that should at least garner some respect.
It doesn't take a business expert to see what GW are doing. Sure, you're going to respond by saying that I'm not one hence why I'm uninformed, which isn't exactly true. I'm informed by the posts of people with experience in economics, and I understand and agree with what they say.
Exactly, we don't like the response because we don't agree with the reasons behind GW's moves regardless of who or where it comes from or how it's worded.
I agree to an extent, he should have done what you said, perhaps they would have taken a little more thought about what he said. However, if they just see a wall of criticism they aren't going to take it seriously anyway. GW is of the mind that a few customers writing in represent only those few customers. What Calvin did was give them statistics, however inaccurate and novel they may seem, coming from an internet forum. It should have given them at least an over-view of how people are reacting.
1. Price your product so that it is a painful decision to buy the product. (@ $500 USD per army or more)
2. Promote instability in your gaming system so that your investment is at risk in 6 - 12 months of being outdated/underachieving.
3. Remove metal and go to resin, tell your customers it is an improvement and oh by the way it has added 50% to the cost.
This sound like a non-winning formula to me. The problem is not complaining customers it is the silent customer who walks away never to come back. Frankly GW miniatures are not earth shattering awesome compared to competitors. It is the sheer fact that GW games Warhammer and 40k have a universal nature much like McDonalds. I can go anywhere in the world darn near and find some group that plays one of those games. It is the one GW advantage. Long term though the 3 downsides listed above will drive people away so you will sell units and GW perhaps will pocket 20% per unit sold but the unit sales will be one tenth of what a properly marketed model could be.
I mean 1000 units at 5$ profit or 10000 units at 2$ profit. It seems that GW is going for the immediate payout and thumbing its nose at the potential for a higher volume profit.
Although I don't think you can compare the scale of those two companies. The transformers movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, and probably made many more times that at the box office. They exist on a different level to GW, and while I would argue that the 'niche' of internet interest does not constitute the majority of the player base in GW's case, they would certainly make up a far bigger majority than was the case with Hasbro.
I think that the average young teenager who comes into the game now is quite internet savvy. They are most likely are in to computer games, and other specialist interests that have communities on the web. I wouldn't be surprised if those new players took a look at the forums, and if they do so then there is no way they could have avoided some of the overwhelming negativity which has been flung about recently. One of the old sayings of customer service relations was that if you gave a customer a bad experience, they would tell ten of their friends about it. Thanks to the internet, a few bad experiences can travel far further, and when you piss of an entire area of the globe (as has happened over recent weeks) the outcry can reach monolithic proportions. It doesn't help that GW seems intent on not engaging with the internet at all, and pretending it doesn't exist, instead letting a few poor guys running the facebook page bare the brunt of the vitriol aimed at the company. Sadly in this day and age, when fans of this sort of niche hobby demand and expect feedback and dialogue with the companies they invest their time with, it gives the impression of GW telling their customers to f*** off and not caring at all, even though of course this is not the case.
Why are some people talking about this 'silent majority'? It's not as if they don't have an opinion, and are immune to what's happening. When a non-forum person sees prices go up, they're going to consider whether they want to buy something at that price. When they see that Finecast prices have increased, despite resin being cheaper, they're going to think why that is, and probably be generally annoyed because of it. This 'silent majority' phrase presumes that they aren't aware of the things around them. The Voice of the un-washed masses has spoken!
The silent majority have immense power. The let their actions speak for themselves.
They choose not to buy. There is nothing more to be said. How scary is that to a company? Very scary. Imagine your actions are your own undoing and you would never know because they silently walk away from your products.
WarOne wrote: Beast Wars was the start. At first people were skeptical about animal transformations. Little did they know that those would be the glory days of the new Transformers once that series ended and became Beast Machines, followed by the Transformers Armada (got worse at time went on) series trilogy and Transformers Animated (ugh..).
I think you're basing a lot on your own bias. The Unicron trilogy was a big hit with more TF fans than you think(even springing a sub-fandom based around minicon/micron collecting) and that's even more true of Animated(in fact this year's Animated themed Botcon set sold out faster than any year previous). As well, you're ignoring how well Robots in Disguise/Car Robots did.
I know I've posted this before in threads regarding this issue with GW, but I think now that it's been brought up(several times), everyone needs to have a read through this entry:
Overall, I think Mark Well's response is a positive thing. Really, did you actually expect you'd get a response at all, let alone a personal one?
You're annoyed at him for the generic company-speak, for copy-pasting answers. Can you imagine the uproar on here if even a single different word could be construed with an alternate meaning?
Mark Wells cannot very well admit that their company is doing something wrong. They need to be confident in their business decisions when they make them.
Really, you've got an amazing outcome here; very senior management has responded in a reasonably personalised manner to each of the points you make, acknowledging that there is at least a difference of opinion. Perhaps the seeds of change have been planted.
I'm not saying I agree with what MWells is saying. But, as others have said above, we on the forums seem to think we are much more important than we really are, and all of our 'fixes' would really be changes to a company that has managed to become extremely successful in order to cater to our own needs. GW might be in a slight decline, but they still managed to make decent profit, which means that it will be many years and with many opportunities for drastic restructuring before GW actually 'dies'.
Dang, cant believe I actually just read that entire thing...like the thread though and both sides have things that are correct. But the silent majority walking away thing was a cool point. I dont claim to be an expert, i am not claiming i can run a company. I am currently taking economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In which I learned about elasticity...models are a very elastic product, they are by no means necessary for survival(techinically). So with higher prices, less are sold, I am not saying that GW should make each model 1 penny because that would also be hard to turn a profit, but there is an equilibrium point on the supply and demand curve, and (i very well could be wrong) i dont believe that they are currently there. Profits are MAXIMIZED at that point. And if GW is currently there, kudos, keep up the good work, and we are wrong. But i am not inclined to believe that if they have been in a decline for the last 5(maybe 10) years
In my view GW are in decline because they have been forced to price their core ranges above market clearing price to support the expense of their retail chain.
They need the retail chain because it is their only real marketing channel. However, they aren't getting best value out of their retail space because they have a very limited range of products (basically, three products).
I think GW should be publishing and selling a greater variety of games than just WH/40K and LoTR. Give more people more reasons to walk into the shop. Give the staff more products to sell.
The other thing they should do is not piss off veterans. Veterans are a potentially huge source of word-of-mouth promotion and transferral of expertise to new customers.
dajobe wrote:Dang, cant believe I actually just read that entire thing...like the thread though and both sides have things that are correct. But the silent majority walking away thing was a cool point. I dont claim to be an expert, i am not claiming i can run a company. I am currently taking economics at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In which I learned about elasticity...models are a very elastic product, they are by no means necessary for survival(techinically). So with higher prices, less are sold, I am not saying that GW should make each model 1 penny because that would also be hard to turn a profit, but there is an equilibrium point on the supply and demand curve, and (i very well could be wrong) i dont believe that they are currently there. Profits are MAXIMIZED at that point. And if GW is currently there, kudos, keep up the good work, and we are wrong. But i am not inclined to believe that if they have been in a decline for the last 5(maybe 10) years
I agree for their target audience. If you figure that building a playable army has gone from @ $200 to @ $500. And the life expectancy of that $500 dollar investment has gone from about 2 years to 1 year due to the codex creep oneupsmanship that seems to be the norm now. You can be talking the investment has gone up 500% to play the game. Now in my case that may be fine but I know from experience that other than a core of hard core players, we have lost about 75% of the community that used to play 40k in our area. We also see newbies that start and are enthusiastic until they find that their army can no longer compete and then most drop not reinvest in the flavor of the moment.
Hopefully the finecast "enhancement" where we see a 50% to 80% cost increase will not be the straw that broke the camel's back but it is scary to think that your fully outfitted army with "finecast" adds is going to take your cost up to $600 to field the army of choice.
As I said the problem is not those who complain. They/we still have a passion for the game. It is the silent - in our part - 75% that look at their disposable income and decide that they will be happier spending their $500 on something else. Whether it is the sheer cost or the known frustration of having spent $500 only to see the newest codex totally invalidate your investment.
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
As far as I can tell, speaking as someone picking up Legion for my first Warmahordes army, the only thing that really keeps PP games cheaper than GW is the much lower model count. The price tags on some of these things are pretty eye-popping ($85 battle engines? $100 for 5 cavalry models?)
Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:"GW ARE RUBBISH, SERIOUSLY DO THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!"
Personally I would like to see some evidence that they actually do know.
They show little evidence of being able to do so, other than "they are a niche market who can charge what they want because a loyal fanbase keeps begging for more."
They take a loyal fanbase for granted and show nothing but disrespect bordering on contempt.
GW management display a mindset that is exploitative. It is simply not good enough to say that that is the nature of business.
It is part of the fault of the long term customers that has brought this about for putting up with it but if any other company behaved like this towards its customers, would you keep buying their products/services?
Apologies if that is emotive, but as I have said elsewhere, I have never known another company behave like GW, so I have nothing else to base the experience on.
From a business standpoint, I think they know exactly what they are doing. They are playing ratio games with the financials so they can continue to appear to be healthy to the capital and investment markets by improving or holding their ratios at an even point. How they are doing it is irrelevant to that goal. Ratios and cash positions are king for what they are doing which reflects that all their decisions are geared toward maintaining sales levels or cutting cost. Declining sales volume does not appear on those reports, only revenue and profit. Ratios good, dividend paid, investors happy, management happy.
Kilkrazy wrote:In my view GW are in decline because they have been forced to price their core ranges above market clearing price to support the expense of their retail chain.
They need the retail chain because it is their only real marketing channel. However, they aren't getting best value out of their retail space because they have a very limited range of products (basically, three products).
I think GW should be publishing and selling a greater variety of games than just WH/40K and LoTR. Give more people more reasons to walk into the shop. Give the staff more products to sell.
The other thing they should do is not piss off veterans. Veterans are a potentially huge source of word-of-mouth promotion and transferral of expertise to new customers.
The problem with their retail chain is now they have to pay their stay minimum wage, in the UK that must have nearly trippled their store running costs, I believe before it was low wages for a brilliant staff discount.
Kilkrazy wrote:Then their business plan is screwed, because it's entirely based on retail shops selling two basic products.
Two basic products at a super high markup.
It's not unlike cinemas really. I was a manager for Odeon once and the business plan actually has nothing to do with selling tickets for films. The box office is really money for the distributor. Although the cinema gets a share, it's only enough to break even, once you factor in staff costs and rental of the premises etc. Where the cinema actually makes money is from selling popcorn and postmix at an 80% mark up. The day customers stop buying it, is the day that cinemas disappear from this country.
For GW, the game (or the film) is incidental. It's just the reason to get people through the door. The business is selling paper, plastic and resin (popcorn and postmix) at an inflated price. As KK suggests, the business might therefore benefit from producing more games (or showing a greater variety of films) like they did in the old days.
Do you REALLY want to get into the arguement of how Disney treats its customers, release information, and accessability to its products vs how GW does the same? Because GW will LOSE that arguement hands down.
Not really sure what you are getting at here, the comparison was that they both sell very specific IP items for a premium price and don't allow other 3rd parties to infringe their own IP. It wasn't a comparison of the companies themselves or their methods, just an example of companies charging a premium for access to a certain IP.
nkelsch wrote:While GW seems to be doing 'ok' not great, everyone wants to claim credit that every financial problem is a direct result of thier personal gripe with no experience or evidence that it is related to that. 'Fandom knows best' is a disturbing trend on the internet and even if they are right once or twice, usually that is not the case overall. People want whatever benifits them personally even if it doesn't have a valid buisness case that can be supported without damaging the company.
QFT and very eloquently put i might add.
The HASBRO example is an interesting case study but doesn't compare in scale or scope with GW, with HASBRO's huge sales figures. My argument about Irrational Fans comes to the fore when I read the sublimly ridiculous "Michael Bay Raped my Childhood" arguement.
I 100% Agree with KILLKRAZY the Retail arm is disabling GW, it is an enormous expensive operation and it is the only Gaming System/ Game creator that followed this line. Once the Internet took off with Broadband, well the rest is history, Ebay, discount retails, bits stores are hurting GW and benefiting us.
I think we need to identify more precisely why GW was doing so well in the Late 90's before the Advent of the LOTR. Any Ideas?
Kilkrazy wrote:Then their business plan is screwed, because it's entirely based on retail shops selling two basic products.
I don't think it was so screwed before min wage, its actually pretty cleaver, if you can gets someone to work for peanuts then real its a win for the company, low wages = more profit, just s shame that damn evil goverment stepped in
mwnciboo wrote:I think we need to identify more precisely why GW was doing so well in the Late 90's before the Advent of the LOTR. Any Ideas?
Well this is what I remember from the 90s
Mail Order - You used to be able to call up and say "hey I want to spend x on y, what deal can you do", it wasn't massive deals but you felt like a valued customer
White Dwarf - You know what I see that stands out the most, deals, you look through old ones and they had deals like "buy and a landraider and termies and save £5-10", buy a command squad and razorback save X"
Aside from the deals you had one offer you actually had some good articles, chapter approved, any one remember the flesh tearers list? I actually bought a flesh tearers army because this, I also remember they would have a Q&A over rules, anyone remember when they changed the command squad so it could split up, apoth joining units, tech marines going off on by himself.
Specialist games - I know not everyone will agree but I think they helped alot, Necromunda was great, I seem to recall it had rules for using models from you armies (stealers, arbites, marines), gorka morka which had great models for expanding your Ork army, space hulk, blood bowl, mordheim, as a kid I actually renmember playing talisman in the store with the, I don't know but I think the company just had a different feel about it.
Rules/models - While the old rules and models may not be as nice as what we have today (or streamlined) I think they had a lot more character, look of the realm of chaos book, daenomic animoisty, when I look back at 40k will ap system for tanks was silly I do remember a lot of quirky things, amusing grenade types, shot guns that actually moved you backwards, back of the book armylist (genestealer cult I seem to recall being one), as for the models they just seem so much more serious, I actually miss the old goffy orks!
Cutsomer reward scheme - who remember the silver skulls? but x amount and get stuff free?
Problem with GW now is they have just cut everything from that list, maybe some was needed all those things are what made me want to go into the store and spend money, now they have lost the friendly face and the image of for gamers by gamers, its just some guys in suits trying to improve the share prices.
