You're still in the miniature wargaming hobby, just heavily invested in one brand which I must point out isn't a problem. It's no different to someone who is heavily invested in, say, Infinity and immerse themselves and imbibe everything to do with infinity and nothing else. Doesn't stop them from being part of the wargaming hobby though
I think back in the 90s in the pre-mass internet era and even when the internet was getting going - GW had a tighter hold on the market. Certainly in the UK. Back then you had to get pretty big to advertise and get your game into actual stores; even then GW stores (UK) were the most common and they were the only ones with a magazine.
Basically back then it was darn hard to market your game.
Today with the internet even just browsing warhammer in search engines you get LOADS of 3rd party models and companies and ideas. It's much easier to casually be aware of other games.
harlokin wrote: I understand your point, but kind of disagree.
I read 30K/40K books, I watch YouTube channels dedicated to 40K, and buy/paint/play with 40K mimiatures. If 40K somehow went away, I would not be seeking to replace it with other games because I am not invested in their lore, and don't have the time or inclination to become so. For me, playing the wargame is just a byproduct of my interest in the setting.
Out of curiosity, why is that? Have you learned about other wargames' settings, or were you never interested? If some settings that you are already interested in (from, say, a book, TV show, movie) is made in a wargame that becomes very popular, would you be likely to play it?
I've been immersed in 40K and The Old World since the late 80's...so I guess it's partially a lot of nostalgia and accumulated geek knowledge. The closest I got to an alternative was perhaps the Battletech universe, but I didn't really like all the Clan stuff.
I read up a lot on the Infinity setting to play the RPG, and I really liked it, but I don't have the same emotional connection, and the truescale metal minis are not to my taste.
yukishiro1 wrote: Especially when GW's whole business model is centered around cultivating a feeling among its customers that it is more than just a brand. When a brand trades on that kind of "more than just a company" image, it's especially unreasonable to mock people who buy into it until they literally cannot buy into it any more.
I'm not sure someone being duped by marketing makes any anguish they have because GW raised prices on a kit more reasonable.
Nobody likes the guy who responds to someone's feelings of loss with "suck it up, it's not really a loss anyway, maybe it's even a gain, stop being emotional." It is a good idea in life to strive not to be that guy.
I'm beginning to think that society might actually benefit with more people like that. Pandemic, economic upheaval, social unrest all might mean we might need to re-calibrate our reactions and no longer being able to be a consumer of a brand might just not rate as a real loss in such a climate. If it is a result or emblematic of a larger financial reversal, then that's a different story though. If it's "I have $100 for a start collecting, but GW will only sell me one at $115" then yeah, maybe that isn't something to get upset over. Maybe in that case, "suck it up, it's not really a loss anyway, maybe it's even a gain, stop being emotional."
Okay, I have to ask, are you defending GW's prices or just kind of wandering into a cul de sac of "Well akshully"?
GW's prices range from okay to terrible. We know from their financials that they care about maintaining margins, so existing products get bumped up in price to meet their targets. And they're going to keep doing that.
So now what?
If you have 50GBP for a start collecting but GW will only sell it to you for 60, what are you going to do about it? Realize there are other options? Realize there are ways to get it or something like it for less?
Nah, just quit. You're priced out, so it's all over right? Hobby gone right?
I'm not priced out. I'm fine. If I want, I could be a big fat ol' whale. Indeed sometimes I have been. I cut my spending based on how offended I am at GW's pricing, not on how much I can afford or not.
I think this comes to the heart of an issue. People can't conceive that anyone is bothered by anything but pure egoism and so the only people upset about price rises must, of course, be upset about their own personal finances, and if they say anything, well then they're liars because that's the only reason a person could be upset. This is a view that permeates society and, again, leads to some real dark gak,
soviet13 wrote: What a spectacular strawman. Maybe people just don't think that a box of plastic spacemen going up by £2.50 is actually that big of a deal.
I still think it would be different if the price hikes were a singular thing in only one aspect of people’s’ lives. Instead, everything is getting more expensive. People get priced out of home ownership and starting a family. They get priced out of healthcare. People get priced out of buying even a used car. Then they go to blow off steam and they get priced out of their plastic orks. Or they see it happening to their friends and realize their hobby will be poorer for those left behind. And this is happening to all hobbies at the same time.
