Games Workshop, the retailer behind fantasy games such as 'Warhammer', has appointed the Bio Agency to handle its online services.

The digital agency was awarded the business following a four-way pitch against undisclosed agencies.

It will handle the global digital strategy for Games Workshop, which is seeking to grow its e-commerce business. It is the company's first agency appointment.

Earlier this month, Games Workshop released its first digital products to download from the iBookstore, in the form of interactive books for gamers.

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This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk

pretre wrote:Very interesting! Maybe this digital agency will handle their online presence and social media presence meaning they will have one!

AgeOfEgos wrote:

http://www.thebioagency.com/#/home


Some big names on their CV and I'm sure they carried a pretty nifty price tag. Looks like GW is serious.

They're representing Mount bloody Everest! GW is in good company now.

H.B.M.C. wrote:How's that saying go? The road to good intentions is paved with fists of ham? Something along those lines...


Though I would have liked to have seen that board meeting:

Kirby: So... digital media. I'd prefer it if we didn't even have electricity, but we can't ignore the Internet forever... Harry... what are you doing?
Exec #1: *concentrating very hard* I'm trying to will the Internet out of existance.
Exec #2: You've been doing that for 3 days straight. Trust me, it doesn't work. I tried.
Kirby: We all tried.

The digital agency was awarded the business following a four-way pitch against undisclosed agencies.

Unholy_Martyr wrote:From what I can tell these people know their stuff and their CV is, as AgeofEgos mentioned, pretty impressive. I think with the amount of experience they have, Games Workshop will have to heed their advice on content drips or they'll be flushing a massive opportunity and a boatload of cash down the toilet.

Unholy_Martyr wrote:@Testify

I never said I wanted leaked rules or anything of the sort...I was speaking in terms information about what the hell to expect (i.e. Upcoming releases more than a damn week in advance).

Kroothawk wrote:How did the Bio Agency win? They were the only e-commerce agency agreeing to not making any advertising

Testify wrote:Like what?
How can you announce what's going to be in rules...without announcing the rules?
And as a press statement, something like "LOOK OUT FOR HULL POINT" would be pretty lame.
And by "a week in advance" I assume you actually mean 3 or 4 weeks since it won't be on general sale until mid July.

Testify wrote:

Unholy_Martyr wrote:@Testify

I never said I wanted leaked rules or anything of the sort...I was speaking in terms information about what the hell to expect (i.e. Upcoming releases more than a damn week in advance).

Like what?
How can you announce what's going to be in rules...without announcing the rules?
And as a press statement, something like "LOOK OUT FOR HULL POINT" would be pretty lame.
And by "a week in advance" I assume you actually mean 3 or 4 weeks since it won't be on general sale until mid July.

ShumaGorath wrote:

pretre wrote:Very interesting! Maybe this digital agency will handle their online presence and social media presence meaning they will have one!

Having done that sort of work they'll only have the presence that GW allows them to have. That means that GW itself would have to start opening up in a more personable fashion (very unlikely) or start providing consistent news and content drips that would make social media useful to them (also unlikely). I suspect they're just going to start tweeting sameday product launches. I doubt GW considers these tools as anything other than direct marketing. These people probably won't be handling things like FAQ releases or the webstore businesses, so I don't really see much use in an agency like this in GWs strategy.

Altruizine wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

pretre wrote:Very interesting! Maybe this digital agency will handle their online presence and social media presence meaning they will have one!

Having done that sort of work they'll only have the presence that GW allows them to have. That means that GW itself would have to start opening up in a more personable fashion (very unlikely) or start providing consistent news and content drips that would make social media useful to them (also unlikely). I suspect they're just going to start tweeting sameday product launches. I doubt GW considers these tools as anything other than direct marketing. These people probably won't be handling things like FAQ releases or the webstore businesses, so I don't really see much use in an agency like this in GWs strategy.

Well, at least there will be somebody on the payroll and in the building to tell them "You guys are ****ing this up" when they default to their tried and true methods of failure.

Honestly, this is pretty cool. They would not have hired an agency if their plan was merely to keep rolling out digital rulebooks.

Charax wrote:Hopefully the first step will be to encourage GW to change their IP Policy:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Altruizine wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

pretre wrote:Very interesting! Maybe this digital agency will handle their online presence and social media presence meaning they will have one!