Chimera_Calvin wrote:As you may know, GW has recieved a bit of criticism over the last few weeks [/understatement]
Some of that was from me! Hence, I sent a letter to Mark Wells (GW CEO) which I have copied here:
Spoiler:
Dear Sir,
It is with regret that after 23 years of loyal custom I feel compelled to cease purchasing Games Workshop product and look for alternatives elsewhere. Despite the abiding appeal of your games and the settings thereof, I can no longer support a company whose business decisions are so flagrantly to the detriment of their customers.
I appreciate that Games Workshop is a business and must make a profit. I further understand that as a publicly traded company, you have an obligation to your shareholders – but if your decisions (designed it seems purely to prop up short term profit margins) lead to the alienation of your customers and a continuation of the falling sales volume you have experienced for many years, then I see no long term future for the company.
It is a fact – and one that you and your colleagues have stated publicly – that you rely on the goodwill of your customers to advertise your product through word-of-mouth recommendation, yet your actions often indicate nothing but contempt for the hopes and expectations of those customers, as examples:
1. Your ‘Specialist Games’ range has clearly become a dumping ground for games that you no longer wish to support yet are unwilling to remove from sale in spite of repeated claims to the contrary.
2. An inability (or simple refusal) to write balanced and tightly-worded rules to reduce disagreements between players and to facilitate better tournament play, justified by the tired trope that players can create house rules for anything they don’t like – despite the fact that having better rules in no way prevents the creation of house rules by those inclined to do so.
3. A release schedule which consistently leaves some factions without an update for entire editions of their associated game and many units having rules but no representing models.
4. Spates of ‘Cease and Desist’ orders issued by your legal department to companies who are in many cases filling in the blanks left by your release schedule. A classic case of trying to deal with symptoms rather than cause.
5. Paranoid levels of secrecy regarding new releases and increasingly heavy-handed attempts to thwart the release of information, as if having people excited about forthcoming releases and spreading the word about them is somehow detrimental to sales.
Your most damaging decisions, however, have come with price. Like-for-like prices have risen almost 600% over the last 25 years, despite the UK inflation rate running at 160% over the same period. The growth of your company should have led to economies of scale, particularly when associated with a move to cheaper casting materials – first with plastic and most recently with ‘finecast’ resin. However, whilst your plastic kits are cheaper than the metal equivalent of those models, they remain twice (if not more) as expensive as comparable multi-part 28mm plastic kits made by your competitors. In contrast your ‘finecast’ kits are more expensive than their metal equivalents and are receiving worryingly bad reviews from independent sources with regards to their casting quality.
Your latest round of price increases, coupled with the change to ‘finecast’ has led some products to receive an effective 30% price rise – in the current economic climate people simply cannot afford these kinds of increases.
Finally, the embargo on independent retailers shipping outside of the EU has made the hobby prohibitively expensive for many in the affected territories, particularly in Australia and New Zealand. Your public statements regarding independent retailers are frankly offensive – surely all avenues that allow people to participate in Games Workshop’s games and other hobby activities are of benefit as this will grow your customer base? The notion that somehow buying from an online retailer is damaging to ‘the hobby’ is absurd. If it is not economically viable to run Games Workshop stores in certain territories, why not work with local independents or gaming clubs to raise the profile of your games? Simply trying to force people to pay prices they cannot afford will lead to fewer customers and hence less of the ‘local support’ you claim to cherish.
The culmination of all these decisions has reached a head in the last fortnight and has given rise to an outpouring of feeling I have never experienced before. To try and get a measure of the mood of the gaming community I conducted an online poll through the ‘dakkadakka.com’ website (one of the leading online forums for discussion of Games Workshop products) which garnered 565 responses over a 5 day period with the following results:
106 people (18.76%) stated that they had already ceased buying Games Workshop products before the latest price rises, with a further 94 people (16.64%) saying that they would no longer buy in the future.
66 people (11.68%) stated that they would make one last purchase to complete existing projects but would make no further purchases whilst 167 people (29.56%) said they would remain as customers but would spend less in the future than they presently do.
116 people (20.53%) stated that there buying habits would remain unaffected with just 16 people (2.83%) planning to increase their future spending.
In summary 35.40% of customers who responded to this survey will no longer spend money with you, 41.24% will spend less than they had otherwise planned with only 23.36% spending as much or more than before. Whilst an individual letter can be ignored, surely these figures should make you aware of the depth of feeling against your decisions?
In closing, I wish to extend an olive branch. It remains my firm belief that Games Workshop can regain the custom of those like myself who have decided that we can no longer support the company and are looking instead at wargaming pastures new, but only if it is willing to change and truly willing to address the needs and concerns of its customers. I and many others would be happy to engage with you and work with you to overcome these problems, but you must open the door for us to walk through.
Regards,
To which I recieved the following response:
Spoiler:
Thank you for your letter in which you described your concerns regarding Games Workshop’s strategy. You raised a number of issues and I will do my best to address them.
First, as for our product releases and rules, the last thing we are trying to do is treat our customers with contempt. Quite the reverse. Come down to Nottingham and talk to us if you have any doubts on that score. When Jervis says he will speak to anyone regarding their concerns, he is serious about that. I see him most weeks in Bugmans having coffee with experienced customers like yourself to learn what your suggestions are.
The simple fact is that we cannot possibly make everything that every customer wants as there is a limit to how much our Studio can design or our factory make. We have to make choices about what products we release and when. Specialist games is a good example. We would love to have another go at one of these, but there are other exciting projects that we have to deliver first.
That’s not to say they will never be revisited, as we showed with Space Hulk, it’s simply a case of priorities. That’s why we keep them in the range, so that at some time in the future we have the option to come back to them. We are not trying to be disrespectful to fans of these games, many of whom will love the other new stuff we do as well. It’s just that they are not top of the list right now.
As for the legal action we take against infringers, I don’t think we have any choice. They have taken, without our permission, intellectual property which our design teams have taken years to develop and have used it for their own commercial purposes. That is clearly morally and legally wrong. If companies want to make product using our intellectual property then they should approach us for a licence, like Fantasy Flight Games have. Provided they meet our quality standards and our minimum royalty requirements, then we will consider them. But they can’t simply steal from us and expect us to ignore them.
As for secrecy about new releases, what we have found is that the more secret we keep things, the more excitement there is about a launch. Space Hulk was a great example of this, as was Finecast. Some people love to know in advance what is going to happen, of course. But as you point out in your letter, we are a commercial organisation. And what we have learnt is that the more information that is leaked in advance, the weaker the launch. The more secret we keep it, the bigger the launch. We are not being paranoid, it just makes sense for us to do it that way, nothing more than that.
Next let me deal with price increases. We review our pricing each year. In doing so we take into account the costs of designing and making the product, raw material costs, support costs such as staff salaries and rent for our Hobby Centres and of course any quality improvements we have designed into the products.
All of these costs have increased in recent years, particularly raw material costs such as tin and plastic which have increased far faster than our retail prices. The reason that we have been able to absorb much of this cost pressure is that we are constantly investing in technology and training to deliver greater efficiency in our manufacturing and design processes. We have also worked hard to keep our staffing to a minimum in all areas, from hobby centres to production lines to offices.
However, the one area where we will not compromise is quality. Every miniature we have released since you started in the hobby has delivered an improvement in quality. Our plastic sets, paints, scenery and hobby products are incomparable compared to then. I’d argue that our product quality has improved at a far faster rate in recent years than our prices.
Finally, I’m not seeking to offend anyone when I say that European trade accounts have not invested in growing the customer base outside Europe. I’m simply stating the facts. If we had not taken action to enforce our European trade terms, they would have continued to undermine the very accounts you suggest we work with to support clubs in places like Australia and New Zealand.
Those local Australian and New Zealand accounts have worked hard over the years to build up their customer base by word of mouth and running events. As have our Hobby Centres which have recruited tens of thousands of customers through introductory activities, painting lessons and beginners programmes. It’s because we want to have a vibrant customer base in Australia in twenty years time, that we are taking legitimate action now to support local accounts and Hobby Centres.
Hopefully that helps to explain the reasons for each of the decisions we’ve made. I’m sorry that at the moment you are unhappy with us. It certainly wasn’t our intention to upset you. What I hope comes across is that whenever we are faced with difficult choices at Games Workshop, we always seek to do the right thing for the long term. That may make us unpopular with customers from time to time.
However, we believe that the choices we have made will enable us to keep making fantastic miniatures and games with outstanding service from local accounts and Hobby Centres. And, if we keep doing that consistently well over time, in the long term there will continue to be a great Games Workshop for current and future customers to enjoy.
Yours sincerely
Mark Wells
First, apologies for the wall of text but I thought I would be doing a disservice to those interested by paraphrasing what he had to say. As to my feelings?
Well, I have to say I am impressed to have a personal reply - certainly not something I expected, but it is clearly not a standard letter as it addressed everything I said point-by-point. I think I was misinterpreted slightly with regards to copyright infringement - I was pointing out that if GW had done its job properly to start with then aftermarket bits companies would not have arisen in the first place but reading back I don't know if I made that clear enough.
As for the biggies:
All price rises are justified because the quality is universally better... Secrecy works - it made the release of Space Hulk and Failcost the successes they were... oh wait Specialist Games are not being ditched 'in case we go back to them later, like Space Hulk'... err, SH was never a Specialist Game and had been officially out of print for years before the splash 3rd edition. Australia and New Zealand need protecting from those evil European traders or the hobby will disappear down under... what the ?
Games Workshop always takes decisions for the 'long term'...
Back to the drawing board, methinks.
Your letter absolutely hit the nail in the head, congratulations on a well written letter and your extensive economic knowledge.
On the subject of pointing us in the direction of Jervis in Bugmans bar, I wonder what would happen if a large number of disgruntled gamers wandered down to Nottingham and started asking a lot of questions?
Well, I would recommend that as direct action. Go there with £100 of beer tokens a polite manner and some bridled passion (don't let your emotions get the better of you and your language) and make a good/solid arguement. Consider it from every angles, know and freely admit the weaker parts of your arguement and see where it gets you.
My personal idealogy is that Mass production = Good. Drive down unit cost, Gamers should be given generic models we can adapt. TACTICAL MARINES are a perfect example, why do we need specific GREY HUNTERS et al, just sell an upgrade sprue for £10 (One for DA, BA, SW, BT IF etc etc). Use the generic Marine pack for all of them as bodies and legs, with specific upgrades from the Sprue packs. Unit Cost in the 1,000,000 and drive the cost of 10 Marines down to £15 and an Upgrade sprue £5 - £10 depending. Do this for every race and you are laughing.
On the subject of pointing us in the direction of Jervis in Bugmans bar, I wonder what would happen if a large number of disgruntled gamers wandered down to Nottingham and started asking a lot of questions?
Probably the same thing that would happen anywhere else: If you were polite and felt like discussing things over a beer, you'd have a good time and get some good conversation, and maybe some answers. And you'd have a chance to give him some feedback.
If you all walked in angry and the entire tone was accusatory, he'd answer a couple of questions and leave.
mwnciboo wrote:My personal idealogy is that Mass production = Good. Drive down unit cost, Gamers should be given generic models we can adapt. TACTICAL MARINES are a perfect example, why do we need specific GREY HUNTERS et al, just sell an upgrade sprue for £10 (One for DA, BA, SW, BT IF etc etc). Use the generic Marine pack for all of them as bodies and legs, with specific upgrades from the Sprue packs. Unit Cost in the 1,000,000 and drive the cost of 10 Marines down to £15 and an Upgrade sprue £5 - £10 depending. Do this for every race and you are laughing.
Do you honestly think price is the only reason people are buying less, GW have basically removed everything from the equation that won them a lot of customer loyalty.
mikhaila wrote:On the subject of pointing us in the direction of Jervis in Bugmans bar, I wonder what would happen if a large number of disgruntled gamers wandered down to Nottingham and started asking a lot of questions?
Probably the same thing that would happen anywhere else: If you were polite and felt like discussing things over a beer, you'd have a good time and get some good conversation, and maybe some answers. And you'd have a chance to give him some feedback.
If you all walked in angry and the entire tone was accusatory, he'd answer a couple of questions and leave.
Well yeah of course, anger would just make you look like an upset person who doesn't really know what you're talking about. Although this may not be the case (the doesn't really know what they are talking about bit anyway), it would be because of the anger. Anger rarely accomplishes as much as calm.
I dont think that it is the only reason, but i do feel that it is a large percentage of the reason why. I currently need more standard tactical marines in my army, just because i am expanding my list, however, with the cost of marines at what is now, I am putting that on hold because i dont want to spend $100 just to make my army a little more competitive while i have other units that I can use. If prices just dropped $5 per major item i'd probably go apeS**T crazy. Buy about 3 tac squads, and then "OH WOW! a razorback at $25, GOTTA HAVE IT! then i start thinking, this is a great deal, I need to expand my guardsmen! by the time i walk out of the store ive dropped $500+ dollars 1)because im pretty impulsive 2)because I thought i was getting a better deal. My point is even if GW drops prices just a little bit, noobs like me are gonna go crazy, and as long as they make even some profit off of each unit, thats more than they were making before off me...
Kilkrazy wrote:Then their business plan is screwed, because it's entirely based on retail shops selling two basic products.
How is this different than the business plan of most non-big-box retail shops? When I go to the local mall, nearly every shop there is predicated on the idea of selling one or two basic products.
There's Bath&Bodyworks - they sell scented soaps and lotions.
There's the White Barn Candle shop - they sell candles.
There's Victoria's Secret - they sell lingerie.
There's Godiva chocolatiers - they sell chocolate.
There's Game Stop - they sell video games.
There's the Disney Store - they sell Disney themed toys
There's the Build-a-bear store - they sell stuffed bears.
Selling one type of product is not an automatic failure as a business plan.
GWs main problem, as I see it now, is that they're selling a luxury item during a global recession combined with price increases on the raw materials that they use in production. These factors, none of which are anything they can control, lead to the unpleasant choices of either raising prices, losing some sales but maintaining profitability, or not raising prices, losing fewer sales (some loss of sales has to be attributed to the state of the global economy), but losing profitability.
In my mind, they chose the lesser of two evils. Some customers are going to be lost during a recession, that's the nature of a luxury good. When people struggle to buy food, they don't buy toy soldiers. As a company, they need to survive through the economic downturn, in order to be able to grow again once the economy recovers. Trying to retain customers by lowering prices in the face of rising costs isn't likely to make a huge difference to the number of customers, but failing to remain in business is going to have a huge impact. It's not a pleasant choice, but it's one that has to be made.
mwnciboo wrote:My personal idealogy is that Mass production = Good. Drive down unit cost, Gamers should be given generic models we can adapt. TACTICAL MARINES are a perfect example, why do we need specific GREY HUNTERS et al, just sell an upgrade sprue for £10 (One for DA, BA, SW, BT IF etc etc). Use the generic Marine pack for all of them as bodies and legs, with specific upgrades from the Sprue packs. Unit Cost in the 1,000,000 and drive the cost of 10 Marines down to £15 and an Upgrade sprue £5 - £10 depending. Do this for every race and you are laughing.