After years of stress and loss due to the big things, taking away the small things is sure to get an outsized reaction. There’s a reason hobbies are likened to a pressure release valve.
Sqorgar wrote: Just saw GW's "Warhammer Is For Everyone" black square, and my first reaction was, then why don't they make Warhammer something everyone can afford?
It's because writing "We at [large Corporate entity] are committed to fighting injustice by posting images to Twitter communicating our disapproval of injustice. To that end, we offer you this sincere apology that expresses vague solidarity with your cause. We at [large Corporate entity] hope that this encourages you to view [large Corporate entity] as an ally, and continue to support [large Corporate entity] by buying our products. Thank you", on the face of it, costs them nothing.
You deserve compassion if you can't afford food, clothing, housing, education for your kids or proper healthcare. But for a hobby which has always been an expensive luxury good and which I could not afford myself for large parts of my life? Nope. None.
That much has changed though. You did used to be able to get blister packs for pocket money, get into the games relatively cheaply. I started collecting as a child in the late 80s, it wasn't super cheap but you could get a blister pack of marines for a few week's pocket money or a paper round.*
Kids coming into the GW hobby in a similar situation to myself will now no longer be able to afford to - and other games quite often haven't got the marketing presence that a kid would be aware that there are cheaper alternatives. So, the child in that instance doesn't start to game, and there is one less person in the hobby, which is a dreadful shame.
Comparing GW products to yachting (I note it has moved on from Porsches these days, which obviously aren't expensive enough!) is disingenuous though. There is an artificial additional cost which GW adds to its products (they don't need to cost that much, but GW pushes up the price to what they think the market will bear). This is evident by the number of competitors products which are of equal quality and produced in far smaller economies of scale than GW - and yet manage to be significantly cheaper. And while GW is absolutely free to do that, it's a free market, yadda yadda, they must understand that there is a cost in terms of numbers of GW hobbyists with this approach. And, as evident by the threads like this that pop up every time, it does cost them some goodwill towards them as an organisation - and you get replies which are as though drugs have been taken away from an addict, which it is like in some ways, and produces a similar reaction where people are not able to just 'walk away'.
* I will say some of the small/cheaper 'start collecting' boxes that you get in non-GW stores are a good step, I think that the company is at least a bit mindful now of creating a barrier or paywall to hooking people's interests, which certainly wasn't the case about 10 years ago.
JWBS wrote: It's because writing "We at [large Corporate entity] are committed to fighting injustice by posting images to Twitter communicating our disapproval of injustice. To that end, we offer you this sincere apology that expresses vague solidarity with your cause. We at [large Corporate entity] hope that this encourages you to view [large Corporate entity] as an ally, and continue to support [large Corporate entity] by buying our products. Thank you", on the face of it, costs them nothing.
I don't think anybody was fooled by their empty posturing. I'm just a little frustrated that GW cares more about the internet likes of people who aren't their customers (and never will be) rather than the people who actively, desperately want to be their customers but can't due to high prices.
Well, it doesn't really cost them anything to send out a message like that, and it might even do them a bit of good in terms of PR. I think they mean it, too. You can certainly see an increased attempt at being inclusive in terms of female and nonwhite faces in the art and models etc. Calling it empty posturing is not quite fair IMO.
Sqorgar wrote: Just saw GW's "Warhammer Is For Everyone" black square, and my first reaction was, then why don't they make Warhammer something everyone can afford?
Sorry, that reminds me of somebody with around a million GBP£ in assets (Jeremy Corbyn) standing next to a millionaire (Eavis) on the stage at Glastonbury telling those who could afford the tickets to watch millionaires perform that society should not have walls, whilst being surrounded by a wall to keep out those who couldn't afford the tickets.
At some point, something will always be out of the price range of somebody.
You deserve compassion if you can't afford food, clothing, housing, education for your kids or proper healthcare. But for a hobby which has always been an expensive luxury good and which I could not afford myself for large parts of my life? Nope. None.
