I've been to two different GW stores in my citiy, and at both the staff very strongly HATE dakkadakka. They will tell people to only go to the GW facebook page or Warseer instead.
One redshirt referred to the dakkadakka community as "Uneducated goons".
It's crazy how much they hate dakkadakka more then any of the other Wargameing/Warhammer related forms. And like i said this was at two diffrent stores, with diffrent staff. It's like they are being trained to hate on Dakka. Has anyone eals noticed this if they every casually mentioned dakka in anyway?
O____o
Have you seen how robustly GW gets kicked on here in a daily basis?
Are you surprised that GW, the company of "everything is fine, please don't look out the window" would encourage their staff and customers to steer clear as much as they can?
A lot of people I play with think the same of dakka. I can see why. Im here because once you weed out the annoying ones its not too bad... and I got lots of spare time at work these days.
"The members of dakka are close minded simpletons" was one persons kind way of saying it haha.
Its just some of the more common posters are very negative and can be offensive (without breaking the rules offensive). I simply say its the internet, could be worse, go look at you tube.
But id like to hear what people have to say on GW employees thinking that way. If they do.
Swastakowey wrote: A lot of people I play with think the same of dakka. I can see why. Im here because once you weed out the annoying ones its not too bad... and I got lots of spare time at work these days.
"The members of dakka are close minded simpletons" was one persons kind way of saying it haha.
Its just some of the more common posters are very negative and can be offensive (without breaking the rules offensive). I simply say its the internet, could be worse, go look at you tube.
But id like to hear what people have to say on GW employees thinking that way. If they do.
I find it odd that people are comfortable making such sweeping generalisations about the largest online wargaming community in the planet.
Swastakowey wrote: A lot of people I play with think the same of dakka. I can see why. Im here because once you weed out the annoying ones its not too bad... and I got lots of spare time at work these days.
"The members of dakka are close minded simpletons" was one persons kind way of saying it haha.
Its just some of the more common posters are very negative and can be offensive (without breaking the rules offensive). I simply say its the internet, could be worse, go look at you tube.
But id like to hear what people have to say on GW employees thinking that way. If they do.
I find it odd that people are comfortable making such sweeping generalisations about the largest online wargaming community in the planet.
azreal13 wrote: I find it odd that people are comfortable making such sweeping generalisations about the largest online wargaming community in the planet.
Anything more would require critical thought and logical justification over Internet Hyperbole and statements of emotionally fuelled rhetoric.
Swastakowey wrote: A lot of people I play with think the same of dakka. I can see why. Im here because once you weed out the annoying ones its not too bad... and I got lots of spare time at work these days.
"The members of dakka are close minded simpletons" was one persons kind way of saying it haha.
Its just some of the more common posters are very negative and can be offensive (without breaking the rules offensive). I simply say its the internet, could be worse, go look at you tube.
But id like to hear what people have to say on GW employees thinking that way. If they do.
I find it odd that people are comfortable making such sweeping generalisations about the largest online wargaming community in the planet.
But, meh.
The few ruin it for the many I think.
They really are a very few, to the non existent. Personalities will clash, and the Internet removes a large part of the need to grin and bear it when stuck in a room with someone you find obnoxious, but, even having been on the receiving end occasionally, the moderation is fair and fairly effective.
Like HBMC says, probably largely boils down to sweeping generalisations and ignorance on the part of the detractors rather than any sort of informed opinion. (Or people who got baned)
I doubt GW managers are trained to hate dakka but I'd put a not insignificant amount of money on them being trained to hate any environment that cannot be controlled and maintain the illusion of 'GW are the hobby'.
jonolikespie wrote: I doubt GW managers are trained to hate dakka but I'd put a not insignificant amount of money on them being trained to hate any environment that cannot be controlled and maintain the illusion of 'GW are the hobby'.
The thing is that they have nothing but nice things to say about warseer for the most part. It's dakka that get's their panties in knot.
jonolikespie wrote: I doubt GW managers are trained to hate dakka but I'd put a not insignificant amount of money on them being trained to hate any environment that cannot be controlled and maintain the illusion of 'GW are the hobby'.
The thing is that they have nothing but nice things to say about warseer for the most part. It's dakka that get's their panties in knot.
Likely because Warseer very much dances to GW's tune, they are known to take down pics of new stuff if leaked too early, and generally foster a much more structured environment which doesn't really permit the same degree of expression as the way Dakka is moderated and constructed does.
At least, when I was looking for an online hobby home, that's what put me off.
jonolikespie wrote: I doubt GW managers are trained to hate dakka but I'd put a not insignificant amount of money on them being trained to hate any environment that cannot be controlled and maintain the illusion of 'GW are the hobby'.
The thing is that they have nothing but nice things to say about warseer for the most part. It's dakka that get's their panties in knot.
Lockark wrote: I've been to two different GW stores in my citiy, and at both the staff very strongly HATE dakkadakka. They will tell people to only go to the GW facebook page or Warseer instead.
One redshirt referred to the dakkadakka community as "Uneducated goons".
It's crazy how much they hate dakkadakka more then any of the other Wargameing/Warhammer related forms. And like i said this was at two diffrent stores, with diffrent staff. It's like they are being trained to hate on Dakka. Has anyone eals noticed this if they every casually mentioned dakka in anyway?
O____o
They may hate us because we are "Educated goons"
And Veterans know too much! they must be silenced!
I think there are probably several reasons why GW employees don't care for our website. I think one of the reasons is because these employees never really heard of the website before they joined Gee Dubs and only got heresay from their peers afterwards.
However, I think the biggest reason is that Games Workshop hires mostly for attitude meaning they go for people who are supportive of their policies. Since DakkaDakka members are very critical of what Games Workshop does it's only natural that these people would write us off as "Uneducated goons". In other words, Games Workshop employees represent a demographic that drinks the Nottingham brand kool-aid rather than game store workers in general. So, take what they say with a pinch of salt.
I don't think GW employees are trained to hate dakka, but they have every reason not to steer their customers to it.
Store managers's salary/bonus largely depends on store sales, so much so they will sad face you when you told them they ordered from GW online and have it sent to their store for free pickup. So why would they steer their customers to a forum where
1. There is so much negativity about GW and its expensive products
2. Everyone here is posting where you can get CHEAPER GW models
wufai wrote: I don't think GW employees are trained to hate dakka, but they have every reason not to steer their customers to it.
Store managers's salary/bonus largely depends on store sales, so much so they will sad face you when you told them they ordered from GW online and have it sent to their store for free pickup. So why would they steer their customers to a forum where
1. There is so much negativity about GW and its expensive products
2. Everyone here is posting where you can get CHEAPER GW models
Not to mention Trading and selling huge lots here for upwards of 50% of retail
Also Warseer does love banning folks who pay out on GW.
But lets be honest here, GW does cop a lot of crap whether they deserve it or not, and it must hurt the staff on the coal face, so they get justifiably tetchy.
Achaylus72 wrote: But lets be honest here, GW does cop a lot of crap whether they deserve it or not, and it must hurt the staff on the coal face, so they get justifiably tetchy.
When you're working in a customer service postion, 'tetchy' is never justifiable.
If the company you are working for is copping flak for something, and it's not something that you're responsible for, you have to learn to let it slide off. Insulting potential customers because they hold an opinion about your employer that is different to your own is most certainly not in the employer's best interests.
When I worked GW Retail, I was never told to steer people anywhere online, nor was I "trained" to hate Dakka.
I was asked not to post on Dakka anymore after I was outed as a GW employee by a kid I used to be friends with ( I made an opinion on a tournament ruling that upset the TOP so much he wrote Ernie Baker, then CEO...I was almost fired. I was also attacked on here because of my pre employment posts supporting GW pricing at that time, pre 2005). Just a note, I ceased being friends with the kid after he almost got me fired.
Later on when I moved up in the company I'd use Dakka all the time, whether answering someone's rules question or looking for hobby advice cause I could not find Dave Taylor....guy always disappeared and then showed up with a ginormous converted army darn it....never did find where he hid at GWHQlol.
Geez, I even bid on Dakka when it was for sale.
I think the reason GWers hate Dakka is because it does "hurt" their sales, when people on Dakka universally tell people Army X doesn't win don't play it.
Lockark wrote: I've been to two different GW stores in my citiy, and at both the staff very strongly HATE dakkadakka. They will tell people to only go to the GW facebook page or Warseer instead.
One redshirt referred to the dakkadakka community as "Uneducated goons".
It's crazy how much they hate dakkadakka more then any of the other Wargameing/Warhammer related forms. And like i said this was at two diffrent stores, with diffrent staff. It's like they are being trained to hate on Dakka. Has anyone eals noticed this if they every casually mentioned dakka in anyway?
O____o
If you logged onto a forum to see the majority of the people on it ridicule you, the company you work for, your job, and seem to take an outright hateful stance to you at times, you'd probably get sick of wargaming forums too.
That, and I imagine that it gets really old hearing "Dakka told me this is terrible," or "Warseer says that I can get this model cheaper", ad infinitum.
Can't say I blame the guys, although if they're upset its probably because of a bad customer who came in, talked about online forums, and came to represent their communities in that employees mind.
Think about it, if you had never heard of Dakka before, and the first time you heard it mentioned was by some socially awkward neckbeard with poor social skills and a tendency to rant about things you don't care about, you'd probably hate Dakka by proxy because that's the kind of person you would associate with the site. It doesn't matter if it's accurate of the whole or not, because that first impression can leave a lasting mark on your opinion of the site until proven otherwise.
Swastakowey wrote: A lot of people I play with think the same of dakka. I can see why. Im here because once you weed out the annoying ones its not too bad... and I got lots of spare time at work these days.
"The members of dakka are close minded simpletons" was one persons kind way of saying it haha.
Its just some of the more common posters are very negative and can be offensive (without breaking the rules offensive). I simply say its the internet, could be worse, go look at you tube.
But id like to hear what people have to say on GW employees thinking that way. If they do.
I find it odd that people are comfortable making such sweeping generalisations about the largest online wargaming community in the planet.
But, meh.
Are you suggesting that it's because they are close-minded and like to keep things simple?
I can't imagine how anyone could consider Dakka to be worse than Warseer. Dakka is pretty chill, even if some topics tend to work up a frothing rage sometimes. It still beats that feeling of tension and oppression I get on Warseer. Warseer is like all the parts of 1984 before the torture. Warseer is where minis discussion goes to die get moderated.
In my local GW one guy who I would talk to goes really funny when you mention any online material outside official sites. It's odd like he is scared of saying anything outside official cannon, he looks over at the store manager with what I can genuinely assume is real fear and loudly states he doesn't read 'those sort of things on the web'. The manager is, I reckon, a closet Stalin.
The thing is that they have nothing but nice things to say about warseer for the most part. It's dakka that get's their panties in knot.
I find this quite strange. I used to be a regular on Warseer (all the way back to when it was Portent) and its general atmosphere was basically identical to here, it had a strong reputation for 'GW hating'. After a while I found (most) of the mods to be objectionable however and moved here. Has warseer genuinely changed so much that GW actually likes it now? If so its even more understandable why Warseer is tanking.
Swastakowey wrote: A lot of people I play with think the same of dakka. I can see why. Im here because once you weed out the annoying ones its not too bad... and I got lots of spare time at work these days.
"The members of dakka are close minded simpletons" was one persons kind way of saying it haha.
Its just some of the more common posters are very negative and can be offensive (without breaking the rules offensive). I simply say its the internet, could be worse, go look at you tube.