Do you honestly think price is the only reason people are buying less, GW have basically removed everything from the equation that won them a lot of customer loyalty.
ERRR YES, YES I DO. In fact i would go as far as saying that if a Space Marine tactical box cost £15 i wouldn't care if GW had them made in backstreet sweat shops.
Capitalism my friend, money makes the world go round. If you want Idealogy well your welcome to it, price is the ultimate fixation because it is the ultimate fixation. If you think I am wrong then look at the bad will that has been generated by the Price Hike, we are having this current debate because of the Price. If you think otherwise I think you might be over stating the other elements.
mwnciboo wrote:ERRR YES, YES I DO. In fact i would go as far as saying that if a Space Marine tactical box cost £15 i wouldn't care if GW had them made in backstreet sweat shops.
Capitalism my friend, money makes the world go round. If you want Idealogy well your welcome to it, price is the ultimate fixation because it is the ultimate fixation.
Price isn't the ultimate fixation for a lot of people, thats not saying it isn't a factor but like I listed above they need to do a hell of a lot more, 40k isn't the game it once was, its streamlined to deal and void of a lot of former charm, what used a box of marines if the rules required to use them are just average (core rule mechanic's) with seriousl balance issues within the game, you asked before what they did right in the 90's look above a few posts, take all that away, knock a few quid off and suddenly its all rosey?
would say dropping the prices 20% really win them back that much buisness, I'm not pro high prices or anything but personally I don't think that alone is going to bring that man people back. I think the rules behind the game are also a factor to consider, until 3rd ed I was a massive 40k player, I buy the odd but from time to time because I like the models but I don't really have the desire to play it like I used to. If the 6th ed rumours are true then I might start playing and then if you factored that with a price reduction I would more than likely spend more than I do now.
I think most peple with the game as it is would just spend the same but get more models.
Congrats on a well worded and formal letter, it's such a shame GW thought you were some kind of 10 year old or something.
"Caring for our fanbase? Sensible buissiness practice? Foolish child, you do not know who you speak to!"
itsonlyme wrote:would say dropping the prices 20% really win them back that much buisness, I'm not pro high prices or anything but personally I don't think that alone is going to bring that man people back. I think the rules behind the game are also a factor to consider, until 3rd ed I was a massive 40k player, I buy the odd but from time to time because I like the models but I don't really have the desire to play it like I used to. If the 6th ed rumours are true then I might start playing and then if you factored that with a price reduction I would more than likely spend more than I do now.
For me, dropping prices won't bring me back. Prices aren't the main problem... it is the perception of value. As long as the rules are rubbish, I will not return, except as a last resort... (i.e. if I move to an area where GW product is the only miniatures system used.) To give an idea of how far GW has fallen, I'd sooner jump back into MTG than go back to 40k the way it is now - and I quit MTG to go to 40k back in 3rd Ed. Thank the Emperor that there's a decent PP presence where I live.
Mr Mystery wrote:
Erm, I think yes...as your constant assertation that it's badly run is well, utterly uninformed, by your own admission?
GW ARE badly run though, I believe the cliche of piss ups and breweries comes to mind. They are consumed by their own hubris, and this will be their downfall.
Sorry, I just have to ask; did you twirl your mustache as you made that statement?
I am wondering who here actually expected Wells or his proxy to openly put up their hands and say 'Fair enough, yeah, we're just in it for the lulz and being evil'.
They were never going to admit to wanting maximum profit by various nefarious means. Using ideas like 'protecting Oz businesses' for their East India styled monopolising Down Under and 'raising the quality' for the finecast debacle are fine smokescreens to throw at folks and once they have refined the excuses and given them out enough times, certain in the hobby will continue down the path of knowing they have a very nasty business sense and certain others will adopt these new and flimsy excuses as a gospel.
I personally think, from reading about 'price elasticity', the metal to plastic to plastic prices to metal prices following the tin crisis now resulting in the finecast cheaper material price raise (whew!), the reboxing to contain less for more money... Urgh, the list just goes on and on. But here's the point.
Wells is a manager brought into the company. He doesn't give a flying turd about 'The Hobby', it is a product. He has probably met many kids and then a few older mouthbreathing hobbyists, all fawning about the game. How seriously do you think that guy takes the angry letters from older gamers. He's already read the previous financial reports from Kirby, that state kids are the target, older gamers are either embittered yet addicted or fanatical to the point of spending money for food on the product instead.
The Ivory Tower does not hear legitimate concerns. It is only concerned with the bottom line and if you want anything to come about in the company, vote with your wallet and advise your friends/gaming group to do likewise.
MeanGreenStompa wrote:I am wondering who here actually expected Wells or his proxy to openly put up their hands and say 'Fair enough, yeah, we're just in it for the lulz and being evil'.
They were never going to admit to wanting maximum profit by various nefarious means. Using ideas like 'protecting Oz businesses' for their East India styled monopolising Down Under and 'raising the quality' for the finecast debacle are fine smokescreens to throw at folks and once they have refined the excuses and given them out enough times, certain in the hobby will continue down the path of knowing they have a very nasty business sense and certain others will adopt these new and flimsy excuses as a gospel.
I personally think, from reading about 'price elasticity', the metal to plastic to plastic prices to metal prices following the tin crisis now resulting in the finecast cheaper material price raise (whew!), the reboxing to contain less for more money... Urgh, the list just goes on and on. But here's the point.
Wells is a manager brought into the company. He doesn't give a flying turd about 'The Hobby', it is a product. He has probably met many kids and then a few older mouthbreathing hobbyists, all fawning about the game. How seriously do you think that guy takes the angry letters from older gamers. He's already read the previous financial reports from Kirby, that state kids are the target, older gamers are either embittered yet addicted or fanatical to the point of spending money for food on the product instead.
The Ivory Tower does not hear legitimate concerns. It is only concerned with the bottom line and if you want anything to come about in the company, vote with your wallet and advise your friends/gaming group to do likewise.
Kids are the target? With a $600 investment requirement I think that is the hard part from getting the hobby to grow. Add to that the product being "outdated" on nearly an annual basis by codex creep so you are talking an annual expenditure of $600 to have fun. Assuming you want a competitive game where you have a chance to win.
I don't know about you but averaging $50 per month of allowance is a pretty steep amount to get a kid interested especially when he receives his last $50 installment and then lo and behold a new codex arrives on the scene and make your investment worthless.
MeanGreenStompa wrote:I am wondering who here actually expected Wells or his proxy to openly put up their hands and say 'Fair enough, yeah, we're just in it for the lulz and being evil'.
They were never going to admit to wanting maximum profit by various nefarious means. Using ideas like 'protecting Oz businesses' for their East India styled monopolising Down Under and 'raising the quality' for the finecast debacle are fine smokescreens to throw at folks and once they have refined the excuses and given them out enough times, certain in the hobby will continue down the path of knowing they have a very nasty business sense and certain others will adopt these new and flimsy excuses as a gospel.
I personally think, from reading about 'price elasticity', the metal to plastic to plastic prices to metal prices following the tin crisis now resulting in the finecast cheaper material price raise (whew!), the reboxing to contain less for more money... Urgh, the list just goes on and on. But here's the point.
Wells is a manager brought into the company. He doesn't give a flying turd about 'The Hobby', it is a product. He has probably met many kids and then a few older mouthbreathing hobbyists, all fawning about the game. How seriously do you think that guy takes the angry letters from older gamers. He's already read the previous financial reports from Kirby, that state kids are the target, older gamers are either embittered yet addicted or fanatical to the point of spending money for food on the product instead.
The Ivory Tower does not hear legitimate concerns. It is only concerned with the bottom line and if you want anything to come about in the company, vote with your wallet and advise your friends/gaming group to do likewise.
+1
Every time someone sends a letter all you get in return is a pre-formatted form letter. If you do not like the price, "imbalance", or some other things find another company to provide your hobby and wargaming stuff.
We can try and butter this up, it's not as good as it used to be arguement but thats just nonsense. Remember some of the balancing issues back in the day? Imperial Assassins with Vortex Grenades as Wargear? There were some insane choices back then.
You can say price isn't the issue (fair enough) and start quoting, unfair rules or unbalanced rules? But then you start pushing specific example (which is possible as nothings perfect) where as 95% of the rules are solid. If the Rules were broken no one would play, there are more tournaments for 40k than ever before at a lower level than just Grand tournaments. Nevermind the GW Ivory tower, some people need to get real and live in the real world not their own heads. GW is not Evil, it is a for profits company with Share Holders.
Alot of people in this hobby need to get out their own Ivory Tower built on a foundation of pseudo-business-intellect and a skew morality. You want it buy it, don't want it then walk away from it, bitching that it's not as good as it used to be makes you sound like old man.
If you took an Nemesis Dread Knight back to the 1997 people would be blown away by it. I recently read my old Painting guide by John Blanche, it took me back, but things have evolved massively and for the better since then. It's too easy to be negative and revert to a sarcastic, irrational standpoint based on "I'm right, your wrong" rather than an objective view point.
Mr Mystery wrote:
Erm, I think yes...as your constant assertation that it's badly run is well, utterly uninformed, by your own admission?
GW ARE badly run though, I believe the cliche of piss ups and breweries comes to mind. They are consumed by their own hubris, and this will be their downfall.
Sorry, I just have to ask; did you twirl your mustache as you made that statement?
Nah, I was stroking my Goatee. I genuinely want to see GW burn to the ground, and out of those ashes arise a new, better, reborn company. They are going have to fall on their arse quite hard and I think this year's financials will be the beginning of the end, all we need is another Pokemon or equivelant to rid GW of the kiddies spending their pennies and the rest will topple.
Do you REALLY want to get into the arguement of how Disney treats its customers, release information, and accessability to its products vs how GW does the same? Because GW will LOSE that arguement hands down.
Not really sure what you are getting at here, the comparison was that they both sell very specific IP items for a premium price and don't allow other 3rd parties to infringe their own IP. It wasn't a comparison of the companies themselves or their methods, just an example of companies charging a premium for access to a certain IP.
nkelsch wrote:While GW seems to be doing 'ok' not great, everyone wants to claim credit that every financial problem is a direct result of thier personal gripe with no experience or evidence that it is related to that. 'Fandom knows best' is a disturbing trend on the internet and even if they are right once or twice, usually that is not the case overall. People want whatever benifits them personally even if it doesn't have a valid buisness case that can be supported without damaging the company.
QFT and very eloquently put i might add.
The HASBRO example is an interesting case study but doesn't compare in scale or scope with GW, with HASBRO's huge sales figures. My argument about Irrational Fans comes to the fore when I read the sublimly ridiculous "Michael Bay Raped my Childhood" arguement.
I 100% Agree with KILLKRAZY the Retail arm is disabling GW, it is an enormous expensive operation and it is the only Gaming System/ Game creator that followed this line. Once the Internet took off with Broadband, well the rest is history, Ebay, discount retails, bits stores are hurting GW and benefiting us.
I think we need to identify more precisely why GW was doing so well in the Late 90's before the Advent of the LOTR. Any Ideas?
They were selling a greater variety of games.
Prices were more reasonable.
They hadn't undergone retail over-expansion prompted by the LoTR years.
Yep, going back to my cinema metaphor, it's kind of like going to the flicks and finding the same two films on week on week out. Occassionally the film gets remade with a few new characters and plot tweaks, but essentially it's the same movie.
In the 90s, GW was showing a good range of "films", such as Blood Bowl, Gorkamorka, Battlefleet Gothic etc as well as its two "blockbusters", 40K and Fantasy.
They hadn't undergone retail over-expansion prompted by the LoTR years.
The incredible thing is that even during the height of the 'boom' GW was borrowing, even though they must have known it was unsustainable.
I worked for the company both during the boom time (which was fantastic in terms of the boxsets flying off the shelves faster than they could come into the store), and during the subsequent dip which was an ugly experience. It became obvious to me even at that time that the company was being populated by 'yes men' who could not seem to fathom that the game sales would drop once the buzz from the movies was over. Higher management and even people from WD were sent to stores on occasion to try and motivate sales of the LoTR line and get it back up to its previous heights, it was not a comfortable time and it's unsurprising that a lot of GW staff left the company during that time.
So the concensus on the drop in sales is part Price but part lack of diversity. So to re-inject life into GW they need to look at diversifying their products? Okay I can see that, well here is my suggestions to re-invigorate their lines.
1. New Blood Bowl Edition
2. New Space Crusade Edition
3. New Hero Quest
4. Necromunda 2.0
5. Epic 40K 6. Gorkamorka
7. LOTR - ready for the hobbit.
8. Some HH based games
9. Battlefleet Gothic.
Maybe this decline was brought on by external factors? revenge of the Squats anyone?
mwnciboo wrote:So the concensus on the drop in sales is part Price but part lack of diversity. So to re-inject life into GW they need to look at diversifying their products? Okay I can see that, well here is my suggestions to re-invigorate their lines.
1. New Blood Bowl Edition
2. New Space Crusade Edition
3. New Hero Quest
4. Necromunda 2.0
5. Epic 40K 6. Gorkamorka
7. LOTR - ready for the hobbit.
8. Some HH based games
9. Battlefleet Gothic.
Maybe this decline was brought on by external factors? revenge of the Squats anyone?
I really can say that I want the Specialist Games to return, not for some just limited edition "here you go" but something that is continually supported by the staff, I would have loved BFG if they still offered it, and I am sure I would really appreciate the return of Warhammer Quest, not the whole WFRP that Fantasy Flight Sells, but something akin to the original that GW made.
mwnciboo wrote:We can try and butter this up, it's not as good as it used to be arguement but thats just nonsense. Remember some of the balancing issues back in the day? Imperial Assassins with Vortex Grenades as Wargear? There were some insane choices back then.
Not saying that 2nd ed didn't have its problems, I actually think one of the great things about 5th is the vehicle rules and the design of codex's (just the basic principle), generally I perfer the rules of 2nd ed, still balancing is no better now, read the grey knight codex? so its not as unbalanced as certain items but comparative its way out there.