Having done that sort of work they'll only have the presence that GW allows them to have. That means that GW itself would have to start opening up in a more personable fashion (very unlikely) or start providing consistent news and content drips that would make social media useful to them (also unlikely). I suspect they're just going to start tweeting sameday product launches. I doubt GW considers these tools as anything other than direct marketing. These people probably won't be handling things like FAQ releases or the webstore businesses, so I don't really see much use in an agency like this in GWs strategy.

Well, at least there will be somebody on the payroll and in the building to tell them "You guys are ****ing this up" when they default to their tried and true methods of failure.

Honestly, this is pretty cool. They would not have hired an agency if their plan was merely to keep rolling out digital rulebooks.

Having been in that business that's not actually how that goes. The agency will just stay quiet unless they were also hired on to be a consultancy for these matters.

Altruizine wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Altruizine wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

pretre wrote:Very interesting! Maybe this digital agency will handle their online presence and social media presence meaning they will have one!

Having done that sort of work they'll only have the presence that GW allows them to have. That means that GW itself would have to start opening up in a more personable fashion (very unlikely) or start providing consistent news and content drips that would make social media useful to them (also unlikely). I suspect they're just going to start tweeting sameday product launches. I doubt GW considers these tools as anything other than direct marketing. These people probably won't be handling things like FAQ releases or the webstore businesses, so I don't really see much use in an agency like this in GWs strategy.

Well, at least there will be somebody on the payroll and in the building to tell them "You guys are ****ing this up" when they default to their tried and true methods of failure.

Honestly, this is pretty cool. They would not have hired an agency if their plan was merely to keep rolling out digital rulebooks.

Having been in that business that's not actually how that goes. The agency will just stay quiet unless they were also hired on to be a consultancy for these matters.

I realize there's an element of "don't speak unless you're spoken to" but isn't it fairly common for the corp to ask the agency for general or informal input on the way things are going? Obviously only in regards to their online presence; I'm not suggesting the agency will ever be in a position to recommend price changes or the Wood Elves' desperate need for a ranked unit.

Mad4Minis wrote:So, does that mean by selling the SM codex in elec format GW is counterfeiting its own products? Can they sue themselves?

Testify wrote:Anyone can sue themselves if they really wanted to make their lawyer rich. Stop trying to be clever.

notprop wrote:It's entirely possible of course that the GW e-products released so far could be the trail products produced by the Agency.

Necros wrote:99% certain, if they wanted to have an android version of the ipad SM codex, they would have to build the whole thing as an app from the ground up.

BrookM wrote:They're representing Mount bloody Everest! GW is in good company now.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Altruizine wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Altruizine wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

pretre wrote:Very interesting! Maybe this digital agency will handle their online presence and social media presence meaning they will have one!

Having done that sort of work they'll only have the presence that GW allows them to have. That means that GW itself would have to start opening up in a more personable fashion (very unlikely) or start providing consistent news and content drips that would make social media useful to them (also unlikely). I suspect they're just going to start tweeting sameday product launches. I doubt GW considers these tools as anything other than direct marketing. These people probably won't be handling things like FAQ releases or the webstore businesses, so I don't really see much use in an agency like this in GWs strategy.

Well, at least there will be somebody on the payroll and in the building to tell them "You guys are ****ing this up" when they default to their tried and true methods of failure.

Honestly, this is pretty cool. They would not have hired an agency if their plan was merely to keep rolling out digital rulebooks.

Having been in that business that's not actually how that goes. The agency will just stay quiet unless they were also hired on to be a consultancy for these matters.

I realize there's an element of "don't speak unless you're spoken to" but isn't it fairly common for the corp to ask the agency for general or informal input on the way things are going? Obviously only in regards to their online presence; I'm not suggesting the agency will ever be in a position to recommend price changes or the Wood Elves' desperate need for a ranked unit.