But id like to hear what people have to say on GW employees thinking that way. If they do.
It's a bit of an "us and them" or "bunker" mentality from the staff, which is understandable to an extent - especially since many staff tend to be true Beleibers for GW. We have a few here as well. In practice, almost all GW employees I've met, known or interacted with have been really nice guys, with just a couple who have been dicks. Of course, it helps immeasurably if you're not a dick or arrogant to them and realise the guy in the local GW isn't your enemy, but a fellow hobbyist trying to earn a living while engaged in a retail job relating to a hobby he enjoys. I know a few who are by necessity all about the GW when at work, but also buy and play Infinity, FoW and others when not "on the job".
People slag off GW with great venom and passion (being the internet) but then again it's not really that much worse than at least one member of my old gaming group back in the 90's before the net was commonplace as it is today. It's just that you can read the anti-GW stuff he spews now regardless of where in the world you might be, rather than standing right in the same room as him in Melbourne, AU.
I'm sure there are more than a few redshirts who read, lurk and post here, but they'd be smart enough to not make themselves identifiable since they wouldn't want the backlash from work with regard to the official company policy. I'm also sure there are some who hate Dakka, and some who simply think "lolinternet" as they filter through the threads for the bits that interest them. It's not like Priestly, Calvatore, Chambers, Thornton et al exist in a vacuum, after all - and all are still writing good quality rules elsewhere.
The thing is that they have nothing but nice things to say about warseer for the most part. It's dakka that get's their panties in knot.
I find this quite strange. I used to be a regular on Warseer (all the way back to when it was Portent) and its general atmosphere was basically identical to here, it had a strong reputation for 'GW hating'. After a while I found (most) of the mods to be objectionable however and moved here. Has warseer genuinely changed so much that GW actually likes it now? If so its even more understandable why Warseer is tanking.
Well, Portent used to have a pretty decent relationship with the studio. Remember all the rules Q&As that used to be hosted there and answered by Jervis and Andy?
The thing is that they have nothing but nice things to say about warseer for the most part. It's dakka that get's their panties in knot.
I find this quite strange. I used to be a regular on Warseer (all the way back to when it was Portent) and its general atmosphere was basically identical to here, it had a strong reputation for 'GW hating'. After a while I found (most) of the mods to be objectionable however and moved here. Has warseer genuinely changed so much that GW actually likes it now? If so its even more understandable why Warseer is tanking.
Yes I have to be honest, I don't think Warseer comes across any differently to Dakka in that regard. If there is a price rise or GW commit a faux pas, you get a 40-page thread on both sites of people complaining about it.
Them having a different policy when it comes to deleting leaked photos is a different thing entirely. Whoever runs the site must have thought the they will have less chance of attracting attention from GW's legal eagles, but I don't think you can insinuate anything more than that about it..
It's not suprising when Dakka offers more than a GW store.
Correct rules
Tactics
Cheap price links
Painting help
Model showcases
Modding showcases
Reviews
Leaks
Friends
Hookups
What does GW offer?
Yeah it varies. But Dakka offers more.
My GW local lost me as a customer because of what they didn't offer. Not because what Dakka offers.
The employees are under a lot of pressure so it's not suprising that they won't suggest anything online. But given the attitude tje OP recieved, the GW employee is just scared of loosing it's customer base.
I've always wondered what control the managers have with their stores. As the layout in the stores is always rubbish and similar to every other store.
Yeah it's like their jobs depend on in-store sales or something?
It's most likely that the RedShirt the Op talked to prefers Warseer the same way we prefer Dakka. I'm surprised he felt comfortable talking about Warseer when I'd imagine he had been told to talk up gamesworkshop.com as a web resource. It you're at work you should be talking business after all.
I personally have never heard a GW employee bad mouth Dakka, indeed I've discussed armies and conversions seen here with them.
Like allot of GW Redshirts complaint anecdotes I think allot of it comes down to meeting a low paid schmo who might be having an off day/TFG.
Dakka is part of the free world, with people discussing freely GW products. Enough reason for GW employees "with the right attitude" to hate Dakka And yeah, tell your employees that GW is one of the few companies without an official facebook page.
I've known a few GW employees in my time (3! ) and when you talk to them in the pub after work, then a lot of them are critical of some of GW's policies. They like their jobs, so of course they're going to be professional and toe the line at work, and grin and bear it.
When it comes to GW, I'm open minded. I had a lot of fun with GW stuff over the years before I switched allegiance to FOW, so I'm not overly critical of them. Yeah, I don't like their price rises and so forth, but occasionally they do some fantastic models (dark elves and these new imperial knights) so I give praise and criticism in equal measure.
Don't want to blow smoke up dakka's collective rear, but I find most people to have that view.
Well, this is not a problem in Germany. Red shirts are not really very good in English, at least, most of them. So they look at the German (un-)funworld.de.
For me, Dakka is the best forum out there when it comes to 40k and related topics.
wuestenfux wrote: Well, this is not a problem in Germany. Red shirts are not really very good in English, at least, most of them. So they look at the German (un-)funworld.de.
For me, Dakka is the best forum out there when it comes to 40k and related topics.
I just had a look at funworld.de...
Are you sure this is where German Redshirts hang out?
wuestenfux wrote: Well, this is not a problem in Germany. Red shirts are not really very good in English, at least, most of them. So they look at the German (un-)funworld.de.
For me, Dakka is the best forum out there when it comes to 40k and related topics.
I just had a look at funworld.de...
Are you sure this is where German Redshirts hang out?
Actually there is no other forum around. But I never had a discussion with a red shirt in which funworld.de played a role. These guys want to have it cineastic.
Just typed in Funworld.de, I got what looks like a German Male Escort site. People Auktion and all. Well this is very revealing about the German GW employees!
My local GW manager doesn't hate Dakka, he didn't criticise me for using it when he asked me how I knew about new releases but he did say he used to be on Dakka until everyone started flaming at GW (In his opinion unfairly. His real opinion, no script) so now he goes to Warseer. He says it's a little more friendly there, for the life of me I can't understand that! We are LOVELY over here on Dakka aren't we Lads and the occasional Ladet!
I have never mentioned Dakka to a GW staff member. Then again i have not been into one in a few years.
But it would not surprise us. So much of what goes on here is anti-GW in its actions.
Bashing the rules/games
Improving on the rules (and there by showing that GW products are not perfect)
Failcast
Other, alternative, and often better games are well discussed.
Cheaper GW modewls
Veterans
etc.....
There is a widespread amount of anti-GW opinion, based on thoughts vis-a-vis GW such as the things you have mentioned. A lot of that is reasonable if vehement, because let's face it, GW has actually done a lot of the things people complain about.
There is also a widespread amount of pro-GW opinion, based on things like Escalation, the Imperial Knight and other models, that people like.
Then there are lots of people getting on with painting and modelling projects and advice, other game systems, and so on.
Warseer isn't all sunshine and roses either. I frequent that site as well and there's a whole subsection dedicated to general GW talk that''s usually "complain about prices/company".
That is a bit weird though that they're so vehement against this site, but then again its GW so I expect they would be against anything that offers a viewpoint other than GW is great, the games are great, the miniatures are great, everything is great why don't you buy a new Imperial Knight and some more paints?
Swastakowey wrote: A lot of people I play with think the same of dakka. I can see why. Im here because once you weed out the annoying ones its not too bad... and I got lots of spare time at work these days.
"The members of dakka are close minded simpletons" was one persons kind way of saying it haha.
Its just some of the more common posters are very negative and can be offensive (without breaking the rules offensive). I simply say its the internet, could be worse, go look at you tube.
But id like to hear what people have to say on GW employees thinking that way. If they do.
I find it odd that people are comfortable making such sweeping generalisations about the largest online wargaming community in the planet.
But, meh.
The few ruin it for the many I think.
Says the poster whose user name is almost Swastika...
GW does get kicked like a rented mule here, so it's not surprising that they don't post here often. It's a shame as I really like the game and their setting. I'd like to know their actual thought behind killing products like bloodbowl and BFG and launching Escalation.
wufai wrote: I don't think GW employees are trained to hate dakka, but they have every reason not to steer their customers to it.
Store managers's salary/bonus largely depends on store sales, so much so they will sad face you when you told them they ordered from GW online and have it sent to their store for free pickup. So why would they steer their customers to a forum where
1. There is so much negativity about GW and its expensive products
2. Everyone here is posting where you can get CHEAPER GW models
Not to mention Trading and selling huge lots here for upwards of 50% of retail
It's not even a drop in the bucket of GW sales. I'd be surprised if they even bat their eyes at it.
Dakka tends to be a wonderful place to find out about wargames companies that aren't GW.
Warseer, less so. There was at one point, a thriving Mantic community on Warseer that got moderated into oblivion.. had a lot of my posts deleted for "advertising" when all I was doing was posting pics of new releases in a news and rumour thread. Whole threads and chunks of threads of perfectly reasonable discussion would suddenly vanish with no explanation.
Eventually, everyone left en-masse and joined the new mantic forums instead.
scarletsquig wrote: Dakka tends to be a wonderful place to find out about wargames companies that aren't GW.
Warseer, less so. There was at one point, a thriving Mantic community on Warseer that got moderated into oblivion.. had a lot of my posts deleted for "advertising" when all I was doing was posting pics of new releases in a news and rumour thread. Whole threads and chunks of threads of perfectly reasonable discussion would suddenly vanish with no explanation.
Eventually, everyone left en-masse and joined the new mantic forums instead.
Score one for Mantic then. Warseer's moderation is in a sad, sorry state. Moderation is key to a healthy forum, and as I have said, Dakka does it right most of the time. Encourage free discussion, keep the topics clean and ineligible, promote reasonable manners both through warnings and, more importantly, modeling appropriate behavior.
Consequently I find that the level of discussion on DakkaDakka is a bit more sophisticated than on other wargaming forums, and generally rather polite for the internet.
scarletsquig wrote: Warseer, less so. There was at one point, a thriving Mantic community on Warseer that got moderated into oblivion.. had a lot of my posts deleted for "advertising" when all I was doing was posting pics of new releases in a news and rumour thread. Whole threads and chunks of threads of perfectly reasonable discussion would suddenly vanish with no explanation.
Warseer threaten to ban me for advertising, Dakka gave me a subforum.
Warseer threaten to ban me for advertising, Dakka gave me a subforum.
I am always confused by their stance. Their entire site is an advert for GW. Yet, woe betide you even mention another company outside the wrong sub-forum. At one point, even linking to a KS got you a warning with the explanation given as "We don't allow advertising". Weird moderation logic.
I think that the majority of posts that could appear to be anti-GW are really Why are you letting things slide GW? posts.
Very few (if any) posters are anti-GW in a way where they want the company to fold. We just want better.
For example we've just had the 8inch Knight description have to be re-labelled to 6inches on their own website. How is that a mistake that could be made?
Dakka has a good staff of mods. As a general rule they don't jump the gun and lock down threads/ban people without a good reason.
The community can get a bad rap from some of the more outspoken posters. There are a handful of people on here who NEVER have anything positive to say. (There are two or three of them where I've gone back through several pages of their most recent posts to see if I could find ANYTHING that wasn't rude, sarcastic, snarky, or negative, and was shocked to find not a one.) I think these people seem to represent more of the forum community because they also tend to post quite a bit more.
Still, I think Dakka is a good representation of the 40k community as a whole, and really enjoy it. I encourage other people to check it out as well.