You can say price isn't the issue (fair enough) and start quoting, unfair rules or unbalanced rules? But then you start pushing specific example (which is possible as nothings perfect) where as 95% of the rules are solid. If the Rules were broken no one would play, there are more tournaments for 40k than ever before at a lower level than just Grand tournaments. Nevermind the GW Ivory tower, some people need to get real and live in the real world not their own heads. GW is not Evil, it is a for profits company with Share Holders.
Price doesn't matter if the rules don't provide enough enjoyment, this is a person think, I love the models but if the rules don't reach my expectations I'm not going to buy multiples of the same model, I have no need as I have no need to buy a army, simply put I am not going to buy models for the sake of it, I don't mind paying more for a product if it provides me with the right amount of enjoyment but it is also true that if I can recieve the same enjoyment for less I will go for the cheaper product (depending how much cheaper it was vs quailty)
Alot of people in this hobby need to get out their own Ivory
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones
If you took an Nemesis Dread Knight back to the 1997 people would be blown away by it. I recently read my old Painting guide by John Blanche, it took me back, but things have evolved massively and for the better since then. It's too easy to be negative and revert to a sarcastic, irrational standpoint based on "I'm right, your wrong" rather than an objective view point.
Maybe, maybe not, I think most people would have been impressed with the greater quailty, like now it would of had mixed responces about the actual look, personally I don't think I have been irrational, your are the one that has said "yeah I'm right your wrong"
*points to price drop comment*
Like I said my feeling is people would than likely spend the same and just get more for it and while I hate the prices that is little reason to drop the prices (which yes I would like) but again just making the prices lower will change the playabity of game for people who don't enjoy it, me apart for some 2nd hand grey knights I haven't really bought any 40k since DoW came out.
facepalm:
I read both letters and I have to say that Mark Wells didn’t respond to any of the OP’s concerns; he just danced around the issue. Seriously, he was better off not responded at all than posting that trash. All in all, there was little substance with Mark Wells’ responses (his claims tended to be more theoretical rather than actual). When taking to account the other “dodgy” responses to customer letters by GW management, it makes me wonder what are they hoping to achieve when they respond to letters such as these (all tend to have the same generic responses so I suspect he's using a template)? I suspect they are only responding to customer letters in a vain attempt to gain a positive image.
On the subject of pointing us in the direction of Jervis in Bugmans bar, I wonder what would happen if a large number of disgruntled gamers wandered down to Nottingham and started asking a lot of questions?
For some reason I started to think about this since we are all thinking about the evil empire. heh
In regards to encouraging angry customers to speak with Jervis face to face, that was a bad idea LOL. I can see the headlines now...
“A man in Nottingham was brutally assaulted by an angry mob in a popular local bar over recent controversial decisions made by miniatures company Gamesworkshop. It is believed the attack was instigated after CEO Mark Wells, encouraged customers to address their concerns face to face with head designer, Jervis Johnson”. Eye witnesses have reported that after the savage beatings, Mr Johnson was forcibly fed various products made by the company. Reports have advised that Mr Johnson is currently sitting in intensive care and is not expected to make a full recovery. No charges have been pressed at this stage”.
candy.man wrote:In regards to encouraging angry customers to speak with Jervis face to face, that was a bad idea LOL. I can see the headlines now...
“A man in Nottingham was brutally assaulted by an angry mob in a popular local bar over recent controversial decisions made by miniatures company Gamesworkshop. It is believed the attack was instigated after CEO Mark Wells, encouraged customers to address their concerns face to face with head designer, Jervis Johnson”. Eye witnesses have reported that after the savage beatings, Mr Johnson was forcibly fed various products made by the company. Reports have advised that Mr Johnson is currently sitting in intensive care and is not expected to make a full recovery. No charges have been pressed at this stage”.
Got a bit out of the loop last night (playing my first game of Kings of War having bought into it with money previously earmarked for Dark Eldar what a fantastic game ) but have just caught up.
First, thanks to all who keep complimenting me on my letter-writing skills. My boss clearly owes me a pay rise for being awesome with my client correspondence
As for the more general issues, I basically raised 5 points in my letter - here would be my solutions:
Lack of support for Specialist Games Sell Blood Bowl to FFG (they do board games better and are respectful of GW IP), scrap Battle of 5 Armies, replace Mordheim, Inquisitor and Necromunda with proper skirmish supplements for Fantasy and 40k, but keep the background alive as 'campaign settings' for those skirmish supplements (initially in WD then as pdf downloads from the net). Take Epic, BFG, Warmaster and add back in Man 'o War as the new SG range but spin it off into a semi-independant company a la Warhammer Historical and let it stand or fall on its own merits.
Unbalanced rules Give the designers more time to get things right by altering the release schedule (see below), get rid of codex-creep and make the design team do proper playtesting by trying to break the game with extreme builds. Have more USR's and fewer codex-specific rules.
Release schedule (and the associated rise of 3rd party companies to fill in the gaps) Change the release cycle for WFB and 40k to 6 years from the current 4, Reduce the number of 40k codices from 16 to 13 (by replacing the SW, DA, BA and BT codices with a Codex: Astartes which would supplement the basic SM codex with variant army lists and chapter-specific unit rules) but then add back LatD to bring it up to 14. Allow Chaos armies to use units from all 3 army books/codices in each system. No codex/army book to be released without all units having models available or slated for release within 6 months. Re-introduce a proper bits service.
Paranoid secrecy over new releases Have an official 'leak' strategy that involves their web team and in-store staff 3 months out from all new releases. Encourage people looking for hints to go straight to them rather than relying on cryptic hints from people potentially worried about their jobs.
Price (including overseas variations) Re-evaluate the purpose of the retail chain in the internet age. If the primary function is to introduce people to the game, then close stores too small to have multiple intro tables and a good painting area. Make going to the stores a real event, no shoddy painting or table construction (which seems to happen more and more in certain stores). Offer more than the basics - Stores should sell stuff from all GW affiliates (Warhammer Historical, the new SG, GW-based computer games, GW-based FFG stuff, etc). Once all other business changes have been effected, do a full commercial analysis from first-principles and calculate an accurate RRP based solely on the genuine cost of making the stuff - no more random mark-ups for units because they are 'rare' (in game terms) or just 'new'. Apply this globally adding only shipping and local tax rates as applicable. The leash could then be taken off independent retailers but GW would remain competetive by having regular offers unique to purchases made through them.
I fundamentally do not agree that making the Rules more watertight will generate more sales. It's akin to having a quality product, which needs to generate greater sales the company decides it needs to improve quality further as this will generate more sales, it is a falsehood. Bottomline is profit margin and pricing. All I can say is "Nero fiddled whilst Rome burned".
In truth I cannot be bothered arguing this anymore, we shall see what happens in the next 10 years.
I've stopped buying both WH and 40k due to the quality of the rules.
And it's not a falsehood. Not having quality rules gives other companies a competitive advantage.
That being said, there is some bad thinking in that post:
Rules but no models
Making models have high up front costs and the company needs to maintain it's cash flow. I don't expect GW to release everything at once or even within 6 months because I don't believe it would be financially viable.
At least if the rules are published, people can convert models.
Bits Service
Again, I don't see this as doing anything other than costing more money than it generates. You can get a lot of the common stuff in bitz packs now anyway. I would remark though that I think some of the kits are poor in terms of the options included compared to army list options (Chaos Terminators I'm looking at you).
Prices
"do a full commercial analysis from first-principles"
"no more random mark-ups for units because they are 'rare' (in game terms)"
Rare = less sales volume = investment in producing the model needs to be spread over fewer units = higher price.
I would suggest even bringing back proper GW run tournaments, even if it's once a year. Make them something for people to be waiting for as soon as the last one is finished. Get rid of stupid things like "sportsmanship" for scoring. Keep it simple. Basic W/L/D points, then a straight knock out. Or even a straight knock out. Turn it into a mini games day if need be.
Personally I enjoy the rules, and have noticed no holes. I have noticed that there are rules for units without models, but I myself enjoy having to convert miniatures in order to use certain units.
@Baragash - I work in a commercial department and know exactly what I mean by a first principles cost. Lower sales volume can lead to higher prices but does not necessarily have to, it is entirely circumstantial.
Hence why you need to do the analysis properly. I am not pre-judging the outcome of any such analysis, I am simply saying it needs to be done.
As for the bits service, if the demand wasn't there, then the aftermarket providers that GW legal goes after would not exist. If GW were to cater to that market themselves, they will turn a profit by selling bits and reduce their legal costs at the same time.
@mwnciboo - You may not agree, but many people have said before that the rules quality is a factor in their decision to opt for one of GWs competitors. After all, how many people do you know who say 'I like GW because their rules are badly written'? People don't like it or they don't care, but this does not equate to thinking its a good thing.
@spookman - have a look through the YMDC sections on this forum
Chimera_Calvin wrote:@Baragash - I work in a commercial department and know exactly what I mean by a first principles cost. Lower sales volume can lead to higher prices but does not necessarily have to, it is entirely circumstantial.
Hence why you need to do the analysis properly. I am not pre-judging the outcome of any such analysis, I am simply saying it needs to be done.
Sure, but GW is a manufacturer. The R&D costs of models is likely to be
- independent of sales volume
- the largest element of cost by a substantial amount
GW will have a view that the maximum payback period to justify bringing the models to market is has to occur within a given time-frame, and that's where the cost is going to be driven up by the low sales volume.
Chimera_Calvin wrote:As for the bits service, if the demand wasn't there, then the aftermarket providers that GW legal goes after would not exist. If GW were to cater to that market themselves, they will turn a profit by selling bits and reduce their legal costs at the same time.
Aftermarket providers and GW have a whole different set of opportunity costs and limiting factors. If GW cannot produce an entire range for a Codex due to resource constraints, it's not going to switch resources into aftermarket parts unless those parts are going to be a lot more lucrative.
That is apparently why SGs got shuffled off to the naughty corner as well.
Even if they did, if others can bring the parts to the market cheaper, they still will, GW would be better licensing unviable projects rather than suing them IMO.
Chimera_Calvin wrote:As for the bits service, if the demand wasn't there, then the aftermarket providers that GW legal goes after would not exist. If GW were to cater to that market themselves, they will turn a profit by selling bits and reduce their legal costs at the same time.
I don't understand why GW felt their is no need for a bitz service, I know used it a lot (until the prices got silly), I infact suse bitz services alot for conversions and what not, its just like how GW felt specialist games didn't actually provide enough sales, I think if they had made a specialist game that uses only exsititing rules they would see a signicant rise in sales as it would provide a low entry cost into the hobby, inquisitor and necromunda could have done this, its not just that, when you get bored of playing 40k rather than looking for another companies game to play you just switch to one of the specialist games until your ready for some more 40k/fantasy.
@mwnciboo - You may not agree, but many people have said before that the rules quality is a factor in their decision to opt for one of GWs competitors. After all, how many people do you know who say 'I like GW because their rules are badly written'? People don't like it or they don't care, but this does not equate to thinking its a good thing.
I think I find with the rules is that hardly cheap, with 40k its £35 for a rule book and £20 for a codex, to me that doesn't suggest they don't matter ( as mwnciboo suggests), thats alot of money invest in a game before you start playing, the price also suggests that the rules are a premium product to me, the sad thing is they are far from it.
Wolfstan wrote:I would suggest even bringing back proper GW run tournaments, even if it's once a year. Make them something for people to be waiting for as soon as the last one is finished. Get rid of stupid things like "sportsmanship" for scoring. Keep it simple. Basic W/L/D points, then a straight knock out. Or even a straight knock out. Turn it into a mini games day if need be.
Well I am actually not a fan of these, I would much rather go to a indie run tournament simply for a comp system, from what I have heard the GW tournaments are really bad now but they seem to making changes to improve them, higher points value is certainly a plus (2400 for warhammer and 1750 for 40k) but lets be honest, warhammer is not a tournament game now, the magic system can win the worst player the game on turn one, they did to really look at that before that start worrying about improving the throne of skulls.
GW shut down the bitz service because keeping that much inventory is expensive. Having every single item available is simply bad business. So shutting down the bitz service as it existed made sense.
However, in typical GW style, they pushed that pendulum hard when they set up the new bits service, creating an obtuse, useless and overpriced system that is hardly ever expanded upon and contains mostly crap.
What they should have done is scaled down their bits service by looking at what sold and what didn't, rather than just cutting the whole service and going to 'bits/conversion packs'.
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
H.B.M.C. wrote:
However, in typical GW style, they pushed that pendulum hard when they set up the new bits service, creating an obtuse, useless and overpriced system that is hardly ever expanded upon and contains mostly crap.
Looking at your three adjectives:
Obtuse:
1. Annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand.
2. Difficult to understand.
I don't find the new bits service difficult to understand in the least. I go to the site, look at the links, click them, they go in my cart, I click order, and they're mailed to my house. So perhaps you meant annoyingly insensitive. But, I don't really see how to apply those words to a retail service.
Useless:
I have to disagree. I've used their bitz service with each of the armies I've built in the last three years, since they switched to this system.
Overpriced:
Again, I have to disagree. Compared to the old bitz service, the new one is far more reasonable. I don't have access to the prices under the old system, but some basic comparisons, with things I've actually bought:
Deathrolla (Ork Battlewagon Upgrade Pack): The old option (FW) runs $25USD. The upgrade sprue is $13.25, and includes a lobba, a killkannon, and a grot rigger.
Marine Shoulder Pads: Packs of 10 for $8.25 is the standard. I remember ordering them individually for $1 or more individually. That's a price drop.
Emperor's Children Weapons: When I put together my first noise marine army, with the old bitz service, these ended up costing something like $5/guy. You had to buy the weapon and the supporting arm separately, and I don't think any bit ever sold for under $1. The pack gives you 5 sonic blasters and a blastmaster for $22, with all the supporting arms included. That's a savings of at least $5 over a unit.
Meltaguns: 5 for $8. Much better than for 1 for $2 under the old system.
Familiars: Yeah, they're kinda funny, but I've always had a soft spot for them. I guess other people did too, because they made the cut for bitz packs. They were at least $3/each before. Now you get a pack where they're about $1.50-$1.75 per guy.
Unicorn: I can actually order the unicorn now, not the unicorn left side, and unicorn right side individually. Hardly what I'd call obtuse.
Wings: In one of the stranger cases, they didn't actually have a parts code for the Dark Pegasus wings under the old system. I had to buy the whole dark pegasus to get the wings for my daemon princess conversion. But they're in the new bitz system, organized conveniently under the heading of 'wings'. I think I still have the old dark pegasus rider around somewhere...