That much has changed though. You did used to be able to get blister packs for pocket money, get into the games relatively cheaply. I started collecting as a child in the late 80s, it wasn't super cheap but you could get a blister pack of marines for a few week's pocket money or a paper round.*
Indeed I recall my paper round was £6 per week which would get you a squad of 8-10 metal minis at £2.99 for 4/5, no idea what the going rate is now suspect it wont cover a full squad
You deserve compassion if you can't afford food, clothing, housing, education for your kids or proper healthcare. But for a hobby which has always been an expensive luxury good and which I could not afford myself for large parts of my life? Nope. None.
That much has changed though. You did used to be able to get blister packs for pocket money, get into the games relatively cheaply. I started collecting as a child in the late 80s, it wasn't super cheap but you could get a blister pack of marines for a few week's pocket money or a paper round.*
Good for you, but me, being a kid in the 90s could not afford paying for GW's product with my allowance at that time, despite being interested in both 40k and WHFB at that time. And if it's about getting kids into the hobby (they aren't the target audience), the ETB sets or the Conquest Magazine are well within reach for such customers.
Comparing GW products to yachting (I note it has moved on from Porsches these days, which obviously aren't expensive enough!) is disingenuous though.
Even an expensive car is still a car and can fulfill your need for transportation. So it actually does something useful, unlike a yacht or a 40k army.
There is an artificial additional cost which GW adds to its products (they don't need to cost that much, but GW pushes up the price to what they think the market will bear). This is evident by the number of competitors products which are of equal quality and produced in far smaller economies of scale than GW - and yet manage to be significantly cheaper. And while GW is absolutely free to do that, it's a free market, yadda yadda, they must understand that there is a cost in terms of numbers of GW hobbyists with this approach.
Premium products are not priced according to their production costs or market value, but according to what people are willing to pay. Why do you think Apple products are much more expensive than comparable electronics from other companies?
And, as evident by the threads like this that pop up every time, it does cost them some goodwill towards them as an organisation - and you get replies which are as though drugs have been taken away from an addict, which it is like in some ways, and produces a similar reaction where people are not able to just 'walk away'.
Wargaming isn't drugs. And drug dealers don't care for their customer's goodwill.
You deserve compassion if you can't afford food, clothing, housing, education for your kids or proper healthcare. But for a hobby which has always been an expensive luxury good and which I could not afford myself for large parts of my life? Nope. None.
That much has changed though. You did used to be able to get blister packs for pocket money, get into the games relatively cheaply. I started collecting as a child in the late 80s, it wasn't super cheap but you could get a blister pack of marines for a few week's pocket money or a paper round.*
Kids coming into the GW hobby in a similar situation to myself will now no longer be able to afford to - and other games quite often haven't got the marketing presence that a kid would be aware that there are cheaper alternatives. So, the child in that instance doesn't start to game, and there is one less person in the hobby, which is a dreadful shame.
Comparing GW products to yachting (I note it has moved on from Porsches these days, which obviously aren't expensive enough!) is disingenuous though. There is an artificial additional cost which GW adds to its products (they don't need to cost that much, but GW pushes up the price to what they think the market will bear). This is evident by the number of competitors products which are of equal quality and produced in far smaller economies of scale than GW - and yet manage to be significantly cheaper. And while GW is absolutely free to do that, it's a free market, yadda yadda, they must understand that there is a cost in terms of numbers of GW hobbyists with this approach. And, as evident by the threads like this that pop up every time, it does cost them some goodwill towards them as an organisation - and you get replies which are as though drugs have been taken away from an addict, which it is like in some ways, and produces a similar reaction where people are not able to just 'walk away'.
* I will say some of the small/cheaper 'start collecting' boxes that you get in non-GW stores are a good step, I think that the company is at least a bit mindful now of creating a barrier or paywall to hooking people's interests, which certainly wasn't the case about 10 years ago.
I think that's the purpose of some of the smaller model count games like Necromunda and Warcry too, to provide an easier and cheaper on-ramp into the hobby (although I suspect all the cards and DLC supplements probably help undermine that).