I've been on quite a lot of forums online and think Dakka is one of the best, with a good community and solid moderation, especially given it's size. GW catch flack because of the crap they pull. It's not going to be a love-in when they start selling poor quality products with price increases and try to hammer small companies and fansites with aggressive legal action. It says something perhaps about the GW corporate attitude filtering down to the shops that criticism is just those 'uneducated goons' on the internet, and not actually a direct result of their own actions.
While I enjoy the Dakka community for the most part, I have a hard time being shocked at GW not liking it.
While we have a good-ish community, I think we occasionally need to step back and get some perspective of ourselves and actually think of the communication and interaction more fully rather than instantly go into 'us vs them' defensive. Let me just take one example that constantly sticks out in my mind.
Anyone remember what happens/happened whenever a GW manager or store worker would post here and let it be known that they are a GW employee? I think the best analogy is a bucket of chum in a tank full of starving sharks. If we cannot communicate with them when they reach out to us, why should they just keep throwing themselves into this? I'm serious. Would you go to a place where just for saying what you are and what you do, you have a small legion of critics grab onto you like you had the ability to fix their grievances (real or not) of the worldwide company you work for?
While I'd love to get in the 'rah rah GW is so evil' camp here, I can't. Because we are hardly kind to them in return. And this is not just a matter of criticism, or white-knighting or whatever other nonsense term that I'm certain will be bandied out to dismiss my point entirely. If we as a community cannot be good ambassadors to GW, why do we expect them to wade through our mud and daggers for us? Why do we act shocked and appalled (in that infuriatingly smug 'oh this is sooooo predictable' way that I hate) when they don't have a positive opinion of places where simply saying you work for them is a death sentence to mob beating? Why support of acknowledge a place that actively, I repeat, ACTIVELY wishes for you to lose your job and for the company you work for to go under?
As Jimsolo has mentioned, the most outspoken posters set the tone. This is the internet and it is an echo chamber. Like it or not, and no matter what you say about it, the loudest members do a lot for setting the tone of the community. I've posted here for a good while and I've downright learned that if I disagree with some of the more virulently anti-GW posters that it is better to just not say anything than to argue. I don't need that kind of crap in my life, and why should we expect a GW employee to want it as well?
I get it. We want GW to be better, and I'm all on board with that. GW has made some mistakes in game design and business practice. Again, I can't argue that because it is true. However, I do not believe that Dakka has the ability to claim any kind of moral high ground. If we want to reach out to GW and fix things, we have a lot to fix in our own yard right now first. And expecting GW to slog through our crap to be here, only to get pelted by more of it for being GW, is utter lunacy.
Its folly for any individual GW employee to set foot here, for the reasons you so eloquently outlined, especially as the likelihood of said employee having any power to affect change is tiny, rendering them nothing but a metaphorical punchbag for people's frustrations.
Much better idea to create an environment where you have control, have multiple staff to avoid any sort of fatigue and burnout, and actually listen to what your customers are saying and do your best to act on it if feedback seems particularly strong and consistent.
Like running your own forums?
Sure, it would be rough for a few weeks, months even, but if it was approached with integrity (not banning people purely because what they have to say is hard to hear) and was run with a genuine attitude of open communication and a desire to improve GWs relationship with it's whole customer base, I sincerely believe that by the 6 month mark, GW could radically improve the attitude many have towards them.
That is an intensely optimistic view you have, azreal.
I'd love to share in it, but just think of the floodgates that would be opened the instant GW announced that. You think it is bad for the poor GW manager who thinks 'oh I can post here and be involved' and posts to Dakka? Now you've painted a giant bullseye in a single spot for all of this to wash out. And it creates a no-win situation for GW in any way I can think of it for panning out.
It would be the 'GW manager posts on Dakka' situation made worse by several orders of magnitude. You'd have a flood of people storming in demanding (let's be honest with ourselves, people would be demanding) changes in everything from rules, to model design to how to run the business at an executive level. And, with the echo chamber effect, GW trying any kind of talking outside of the most obsequious begging and pleading will just be obliterated. Especially when the unfortunate community managers have to explain that they actually can't change the rules or business for the internet mob.
Could it work? Possibly. However, I think calling it a 'rough few weeks/months' does nothing to cover the amount of venom that would pour into that place on a daily, hourly basis. If GW would want to address it, they would need more than a handful of mods and community reps, they'd need to be pouring personnel resources into giving answers that would be adequate to pacify this mob.
Also, is it not a trifle presumptuous to ask GW to take that on? There's no form of compromise there. It acknowledges all of the vitriol and says 'it's your problem, not ours, GW'. Again, GW can open its doors to us, but if we don't even bother to wipe our feet, in a metaphorical sense, what good does it do? Likewise, the line of "if it was approached with integrity (not banning people purely because what they have to say is hard to hear)" rings out to me as an abandonment of compromise because it instantly puts GW in a moral pit and us on a higher level. Which we do not have. We are wishing for people to lose the ability to feed themselves and keep their homes. If we're gonna do this open communication thing, we have to give as well. This is putting everything on GW's shoulders and countenancing pretty horrible behavior on our part as well (using the collective 'our' here for Dakka and other big forums). I agree that they should not ban for dissent, but we should not give them the reason to.
curran12 wrote: That is an intensely optimistic view you have, azreal.
I'd love to share in it, but just think of the floodgates that would be opened the instant GW announced that. You think it is bad for the poor GW manager who thinks 'oh I can post here and be involved' and posts to Dakka? Now you've painted a giant bullseye in a single spot for all of this to wash out. And it creates a no-win situation for GW in any way I can think of it for panning out.
It would be the 'GW manager posts on Dakka' situation made worse by several orders of magnitude. You'd have a flood of people storming in demanding (let's be honest with ourselves, people would be demanding) changes in everything from rules, to model design to how to run the business at an executive level. And, with the echo chamber effect, GW trying any kind of talking outside of the most obsequious begging and pleading will just be obliterated. Especially when the unfortunate community managers have to explain that they actually can't change the rules or business for the internet mob.
I don't think it's overly optimistic, no. Practically every other company on the planet seems to be able to maintain some sort of dialogue with their customer base, and in this very industry there are multiple examples of people getting it right. The issue would be GW genuinely wanting to change to remove the root cause of all the venom sent their way, and in this I would question their desire, possibly even their ability.
Could it work? Possibly. However, I think calling it a 'rough few weeks/months' does nothing to cover the amount of venom that would pour into that place on a daily, hourly basis. If GW would want to address it, they would need more than a handful of mods and community reps, they'd need to be pouring personnel resources into giving answers that would be adequate to pacify this mob.
I'm not going to argue about theoretical timescales with you, but again, you're always going to have people who will blindly criticise and 'hate' whatever you do, those aren't the people to worry about. There are, however, many people who are disenchanted who would be relatively easy to get back on side, there is still huge affection for 40K, even if not necessarily GW, and those would be the ones to target.
Also, is it not a trifle presumptuous to ask GW to take that on? There's no form of compromise there. It acknowledges all of the vitriol and says 'it's your problem, not ours, GW'. Again, GW can open its doors to us, but if we don't even bother to wipe our feet, in a metaphorical sense, what good does it do? Likewise, the line of "if it was approached with integrity (not banning people purely because what they have to say is hard to hear)" rings out to me as an abandonment of compromise because it instantly puts GW in a moral pit and us on a higher level. Which we do not have. We are wishing for people to lose the ability to feed themselves and keep their homes. If we're gonna do this open communication thing, we have to give as well. This is putting everything on GW's shoulders and countenancing pretty horrible behavior on our part as well (using the collective 'our' here for Dakka and other big forums). I agree that they should not ban for dissent, but we should not give them the reason to.
Asking GW to try and ensure the long term growth and health of their company by assuming responsibility for the satisfaction of their own customers, like, as I've said, practically every other company in existence? Nope, not presumptuous at all.
The fact that, at this point, they have such an apparently massive hole to dig their way out of with a percentage of their consumers is nobodies fault but their own, and the responsibility for trying to repair that should be their responsibility, and only theirs. If they choose not to undertake that responsibility, and as a result they eventually have to make redundancies or go into receivership (I'm making no such argument that GW must start to communicate or they will go under, but let us make the assumption for the purposes of this discussion) then who else's fault is it? They are still solvent (albeit not as much as a year ago) and profitable (ditto) so at this point, their fate is still very much in their own hands.
Also, is it not a trifle presumptuous to ask GW to take that on? .
Not in the least. GW's complete lack of community involvement does absolutely nothing to improve their standaing in the community, quite the reverse. Yes an offical GW forum representative would receive vast quantities of flak, this is the internet afterall, however given that the vitriol that they would receive would be from your average intenet mouthbreather they are easy to ignore. Someone who can sort the wheat from the chaff and who doesn't pay an yheed to idiots could easily make a vast and almost immediate improvement in GW's standing within the community, providing that they had some real power within Lenton. I am aware that this is never going to happen but given that there are nearly 10k people currently browsing Dakka GW is either ignorant or stupid to ignore the opportunites that large and established fora represent.
I would happily be GW's forum representative, internet bile has no fears for me.
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scarletsquig wrote: Dakka tends to be a wonderful place to find out about wargames companies that aren't GW.
Warseer, less so. There was at one point, a thriving Mantic community on Warseer that got moderated into oblivion.. had a lot of my posts deleted for "advertising" when all I was doing was posting pics of new releases in a news and rumour thread. Whole threads and chunks of threads of perfectly reasonable discussion would suddenly vanish with no explanation.
Eventually, everyone left en-masse and joined the new mantic forums instead.
This is one of the prime reasons what Dakka is currently being read by approximately 8000 more people than warseer (who can only manage a platry 1.5k). One of these days Wintermute will figure out why he is killing Warseer, maybe.
I'm not going to argue about theoretical timescales with you, but again, you're always going to have people who will blindly criticise and 'hate' whatever you do, those aren't the people to worry about. There are, however, many people who are disenchanted who would be relatively easy to get back on side, there is still huge affection for 40K, even if not necessarily GW, and those would be the ones to target.
I agree with you up to the 'relatively easy' part because I don't think a community as hardline entrenched as Dakka is will be so easily swayed. It just won't. As evidence, look at how little reaction against someone calling for GW employees to lose their jobs gets here. If it was easy to change this mindset, wouldn't this be more shocking to the disenchanted people? Now, outside of the community, on a one on one basis, you're probably right. On an individual scale, most people are pretty reasonable outside of those who are truly trolling for trolling's sake. But we are not dealing with individuals, we're dealing with groups. And groups do not work the same as individuals.
My worry is that anything outside of the most demeaning of pleading will simply be dismissed by the collective. This is not a path to compromise, this is us wanting them to do what we want and calling it 'compromise'.
Now, before anything else, I agree that GW has a lot to do. They have made some business decisions that I think have done great harm to the communities I play with. However, just because they have more work to do than we do does NOT excuse us as a community from the pretty terrible behavior that we show. When it comes to compromise, it takes two to tango.
Asking GW to try and ensure the long term growth and health of their company by assuming responsibility for the satisfaction of their own customers, like, as I've said, practically every other company in existence? Nope, not presumptuous at all.