On the other hand, my favourite set of wings isn't in the new system, that being Be'Lakor's. So I guess that one is about even.
What they should have done is scaled down their bits service by looking at what sold and what didn't, rather than just cutting the whole service and going to 'bits/conversion packs'.
You know that the bitz packs that they put together were based on what sold and what didn't. It was inevitable that some things wouldn't be available under this new system. But, in reality, there has been very little that I've actually wanted to order that I've been unable to, and the things that I've wanted to order in quantities (shoulder pads and sonic weapons, mostly) have been packaged in an intelligent fashion that has actually saved me money.
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
Because they don't.
QFT. I am really baffled by this perception that PP is cheap and GW is expensive. Comparable models have comparable prices; you just need a lost less for a typical game of Warmahordes versus Fantasy or 40k.
You know that the bitz packs that they put together were based on what sold and what didn't. It was inevitable that some things wouldn't be available under this new system. But, in reality, there has been very little that I've actually wanted to order that I've been unable to, and the things that I've wanted to order in quantities (shoulder pads and sonic weapons, mostly) have been packaged in an intelligent fashion that has actually saved me money.
I was working for the company prior to the switch being made, and the reason it was done was entirely down to people's ordering habits. Namely, lots of customers were ordering single components from a model kit, at the expense of the other parts. As an example, Fabius Bile's apothecary pack, a chaos lords weapon or something like one of the high elf characters magic books. The problem was, for each one of those components ordered they would have to cast up an entire miniature as they were all part of the same mould. The end result was that, for something like Fabius Bile, there were literally hundreds of bodies/weapon components made that would never be any use (and would just be scrap) all for the sale of something that was sometimes a 50p or one pound component. It was being operated at a big loss, when GW was doing it's restructuring no one was surprised when it was one of the first things to go.
The current system isn't a patch on what we had then. Admittedly it has got much better since the initial switch (which was completely underwhelming, and lead to a fair amount of bitching by the regulars in the shop), but it stands to reason that nothing will compare favorably to a system where you can order any single component from any metal kit.
Pacific wrote: The end result was that, for something like Fabius Bile, there were literally hundreds of bodies/weapon components made that would never be any use (and would just be scrap) all for the sale of something that was sometimes a 50p or one pound component. It was being operated at a big loss, when GW was doing it's restructuring no one was surprised when it was one of the first things to go.
LOL, is that why my bitz bags from the great disaster seemd to have a bunch of Fabius Bile bodies.
That was the best thign GW ever did as I got so many awesome bitz that to this day I still find uses for. I literally got a bag that was almost 100% fantasy goblins.
Bodiless wrote:
QFT. I am really baffled by this perception that PP is cheap and GW is expensive. Comparable models have comparable prices; you just need a lost less for a typical game of Warmahordes versus Fantasy or 40k.
Some people prefer to compare price per 'fun' as opposed to price per model.
skyth wrote:So why didn't they just melt them down and re-use them?
dajobe wrote:that would be logical...
Pfft, you people and your stupid logic
Redbeard wrote:
Deathrolla (Ork Battlewagon Upgrade Pack): The old option (FW) runs $25USD. The upgrade sprue is $13.25, and includes a lobba, a killkannon, and a grot rigger.
I'm looking at this and thinking "well yes, obviously the FW one is more expensive, their stuff is hardly cheap, thing with the old system is you could get buy just what you needed, I know your harping on about "your can buy X for Y" how often do you actually need 5 metal guns or 5 psycannon arms? Its not cheaper if you paying more and having 4 sitting in your bitz box
What they should have done is scaled down their bits service by looking at what sold and what didn't, rather than just cutting the whole service and going to 'bits/conversion packs'.
You know that the bitz packs that they put together were based on what sold and what didn't. It was inevitable that some things wouldn't be available under this new system. But, in reality, there has been very little that I've actually wanted to order that I've been unable to, and the things that I've wanted to order in quantities (shoulder pads and sonic weapons, mostly) have been packaged in an intelligent fashion that has actually saved me money.
what was i thinking!!! i have now decided to implement a model destruction program where i light my mini's on fire everytime they die in battle! the table in my basement will be glorious!
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
Because they don't.
QFT. I am really baffled by this perception that PP is cheap and GW is expensive. Comparable models have comparable prices; you just need a lost less for a typical game of Warmahordes versus Fantasy or 40k.
I don't know what PP prices are because I've never looked at any of their products.
I do however know that the other miniatures companies I buy from, such as Hasslefree, Corvus Belli and historical figures, are cheaper by a margin of 25% to 75% compared to GW models on a one for one basis.
Also, people keep comparing them on a model vs model basis, i think that a better way to do it would be point vs point. If it only takes 25 models to make 2000pts in warmahordes, and 50 in 40k, i say that PP is cheaper, even if they cost the same amount per model or even if PP cost a little more. For me, it is how much it costs to make an army. I have no idea on actual figures because i have never played warmahordes and have never looked at their products/prices or rules...
Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't know what PP prices are because I've never looked at any of their products.
I do however know that the other miniatures companies I buy from, such as Hasslefree, Corvus Belli and historical figures, are cheaper by a margin of 25% to 75% compared to GW models on a one for one basis.
Okay. I don't know much about this historical lines, or how detailed they are. I do know that Hasslefree models are not as detailed as GW.
Here is the pic from the front page of their website:
They're not bad, but they're not as detailed. The top-left model is laughably simple. Neither of the right side models have any real detail, and even the pirate seems more like the old 1980's grenadier models than a current sculpt. I can see why they're 25% cheaper than a similarly sized GW model.
And, yes, you're right, there are cheaper companies, but there are also companies that cost more on a per-model basis than GW. Freebooter miniatures, a line that I adore, is typically 5-10% more expensive than GW. Their individual characters can hit $20 for a human-sized model, and the slightly-larger-than-human-sized are more. But look at the detail:
My point, however, is that you're continually harping on about how some other companies produce figures for less than GW. That's true. But these other companies produce figures for more than GW, and you're not considering the quality of the models. Maybe that's fair if you're only considering them game pieces, but I have shown, (with data, in other threads), that GWs prices are far from the most expensive on the market, and are, by no means, out of line for quality miniatures.
itsonlyme wrote:
Redbeard wrote:
Deathrolla (Ork Battlewagon Upgrade Pack): The old option (FW) runs $25USD. The upgrade sprue is $13.25, and includes a lobba, a killkannon, and a grot rigger.
I'm looking at this and thinking "well yes, obviously the FW one is more expensive, their stuff is hardly cheap, thing with the old system is you could get buy just what you needed, I know your harping on about "your can buy X for Y" how often do you actually need 5 metal guns or 5 psycannon arms? Its not cheaper if you paying more and having 4 sitting in your bitz box
That's a fair point. However, I haven't really encountered this scenario. Perhaps their research into what should be included in the bitz service included how many were typically ordered. I don't know that it did or didn't, but I know that the sonic weaponry for Noise Marines is sold in the number that makes a lot of sense to Slaanesh players (six total weapons), that shoulderpads are sold in packs of ten (a unit size), and that I don't have any extra meltaguns sitting around...
That's a fair point. However, I haven't really encountered this scenario. Perhaps their research into what should be included in the bitz service included how many were typically ordered. I don't know that it did or didn't, but I know that the sonic weaponry for Noise Marines is sold in the number that makes a lot of sense to Slaanesh players (six total weapons), that shoulderpads are sold in packs of ten (a unit size), and that I don't have any extra meltaguns sitting around...
I'll have to agree on this(the only caveat being I DO have extra Meltas laying around, but only because I haven't purchased the bodies they are to go on yet for a specific project).
I'm not really going to comment on the price issue, because my problem hasn't ever been price(I buy what I think is worth it,), only the way GW Corporate acts.
dajobe wrote:Also, people keep comparing them on a model vs model basis, i think that a better way to do it would be point vs point. If it only takes 25 models to make 2000pts in warmahordes, and 50 in 40k, i say that PP is cheaper, even if they cost the same amount per model or even if PP cost a little more. For me, it is how much it costs to make an army. I have no idea on actual figures because i have never played warmahordes and have never looked at their products/prices or rules...
Right, but this is not the point that people were making. The OP was referencing the price of materials such as plastic and tin, and asking why GW was so much more expensive than PP given the same raw materials. The point is that they are not. Similar materials, similar scales, similar prices.
How much it costs to make an army is a viable metric, but that is a very different point. Sure, if the game doesn't require as many models to play it will be cheaper. But it is also a very different game. It makes as much sense to directly compare Warmachine and Fantasy as it does to directly compare Mordheim and Fantasy.
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
Because they don't.
QFT. I am really baffled by this perception that PP is cheap and GW is expensive. Comparable models have comparable prices; you just need a lost less for a typical game of Warmahordes versus Fantasy or 40k.
Sorry but the final point is a playable army. If one costs 20$ per fig and requires 10 figs, that costs $200. OTOH if one costs 5$ per fig and requires 100, that costs $500. We can argue over the quality of the sculpt or the unreasonableness of the cost per fig but the bottomline if you want to play a game is the total cost to have a viable army. That is the joy that is GW. $500 to get your army and then shortlived duration of effectiveness. (Usually 2 to 4 codexes until you are relegated to 2nd class citizen.)
Sorry but the final point is a playable army. If one costs 20$ per fig and requires 10 figs, that costs $200. OTOH if one costs 5$ per fig and requires 100, that costs $500. We can argue over the quality of the sculpt or the unreasonableness of the cost per fig but the bottomline if you want to play a game is the total cost to have a viable army. That is the joy that is GW. $500 to get your army and then shortlived duration of effectiveness. (Usually 2 to 4 codexes until you are relegated to 2nd class citizen.)
See the above point. If this is the case the problem is not the price of the models, the problem is that you want to play/pay for a skirmish game. Which is fine, but it is a different issue altogether. I am just getting into Legion and think I will really enjoy Warmahordes, but it isn't going to be the same kind of experience as fielding my Tyranid or Skaven swarms. Not saying one is better or worse, but it is an apples and oranges comparison.
DAaddict wrote:
Sorry but the final point is a playable army.
I disagree, completely. GW has stated that maybe only 1/3rd of their customers actually play games. Other people are modelers, painters, artists, or just collectors. There's a guy who lives down the street from me, he's a corporate lawyer. He's got over 20 armies, and doesn't play any of the games. He gets people to paint them for him, and he collects them.
GW is, and views themselves as, a miniatures company first, and a gaming company second. The "final point" is the price of the miniatures. The game, for them, exists to create more demand for the miniatures. You have to buy more models every few codexes to remain competitive - they've turned your desire to be competitive into a demand for more miniatures.
The pricing of the miniatures is impacted by the game because demand influences how many they need to sell to cover their fixed costs. They're going to sell less Marneus Calgars than they're going to sell generic ultramarines, because people will buy 20 or more marines for each marneus. That's just how that part works.
But to claim that the final point is a playable army ignores all those people who don't want playable armies. The people who want one of a model to paint it. And the pricing is absolutely within reason for the quality of the figures you get from GW. They're not the best figures, nor the most expensive. They're loads better than the worst figures, and they're not competing to be the cheapest.
A lot of the arguments I see boil down to anger at a company that has created something so cool that they want more and more of it, but don't want to pay a fair market price to get the more and more of it. So they say, "well, privateer press didn't make me want as many of their models, so they're cheaper and they're great, but GW sucks for making me want more than I can afford." I mean, okay, I guess if that's how you feel. But don't expect me to join in. I enjoy painting quality models, and I enjoy creating large armies, and I've got a group of friends who drink beers and roll dice, and none of us have anything against how GW is conducting their business.
Sorry but the final point is a playable army. If one costs 20$ per fig and requires 10 figs, that costs $200. OTOH if one costs 5$ per fig and requires 100, that costs $500. We can argue over the quality of the sculpt or the unreasonableness of the cost per fig but the bottomline if you want to play a game is the total cost to have a viable army. That is the joy that is GW. $500 to get your army and then shortlived duration of effectiveness. (Usually 2 to 4 codexes until you are relegated to 2nd class citizen.)
See the above point. If this is the case the problem is not the price of the models, the problem is that you want to play/pay for a skirmish game. Which is fine, but it is a different issue altogether. I am just getting into Legion and think I will really enjoy Warmahordes, but it isn't going to be the same kind of experience as fielding my Tyranid or Skaven swarms. Not saying one is better or worse, but it is an apples and oranges comparison.
I am not saying a 10 fig skirmish game is as enjoyable as a tactical 100 fig per side game but the issue IS the total cost of a game. If I have $500 disposable income, I can chose to do either but if I only have $200 disposable, I have a choice of one.
And yes I do ignore the one off modeller. You buy a box of 10 space marines and have at it you can paint 10 different chapters. Chances are you will be done with one box. The gamer is going to buy 5 to 6 boxes on the "need." So given 10 painters and 10 gamers we have a 6 to 1 ratio of who is going to buy more and should be more worth it to the hobby. While I may be a miniature company, I want the guy who is going to by 20 blisters as opposed to the one-off buyer of 5 different blisters.
Having read Redbeards statement, he has swayed me, i had never viewed GW as a model company, but as a gaming company, if you take that into account,and if that actually is the way that they view themselves, then he is very correct. But the point that DAaddict and I brought up, does effect them some. But if they truly are a modelling company at their heart, then that should not bother them as much, because i have seen some PP models and do believe GW is better. but kudos all around
Pacific wrote: there were literally hundreds of bodies/weapon components made that would never be any use (and would just be scrap)
So why didn't they just melt them down and re-use them?
Storage.
How long do you catalogue and store model pieces before you determine it's not profitable? They had millions of dollars tied up in storage and shipping. They have been cutting costs over the last five years, and that was a huge savings.
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Grimtuff wrote:
Mastiff wrote:
Sorry, I just have to ask; did you twirl your mustache as you made that statement?
Nah, I was stroking my Goatee. I genuinely want to see GW burn to the ground, and out of those ashes arise a new, better, reborn company. They are going have to fall on their arse quite hard and I think this year's financials will be the beginning of the end, all we need is another Pokemon or equivelant to rid GW of the kiddies spending their pennies and the rest will topple.
Awesome I wish I could grow a goatee for moments like that.
For the record, though, GW's profits have been steadily rising since 2006. they've taken a slight dip (6%) for the first half of 2011, but overall they're doing well financially.