I'm not sure why you think yachting and Porsches don't also have artificially inflated costs. I suspect that GW's high prices actually help other manufacturers, because it allows them to still charge a fairly high price themselves and still be the cheaper option. I don't see that GW has any competitors offering equal quality though. Maybe in terms of games design this might be right. And there are a lot of good sculptors out there so in terms of metal and resin figures this might be right. But in terms of plastic kits - in level of detail, design, casting, complexity, and sheer breadth of available products - no-one else comes close IMO.
Define "equal quality" because there's a billion companies making models that fit together correctly that look like they're supposed to once assembled.
Azreal13 wrote: Define "equal quality" because there's a billion companies making models that fit together correctly that look like they're supposed to once assembled.
That's a very low bar.
If you're talking to me I defined it later in the same paragraph.
You didn't, not really. Things like "level of detail" and "complexity" are synonymous, unless you mean the kits are complex to assemble, which is surely not a desirable quality? They're also subjective, while some people might think a model covered in rivets and other details is good, others might find them needlessly cluttered and lacking in restraint.
A measure of quality needs to be objective, otherwise your argument is "I prefer this so it's better" which is fine to have as an opinion, but not indicative of any level of quality.
Things like "casting" and "design" are just nebulous as well, like I said, there's loads of kits that fit together perfectly well, and many manufacturers who reliably turn out models without errors, so where is the evidence of superior quality from GW? Or are they just meeting a base line that one should expect from anyone who does what they do?
I guess if you subscribe to "quantity is a quality of its own" then the breadth of range is something GW does offer, but then that depends if you view it as GW Vs any other single manufacturer or GW Vs the market.
I've never understood the strange way some people think that "it's the free market" is a response to a moral argument. The fact that GW doesn't care about anything besides making money is not a refutation of someone's charge that they are behaving badly; if anything, it is a confirmation of it.
Wow, I'm sorry, but there are an awful lot of problems with your argument, as you seem to be conflating several different ideas and assuming they are equivalent. I've highlighted two of the main issues above ^.
1) The free market point is *not* about morals. It's not a moral argument. Sure, you can make it a moral argument in the sense that 'capitalism=bad', but really, we're not going to bring down capitalism any time soon, so you really do need to move beyond the overly simplistic argument that rising prices is somehow immoral. After all, following your logic, everything should be free. And that of course, is a logical impossibility as the world as we know it would simply stop working.
2) Building on point #1, your second false assumption is that any sort of price rise is in somehow 'bad', and that GW are 'behaving badly'. Of course, 'bad' here is a relativistic argument. The point here is that everyone has choices. Just because GW (or any other company for that matter) raises prices, doesn't mean they are deliberately out to hurt you personally. They're certainly not 'behaving badly'. It's just economics.
I can give you a more detailed lesson on all of the above if you like, but I don't really want to bore everyone.
If you're going to shamelessly patronize someone, you should at least try to understand what they said before doing it.
Of course the free market point is not about morals. That was the whole point of my statement. If people are angry about price raises and feel betrayed by them, "it's just the free market" is not an answer to their charge that GW has behaved poorly. You are exactly the sort of person I am talking about not getting it at a basic level.
I wasn't making any "assumption" that GW was behaving badly. I was stating that "it's just the market" is not an answer to a charge of bad behavior. I never made the argument that raising prices was necessarily immoral. You made that stuff up because it was an easier to address straw man.
What I did say: "It's just economics" is not a refutation of "GW have treated their customers badly here." It is an explanation in the sense it is saying "GW doesn't care if it behaves poorly, it only cares about $." But that doesn't mean it hasn't behaved poorly. This is like saying a company has not behaved poorly if it cuts safety corners that led to the deaths of some of its customers, as long as it makes more money by doing so, because "that's just economics." It is neither here nor there to the moral charge. GW may or may not have behaved badly by raising prices here, but "it's just economics" is not a good argument for why they haven't.
That you've even thrown some ridiculous straw man in about everything being free shows how fundamentally unserious your response is. For someone who has bragged several times here about his job as a teacher at a prestigious institution, this is not encouraging behavior. Please try to actually understand what someone else is saying before launching into a lecture directed at a straw man.
soviet13 wrote: Well, it doesn't really cost them anything to send out a message like that, and it might even do them a bit of good in terms of PR.