The fact that, at this point, they have such an apparently massive hole to dig their way out of with a percentage of their consumers is nobodies fault but their own, and the responsibility for trying to repair that should be their responsibility, and only theirs. If they choose not to undertake that responsibility, and as a result they eventually have to make redundancies or go into receivership (I'm making no such argument that GW must start to communicate or they will go under, but let us make the assumption for the purposes of this discussion) then who else's fault is it? They are still solvent (albeit not as much as a year ago) and profitable (ditto) so at this point, their fate is still very much in their own hands.
You're changing the issue here. My focus is solely on communication and this has wrapped around to how GW operates as a whole. Let's keep our eyes on what this is about. If we want GW to communicate with us, we have to meet them on this as well. To use a rather bizarre metaphor, let's say every time you go into a place, you are yelled at and harassed. Yet when you don't come in, they say that you do nothing to communicate. That is the position that I see GW in with this regard. Their attempts to communicate, at least on an individual GW employee level, has shown how terrible this community can treat someone. This community has voices that actively wish for people to lose their means of supporting themselves over a game, and because the community as a whole is complacent about it, we create the worst kind of toxic environment for GW to do anything in. It's a no-win for them. When I suggest compromise, the response is 'GW should compromise', not 'we should all compromise'.
Now, remember that this is in the realm of communication. I am not pardoning GW's decisions here. But I am not letting their business shortcomings pardon our behavior, either.
Not in the least. GW's complete lack of community involvement does absolutely nothing to improve their standaing in the community, quite the reverse. Yes an offical GW forum representative would receive vast quantities of flak, this is the internet afterall, however given that the vitriol that they would receive would be from your average intenet mouthbreather they are easy to ignore. Someone who can sort the wheat from the chaff and who doesn't pay an yheed to idiots could easily make a vast and almost immediate improvement in GW's standing within the community, providing that they had some real power within Lenton. I am aware that this is never going to happen but given that there are nearly 10k people currently browsing Dakka GW is either ignorant or stupid to ignore the opportunites that large and established fora represent.
I would happily be GW's forum representative, internet bile has no fears for me.
Is it that easy to ignore? Is it really that small of a deal?
I don't buy it.
You're dealing with people who would be happy if your company went under and left hundreds, if not thousands, of employees wondering how they are going to get support. This 'pft it's the internet' dismissal, is an unwise, untenable position simply because we are human. Can you seriously, seriously, say that you can handle a job where for 8-10 hours a day you deal with people who spit venom at you? I deal with plenty of trolls but frankly, no I don't want that job.
Lockark wrote: I've been to two different GW stores in my citiy, and at both the staff very strongly HATE dakkadakka. They will tell people to only go to the GW facebook page or Warseer instead.
One redshirt referred to the dakkadakka community as "Uneducated goons".
It's crazy how much they hate dakkadakka more then any of the other Wargameing/Warhammer related forms. And like i said this was at two diffrent stores, with diffrent staff. It's like they are being trained to hate on Dakka. Has anyone eals noticed this if they every casually mentioned dakka in anyway?
O____o
It's complicated.
Hate might not be the right word for it, I would use the word- Threat. Dakka is a Threat to them, because point of fact the news is not all peaches and cream and we're not afraid to let them know about it.
I for one don't honestly have the time or energy to hate them anymore. I did- for a bit there. I don't mind telling you that the "Corperate doublespeak" and the party line is gak, and they peed on thier own good will and did a very good job of killing off thier golden goose- Me.
There was a time, not so long ago that they would pitch thier party line at every turn, the "HHHobby" was the be all and end all of gaming, and everyone else did not exist. GW was pretty good, but much the same as most big dogs, they got too big for thier own good, started worrying more about padding thier own 401's and peeing on the fans, and much the same as most corperate smacktards- started believeing thier own hype.
NOW- at present, GW is fading glory incarnate. They are more inclined to pitch "what once was..." and the shadow of thier former selves is less the better for it. Public faced GW hates the fact that there are some of us out here that have been playing the game for longer then some of thier "Corperate D bags " have been alive, and they don't like us very well.
Thats ok, though, the feelings mutual.
At the same time- There are many out there in the real world that on the surface show their corperate self, and then when your one on one with them- the real gamers come to the fold and they let thier hair down and tell you the real deal. That if they DON'T denouce the "pleabes" and " Uneducated goons" out there that they will be branded as "nonteam players", and fired. Sites like Dakka are uncontroled by the party line, hence they are a threat, because GW does not control the horizontal and vertical of the message being pumped into little timmy's ears.
"BUY OUR GW Models and paint with GW PAINTS and GW STUFFS !!!", quickly becomes "Hey, Timmy, there are a few other alternatives out there. Miniature wargaming is a bigger world then Space Marines and GW products, and at half of the cost."
Corperate existance is like that. You have a "Business view" and a "Personal view", and never the two shall meet.
I will say that I've met several excellent GW managers out there that were pretty darned good. I've given them gak in the past, but in all honesty- GW is not a nice company to work for, and the ones that I've met that have been both- solid gamers, and solid citizens have been few and far between, but they are out there. ( At least several of you are in at least 3 states for sure that I give public props to.)
I won't name you, or your states, to keep you from any unwanted attention.
To wrap it all up, It is an honestly complicated relationship that Vets have with GW.
Dakka Dakka isn't the only online presence that GW gives public gak to. We wear it as a badge of honor.
I'm not going to argue about theoretical timescales with you, but again, you're always going to have people who will blindly criticise and 'hate' whatever you do, those aren't the people to worry about. There are, however, many people who are disenchanted who would be relatively easy to get back on side, there is still huge affection for 40K, even if not necessarily GW, and those would be the ones to target.
I agree with you up to the 'relatively easy' part because I don't think a community as hardline entrenched as Dakka is will be so easily swayed. It just won't. As evidence, look at how little reaction against someone calling for GW employees to lose their jobs gets here. If it was easy to change this mindset, wouldn't this be more shocking to the disenchanted people? Now, outside of the community, on a one on one basis, you're probably right. On an individual scale, most people are pretty reasonable outside of those who are truly trolling for trolling's sake. But we are not dealing with individuals, we're dealing with groups. And groups do not work the same as individuals.
My worry is that anything outside of the most demeaning of pleading will simply be dismissed by the collective. This is not a path to compromise, this is us wanting them to do what we want and calling it 'compromise'.
Now, before anything else, I agree that GW has a lot to do. They have made some business decisions that I think have done great harm to the communities I play with. However, just because they have more work to do than we do does NOT excuse us as a community from the pretty terrible behavior that we show. When it comes to compromise, it takes two to tango.
I direct you to (a very specific part of) the Knight thread. From the initial leak, right up until the slightly ham fisted way they've started to disseminate the rules, you will find many posters who are characteristically outspoken and critical of GW setting all that aside in favour of enthusiasm for a model they feel GW have gotten right. Now the thread has very much fallen back into old patterns now, but that is a perfect example of how simply and easily people will forgive past transgressions.
GW are very much in the mindset of "they'll buy what we make" rather than "let's make what they'll buy." Better communication with previews, even taking feedback into account and modifying model designs or rules in advance of release, could turn every new release into a Knight release. If GW were to have a flawless year of releases, where the overwhelming majority of customers were enthusiastic and few could fine reason to criticise, where do you think their standing would be in relation to where it is now?
I hear what you're saying about being dictated to by their customers, but frankly, what's wrong with that? As long as you maintain a degree of critical thought and don't blindly try and pander to everyone, who better to be dictated to by? Sure, a few people may be unhappy their ideas aren't listened to, but that's inevitable, all you can do is try and minimise how many.
Asking GW to try and ensure the long term growth and health of their company by assuming responsibility for the satisfaction of their own customers, like, as I've said, practically every other company in existence? Nope, not presumptuous at all.
The fact that, at this point, they have such an apparently massive hole to dig their way out of with a percentage of their consumers is nobodies fault but their own, and the responsibility for trying to repair that should be their responsibility, and only theirs. If they choose not to undertake that responsibility, and as a result they eventually have to make redundancies or go into receivership (I'm making no such argument that GW must start to communicate or they will go under, but let us make the assumption for the purposes of this discussion) then who else's fault is it? They are still solvent (albeit not as much as a year ago) and profitable (ditto) so at this point, their fate is still very much in their own hands.
You're changing the issue here. My focus is solely on communication and this has wrapped around to how GW operates as a whole. Let's keep our eyes on what this is about. If we want GW to communicate with us, we have to meet them on this as well. To use a rather bizarre metaphor, let's say every time you go into a place, you are yelled at and harassed. Yet when you don't come in, they say that you do nothing to communicate. That is the position that I see GW in with this regard. Their attempts to communicate, at least on an individual GW employee level, has shown how terrible this community can treat someone. This community has voices that actively wish for people to lose their means of supporting themselves over a game, and because the community as a whole is complacent about it, we create the worst kind of toxic environment for GW to do anything in. It's a no-win for them. When I suggest compromise, the response is 'GW should compromise', not 'we should all compromise'.
Now, remember that this is in the realm of communication. I am not pardoning GW's decisions here. But I am not letting their business shortcomings pardon our behavior, either.
I'm not changing the issue, I fundamentally believe that the lack of communication is at the heart of every issue people ascribe to GW and the way they operate. There is no obligation on their customer base to "play nice" if the customer base is pissed off, it has every right to express that. At the moment, it can't, other than on forums where it likely won't achieve anything. The only obligation in this situation is on GW, and that obligation is to ensure that it has enough happy customers willing to give it cash that it can continue to survive. Again, if they fail to do that, they have nobody to blame but themselves.
Frankly, given the apparent residual goodwill that many, even the harshest critics, still seem to have towards Warhammer, it could only be chronic mismanagement of the highest order that would lead to that, such as failing to provide any sort of mechanism to listen to customer feedback.
Is it that easy to ignore? Is it really that small of a deal?
Of course it is. Life is far too short to take offence from fools online, especially if you are being paid to do a job. The primary rule for a happy internet existence is not to take personal offence at anything, afterall what would be the point?
As I said, I would happily be GW's forum representative, or at least I would be if I had faith in the company.
I don't feel GW fans are more or less bile filled than any other fan group on the internet (certainly I would say that generally speaking Dakka is much more intelligent and articulate than a lot of sites I have visited) so as such I judge GW on exactly the same terms as I would judge any other company. On other forums I belong to (car marque fan sites for example), there are individuals who represent the companies in question and who post on the forums so why shouldn't GW?
I don't think GW would suddenly be awash with rage if they started posting here. and even if they did suffer some slings and arrows, they aren't obliged to interact with every post - they could pick and choose what they wish to reply to much like any other user. To say that GW would somehow be scared off by hordes of hate spewing zombies is doing the community a disservice frankly, IMO. Yes, there are bad apples in every community but I would like to think that the vast majority of us are capable of discussing issues and opinions in a calm, concise and adult fashion. That GW chose not to interact with the community is a massive loss for them I feel. The point is we don't know how GW would be received because they have never deigned to address the community. I don't think you can use the debacle of their own fora as a healthy barometer for how other communities would react to them.
I think at the core of this issue is the level of animosity directed towards GW. Why is this? Why can I go on the Corvus Belli forums, Mantic, Battlefront etc. and not experience it there towards those companies? Put simply, it is a result of not only GW's policies, but the fact that it the changes within the company actions over the past 5 years have been a redaction of what has come before.
Put simply, for the veteran customer, GW is not the company it was before. I mean that from a completely customer-focused perspective, putting aside all arguments concerning profitability, covering of shop overheads etc from GW's own perspective. I could make a list as long my arm here, but a few highlights (lowlights?) would include; Finecast, overseas trade ban, price increases, death of games day/golden daemon, war on independent stores and on fansites, closing of stores & staff cuts, warhammer visions, specialist games.. I could go on.