DAaddict wrote:
Sorry but the final point is a playable army. If one costs 20$ per fig and requires 10 figs, that costs $200. OTOH if one costs 5$ per fig and requires 100, that costs $500. We can argue over the quality of the sculpt or the unreasonableness of the cost per fig but the bottomline if you want to play a game is the total cost to have a viable army. That is the joy that is GW. $500 to get your army and then shortlived duration of effectiveness. (Usually 2 to 4 codexes until you are relegated to 2nd class citizen.)
Other hobbies have similiar start up fees and astronomical ones if you choose to stay in. My mate who plays golf says the for an entry level bag of clubs $300-$400 Usd while a good "keeper set" of golf clubs will cost you past $1000. He also said the most he's ever spent on a single club was over $400 USD. My cousin flys Radio controlled vehicles says that an entry level RC plane with controls run $200. Because he's stays in his hobby he's amassed over $8,000 Usd of planes/controls etc....and that's not even counting maintenance costs (because sometimes planes crash). And there are a myriad of other "hobbies cost money" examples.
And GW isn't producing crap by any means. In the non wargaming miniature collecting hobby there are companies that certainly are less expensive than GW, but what kind of quality are we talking about? Sure some better quality for less, but also some less quality for less. And honestly check this girl out.
AussieCon SteamPunk Dorothy $24Usd before shipping. I would have snapped her up in a minute had I saw her earlier. OOP Now. Quality matches if not surpasses GW easily, made of resin-so it's supposed to be cheaper. But this is the type of quality GW is going for on every new sculpt. They've employed new tech to back their play. I don't think I've seen a piece in 4 years that thought was absolute gak. And their customer service is great too - I've never had a problem getting an entire miniature replaced without any return on my part. So there are some brightsides to working with GW.
I'm not apologizing for GW. I know that they've done some f'd up things. I personally hate seeing old casts get bumped up in price year after year. But the bottom line is what we do is a hobby. Hobbies cost money, some more than others for sure. And we get all emotional and upset because it's a hobby we love. I think that we need to get touch with the fact that we could be spending the same or a lot more on other personal interests in lieu of GW. And after that tell GW how you really feel with your wallet.
mwnciboo wrote:Can someone please enlighten me as to the Poor Quality rules that some people are alluding to?
If someone could give me a few examples.
Sure, where to start?
How about, a game that's advertised as being "True Line of Sight", where if you can see one model in a unit of 20, you can kill all 20. How is that True Line of Sight?
What about a unit with five heavy weapons, that's allowed to engage two targets each turn, costing less points than a unit that has four identical heavy weapons, and may only engage one target each turn? Oh, and the less expensive unit also gets to re-roll their night-fighting spotting distance as well.
Or the one that allows a unit to arm itself differently and allocate wounds all over the place?
The Space Wolf codex is a bit on the crazy side with Scouts with Special Weapons, and the best Tactical marines (Counter charge, Bolters + CC Weapon, 2 x special weapons). LF's are annoying, Fire control being a killer.
BA's are a PIAT as well with all the FNP that they get.
On the LOS and wounds issue, well you can argue all of this with other Games systems like FoW. It's a simulation, a tabletop representation. I don't think it's broken, so much as not how others would do it. I really (not sure why) don't get bothered enough to quit the hobby over it, maybe i'm not a true wargamer, i like collecting painting and going to tournaments. But I don't get bothered by too much detail, maybe that's why i don't follow religion (It doesn't bother me that i don't know why life developed on earth and not in other places, and I'm a Physicist so really i should be intrigued)
I think that hit/wound/armour save should be Hit/Armour Save/Wound but that's me e.g. A wound is only wound after it has defeated the armour, and sometimes a round can only just penetrate and so not have enough energy left to penetrate skin and tissue. But that's just me, i think that we cannot create a foolproof set of rules that can satisfy everything and everyone.
candy.man wrote:In regards to encouraging angry customers to speak with Jervis face to face, that was a bad idea LOL. I can see the headlines now...
“A man in Nottingham was brutally assaulted by an angry mob in a popular local bar over recent controversial decisions made by miniatures company Gamesworkshop. It is believed the attack was instigated after CEO Mark Wells, encouraged customers to address their concerns face to face with head designer, Jervis Johnson”. Eye witnesses have reported that after the savage beatings, Mr Johnson was forcibly fed various products made by the company. Reports have advised that Mr Johnson is currently sitting in intensive care and is not expected to make a full recovery. No charges have been pressed at this stage”.
LMAO!!!
This made me LOL, but I was more refering to a disgruntled but calm and non-violent mob as oppose to one armed with crowbars, GW products and a spoon.
Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't know what PP prices are because I've never looked at any of their products.
I do however know that the other miniatures companies I buy from, such as Hasslefree, Corvus Belli and historical figures, are cheaper by a margin of 25% to 75% compared to GW models on a one for one basis.
Okay. I don't know much about this historical lines, or how detailed they are. I do know that Hasslefree models are not as detailed as GW.
Here is the pic from the front page of their website:
They're not bad, but they're not as detailed. The top-left model is laughably simple. Neither of the right side models have any real detail, and even the pirate seems more like the old 1980's grenadier models than a current sculpt. I can see why they're 25% cheaper than a similarly sized GW model.
And, yes, you're right, there are cheaper companies, but there are also companies that cost more on a per-model basis than GW. Freebooter miniatures, a line that I adore, is typically 5-10% more expensive than GW. Their individual characters can hit $20 for a human-sized model, and the slightly-larger-than-human-sized are more. But look at the detail:
My point, however, is that you're continually harping on about how some other companies produce figures for less than GW. That's true. But these other companies produce figures for more than GW, and you're not considering the quality of the models. Maybe that's fair if you're only considering them game pieces, but I have shown, (with data, in other threads), that GWs prices are far from the most expensive on the market, and are, by no means, out of line for quality miniatures.
No offense, but the complaint about Hasslefree is profoundly misplaced, to the degree that it undermines the sincerity of your argument; to say "The top-left model is laughably simple" in the context of criticism is mind boggling, when that mini is clearly intended to ape a man in a featureless bodysuit.
Further, you make an unwarranted conflation: that of more/less detailed with high quality. High detail can, certainly, be present in models of high quality, but high detail is certainly not the sine qua non of high quality. To imagine that it is would propose that
is higher quality then
To be clear, I'm here pointing out that Nagash, sculpt of poo that he is, is quite detailed, while the superlative Ninja (from Corvus Belli) is excelent not because she is festooned with gegaws, but because of other elements.
Moreover, it should be pointed out that the original point was "other miniatures companies I buy from, such as Hasslefree, Corvus Belli and historical figures, are cheaper by a margin of 25% to 75% compared to GW models on a one for one basis", which was answered by claiming that Hasslefree minis were "less detailed", which by the end "you're not considering the quality of the models", implying that "Hasslefree, Corvus Belli and historical figures" are able to be cheaper because they are of lower quality. A point neither warranted nor supported, nor, indeed, at issue in the original statement.
The real question is why does GW charge so much more than smaller companies producing comparable minis? I don't think it has to do with the detail of the minis...
Buzzsaw wrote: No offense, but the complaint about Hasslefree is profoundly misplaced, to the degree that it undermines the sincerity of your argument; to say "The top-left model is laughably simple" in the context of criticism is mind boggling, when that mini is clearly intended to ape a man in a featureless bodysuit.
Okay, that doesn't explain the other two. I didn't go in-depth to pick any specific models, that's simply the image on the hasslefree front page.
Further, you make an unwarranted conflation: that of more/less detailed with high quality. High detail can, certainly, be present in models of high quality, but high detail is certainly not the sine qua non of high quality.
I accept this point. Perhaps I should clarify, it's not the amount of detail on the hasslefree miniatures that leads me to dismiss them as inferior, it's the quality of the details. The hasslefree sculpts are not as clean. They're not as crisp. They're not as high quality as the other company's models. They're just not.
Moreover, it should be pointed out that the original point was "other miniatures companies I buy from, such as Hasslefree, Corvus Belli and historical figures, are cheaper by a margin of 25% to 75% compared to GW models on a one for one basis", which was answered by claiming that Hasslefree minis were "less detailed", which by the end "you're not considering the quality of the models", implying that "Hasslefree, Corvus Belli and historical figures" are able to be cheaper because they are of lower quality. A point neither warranted nor supported, nor, indeed, at issue in the original statement.
Should I simply have replied that other miniature companies that I buy from, such as Freebooter, Avatars of War, or Studio McVey are more expensive than GW, with no understanding of why? Killkrazy's post was accurate, there are cheaper minis than GW, but it doesn't present the whole picture. And, when people buy miniatures to buy miniatures, instead of to think of them as game pieces, the quality of the model is a valid point of comparison. Model A might be cheaper, but model B is of higher quality. If you want cheap game tokens, buy A, if you want to paint a nice model, buy B. And this point is also directly connected to my prior statement that GW states only 1/3rd of their customers play the game, and I doubt that that whole third are buying their miniatures solely to use as game pieces. I know that I spend more time modelling and painting than I spend playing.
Brunius wrote:I'm sorry, if you people have to take into account the price of tin/plastic, then why do competitors such as privateer press still price their products lower?
Because they don't.
Except In Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Brazil etc.
To be honnest GW prices are only comparable to competitors in the US and Europe. So its fair to say that on the whole GW is significantly more expensive than similar models of equal quality for the vast majority of people on this planet.
For example the Infinity range is similar and often better in quality/detail than GW models. While also being marginaly cheaper. And thats in the US/Europe. Which makes it a hell of alot cheaper than GW for every one else.
I find the RRP in the UK to be mostly reasonable and would be happy to pay those prices. But since I can't, im going to keep wondering why competitors, such as privateer press, can price their products so much lower.
You can add Canada to that list as well. GW has "Screw Canada" pricing in effect that means GW plastics can be more than PP metals for some products. Another thing to remember when comparing prices is that many countries have the practice of including all applicable taxes in the final price. The US and Canada do not. People often look at Privateer's UK prices compared to GW's UK prices and see them looking pretty equal. But translate that after tax UK price into Canadian Dollars and then add our taxes and I'd still be getting a good 25-30% discount.
If GW wanted to be fair to all markets, they would sell all trade accounts on UK pricing less VAT & wholesale discount and let each local market discover the final market price in order to cover the higher costs of operating and shipping to their location. PP pretty much does this with their product (but in USD). The distributors take the product at PP's distributor pricing, pay for shipping, add their cut and offer it to the local Australian and Canadian stores.
In the UK, a local company casts up privateer's products and sells it at a price that is about the USD exchange + VAT. I just bought some cryx stuff from Wayland and payed a bit less as I would here thanks to their free shipping offer.
Not to abandon my Aussie brothers, but I have to say that Canada has it even worse than we do. Oh sure, you have cheaper prices (there are few that suffer as badly as Oz when it comes to slowed pricing structures), but in Canada it's more blatant and insulting because of just how close you are to a place that has cheaper prices.
Unlike Oz/UK, Canada/USA is a far shorter journey, so the price difference between stores that could be 100 miles from one another is just balls-to-the-wall insane.
[EDIT]: Actually, that could be an interesting question. I'm sure GW stores aren't as prevalent in CA as they are in the US, but what are the two closest GW stores (ie. the two closest GW stores where one is in Canada, the other in the US). I'd be interested to see that figure.
The cost issue has been muddied a bit here. Try these examples which give a better comparison:
Perry Miniatures War of the Roses Billmen - £18 for 40 (£0.45 ea) GW Empire State Troops - £15.50 for 10 (£1.55 ea)
Both are multi-part 28mm plastic kits with very similar styling (real 15th century vs 'faux' 15th century), include command group, weapon options, etc. and the quality-of-sculpting argument holds no weight as the Perry's sculpt for GW as well as themselves.
Why do the GW ones cost over 3 times as much per model?
Mantic games Wraiths were £14 for 5 in metal (£2.80 ea), they change to resin and now cost £14 for 10 (£1.40 ea) GW Mandrakes were £18 for 5 metal (£3.60 ea), they change to resin and now cost £23 for 5 (£4.60 ea).
Why does one company move to a cheaper casting material and half the price per model, whilst GW does the same and increases the price per model by 28%?
Buzzsaw said what I wanted to and managed to express it better that I could have done.
Detail is not necessarily a plus point in itself.
No doubt there are some models which are more expensive than GW, however most are cheaper.
GW's customers may include a lot of painters and modellers. GW actually sell the models as wargame pieces, not collector pieces, for what that is worth.
Each customer will have their own view on the quality versus price trade-off, of course.
Chimera_Calvin wrote:Why does one company move to a cheaper casting material and half the price per model, whilst GW does the same and increases the price per model by 28%?
Because GW produce the best miniature sculpts with the best state of the art machinery, with the best in field sculptor, with the best materials.
Chimera_Calvin wrote:Why does one company move to a cheaper casting material and half the price per model, whilst GW does the same and increases the price per model by 28%?
Because it's made of Finecast silly! We all know that stuff is both hard to source, difficult to make into mould correctly and requires extremely expensive and specialist equipment in order to make it into highly detailed (more than metal!) models. I mean - have you ever seen a Finecast models? They're easily the most high quality miniatures known to man. If you'd read any of GW's marketing material when they first came out, you'd know that.
Chimera_Calvin wrote:...........................Why do the GW ones cost over 3 times as much per model?..................................
Spoiler:
Answer: Retail Chain. But we all knew that.
Other stuff we all know: GW models must cost less than any other simile, simply because of Economies of Scale, but use the margin generated to garner greater market presence. Dispite the fct that I virtually never go to a GW store (indeed many don't even have one nearby) I apreciate the benefits that this brings to the wider community. Ergo I can accept GWs pricing, well Wayland acually but you get the point.
A more intereting question for me, is why do other [Fantasy/SciFi] companies follow GWs suit when, despite more limited scope of their Economies of Scale, they lack a retail chain but still support similar prices
mwnciboo wrote:Can someone please enlighten me as to the Poor Quality rules that some people are alluding to?
If someone could give me a few examples.
Hmm, let me see, warhammer:
Magic - main problem is any wizard can roll 6 dice, he has a 50% chance of getting a double 6 and if its one of mega spells a lot of time its game over in a single turn, items/abilites that add to power/dispel pool are overpowered now with a 12 dice limit, Book of Hoeth, cupped hamds, infernal puppet.