Not as much as you might think. Advertising and marketing is often more about shmoozing and relationships than actual throughput on the service. If the marketer doesn't want to risk client loss they might not attempt to push for anything since it doesn't always make for the best lunch conversation and it's less risky to have an initiative stagnate or fail when it was exactly what the client wanted then it is to risk pushing for more involvement client side only to have the campaign fail anyway. Given that the agency has other seemingly successful clients they may be in a more advantageous position for making suggestions though. It really varies by client and agency.

notprop wrote:It's entirely possible of course that the GW e-products released so far could be the trail products produced by the Agency.

travelnjones wrote:Seriously I don't know why they don't just make their rules 100% on line. I am more of an RPG guy so I may not get all of the in's and outs of war gaming so take this with a grain of salt. But if they moved to a completely online model they could make changes to rules almost like patches to video games. Increasing the cost of something or quickly addressing a rule that was unbalanced. On the small scale you could think of it like making chapter approved put directly into the rules every month. On the big scale they would have monthly rules updates that fix problems and introduce minis for all factions. They could move from their codex with a couple of waves of minis thing which seems sort of outdated and flawed. Honestly i don't know why everyone isn't doing this sort of thing already

d-usa wrote:Well, as the Hobbit is nearing release GW may hit the end of their self imposed news embargo.

d-usa wrote:My understanding is that previous leaks from GW resulted in some characters from the movies being revealed before the movie actually opened. So leaks from GW about the Lord of the Rings don't just affect the games but also tha actual movie by revealing stuff that was kept secret.

So the story is that in order for GW to get the rights to the Hobbit they had ro prove that they can keep a lid on leaks.

All just hearsay though.

Pacific wrote:

d-usa wrote:My understanding is that previous leaks from GW resulted in some characters from the movies being revealed before the movie actually opened. So leaks from GW about the Lord of the Rings don't just affect the games but also tha actual movie by revealing stuff that was kept secret.

So the story is that in order for GW to get the rights to the Hobbit they had ro prove that they can keep a lid on leaks.

All just hearsay though.

You say this, but I've heard it said that the complete lack of news is to try and create a 'kids at Christmas' kind of enthusiasm.

Although, that makes absolutely no sense, as that kind of feeling was because of the anticipation that you knew something was coming. Not just because you were only told one week before it arrived. Also, most of us here aren't 7 years old.

I do find it mildly amusing though that we are 10 days away from GW's biggest release (possible ever) and the general, casual public don't know a thing about it. It's like there are agents of disorder within the company, presumably wearing Privateer Press underpants, who are trying to reduce sales as much as possible.

travelnjones wrote:Seriously I don't know why they don't just make their rules 100% on line. I am more of an RPG guy so I may not get all of the in's and outs of war gaming so take this with a grain of salt. But if they moved to a completely online model they could make changes to rules almost like patches to video games. Increasing the cost of something or quickly addressing a rule that was unbalanced. On the small scale you could think of it like making chapter approved put directly into the rules every month. On the big scale they would have monthly rules updates that fix problems and introduce minis for all factions. They could move from their codex with a couple of waves of minis thing which seems sort of outdated and flawed. Honestly i don't know why everyone isn't doing this sort of thing already

Jayce_The_Ace wrote:

Sorry if this sounds a dumb question, but why is this? Honestly It's always puzzled me.

I understand the the company bringing out the Hobbit want it's stuff kept secret, fair enough, but how on earth can they make another company keep stum about their own realeases?

Nothing in Fantasy/40K is anything like the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, won't impact on sales, and can't in anyway give away the storyline (which a lot of people will know anyway from reading the book), so what harm can it do?

I just don't get it.

Any way, back O/T, I hope GW are actually going to use this opportunity properly, or they could have just found a nice big hole to pour all that unwanted spare cash into.

Pacific wrote: Also, most of us here aren't 7 years old.

yakface wrote:If GW ends up leaking any Hobbit stuff then they would have to pay New Line some huge fee.

So GW went about tightening its ability to control information in every manner, and that has unfortunately meant an almost draconian lockdown on information about everything they release.

d-usa wrote:So the story is that in order for GW to get the rights to the Hobbit they had ro prove that they can keep a lid on leaks.

yakface wrote:GW have signed a reportedly incredibly punitive NDA with New Line Cinema based on what happened with a leak during the LOTR films.

yakface wrote:...and that has unfortunately meant an almost draconian lockdown on information about everything they release.

Kroothawk wrote:

yakface wrote:If GW ends up leaking any Hobbit stuff then they would have to pay New Line some huge fee.

So GW went about tightening its ability to control information in every manner, and that has unfortunately meant an almost draconian lockdown on information about everything they release.