No doubt there have been a lot of highlights along the way (the increased release rates, the new Knight kit!) but, they have been outnumbered in the wider context, and it is within human nature to focus on negative aspects, and things they want to change rather than things that are as they should be.
GW's 'fall' has been all the more painful, the more loudly abhorred, because they initially started at such a great height. They used to do so many things right, and like it or not, when these things are taken away then that customer base that remembers them is always going to complain and feel a sense of entitlement.
curran12 wrote:Now, before anything else, I agree that GW has a lot to do. They have made some business decisions that I think have done great harm to the communities I play with. However, just because they have more work to do than we do does NOT excuse us as a community from the pretty terrible behavior that we show. When it comes to compromise, it takes two to tango.
It takes two to tango certainly, but it hasn't helped that GW's opening steps have been to stamp on the toes of their dance partner, followed by a swift head-butt and shoe-in when they are on the floor(!) . Fans sites closed down, forced to change their name, remove 'copyrighted imagery'. And a lot of this is directed towards the company's biggest fans - the people who have spent significant amounts of their own free time promoting the GW hobby and bringing new players into the fold, which makes it utterly incomprehensible as well as offensive. I've seen previously laid-back, very open websites turn into moderator-heavy groups of sycophants, with constant thread and image removals because the owners are so fearful that the C&D letter will make its way in the post, and they will lose their site. Not to reference them specifically, but people moan about Warseer being overly oppressive? It's not like that just for the hell of it, and it certainly wasn't like that in the past.
You could go beyond this, to the removal of tournament support and official tournaments, of turning Golden Daemon into a shadow of its former self, the cancelling of international games days and turning games day itself into a GW store with an expensive entry ticket.
So, 'pretty terrible behaviour'? If anything the response has been pretty staid, and I for one am amazed that some of the bloggers and forum owners have even been able to continue doing what they do following that kind of treatment, and it's no surprise that a few have told GW 'where to go'. Not only do they seem to be averse to the idea of fostering and creating community, they seem to be doing their level best to destroy it.
The closing down of the Facebook page came after GW's gakky behaviour surrounding Spots the Space Marine managed to move beyond the boundaries of the wargaming community, and attracted the attention of people who were outside of the wargaming community and viewed it for the dickish behaviour that it was. GW's interaction with the community following this has been non-existant considering this concerns a game that revolves around social interaction and creativity, and is highlighted by the fact that other companies do better with 1% of GW's budget, and continue to engage with their customer base.
So yes, there has been something of a negative atmosphere, but it's not just 'hating on' for the sake of it, or 'echo chamber' of a few loud-mouths. It's a result of years of GW making changes, not always with their fans in mind, and then closing their eyes and putting their fingers in their ears towards any kind of dialogue. A few employees have (perhaps foolishly) timidly raised their hands and then become the target for vehemence from aggrieved fans that have no other way of venting. Look at the reception the Mantic employee who posts in their News and Rumour thread sometimes receives, and that is from a much smaller company, with smaller customer expectations, and that has official communication channels. What else is going to happen to the GW employee, other than the gibbed remains of the poor guy to get washed down the gutter?
The problem is that now, unless their is a radical change of philosophy by the GW company makers, any future forays towards customer interaction are just going to end the same way. Be it the next time they try to crush a garage seller, claim ownership of the word 'space marine', or lay off hundreds of staff while announcing a shares dividend.
It's a nice idea that GW could try and engage with the community again, but they can't/won't face up to the animosity created by their own obnoxiousness. They are responsible for creating the floods of complaints on their facebook page by attempting to claim ownership of the term 'Space Marine' and quashing the author of an independent book. After stirring that up, they 'managed' the situation by closing their Facebook and Twitter accounts. Many brands have done stupid things and pissed off their customer base, big brands like Coke and Apple, but they don't go into lockdown like GW and refuse communication until the problem just goes away.
Price increases are one thing, everyone has price increases justified or not, and there will always be moaning about prices. But there's stuff they just invite criticism for. For example, introduction of Finecast at the same time as price increases and not publicly acknowledging the issues plaguing people seemed deceptive, particularly when they kept on plugging the same nonsense about it being wonderful. Why do they think people get annoyed? Then they would have to stop all the aggressive legal nonsense which is just nasty. They only venture beyond their fortress walls to attack the customers, not engage with them.
In general though the disdain tends to be for the same reasons:
1) Broken rules and completely ignoring that they're broken while foisting more and more broken things as cool as they might be (Knights being superheavies intended for regular games as the possible precursor to making Escalation rules baseline, Flyers, etc.)
2) Constant and repeated price hikes often for no reason and while actually lowering the cost. Ex: Tyranid Warriors went from $47USD to $51USD with the new Codex for no reason other than the new Codex came out. Things like reducing Dire Avengers to 5 models and still raising the price. The game has become increasingly expensive while GW has found ways to cut costs, so it comes as a bit of a slap in the face as normally when a company reduces its costs, those savings get passed to the customer instead of having a price hike so GW gets more profit than before (and they already were making a lot of profit). The fact their competitors often sell figures that are comparable quality for half the price speaks volumes as those companies aren't stupid and wouldn't sell things without making a profit.
3) GW has stuck its head in the sand and pretends that if it doesn't hear any criticism, then none exists. They live in their own bubble, and that comes into conflict with a lot of sites that promote alternatives and the like since fansites don't "tow the party line" and recommend GW paints, GW brushes, GW terrain, GW dice, etc. but actually discuss other ways of doing it, which GW translates as lost sales. The fact they consider that they have no competition alone is the height of arrogance and shows that they want to exist in their own bubble where its all GW all the time, and anything else is some fanciful rambling that doesn't really exist. To coin a phrase from Apple, they seem to have turned on the Reality Distortion Field, only it malfunctioned and only applies to them.
notprop wrote: Yeah it's like their jobs depend on in-store sales or something?
It's most likely that the RedShirt the Op talked to prefers Warseer the same way we prefer Dakka. I'm surprised he felt comfortable talking about Warseer when I'd imagine he had been told to talk up gamesworkshop.com as a web resource. It you're at work you should be talking business after all.
I personally have never heard a GW employee bad mouth Dakka, indeed I've discussed armies and conversions seen here with them.
Like allot of GW Redshirts complaint anecdotes I think allot of it comes down to meeting a low paid schmo who might be having an off day/TFG.
To be clear this is not just one red shirt. This is mutiple red shirts from two different stores.
lol. but yah, I was just wondering if other people have been experiencing this also mostly.
and all i would ever do is say something like "I read a great paitning tutorial on dakka", or diffrent cool conversions, ect i saw. I always seem to get a really negative reaction to that.
and all i would ever do is say something like "I read a great paitning tutorial on dakka", or diffrent cool conversions, ect i saw. I always seem to get a really negative reaction to that.
And in this, the age of polarized opinion and indignant outrage, it's that big a deal?
Speaking of the maligned changes that GW has made over the last few years, was there ever an official notice that Specialists Games were going away or did we just get outside info on that? And I'm assuming that even if there was a notice, there was no on-the-record reason, yes?
Spoke to a friend of mine who worked for GW. He confirmed that there were quarterly "seminars" where they were instructed to hate Dakka specifically. Even had a massive dart board with Yakface's avatar. Some of the newer staff could never figure out why they were throwing darts at Sean Connery, but questioning the seminar leaders resulted in Citadel™ Solitary™ Confinement™, and they quickly learnt to just throw the darts rather than question the target.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Spoke to a friend of mine who worked for GW. He confirmed that there were quarterly "seminars" where they were instructed to hate Dakka specifically. Even had a massive dart board with Yakface's avatar. Some of the newer staff could never figure out why they were throwing darts at Sean Connery, but questioning the seminar leaders resulted in Citadel™ Solitary™ Confinement™, and they quickly learnt to just throw the darts rather than question the target.
Is it sad that the part of that which I find unbelievable is not the corporate culture of 'shut up and hate who we tell you to hate' but rather that they would go to the effort of putting his avatar on a dart board?
H.B.M.C. wrote: Spoke to a friend of mine who worked for GW. He confirmed that there were quarterly "seminars" where they were instructed to hate Dakka specifically. Even had a massive dart board with Yakface's avatar. Some of the newer staff could never figure out why they were throwing darts at Sean Connery, but questioning the seminar leaders resulted in Citadel™ Solitary™ Confinement™, and they quickly learnt to just throw the darts rather than question the target.
curran12 wrote: .... When I suggest compromise, the response is 'GW should compromise', not 'we should all compromise'.
Well of course it is. Because GW is a business, and we are their customers.
You know the old adage 'The customer is always right'? It's not always actually true... but it is still a very smart philosophy for businesses to try to follow. Because the alternative, assuming that you know better than your customers what they want, is a very risky road to tread, and can very easily leave you with no customers and no idea why. And on the way there, while you have your business all securely battened down in your soundproof bunker, you have angry customers battering on the hatches and venting their frustrations to the sky.
There is no room for compromise there. It's not the customers' responsibility to complain less. It's up to the business to provide what their customers want, if they want to retain those customers.
Warseer is still far up GW's bum. Dakka tells the truth.
Though a true GW fanboy would avoid this new fangled internet altogether except to go on GW.com and order stuff/browse their catal-blog. Only have your hobby experience in WD, Warhammer Visions, and GW's blog!
Also HBMC's story is completely believable at first. GW is that sad.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Spoke to a friend of mine who worked for GW. He confirmed that there were quarterly "seminars" where they were instructed to hate Dakka specifically. Even had a massive dart board with Yakface's avatar. Some of the newer staff could never figure out why they were throwing darts at Sean Connery, but questioning the seminar leaders resulted in Citadel™ Solitary™ Confinement™, and they quickly learnt to just throw the darts rather than question the target.
Was your friend serious when he said that or this is just a joke?
I very much doubt that GW employees are trained to hate Dakka.
I do think that many likely do hate Dakka, or at least try to steer customers away. And that internal discussion might spread this dislike and distrust.
Too much discussion about *gasp!* other games!
And, likely more important from their point of view - no means to control or steer the flow of information and opinion.
The control of information is likely the key issue - they want to be able to get rid of any negative feedback, or and positive feedback about competitors games.
On Warseer the moderation is such that they can effectively do so.
On Dakka, not so much.
Not all companies are that sensitive about opinion - Reaper has a vocal forum, Paizo has a vocal forum, Mantic has a vocal forum. (I have seen question on the Paizo forum answered by the CEO of the company.)
They have found that having an open discussion involves the fans, and engages them to the benefit of the company.
GW, on the other hand... dug a hole, then pulled the hole in after them. They do not want to hear differing opinions - they want to control the flow of information. To be the only source - not just a matter of wanting to hear only praise, but of being the sole voice of any kind.
I remember when there were half a dozen fanzines dedicated to WH40K alone (this was back in 2e) - when Armorcast and Epic Cast had the rights to make large resin models for GW games. When GW would list fan sites in the pages of the Journal. (Gods above and below I miss the Journal.)
When there were posts from internet forums that were quoted in the pages of White Dwarf! (Rocks are not 'free', Citizen.)
The communications blackout is hurting both sides of the equation.
But a free discussion also allows dissent, which appears to be anathema to the current GW management.
The problem with being paranoid is that sooner or later you do have enemies - some of whom could have been avoided, simply by communication.