Shooting - True line of site allows you to shoot through units basically because you can see one gets right led, its silly, template weapons, removing guess ranges, shooting in two ranks
Units - The horde rule, its stupid, now all you see is massive units of fun running at each other, flank is worthless thanks to steadfast (steadfast is one of the worse write rules I have seen)
Miovement - Random charges, yes the shuffle was bad in 7th but now dwarf can charge faster thh cavalry (it just looks silly)
combat - striking in I order, you combine this with random charges and it really doesn't matter who charges, you gain +1 combat res
WoC book - The chaos marks are poorly writtem, a unit of chaos marauders pays the same as a warshrine fir frenzy, warshrine gains 1 attack for 30pts, marauders usually gain 10
Their are more but I haven't slept since yesterday so my brain isn't at 100%
Chimera_Calvin wrote:...........................Why do the GW ones cost over 3 times as much per model?..................................
Spoiler:
Answer: Retail Chain. But we all knew that.
Other stuff we all know: GW models must cost less than any other simile, simply because of Economies of Scale, but use the margin generated to garner greater market presence. Dispite the fct that I virtually never go to a GW store (indeed many don't even have one nearby) I apreciate the benefits that this brings to the wider community. Ergo I can accept GWs pricing, well Wayland acually but you get the point.
A more intereting question for me, is why do other [Fantasy/SciFi] companies follow GWs suit when, despite more limited scope of their Economies of Scale, they lack a retail chain but still support similar prices
There isn't one single reason but here are some points to consider.
1. Every company has its own cost structure, which is usually reflected in retail prices. Economies of scale are one factor in this.
2. Companies often price their products by comparison with their competitors' products. If GW establish the idea in the market place that the correct price of a single infantry model is £8, and £12 for a cavalry, then other companies can price their models at £6 and £9 and look cheap in comparison.
3. Various historical ranges are half to one quarter the price of comparable GW. Single infantry models range from 30-40p for plastic to £1.50 for metal.
4. SF and Fantasy models tend to be more expensive than Historicals, possibly reflecting my point no.2. That said, Hasslefree models are £3.50 to £4.50 except for the large ones.
Kilkrazy wrote:3. Various historical ranges are half to one quarter the price of comparable GW. Single infantry models range from 30-40p for plastic to £1.50 for metal.
And to add to this, a War of the Roses Billman is a War of the Roses Billman. There are many historical companies that produce these, and they can be used in dozens of different rule sets. The competition helps to set and maintain the lower prices because people can shop around for minis that they like, that are cheap, that are more expensive, whatever.
I recently started Napoleonics in 15mm, and research says that AB has the 'best' minis, but at 15mm they cost $.80 a model. I can buy BattleHonors (which I prefer) for 50 infantry for $12 ($.24 per model). Significantly cheaper. Others would gladly buy AB.
With GW, if you like the aesthetic, play in stricter tournaments, then you are stuck with GW models (and prices). If you play at a club, then you can use whatever you want. Other companies, who really are not competitors to GW (i.e. GW = sci-fi/fantasy, PP=steampunk/fantasy) see what the big fish can charge, and then charge the same or less. And people are free to buy and pay whatever.
On topic, GW have their own ideas about what they're doing, which makes sense to someone (one would hope). Of course, with the strategic course shifts every so many months (DA style codexes, now GK style codexes; no WD rules, now WD rules; streamlined with limited options, now total options, etc.) one wonders who really is in control. Could the residents be running the asylum?
Chimera_Calvin wrote:...........................Why do the GW ones cost over 3 times as much per model?..................................
Spoiler:
Answer: Retail Chain. But we all knew that.
Other stuff we all know: GW models must cost less than any other simile, simply because of Economies of Scale, but use the margin generated to garner greater market presence. Dispite the fct that I virtually never go to a GW store (indeed many don't even have one nearby) I apreciate the benefits that this brings to the wider community. Ergo I can accept GWs pricing, well Wayland acually but you get the point.
A more intereting question for me, is why do other [Fantasy/SciFi] companies follow GWs suit when, despite more limited scope of their Economies of Scale, they lack a retail chain but still support similar prices
There isn't one single reason but here are some points to consider.
....................
2. Companies often price their products by comparison with their competitors' products. If GW establish the idea in the market place that the correct price of a single infantry model is £8, and £12 for a cavalry, then other companies can price their models at £6 and £9 and look cheap in comparison.
3. Various historical ranges are half to one quarter the price of comparable GW. Single infantry models range from 30-40p for plastic to £1.50 for metal.
.............................................
This is what I was getting at.
2. This should be enough for most to rage about but I often find it curious that only GW get most of that ire. Battlefront sometimes gets something similar with the WW2 crowd. But then GW do go that extra mile to be a bit annoying!
3. The historical element of the hobby, purely by being in existence before GW, do not see themselves comparatively to their product, as well as the obvious differences in ranges. I would also add that being more diverse, long lived and traditional in their approach they are less inclined towards this sort of behaviour as well.
My point really was that while GW are corporate, what makes be ponder are the non-corporate companies behaving so slavishly to the example set by said Evil Empire (or should that be EEEEvil EEEEmpire to use an internet meme that I hear is very popular ).
H.B.M.C. wrote:Not to abandon my Aussie brothers, but I have to say that Canada has it even worse than we do. Oh sure, you have cheaper prices (there are few that suffer as badly as Oz when it comes to slowed pricing structures), but in Canada it's more blatant and insulting because of just how close you are to a place that has cheaper prices.
The stuff sent up to Canada comes from the same Memphis factory. And as for the higher shipping costs, it's negligible given the carrier they use. I've done a lot of importing from the US and the cost of sending a few boxes by ground from the US to Canada is maybe $5 more.
As a Canadian though, I will never say we have it worse than Australia though. We're half way between you an the UK as far as prices go and I've taken to leaving GW's site on Australia as my country just to see the sticker shock if I ever go there from a link here on Dakka or something.
[EDIT]: Actually, that could be an interesting question. I'm sure GW stores aren't as prevalent in CA as they are in the US, but what are the two closest GW stores (ie. the two closest GW stores where one is in Canada, the other in the US). I'd be interested to see that figure.
The one in Surrey, British Columbia and then one in Washington state. Or maybe Windsor and Detroit?
I'd been thinking about buying the Fantasy Rulebook for a couple of months, but my choice was paying way too much ($70 Canadian) for a massive tome that weighed more than my army (which annoys the helloutta me at 40k tourneys), or buying the much-preferred mini-rulebook in the Isle o' Blood set for $130, which was completely out of my budget.
Then I went to London two months ago for my anniversary, and decided to pop into a GW store to check things out. I ended up buying the Isle o' Blood set for 50 pounds, about $75 Canadian. After a bit of surgery I had the box condensed to half its length and in my luggage with some great plastic bitz for my dark elves.
H.B.M.C. wrote:[EDIT]: Actually, that could be an interesting question. I'm sure GW stores aren't as prevalent in CA as they are in the US, but what are the two closest GW stores (ie. the two closest GW stores where one is in Canada, the other in the US). I'd be interested to see that figure.
Here you go: Not sure if the Vancouver West one is still in operation. Discounts the up to +/- hours that you will wait at the border crossing. Depending on when you cross, YMMV.
GW London ON, Canada and GW Hampton Village MI, USA are 2 hours 10 mintues apart. (I've done this crossing many times - if you hit it at the right time, you'll be waiting about 10 minutes each way.)
GW Vancouver West BC, Canada and the Marysville Store WA, USA are 2 hours 17 minutes apart.
Of course, considering that US GW prices are amoung the lowest in the world (relatively), and Neil (The War Store) discounts off US MSRP... AND delivers to my door without needing to drive across the border... WIN!
-edit- Heck, at the worst of times when GW Canada was roughly 1.5x the cost of the US MSRP, Neil's everyday price was cheaper than the LFGS's wholesale prices from GW direct.
Overall, the number of high quality sculpts that GW makes, of vehicles characters and troops, is far beyond that of the rest of their competitors. Sure, some other companies produce a handful of sculpts which compare well or even favourably, but the majority of their sculpts are equal or more likely below the quality of most GW models. There are very very few companies that mass produce plastic (or even metal) rank+file troops in the quantity and quality of GW core troops (of which nearly every army has 2+ boxes), and most of them are single-part, not multi-part and multi-pose. Again, exceptions do exist (most notably Perry Miniatures, who ironically were/are also GW sculptors).
GW has a few inter-related advantages that let them jack the price up:
1) Sci-fi/Fantasy settings generally have a very set aesthetic. Put LOTR elves down next to WHFB orcs and it is jarring. They have a natural monopoly on products to do with their universes, and so if you want to play their games, you must buy their models.
2) GW IP is quite compelling. Most people playing 40k do it because they like 40k, not because they like wargaming, if you know what I mean.
3) Historicals, and generics, have a lot more competition than Sci-fi. A 28mm Allied Parachutist is a 28mm Allied Parachutist (except of course when he is one from 1943 instead of 1942 and thus has different shaped buttons and longer socks) and is not protectable; as such, there is much much more competition driving prices down.
Other companies producing decently high quality minis are pricing them at around GW prices. As someone said above, I think it is more likely that they are basing their prices off GW's prices rather than inventing their own pricing model. Looking at many Reaper or Hasslefree sculpts they can get very cheap - or some companies like AoW are more expensive than GW. GW is obviously placing a tax on their miniatures so that they will support the retail chain - which seems like fairly backwards marketing to some, but then again GW have built the only international, readily available, played-in-high-street-malls wargames company off the back of this model so it is possible that they have good reasons behind what they are doing. The good thing for us is that Mark Wells has actually taken time to give a marginally personal reply to people's concerns, which means he has read and understood the concerns of the customer base even if he does not agree with them. The market has a very effective way of punishing companies who do not perform well for their customers though, so it might behove them to put some weight to our words.
Trasvi wrote:
GW is obviously placing a tax on their miniatures so that they will support the retail chain - which seems like fairly backwards marketing to some, but then again GW have built the only international, readily available, played-in-high-street-malls wargames company off the back of this model so it is possible that they have good reasons behind what they are doing.
I'll let Pumbagor do my facial expression:
I don't "played-in-high-street-malls" is really a boon to the consumer. To GW? Sure, but frankly I could give a gak.
But like you said: vote with your wallet. I already am.
keezus wrote:Here you go: Not sure if the Vancouver West one is still in operation. Discounts the up to +/- hours that you will wait at the border crossing. Depending on when you cross, YMMV.
GW London ON, Canada and GW Hampton Village MI, USA are 2 hours 10 mintues apart. (I've done this crossing many times - if you hit it at the right time, you'll be waiting about 10 minutes each way.)
GW Vancouver West BC, Canada and the Marysville Store WA, USA are 2 hours 17 minutes apart.
Thanks for the answer. That's very interesting actually. But a follow-up:
You don't happen to know the rough distances in either miles or km from one another? Even their addresses so I can plug them into Google Maps will do. I want to see if it's the same distance between, say, the Sydney store and the Newcastle store, which are in the same state here, and would be about that time apart if you drove (no boarder crossing required obviously!).
keezus wrote:Here you go: Not sure if the Vancouver West one is still in operation. Discounts the up to +/- hours that you will wait at the border crossing. Depending on when you cross, YMMV.
GW London ON, Canada and GW Hampton Village MI, USA are 2 hours 10 mintues apart. (I've done this crossing many times - if you hit it at the right time, you'll be waiting about 10 minutes each way.)
GW Vancouver West BC, Canada and the Marysville Store WA, USA are 2 hours 17 minutes apart.
Thanks for the answer. That's very interesting actually. But a follow-up:
You don't happen to know the rough distances in either miles or km from one another? Even their addresses so I can plug them into Google Maps will do. I want to see if it's the same distance between, say, the Sydney store and the Newcastle store, which are in the same state here, and would be about that time apart if you drove (no boarder crossing required obviously!).
I no longer have reasons to order from GW Canada anymore ( or any Canada retailer ) due to the price difference..
Also if im going to be slapped with such high tax anyways, i rather order from USA. Even if i get caught by customs, it still should be cheaper BY ALOT.
Take the UK prices, don't deduct their VAT, add 25-50%, that's the price you see on the sticker. Take it up to the till, add another 12% taxes (5% taxes in one province). In the US, sales taxes varies by state but the most common seems to be about 6%.
Examples:
Space Marine Tactical Squad.
UK Final Price: £23
Canada Final Price: £31.78
Premium: 38%
Australia Final Price: £40.78
Premium: 77%
US Final Price: £24.74 (using 6% sales tax as it's the most common rate)
Premium: 7.5%
EDIT: Adding a "Finecast" model to round out the comparison:
Hive Tyrant
UK Price: £36
Canada Final Price: £49.18
Premium: 36.6%
Australia Final Price: £63.15
Premium: 75.4%
US Final Price: £38.36
Premium: 6.6%
The reason Wayland & Maelstom have been able to operate so successfully with cheap international shipping is that they don't have to charge or remit their included VAT when selling to the rest of the world. Neither would GW if they supplied retailers directly from their UK operations. So you end up taking that tactical squad, selling it for £23 and having £4.6 pounds to cover shipping it to any part of the world.
GW's "Screw Canada" pricing is not nearly as bad as their "Screw Australia" pricing but is especially strange because they don't have the excuse of shipping around the world. The stuff is made on the same continent and ships across the largest trade border in the world. Both pricing policies are especially bad though, because if a company can ship an individual product and have the shipping charges be subsidized by the VAT, there's really no excuse to say shipping to Australia or Canada causes the higher prices.
wuestenfux wrote:Nice job, Calvin.
However, Mr. Wells seems to understimate the current mood of his customers. The poll underpins this.
Current mood of the internet.) Different from the entire GW customer base. Many of the angry people on Dakka have stated over and over that they don't/won't buy new GW products. Hard to count them as a customer at that point. And the internet is always angry and looking for reason to be angry.
And I'm not saying that the GW higher ups have their finger on the pulse, theirs always been problems between those in the Ivory Towers and those in the trenches. But you also can't judge the entire customer base by the people being angry on forums.
When Jervis says he will speak to anyone regarding their concerns, he is serious about that. I see him most weeks in Bugmans having coffee with experienced customers like yourself to learn what your suggestions are.
I like this bit
I am at warhammer world every week for at least 8 hours 4 of those hours normally spent in the bar with a book.
Never have I seen Jervis sat in there having a coffee with a customer, in fact never have I seen him in there. I will start to keep an eye out for him so I can address my concerns to him and tell him that white dwarf is terrible in person rather than just saying it on the internet.
Compliments to both you and Mr. Wells for writing eloquent and polite letters. They got a little testy in a few parts, but you both did a good job conveying your points. Also, while dakka does have a good population, I don't believe that one online community constitutes a good survey base. I would have attempted to include warseer, or perhaps gotten BoLS in on it. Then again, you'd have problems with people voting multiple times if they were members of multiple communities, but I'm getting too into detail. Nevermind my scientific tendencies.