So GW basically feels legally obliged to publicly deny its existence. Costs them a lot of sales and money, too. But seems they are fine with selling 10% less each year, as long as Tim Kirby can milk GW's finances dry for a few more years.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

yakface wrote:GW have signed a reportedly incredibly punitive NDA with New Line Cinema based on what happened with a leak during the LOTR films.

Remind me: What leaked?

H.B.M.C. wrote:

yakface wrote:...and that has unfortunately meant an almost draconian lockdown on information about everything they release.

Which doesn't make sense. It'd be like telling someone they're not allowed to drink beer, so they swear off all forms of liquid.

H.B.M.C. wrote:But Yak, Apple customers are border-line cultists. Everyone knows that.

yakface wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

yakface wrote:GW have signed a reportedly incredibly punitive NDA with New Line Cinema based on what happened with a leak during the LOTR films.

Remind me: What leaked?

I have on fairly good authority that the incident did actually occur and the deal with New Line for the Hobbit is at least partially responsible for the extreme lack of pre-release info. However, I myself don't actually know what leaked during the LOTR times to cause this supposed hubbaloo, so I can't give you anymore info on that, sadly.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

yakface wrote:...and that has unfortunately meant an almost draconian lockdown on information about everything they release.

Which doesn't make sense. It'd be like telling someone they're not allowed to drink beer, so they swear off all forms of liquid.

As I mentioned in my reply to Kroot, we all know that GW was constantly moving towards a state of utter secrecy before this anyway, so yeah you're right that there's no reason they shouldn't be able to release 'official' info at earlier intervals while still keeping the lid on sensitive material.

However, it does make sense for a company who already prizes itself on secrecy of its new releases to use the situation as an opportunity to tighten control all around in order to prevent any accidental leaks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

H.B.M.C. wrote:But Yak, Apple customers are border-line cultists. Everyone knows that.

True, and I'm sure you're also inferring the same can be said of many GW customers...which I also agree with being a regular customer of both.

Alpharius wrote:I think it was a picture of the berserker Orcs and possibly a picture showing Elves at Helm's Deep - which may have been something that wasn't in the actual books?

H.B.M.C. wrote:How's that saying go? The road to good intentions is paved with fists of ham? Something along those lines...


Though I would have liked to have seen that board meeting:

Kirby: So... digital media. I'd prefer it if we didn't even have electricity, but we can't ignore the Internet forever... Harry... what are you doing?
Exec #1: *concentrating very hard* I'm trying to will the Internet out of existance.
Exec #2: You've been doing that for 3 days straight. Trust me, it doesn't work. I tried.
Kirby: We all tried.

yakface wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

yakface wrote:GW have signed a reportedly incredibly punitive NDA with New Line Cinema based on what happened with a leak during the LOTR films.

Remind me: What leaked?

I have on fairly good authority that the incident did actually occur and the deal with New Line for the Hobbit is at least partially responsible for the extreme lack of pre-release info. However, I myself don't actually know what leaked during the LOTR times to cause this supposed hubbaloo, so I can't give you anymore info on that, sadly.

Kanluwen wrote:
I can make a few really, really good guesses.

1) Some of "The Two Towers" boxed sets came too early for preorder customers, and that rulebook had a bunch of spoilers. Most notably: the production photos of the Uruk-Hai Berserkers (which in essence were created for the movie) and the Elves at Helm's Deep. Remember in the novel, the Elves were not present.

Alpharius wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
I can make a few really, really good guesses.

1) Some of "The Two Towers" boxed sets came too early for preorder customers, and that rulebook had a bunch of spoilers. Most notably: the production photos of the Uruk-Hai Berserkers (which in essence were created for the movie) and the Elves at Helm's Deep. Remember in the novel, the Elves were not present.

That's a pretty good guess... of something that was already posted in this thread!

None of this should prevent GW from figuring out a way to talk about 40K 6th though...

yakface wrote:
So if you stop making physical books and just put the rules online, you compromise your ability to sell your games to those types of people. I know to those of us who regularly go online it seems nutty in this day and age that so many people still exist like this, but it is absolutely the truth.

Altruizine wrote:

yakface wrote:
So if you stop making physical books and just put the rules online, you compromise your ability to sell your games to those types of people. I know to those of us who regularly go online it seems nutty in this day and age that so many people still exist like this, but it is absolutely the truth.

Based on what?