Its just some of the more common posters are very negative and can be offensive (without breaking the rules offensive). I simply say its the internet, could be worse, go look at you tube.
I had the same problem with dakka. All it took was putting four or five people on Ignore, and dakka became a pretty freindly place.
Through technical wizardry we know for a fact that quite a few people from Games Workshop regularly peruse Dakka, so I wouldn't take the word of a couple redshirts as gospel.
As with any group of people, some GW employees will like certain things and others won't like those same things...y'know, human nature and all that.
Now, whether or not GW coaches (or forces) their employees not to participate in online forums actively (posting) is another story. There seems to be anecdotal evidence that they do request/force their employees to refrain from posting online, something that isn't entirely uncommon among large corporations.
But that commandment (assuming it exists) certainly doesn't stop many, many GW employees from browsing dakka.
Retrogamer0001 wrote: I haven't been here long, but I really like it so far - tons of helpful, knowledgeable posters with a real passion for modelling and gaming.
It's a great community, and one of the smartest I've found on the internet, regardless of interest group. Whenever a real world concern appears, we have experts. Economists, military veterans, you name it. The Chapterhouse lawsuit thread has a self-appointed legal team to translate jargon for the rest of us!
The issue at hand is so ridiculously self-manufactured. GW shut down all lines of communication and decided to start dictating what we as consumers should want. Doesn't take a business degree to figure out that that plan is a recipe for disaster.
When I worked at Sony we were instructed to identify ourselves as Sony employees if we commented in online discussions about Sony and Sony related stuff. A declaration of special interest, basically.
Hate might not be the right word for it, I would use the word- Threat. Dakka is a Threat to them, because point of fact the news is not all peaches and cream and we're not afraid to let them know about it.
And where there is threat, there is also usually fear...
I'm sure Dakkanaughts could come up with any number of reasons why a GW redshirt might fear the truth/reality contained within Dakka...
MY local store staffer is worse than one-eyed, he is blind to ALL but the company.
They replaced all the cool staff (who actually gamed) with a hipster who knows nothing bar the current range of stuff - so if you're after something that would work with the older stuff (aesthetically) or a compatible paint colour to the older stuff, you're SOOL.
Kilkrazy wrote: When I worked at Sony we were instructed to identify ourselves as Sony employees if we commented in online discussions about Sony and Sony related stuff. A declaration of special interest, basically.
When i worked at Philips i had to sign a NDA form.
Kilkrazy wrote: When I worked at Sony we were instructed to identify ourselves as Sony employees if we commented in online discussions about Sony and Sony related stuff. A declaration of special interest, basically.
When i worked at Philips i had to sign a NDA form.
Wait, you had to sign an NDA telling you you couldn't identify yourself as an employee?
He's not saying they talked about stuff they couldn't, he meant participate in any way in a discussion online about Something related to Sony. Basically a disclaimer.
No that means that you cannot talk about everything related to your work, when i worked in Philips we were working on new stuff that wasn't supposed to be told on the interwebs before it was officially released, it means just that i am liable for what i say, but i don't have to say that i am a Philips employee.
Now that you have a canned arse chromedog you should probably go for a job at SPC since you are at least half way qualified.
On being trained to hate dakka- i think grot 6 is right , i think they are threatened by people who have been with them a very long time ( i personally started in the rogue trader days and collected old white dwarfs because they were awesome) and know that the sales pitch used unmercifully by the company bears no resemblance to the old reality of the company.
ON dakka - I really like this site the moderation is perfect allowing you that sense of freedom whilst clamping down on excess. I never realised it was the largest gaming forum though, i might have to self moderate more of my silliness (though I'm probably on enough ignore lists not to bother)
On a few posters ruining it for everyone else- I agree HBMC is to blame, he ruined my enjoyment of this site as i can only read his posts out of all 10000 members. I'm sick of his well thought out and humourous replies. Less of that and more somber boring crud please. Also does he have to post in every GW thread.... yes, yes he does
Bullockist wrote: Now that you have a canned arse chromedog you should probably go for a job at SPC since you are at least half way qualified.
Nice.
Did your mum help you with that?
No point working for SPC as it's gone the way of the Holden anyway. Why would I want to move to that part of the country anyway (hell of a commute to and from Godzone).
I did used to like my local GW. The guys were fun. They could take a joke.
Then it went and changed - and the new guy has no charisma. His sales training, what he has of it, comes from the McDonalds school of upselling.
He has no clue on older products (I went in looking for a paint in the current range that would work as a replacement for an older (3 years ago) colour).
Most of the gamers in the area avoid the place and go to the indy down the road instead as a result.
yes, yes she did, I specially made an STD call 6 hours down the coast so she could advise me on a great 'zinger' to get that Chromedog guy on Dakka with.
Godzone? First Ive heard that call about Newcastle, though I must admit Newcastle is becoming very nice now days. Why is it that crappy areas in Australia have to identify with God :p
Last time i went into a GW i bought some paint , they asked what it was for and I said warmachine , they said it's all wargaming and I was dumbfounded. Was I in a REAL GW. *
*location not included so they don't get fired, meh they are probably allready fired
Well I haven't seen anyone on here from my town but we don't have a GW.
I think if the people at GW don't like DakkaDakka is because there is a whole lot of complainers on here (I mean some stuff is legit) but haters gunna hate as they say lol Plus it might be the leaks or the constant "GW is a piece of junk" talk. I doubt this is ALL GW employees who think that dakkadakka is bad though.
As is frequently the case, I find myself agreeing whole heartedly with The Auld Grump. Of course GW don't train their employees to hate Dakka. That's absurd. Nevertheless, this line:
"The problem with being paranoid is that sooner or later you do have enemies - some of whom could have been avoided, simply by communication."
... couldn't possibly ring any truer.
Jehan-reznor wrote: No that means that you cannot talk about everything related to your work, when i worked in Philips we were working on new stuff that wasn't supposed to be told on the interwebs before it was officially released, it means just that i am liable for what i say, but i don't have to say that i am a Philips employee.
Ok well that's pretty normal. I work in the telecommunications industry, and NDA's for upcoming products happen all the time. Of course, with us it's kinda silly that we have to be all secretive about a new iPhone or whatever when people already know it's coming and the news is already reporting the launch date.
Bullockist wrote: On a few posters ruining it for everyone else- I agree HBMC is to blame, he ruined my enjoyment of this site as i can only read his posts out of all 10000 members. I'm sick of his well thought out and humourous replies. Less of that and more somber boring crud please. Also does he have to post in every GW thread.... yes, yes he does
Through technical wizardry we know for a fact that quite a few people from Games Workshop regularly peruse Dakka, so I wouldn't take the word of a couple redshirts as gospel.
As with any group of people, some GW employees will like certain things and others won't like those same things...y'know, human nature and all that.
Now, whether or not GW coaches (or forces) their employees not to participate in online forums actively (posting) is another story. There seems to be anecdotal evidence that they do request/force their employees to refrain from posting online, something that isn't entirely uncommon among large corporations.
But that commandment (assuming it exists) certainly doesn't stop many, many GW employees from browsing dakka.
Very true. If you remember back on how tense on this site due do GW's throwing C&D's + Lawsuits. A few of us offered (myself included) names off attorneys and monetary funds to fight off any would be litigation from hostile intentions of others? Why? Because this site IS the site to learn things of the hobby in general. Of like minded individuals who can share thoughts and concepts to their fellow hobbyists.
This is something that a company, that is run in a manner like GW (because there are companies that have similar corporate ideals in their prospective spheres of influence) does not like.
Which is... A very large, well ran Independent web site within their sphere of influence that a corporation(s) has no control of.
You will be disliked by said corporation(s). But to the person who wants to listen, to learn to teach and give back to the hobby that we enjoy.
curran12 wrote: It would be the 'GW manager posts on Dakka' situation made worse by several orders of magnitude. You'd have a flood of people storming in demanding (let's be honest with ourselves, people would be demanding) changes in everything from rules, to model design to how to run the business at an executive level. And, with the echo chamber effect, GW trying any kind of talking outside of the most obsequious begging and pleading will just be obliterated. Especially when the unfortunate community managers have to explain that they actually can't change the rules or business for the internet mob.
Could it work? Possibly. However, I think calling it a 'rough few weeks/months' does nothing to cover the amount of venom that would pour into that place on a daily, hourly basis. If GW would want to address it, they would need more than a handful of mods and community reps, they'd need to be pouring personnel resources into giving answers that would be adequate to pacify this mob.
Respectfully, I disagree with this conclusion. There was an Official GWSHR rep posting a Dakka for a while, and that (ahem) after an initial speedbump went well enough. Perhaps they could dip their toes into something even less debatable: rules. For example, YMDC is pretty well regimented and moderated, why not have a GW rep there whose only duty on the forum would be to answer rules related questions? It's straightforward, some questions are really easy (even I answer some now and them) and there is no real downside. You can't argue or scream or negotiate with the determination because the answer is essentially ex cathedra.
That's just one idea, but I don't think that the idea that GWS have irrevocably tainted themselves beyond all repair in the social media presence is a truism. Forge World seems to do alright, after all, and they deserve even more gak in a way with their high prices and highly dubious quality control... but that's another thread.
Ok well that's pretty normal. I work in the telecommunications industry, and NDA's for upcoming products happen all the time. Of course, with us it's kinda silly that we have to be all secretive about a new iPhone or whatever when people already know it's coming and the news is already reporting the launch date.
That is where GW's policies put their own employees over a barrel.
GW staff member frequents Dakka and find out the Knights are coming.
The following day a customer comes in:
"What about the upcoming Knights?"
Staff member's internal monologue goes:
"Two weeks time, costing £xx, they look great, looking forward to it, what are you planning to do with yours? The rules are two weeks after that so you might want to hold off until the full rules are here"
In reality he's not allowed to discuss it and remembering his sales figure for this week goes:
"How about a Leman Russ/ Baneblade/ Lord of Skulls? Glue, Paint?"
It might be that some prefer ignorance of sites like this. At least that way they're not feeling like they have to duck and dive with customers over leaked release details.
Jehan-reznor wrote: @alphaecho what is the issue? As an employee, you cannot say it. Then be vague about it, or use humor; well i can tell you but then i have to kill you
I suppose it all depends on the risk to employment of getting caught talking about releases that the company hasn't officially launched yet. If the Boss is a toe the party line kind of guy, it might not be worth it.
I know that in my local store I prefer not to put the staff (who I like) in an awkward position by talking about stuff I've found out about on sites like this. I compare it to many (possibly too many) years ago when the staff were free to talk about everything upcoming. Sometimes you even learned from them about what was coming up months in advance.
Ok well that's pretty normal. I work in the telecommunications industry, and NDA's for upcoming products happen all the time. Of course, with us it's kinda silly that we have to be all secretive about a new iPhone or whatever when people already know it's coming and the news is already reporting the launch date.
That is where GW's policies put their own employees over a barrel.
GW staff member frequents Dakka and find out the Knights are coming.
The following day a customer comes in:
"What about the upcoming Knights?"
Staff member's internal monologue goes:
"Two weeks time, costing £xx, they look great, looking forward to it, what are you planning to do with yours? The rules are two weeks after that so you might want to hold off until the full rules are here"
In reality he's not allowed to discuss it and remembering his sales figure for this week goes:
"How about a Leman Russ/ Baneblade/ Lord of Skulls? Glue, Paint?"
It might be that some prefer ignorance of sites like this. At least that way they're not feeling like they have to duck and dive with customers over leaked release details.