When Jervis says he will speak to anyone regarding their concerns, he is serious about that. I see him most weeks in Bugmans having coffee with experienced customers like yourself to learn what your suggestions are.
I like this bit
I am at warhammer world every week for at least 8 hours 4 of those hours normally spent in the bar with a book.
Never have I seen Jervis sat in there having a coffee with a customer, in fact never have I seen him in there. I will start to keep an eye out for him so I can address my concerns to him and tell him that white dwarf is terrible in person rather than just saying it on the internet.
That's funny. I guess that Jervis will show up sometimes, have a coffee and then disappear. Having a talk with a visitor or customer? I guess not.
wuestenfux wrote:Nice job, Calvin.
However, Mr. Wells seems to understimate the current mood of his customers. The poll underpins this.
You mean the mood of an insignificant subsection of his customers... Don't overestimate the vocal minority... Especially when many of those 'vocal' are not even GW customers and claim not to purchase from the evil empire in the first place. Why should GW listen to non-customers?
wuestenfux wrote:Nice job, Calvin.
However, Mr. Wells seems to understimate the current mood of his customers. The poll underpins this.
You mean the mood of an insignificant subsection of his customers... Don't overestimate the vocal minority... Especially when many of those 'vocal' are not even GW customers and claim not to purchase from the evil empire in the first place. Why should GW listen to non-customers?
Well, Mr. Wells has listened to this insignificant subsection ... and he was trying to tell that Jervis will listen to an insignificant portion of players visiting Bugman's bar?
Automatically Appended Next Post: After all, Mr. Wells is not stupid. He will know that Dakka is a rather large community compared with other forums.
wuestenfux wrote:Nice job, Calvin.
However, Mr. Wells seems to understimate the current mood of his customers. The poll underpins this.
You mean the mood of an insignificant subsection of his customers... Don't overestimate the vocal minority... Especially when many of those 'vocal' are not even GW customers and claim not to purchase from the evil empire in the first place. Why should GW listen to non-customers?
Well, Mr. Wells has listened to this insignificant subsection ... and he was trying to tell that Jervis will listen to an insignificant portion of players visiting Bugman's bar?
Automatically Appended Next Post: After all, Mr. Wells is not stupid. He will know that Dakka is a rather large community compared with other forums.
But he may not care about Dakka at all, so don't overestimate the importance of online communities.)
You can only throw crap at someone so long before they don't care about what you say, and don't listen. Years ago, GW quit listening to a lot of what's on the forums because of the constant negativity. The vocal minority of "I will never buy GW and haven't in years!" tends to drown out the rest. Signal to BS ratio is rather low on forums, and currently hovering about 0 for Dakka. No one from GW is going to want to sift through thread after thread of GW bashing. At some point back we became irrelevant.
You write a well thought out letter. You get one back.
You throw crap on forums, you get ignored.
wuestenfux wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post: After all, Mr. Wells is not stupid. He will know that Dakka is a rather large community compared with other forums.
But he may not care about Dakka at all, so don't overestimate the importance of online communities.)
And Dakka is far from united which means while he may be able to change policies to please some of Dakka he will never be able to please all of Dakka. It isn't like someone can say the full purchasing power of dakka is behind <insert policy change here> because it isn't. Online communities being a vocal minority, even within them is an even *MORE insignificant smaller minority with an even louder voice...
If you really boil it down, about 90% of the posts in these multiple threads are from the same 10 people. I don't believe they represent an accurate cross-section of Dakka, the online community or the GW customerbase as a whole. Sure it is fun to discuss and complain on the internet, but I am not sure GW should change policy based on the opinion of a dozen or so people on a single forum.
It's true- the letter in the OP was well thought out and got a thorough reply.
However, that doesn't change the fact that the reply, although thorough, was completely unsatisfactory... and doesn't acknowledge any lack on GW's part on any of the points the OP raised.
I know they might not be willing to do this in letter form, but hopefully they are catching the hint that they'd do better to roll out major changes with a bit more... finesse... than they have been.
I actually think almost all of the recent changes may have been necessary in one form or another, and some have even been good things for the hobby (I think Finecast will be in the long run, for example). But the way they went about it was certainly a PR nightmare, and made what was otherwise a number of defensible decisions (switching away from a more expensive material to a cheaper one) into gakstorms.
So that's my take... they could make some minor adjustments in the way they view/interact/release information to customers, and make a world of difference, without changing a single corporate decision............
nkelsch wrote:You mean the mood of an insignificant subsection of his customers... Don't overestimate the vocal minority... Especially when many of those 'vocal' are not even GW customers and claim not to purchase from the evil empire in the first place. Why should GW listen to non-customers?
Because the vocal 'minority' discourages other people from buying into the game/purchasing more models.
nkelsch wrote:You mean the mood of an insignificant subsection of his customers... Don't overestimate the vocal minority... Especially when many of those 'vocal' are not even GW customers and claim not to purchase from the evil empire in the first place. Why should GW listen to non-customers?
Because the vocal 'minority' discourages other people from buying into the game/purchasing more models.
Should the meat company strive to please vegetarians even though they do not buy thier product? Should they strive to listen to the feedback of a minority fringe of these non-customers out of fear they may say bad things to the core customerbase that will run them off from buying the product?
Maybe if the vocal minority is Oprah... Internet non-customers on dakka are not Oprah... GW should judge thier response to these people's criticism accordly.
12 people posting a fit in an online community many gamers have never heard of is not something GW should sit up and take notice. Regional sales drops and direct feedback from actual customers are.
You can only throw crap at someone so long before they don't care about what you say, and don't listen. Years ago, GW quit listening to a lot of what's on the forums because of the constant negativity. The vocal minority of "I will never buy GW and haven't in years!" tends to drown out the rest. Signal to BS ratio is rather low on forums, and currently hovering about 0 for Dakka. No one from GW is going to want to sift through thread after thread of GW bashing. At some point back we became irrelevant.
There has been constant negativity of late, but go back even a year or so and it was a great deal different. In fact, why GW actually closed down their own forums was a mystery to me, considering most of the atmosphere on their was overwhelmingly positive, in the form of new players asking about rules, armies (trying to get into the game) or just writing 'wow awesome!' about some new release.
I would argue that when GW have done something right, the majority of posts have tended towards the positive. The hubbub surrounding the Battle for Skull pass, Black Reach contents etc. and especially the Dark Eldar was overwhelmingly positive. I think it was a kind of reverse situation to the one we have now, with any 'dissenters' ('Ultramarines again?!?' etc.) generally been shot down. I agree that a kind of atmosphere, or zeitgeist, seems to swing on a pendulum from one side to the other depending on what has happened recently. But to say that public reaction to something is exclusively negative is to be rather selective about commenting on things from recent years.
The deluge of bad news recently; alienating the RoW customers, the quality control issues with Finecast, new secrecy rules and the price increase are a lot of things which individually could have (rightly or wrongly) put peoples backs up. In combination, they have produced a torrent of negativity that goes far beyond anything else I can remember, and I've been part of the forum community going back to the late 90's and the days of the relic forums.
I think a few strong releases, getting the QC ironed out with Finecast, and the annexation of the former colonies from the internet (joke), and the pedulum will swing back a little the other way. Certainly, I think for the most part fans really love the company and only need the smallest of olive branches to come back on side. In my case, even though I may have raised an eyebrow in the past at price rises and the switch to 1-man stores, for the most part I have been content. Now, the latest enactments make me feel like GW has got it's large and hairy out and swung in front of my face. To put it less crudely, and more specifically, I can no longer order GW product at a sane price, and even if I could the QC of finecast means that a long distance internet order is going to involve an element of risk.
So that's it really, I hate all the negativity around here, but I think it is completely justifiable for the most part. When people stop complaining, it means that they will have given up on GW entirely, and that will be a sad day indeed.
wuestenfux wrote:Nice job, Calvin.
However, Mr. Wells seems to understimate the current mood of his customers. The poll underpins this.
Current mood of the internet.) Different from the entire GW customer base. Many of the angry people on Dakka have stated over and over that they don't/won't buy new GW products. Hard to count them as a customer at that point. And the internet is always angry and looking for reason to be angry.
And I'm not saying that the GW higher ups have their finger on the pulse, theirs always been problems between those in the Ivory Towers and those in the trenches. But you also can't judge the entire customer base by the people being angry on forums.
Maybe in your region but not in mine. You can only report on your sphere of influence as well as anyone else in theirs.
The Internet brings sources of data together. Data is a key to marketing research. Companies do data mine the internet for sources of information. I know that as a fact.
You own a comic book/game store and it seems that you are doing well in your sphere of influence.
But that is your sphere of influence, not mine nor anyone else.
Of course the data expressed by yourself and others, will be noted by companies and people who search these sites for information.
Now slightly off the subject. It is good that you are well to open up another site. I congratulate you on that since it seems that you have a good mix on services you provide for your customer base.
Current mood of the internet.) Different from the entire GW customer base. Many of the angry people on Dakka have stated over and over that they don't/won't buy new GW products. Hard to count them as a customer at that point. And the internet is always angry and looking for reason to be angry.
And I'm not saying that the GW higher ups have their finger on the pulse, theirs always been problems between those in the Ivory Towers and those in the trenches. But you also can't judge the entire customer base by the people being angry on forums.
You can, however, judge it by GW's finacial reports. Unit sales are still decreasing overall, have been for years in a row. So it doesnt matter what the internet forums say, nor how well your store is doing(as it is doing very well by your own admission). Their reports are why folks say so. When your profit mostly comes from cost savings, currency conversions, some licensing, prince increases.....not your actual core product sales, well it says alot.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
skyth wrote:
nkelsch wrote:You mean the mood of an insignificant subsection of his customers... Don't overestimate the vocal minority... Especially when many of those 'vocal' are not even GW customers and claim not to purchase from the evil empire in the first place. Why should GW listen to non-customers?
Because the vocal 'minority' discourages other people from buying into the game/purchasing more models.
Alot of GW's early success, wasnt really GW store, nor their push. Alot of it was word of mouth, getting friends in, some indy stores(but nothing like the numbers today of stores). Alot of those same folks that helped build up GW, will also push folks instead of into GW, towards something else, or at least discourage them from GW.
Is it alot? *shrug* cant tell you. But it has had some effect./
Mark Wells tries to justify the price increase using overhead and materials, but all that doesn't mean anything if customers decides its not worth their time and money to invest in an expensive hobby.
The word of mouth approach fails. I've yet to persuade any of my friends into playing tabletop Warhammer. The reason is all the same. Cost of starting an army, even at 1000 points, scares them away. They prefer sticking to Relic Entertainment's Dawn of War II computer game.
The vocal minority are the ones NOT happy with GW plc direction , and think GWplc might fail.
The vocal minority WANT GW plc to SUCEED.
They are invested in GW plc in some way,even if it is just happy memories.
The customers that have no interest say NOTHING.
They just buy or leave.
Currently MrWells and MR Kirby are getting paid well .
They are motivated to do as little as possible , to maintain the status quo.(Not the band! )
So listening to the customers that actualy care about the future of GWplc and its games and minatures.Means listening to people that want action to improve the long term prospects of GW plc.
This means doing more than Kirby and Wells need to to get paid.
So Mr Wells listens to the 'silent majority'.
That say nothing when they buy , and nothing when they leave...
And he can do as little as he needs to to keep getting paid.
Who cares more about GW ?
Passionate hobbists who love the products and IP.
Or the man just taking the money out of GWplc while there is money to take out of GW plc...
The vocal minority are the ones NOT happy with GW plc direction , and think GWplc might fail.
The vocal minority WANT GW plc to SUCEED.
Well, minus the people who claim to want GW to burn down,
and the ones who claim to never buy their miniatures,
and the ones who don't like their rules and claim to never play the games.
and the people who love drama on the internet for entertainment itself.
and the ones who care enough to advocate changes that might kill GW outright.
Not all the vocal minority are speaking with one voice.) If you somehow got Mr. Kirby's ear, who do we elect to speak for the group?
ME, jk, i dont know, but the people that say Mr. kirby does as little as possible to keep the company where it is and not do any better are obviously misinformed. Much of CEO's pay is based on how well a company does, he gets stock rewards and bonuses, all of which are approved by their board of directors, so if the board sees a bad year, or dont think hes doing as well as he could, guess whos getting paid less. I am not trying to justify Mr. Kirby's actions or that of GW, but the people saying that he is doing as little as possible to keep things where they are are misinformed, because CEO's tend to like money, and the more successful the company is, the more the CEO gets
When Jervis says he will speak to anyone regarding their concerns, he is serious about that. I see him most weeks in Bugmans having coffee with experienced customers like yourself to learn what your suggestions are.
I like this bit
I am at warhammer world every week for at least 8 hours 4 of those hours normally spent in the bar with a book.
Never have I seen Jervis sat in there having a coffee with a customer, in fact never have I seen him in there. I will start to keep an eye out for him so I can address my concerns to him and tell him that white dwarf is terrible in person rather than just saying it on the internet.
I've sat there and had a chat and a drink for about an hour or so on at least 2 occasions. If you've been in contact with him/then he will, if he can, indeed meet and talk with you.
notprop wrote:So is the problem Canadian Taxes or/as well as Comparative prices differences?
Sorta lost track?
Canadian tax is 5% on the total declared value. Its no big deal, because it's still cheaper in the long run. The kick in the teeth is the postal service's arbitrar yhandling fee of $5 that makes me want to throttle the processing agent.
mikhaila wrote:
Current mood of the internet.) Different from the entire GW customer base. Many of the angry people on Dakka have stated over and over that they don't/won't buy new GW products. Hard to count them as a customer at that point. And the internet is always angry and looking for reason to be angry.
And I'm not saying that the GW higher ups have their finger on the pulse, theirs always been problems between those in the Ivory Towers and those in the trenches. But you also can't judge the entire customer base by the people being angry on forums.
To simply shrug off the current outrage as the typical angry forum members is simplistic and in my opinion, wrong.
Myself as an example. I've defended GW's decisions many times (Check my sig) and I've purchased a great deal of GW product over the past several years---and did up until the last month or so. My group spends similar amounts of money and have supported GW as long (if not longer). As a group, we've decided to go on a year long GW embargo and give other companies our money---and this was not born simply of the price increase. I believe there is a palpable shift in the customer mood---even if you aren't observing it in your store.
?
I genuinely want to see 