I haven't the slightest problem believing that a large segment of various national populations does not go online.

What I do have a problem believing is that a large segment of the wargaming population does not go online. Wargaming is necessarily a pursuit of the middle class and above, a group in which the overwhelmingly majority would seem to be online.

Altruizine wrote:

yakface wrote:
So if you stop making physical books and just put the rules online, you compromise your ability to sell your games to those types of people. I know to those of us who regularly go online it seems nutty in this day and age that so many people still exist like this, but it is absolutely the truth.

Based on what?

I haven't the slightest problem believing that a large segment of various national populations does not go online.

What I do have a problem believing is that a large segment of the wargaming population does not go online. Wargaming is necessarily a pursuit of the middle class and above, a group in which the overwhelmingly majority would seem to be online.

spaceelf wrote:I am still wondering just what a digital agency does. Is it simply an online advertising/SEO firm?

th3eviltwin wrote:so they have hired some to troll forums to tell everyone how wonderful GW is and how your wrong to think or say anything bad about them?

It will handle the global digital strategy for Games Workshop, which is seeking to grow its e-commerce business.

yakface wrote:
Uh guys, what the digital agency will do for GW it is right in their press release (from the first page of this thread):

It will handle the global digital strategy for Games Workshop, which is seeking to grow its e-commerce business.

So this company will be handling and driving GW's e-commerce business. This could just be limited to producing and distributing digital media, such as digital rulebooks and codexes (which the press release kind of hints at) but it also could theoretically apply to how GW does business online. For example, perhaps this company could finally convince GW to stop their crazy approach to not allowing online retailers to use their IP for web-carts (but probably not).

I think the safe bet is that they're just going to be developing the strategy for creating purely digital products (i.e. ebooks).


But no, this isn't a PR firm, so nobody from that company is going to come onto forums to try to convince us how great GW is.

IRVINE, CA, Jul 18, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- Disaster recovery and data protection software developer Paragon Software Group (PSG), today announced that Games Workshop, the leading designer and manufacturer of fantasy miniatures, selected Paragon Software Group's Paragon Alignment Tool (PAT) to boost server and workstation performance due to misaligned partitions.

Games Workshop employs both a modern VMware virtual server environment running Windows 2008 Datacenter and a legacy physical server environment running older Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 operating systems. "We had a number of older servers that we migrated into our virtual environment and noticed that we did not get the performance that we expected," said Jon Howell, North America IT Director for Games Workshop. "A little research revealed that since they were older OS versions, the partitions were not aligned correctly. The Paragon alignment tool cleaned things up nicely and increased the performance."

In the recently issued IHS iSuppli report "Hard Disk Drive Pricing: Will it Reach Pre-Flood Level in the Near Future?", prices for hard disk drives are expected to remain above pre-flood levels through 2014. Paragon Software's partition alignment tool is perfect for extending the life of hardware still utilizing older operating systems; it also boosts server performance for little investment in time or dollars.

Partition Alignment Tool ESX Benefits




-- Measurably increase I/O performance of virtual machines by a factor of
2X to 3X
-- Control, manage, and align centrally and remotely dozens of virtual
drives belonging to different virtual machines (no need to manually
install software on every virtual machine)
-- Reduces complexity and hardware requirements of alignment projects (no
need for extra storage, because PAT performs in-place alignment -- no
migration required)





"As the use of virtual machines continues to expand, partition alignment is becoming more and more relevant to the IT departments that manage servers and workstations utilizing older versions of Microsoft operating systems," said Tom Fedro, president of Paragon Software Group. "Paragon's line of partition alignment software is specifically designed with a powerful feature set and easy-to-use interface to ensure maximum performance from older operating systems running on new, advanced format drives (AFDs)."

About Games Workshop

Games Workshop is a publicly quoted company with direct sales operations in the UK, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and Australia. With over 70% of sales coming from outside of the UK the Group is now truly international. GW remains a vertically integrated company, retaining control over every aspect of design, manufacture, distribution and retail of our models and rulebooks. Products are sold through our own chain of 340+ Hobby centers and by more than 3,700 independent toy and hobby shops around the world. These outlets are complemented by our growing mail order and online sales businesses.

notprop wrote:Wow! that's amazing stuff.... What on earth does it mean?

Daemonhammer wrote:I wonder how it will work out for us, gamers.