I don't know whether all GW are like this, but my personal experience is more like:
"What about the upcoming Knights?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, but if I did.. I bet they'd be awesome and I'd want one!"
They then ask you to confirm what you know.. and discuss those rumours based on the info you give.
I don't think GW actively trains their employees to apply more or less hate to certain online sites. I think they tell their employees to focus on sales and to understand that a "small" portion of their client base in engaged with non-GW supported internet sites and may be a difficult customer. I think GW is way, way too big an aloof to individually target any internet forum.
My main issue with GW employees is that they can't admit when something is sub-par. I don't even tell them what army I'm playing if I drop into a store to look around because I don't want to be pushed another crap unit. They'd get a lot further with me if they admitted something is bad, rather than defending it as good. I'm more likely to buy something if they agree to some level with me, where as I am probably going to buy nothing if they keep blowing smoke up my arse.
GW employees are probably trained to direct people to the GW website as GW want themselves to be the only source of news to a new hobbyist, their website and their own magazine. Their staff are there to sell only the GW hobby which is why they only allow their own product in store and depending on how far the redshirt takes it, forbid discussion into other products (according to some accounts online). GW discourage the new hobbyist from actually exploring the hobby and, again depending on the redshirt, will claim GW is unique or that there aren't alternatives (extreme anecdotal examples are of redshirts flat out denying the existence of other fantasy companies).
Dakka is a prime example of a large community in which none of the GW rules apply, people discuss where to get discounts and alternative miniature suppliers and are free to critique products. None of these things GW want to encourage and wish to steer their new hobbyists, those they focus on most, away. Maybe some redshirts take it too far and trash talk the site, that doesn't amount to GW training people to 'hate' Dakka but it is a reflection of their corporate attitude.
They are not only trained to hate Dakkadakka, but any site not in line of the "GW hhhobby."
It is a matter of corperation D baggery that comes with working in that sort of environment. On the surface its pretty standard SOP, and theres really not that mutch that a redshirt can do or say about dakka. You can see where that might build up a little operational resentment.
If you dig on the interwebs for the letters G and W, and add in something about employees... and a handbook..... You might find out something pretty interesting.
Grot 6 wrote: They are not only trained to hate Dakkadakka, but any site not in line of the "GW hhhobby."
It is a matter of corperation D baggery that comes with working in that sort of environment. On the surface its pretty standard SOP, and theres really not that mutch that a redshirt can do or say about dakka. You can see where that might build up a little operational resentment.
If you dig on the interwebs for the letters G and W, and add in something about employees... and a handbook..... You might find out something pretty interesting.
I did just this Grot, and I haven't read it in detail, but... So. Much. Hypocrisy.
It's going to take weeks to get all that bs scrubbed out of my brain!
The people who defend GW on forums are truly amusing, because if GW had their way you wouldn't be able to discuss anything about "the hobby" on any forum period.
Azazelx wrote: So what the feth is HHHobby supposed to mean/stand for, anyway?
GW like to refer to 'the GW hobby' as if they were the hobby in it's entirety or not part of the wider tabletop miniature wargaming hobby and a hobby unto themselves.
This is of course stupid and so referring to the HHHobby is a way of making fun of that.
I always imagine a GW rep saying "HHHOBBY" because he's getting an orgasm of joy, truth and undying love for the one and only tabletop company out there.
I can tell you from friends in middle ranks of the retail and sales side of GW, that GW's upper ranks in those fields, in the UK anyway, actively discourage forum use and believe forums to be hotbeds of 'bitter exes', hobbyists who quit GW but can't help but endlessly troll and attack GW for anything and everything. I know that at least one of them was 'outed' as posting on this forum and his direct supervisor had a word and recommended very strongly that he stop posting. I also know that an ex store manager I know was told to get rid of one of his employees for their posting on forums by his area manager, despite all the employee doing was posting in painting and modelling type areas, the store manager refused, was himself threatened and went over his area manager's head, which resulted in he and the employee being saved but also warned to stop posting as the minis could identify the poster as a GW employee.
I believe it's all part of the moat and wall thing, I find it a great shame as I think active and open interaction, both from the people who love the games and work at the company, along with some 'official online reps', who don't just tow company lines of cut/paste legalese but actively engage with the community and bring these interactions to the board rooms and team meetings, would reap the company real dividends not only in tailoring product, but in rebuilt bridges. Whilst there are some posters on any of these forums who do literally give the company no credit at all, I know many of us are basically more than willing to interact with them again.
Can you imagine if the Forge World crew came onto Dakka for a Q&A session filtered through the mods or if there was a preview for the next codex with the writers talking through it.
If GW could see that there are always going to be a small amount of people who are never going to be satisfied or just post vitriol for the sake of it and differentiate between them and those of us with legitimate concerns but who want the games they love to do well, and started to interact with us instead of seemingly hiding behind a bunker and treating all of us as the enemy... Well, I still believe open interaction and 360 feedback can really help the company, and rebuilt the relationship between it, it's employees and it's customers.
If you dig on the interwebs for the letters G and W, and add in something about employees... and a handbook..... You might find out something pretty interesting.
It was most certainly enlightening.....
We know that what we do is not for everyone. As a niche business we appeal to a
relatively small group of people – those who love to collect, paint, model and play with
our miniatures. Our job is to find these people and supply them with the highest quality
models, punctual delivery and superior service. This is because our customers’ main
concern is with value and quality, not with price. In a business like ours respect for our
customers is absolutely paramount
Games Workshop respects loyalty from its employees. The company therefore rewards
and celebrates hard work, dedication and length of service at several milestones in your
career with us.
As you achieve five years service you will become a ‘Five Year Veteran’ and you will
receive a personalised Games Workshop gift.
After ten years of service you become a Ten Year Veteran. At this time you will receive
personalised Games Workshop gifts including an invitation to the exclusive Veteran’s
black tie dinner. Ten Year Veterans also receive a one-off 10 days extra leave. You can
take these days over a period of 2 consecutive calendar years, starting from the day
after the dinner.
At times you may receive gifts from the company which are Games Workshop products,
or personalised items or gifts for special occasions. Selling these gifts is not permitted.
Should you wish to give away gifts which you received from Games Workshop for
whatever reason, please consult your manager beforehand to obtain written permission
I think GW view Dakka, the same way that Politicians view the public who criticize them. It goes with the territory...
I would always advocate free forum, over "Officially Sanctioned and endorsed one" where peoples posts are routinely removed from a forum if they aren't inline with how the company feels or perceives itself..
The Battlefront, Flames of War Forum comes to mind....
So I would say it's a healthy discourse, I don't think they hate Dakka, it's more a mirror they can look into, warts and all, no holds barred, out of this myriad of posts does come themes and recurring grievances, suggestions and in some cases praise! Burying your head in the sand or self-deluded-narcissism aren't healthy options.
As mostly everyone has explained, its clear why some GW employees wouldn't like this site.
However, I wonder what would happen if GW opened a forum section on their official site? I mean since we have already stated that they don't have a facebook page, maybe its true that they don't want to allow too much interaction with the customers on the internet due to the fact that there will be a lot of hate and demands etc...
In my experience GW trys to get people to stay away from forums, i definitely think if they could make them dissapear... "Speak no evil, hear no evil" and all that.
Few months ago my local manager ranted at me when i said there was a discussion about a rule on a forum, i can't quote it word for word but it was something like "They contribute nothing to the hobby", "Most of them don't even play and just want arguments" and "Degenerates who don't leave there house".
Glaiceana wrote: As mostly everyone has explained, its clear why some GW employees wouldn't like this site.
However, I wonder what would happen if GW opened a forum section on their official site? I mean since we have already stated that they don't have a facebook page, maybe its true that they don't want to allow too much interaction with the customers on the internet due to the fact that there will be a lot of hate and demands etc...
GW used to have their own forum.
The moderators were volunteers. They were very good, IMO, though of course they had to follow the company rules, one of which was to lock any thread that mentioned Squats.
There was a pretty low signal to noise ratio partly because lots of the members were very young new recruits. There was good stuff too, and lots of complaining about prices and arguing about the rules, much like here.
After ten years of service you become a Ten Year Veteran. At this time you will receive
personalised Games Workshop gifts including an invitation to the exclusive Veteran’s
black tie dinner.
Would be interesting to know if anyone actually gets to ten years. I suppose it might be some of the design staff, although even then that's probably a push. Shop staff (those that haven't been made redundant) have an average life expectancy of 6-12 months. Although it's probably less these days due to the strain the staff will be under.
Games Workshop employees must not become involved in postings or discussions about
the ‘business of Games Workshop’. This includes, but is not limited to, any discussion of our
product prices, release plans, retail, trade and mail order development and location of
stores via Blogs, Instant Messaging, Forums or Social Networking sites.
After ten years of service you become a Ten Year Veteran. At this time you will receive
personalised Games Workshop gifts including an invitation to the exclusive Veteran’s
black tie dinner.
Would be interesting to know if anyone actually gets to ten years. I suppose it might be some of the design staff, although even then that's probably a push. Shop staff (those that haven't been made redundant) have an average life expectancy of 6-12 months. Although it's probably less these days due to the strain the staff will be under.
A friend of mine did. He got a leather jacket with an embossed imperial eagle on it and had a big dinner thing at GWHQ.
Games Workshop employees must not become involved in postings or discussions about
the ‘business of Games Workshop’. This includes, but is not limited to, any discussion of our
product prices, release plans, retail, trade and mail order development and location of
stores via Blogs, Instant Messaging, Forums or Social Networking sites.
That seems pretty straight forward to me
You're not even allowed to reference it or refer people to the internet. I nearly got canned for that once.
GW cant handle the internet because we keep track of all their wrong doings, monitor prices and call them out for being gaks when they are being gaks (which is often). GW despise free speech and cross border sales, they eliminated one of them with the new trade agreement and the other they strictly enforce in their stores. Years ago it was a joke to call them gestapo workshop, funny how they get closer to the truth of that with each passing year.
If you dig on the interwebs for the letters G and W, and add in something about employees... and a handbook..... You might find out something pretty interesting.
LOL! This should provide a fair amount of entertainment.
From the first page intro by Tom Kirby:
"Games Workshop is global with businesses on nearly every continent. Where once the
sun never set on the British Empire, now the sun never sets on a Games Workshop store."
"We have no time for cynics, whiners or time-wasters."
"We never forget that the hobbyists who buy our products pay our wages."
Other stuff:
"We also realise that mass-marketing is expensive and far less effective for a niche
business than the power of word of mouth. People’s opinions play a vital role in our
success and we do not only market our products, but also our business itself."
I would hate to be a GW employee and have people know I was on Dakka Dakka: you would be bugged to no end.
I think I would go to great lengths to conceal that even without the threat of being canned.
The handbook really highlights the corporate culture: rather than sticking to listing specific behaviors not allowed they also list many "judgment call" labels for people.
I could just see the dismissal paper: "We are sorry to inform you that you meet the criteria for a "whiner" and we have no room in our organization for people of your nature."
It is strange how they define their customers:
Spoiler:
"As a niche business we appeal to a
relatively small group of people – those who love to collect, paint, model and play with
our miniatures. Our job is to find these people and supply them with the highest quality
models, punctual delivery and superior service. This is because our customers’ main
concern is with value and quality, not with price. In a business like ours respect for our
customers is absolutely paramount."
They seem to infer they are only those who use "their" miniatures, not any in general (not expanding markets??).
Concern for "value" (to hold something of importance) and quality is rather relative which DOES include price but they state price is not important...!!??
Madness.
$300 for a Khorn Mower despite the insane amount of detail still appears to have little "value" compared to the money.
They really are a business that is very interesting as a study of organizational behavior.
They also seem to be oblivious to what effect Finecast had on their perceived quality. I never complained about GW quality prior to that switch over (a few sculpts here and there were substandard but their QA was top notch).
Does the company have a general culture and attitude that leads to staff hating Dakka Dakka? Almost certainly?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Intresting that they disallow you to speak about the location of stores via the internet. Does this mean you could get sacked for telling somewhere where their nearest GW is?
Kilkrazy wrote: I am sure that new recruits are enthusiastic. Logically they have to be or they wouldn't join up.
It's the word of mouth of veterans that is fairly cynical about GW.
Except that you'd expect it to be Vets who bring in new players if they are relying on word of mouth wouldn't you?
That has always been my theory. I don't think GW believe it. That's why I am interested to see what happens in the next five years.
GW have just about reached the bottom of the curve as regards relations with vets. That clearly feeds back into anti-GW feeling and behaviour. You see it all the time on DakkaDakka now, which didn't happen five years ago.
I mean advice about alternative games, modelling supplies and proxy models. Many vets have gone from being enthusiastic promoters of GW games to detractors of GW and keen promoters of alternatives.
If that compromises the recruitment of new players, GW will find themselves in trouble.
After ten years of service you become a Ten Year Veteran. At this time you will receive
personalised Games Workshop gifts including an invitation to the exclusive Veteran’s
black tie dinner.
Would be interesting to know if anyone actually gets to ten years. I suppose it might be some of the design staff, although even then that's probably a push. Shop staff (those that haven't been made redundant) have an average life expectancy of 6-12 months. Although it's probably less these days due to the strain the staff will be under.
I know a couple of 10 year vets, though they are in Nottingham.
I can say with certainty that GW trainers, if the topic comes up, bad mouth Dakka and the internet in general as much as possible. I've said it before and I'll say it again: The problem with GW is they are so internalized culture wise they wouldn't hear a tornado pass over HQ.
I've been getting back into the hobby (Like a lot of people I have a 22 year on again off again with 40k) and I find a lot of the stuff on Dakka to be great. I come here for modeling tips, to look at people's paint jobs to get ideas on how I can translate that pro paintjob to my Orks with my 3rd grade skills, so on and so forth.
However, I don't blame GW staff for hating on Dakka, sometimes I accidently wander into some of the more hate filled doom and gloom post and a little part of my soul literally dies because of how anti-GW some people are. I look through Warseer and Bolter and Chainsword (or is it Chainsword and bolter? Screw them, they hate xenos over there) and I don't see nearly as much venom flowing. It's all subjective, haters are everywhere and a lot of times people have a right to be angry with GW or have legitimate gripes (GW has messed up my last two orders.....they did give me a free painboy after one of them though...oh well). I've just never found unfocused internet anger to be all that useful.
The guys who love the hobby and hang out here are a great asset to the community, and I support people's right to vent and cuss GW, because if you are willing to cuss and moan about something, chances are you are passonite about it, I guess I am just not surprised they hate Dakka.
I think dakka is really great at acknowledging solid evidence and not necessarily bending to a particular hive-mindset. Most major complaints people have about GW can be backed up by objective data in some regard or another, it's just the interpretation of cause and effect that I feel gets arguments started.
GW doesn't like dakka talking about price rises because what is GW supposed to say to counter it? Someone cited a little while back that they are under the belief that cost does not affect a customer's decisions, so they only thing they can say to complaints that things cost too much is "deal with it." But they don't want people talking about that, because I think deep-down they realize cost does affect purchasing behaviors, it's just a matter of evaluating the perceived value of their products and setting the price at the upper threshold.
GW doesn't like people talking about rule balance because they don't feel that it is important to the experience of playing their games. But game balance, like cost, does seem to be something that is important to a considerable portion of the customer base, so again what is their response to people who say "we don't like that your games aren't balanced well"..."tough, we like it this way so deal with it" ?
I think it's just natural that the management portion of GW would dislike dakka or any outlet where everything they do is not shown in the best light- it builds up a consensus that affects their business.
I used to know a GW employee a while back who played both GW and other systems. He got tired of people coming in complaining about the same things that people complain about here, because it's repetitive, but more important, he had no control over it. Corportate GW *does* have control over complaints (to a degree).
It reminds me of a story I read about Time Warner cable dicussing how Google could never break into the internet provider business, and one of the reasons was they didn't have system put in place to deal with the vast customer complaints, and all I could think was "there wouldn't be some many complaints if your service wasn't so gakky!"
It might be an anomaly, but I found this place via a GW employee. I got into the hobby just over a year ago after resisting the lure for years. I had the chance to swing by Warhammer World while on a trip and jumped at it. While in the shop there I was mentioning my trepidation with playing straight away, as I was still fuzzy on rules, and I also wanted as many painted models on the table as I could get. The guy there was very helpful, but suggested I hit Dakka for any questions I couldn't answer elsewhere, and for the hobby community. He also gave me free shipping on some FW stuff I wanted but wasn't on hand.
I guess that's been your experience. I feel like dakka has educated me on a lot of goings-on both for Games Workshop as well as a lot of other games/companies. Sure, it's not always positive for GW, but then again I want information to be as objective as possible, and when you take the overall experiences and opinions of people I feel like you build a better consensus. Sure, people will shift to hivemind mentality, but I see a lot of anti-popular opinion crowd running around in threads with a pretty high frequency too.
It's worth considering why it seems dakka rallies against GW sometimes. Are complaints generally consistent? Do they have merit? Do people supply evidence for their opinions? A good example of this evidence-supported arguments is the GW financial thread. I know I looked at the thread and saw it as evidence that GW is moving strongly in a financially negative direction, but some of the opinions by derek I feel are well-supported, and I have since adjusted my opinion. But I'd rather have the back-and-forth arguing than a thread than something that has to be universally fixed to one side.
If one person says Dakka is not a hivemind and another person says that it is a hivemind.... don't you think that's the very definition of it being NOT a hivemind? Like, people have different opinions?
heartserenade wrote: If one person says Dakka is not a hivemind and another person says that it is a hivemind.... don't you think that's the very definition of it being NOT a hivemind? Like, people have different opinions?
If you have a different opinion than the approved GW one, then surely you are a part of the hivemind
heartserenade wrote: If one person says Dakka is not a hivemind and another person says that it is a hivemind.... don't you think that's the very definition of it being NOT a hivemind? Like, people have different opinions?
Don't be silly. If your opinion is contrary to GW's then you are just a mindless hater and by that very definition you are part of a hive mind.
On the other hand, if your opinion is like DarknessEternal's then you are a shining example of individuality!
heartserenade wrote: If one person says Dakka is not a hivemind and another person says that it is a hivemind.... don't you think that's the very definition of it being NOT a hivemind? Like, people have different opinions?
Pretty much this. Dakka has plenty of posters on both sides of the fence.
The fact that Dakka has some individual posters who are largely negative about what GW does, even if they're really vocal about it, does not make Dakka anti-GW. It just makes Dakka a place with some members who are anti-GW.
Thing is most people are not anti GW as much as they are Anti what GW is doing atm. Many people who are vocally anti gw will give GW props when they feel it is due. There is just less and less worth praising with GWatm.
heartserenade wrote: If one person says Dakka is not a hivemind and another person says that it is a hivemind.... don't you think that's the very definition of it being NOT a hivemind? Like, people have different opinions?
Pretty much this. Dakka has plenty of posters on both sides of the fence.
The fact that Dakka has some individual posters who are largely negative about what GW does, even if they're really vocal about it, does not make Dakka anti-GW. It just makes Dakka a place with some members who are anti-GW.
This is fundamentally true, Dakka is a community and consists of an enormous amount of diversity.
However, "Dakka" and every other community out there, internet or otherwise, is going to be viewed as single unit because of that very diversity. It is impossible to list the number of different nuanced opinions in Dakka, so it is easier to make a sweeping generalization and apply it to the "Dakka collective."
This generalization, at least in the eyes of GW, is going to be defined by those that disagree most directly with the opinions (dare I say values?) of GW. This is in part because it is far less common to say "hey, good job" when something is done right. What is done right is largely ignored (because it is expected of a company) and so the complaints dominate.
GW employees therefore are going by a generalized view of Dakka that is dominated by those views that are most strongly opposed to theirs.
heartserenade wrote: If one person says Dakka is not a hivemind and another person says that it is a hivemind.... don't you think that's the very definition of it being NOT a hivemind? Like, people have different opinions?
I think some people will shift towards what they think is the majority opinion- a perceived hivemind, or mob mentality, or whatever you want to call it. Either way, I don't think dakka is a single hivemind of GW-hate; it is quite the opposite.
heartserenade wrote: If one person says Dakka is not a hivemind and another person says that it is a hivemind.... don't you think that's the very definition of it being NOT a hivemind? Like, people have different opinions?
Pretty much this. Dakka has plenty of posters on both sides of the fence.
The fact that Dakka has some individual posters who are largely negative about what GW does, even if they're really vocal about it, does not make Dakka anti-GW. It just makes Dakka a place with some members who are anti-GW.
This is fundamentally true, Dakka is a community and consists of an enormous amount of diversity.
However, "Dakka" and every other community out there, internet or otherwise, is going to be viewed as single unit because of that very diversity. It is impossible to list the number of different nuanced opinions in Dakka, so it is easier to make a sweeping generalization and apply it to the "Dakka collective."
This generalization, at least in the eyes of GW, is going to be defined by those that disagree most directly with the opinions (dare I say values?) of GW. This is in part because it is far less common to say "hey, good job" when something is done right. What is done right is largely ignored (because it is expected of a company) and so the complaints dominate.
GW employees therefore are going by a generalized view of Dakka that is dominated by those views that are most strongly opposed to theirs.
I agree completely, think you have got it in a nut-shell there.
There were lots of positive comments about the Knights release - those negative comments tended to be about the price, as well as the need to purchase the rules for it separately - but by and large I think the net community was pretty complementary over what is a cool looking model. But, recently the Taurox is revealed - aesthetically the general consensus is probably '4/10', you read lots of 'Tonka Truck' type comments - people comment what they think of it.
But, a lot of issues are less subjective than that - price rises, quality control issues, trading bans, heavy-handed IP litigation; there is only ever going to be one form of reaction to that kind of stuff when viewed from a customer perspective. People will give credit where it is due, and visa versa. No doubt there is a certain amount of 'echo chamber', but I think the vast majority of regular posters here would not just repeat a comment just to fit in with a consensus opinion.
carlos13th wrote: Thing is most people are not anti GW as much as they are Anti what GW is doing atm. Many people who are vocally anti gw will give GW props when they feel it is due. There is just less and less worth praising with GWatm.
Saevus wrote: I look through Warseer and Bolter and Chainsword (or is it Chainsword and bolter? Screw them, they hate xenos over there) and I don't see nearly as much venom flowing.
Well of course you don't. Badmouth GW over at Whineseer and you'll very quickly find yourself coming over to Dakka as you won't be able to post over there. They even try to enforce GW's secrecy. They're like GW's own Internet cheer squad.
Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't NEED to follow ME, You don't NEED to follow ANYBODY! You've got to think for your selves! You're ALL individuals!