I think they went a step too far with the "if you are not in ideological lockstep with us, you will not be missed". It feels COMPLETELY at odds with the message of an open, welcoming Warhammer to then end with a literal "you are not welcome here". I don't know about other people, but I wish I could afford Warhammer models so that I could not buy them on principle. If they want to make the decision to play Warhammer into a moral one, I'm happy to oblige.
I think they mean it, too.
I think they meant the "you will not be missed". I don't think they meant the "Warhammer Is For Everyone" part.
Calling it empty posturing is not quite fair IMO.
You're right. I think they actually do intend to declare war against a sizeable portion of their audience as a distraction from what a greedy, exploitative company GW actually is. You have to admire the giant brass balls they must have to call the "female space marines are canonically destructive" players evil.
"People have been out of work for three months due to the lockdown and many of them have lost their jobs permanently, and we're going to raise prices even further, on kits both brand new and years old... but that guy over there prefers the old Repentia models!! He's what's really destroying this hobby!"
JWBS wrote: It's because writing "We at [large Corporate entity] are committed to fighting injustice by posting images to Twitter communicating our disapproval of injustice. To that end, we offer you this sincere apology that expresses vague solidarity with your cause. We at [large Corporate entity] hope that this encourages you to view [large Corporate entity] as an ally, and continue to support [large Corporate entity] by buying our products. Thank you", on the face of it, costs them nothing.
I don't think anybody was fooled by their empty posturing. I'm just a little frustrated that GW cares more about the internet likes of people who aren't their customers (and never will be) rather than the people who actively, desperately want to be their customers but can't due to high prices.
It probably has more to do with keeping the hounds off their back that will (and have been) seeing the Imperium of Man's overtly fascist image and by not making a PR statement like pretty much every major company, they're 'endorsing nazis' or what have you. Personally I'm surprised it took them that long since they have a bigger target on their back than most companies.
I just went back to re-read the Warhammer is for Everyone thing in case I'd missed something. How could anyone possibly feel attacked or excluded by that?
soviet13 wrote: I just went back to re-read the Warhammer is for Everyone thing in case I'd missed something. How could anyone possibly feel attacked or excluded by that?
The only people who I've seen take issue with it were those who felt it was patronising and 'PR speak'. I'm sure we've all seen the "We at [Brand] stand in solidarity without actually doing anything, but this is good PR spin."
I actually kinda get the guy's point re: "you will not be missed." This does feel strangely aggressive for what is an anodyne PR release that is designed to be as content-free as possible.
He's obviously exaggerating a lot re: "declaring war" on anybody and one wonders why. But it does seem weird they went out of their way to end their message on a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" note, rather than a "we're all in this together" note. It's certainly not what the PR textbook would recommend.
I've never understood the strange way some people think that "it's the free market" is a response to a moral argument. The fact that GW doesn't care about anything besides making money is not a refutation of someone's charge that they are behaving badly; if anything, it is a confirmation of it.
Wow, I'm sorry, but there are an awful lot of problems with your argument, as you seem to be conflating several different ideas and assuming they are equivalent. I've highlighted two of the main issues above ^.
1) The free market point is *not* about morals. It's not a moral argument. Sure, you can make it a moral argument in the sense that 'capitalism=bad', but really, we're not going to bring down capitalism any time soon, so you really do need to move beyond the overly simplistic argument that rising prices is somehow immoral. After all, following your logic, everything should be free. And that of course, is a logical impossibility as the world as we know it would simply stop working.
2) Building on point #1, your second false assumption is that any sort of price rise is in somehow 'bad', and that GW are 'behaving badly'. Of course, 'bad' here is a relativistic argument. The point here is that everyone has choices. Just because GW (or any other company for that matter) raises prices, doesn't mean they are deliberately out to hurt you personally. They're certainly not 'behaving badly'. It's just economics.
I can give you a more detailed lesson on all of the above if you like, but I don't really want to bore everyone.
You are correct- the "free market" is amoral. The trouble with capitalism is that is is a system of exploitation and endless greed- the cause of most of the world's problems. The pursuit of profit is not an inherent good. Nice slippery-slope fallacy, by the way. No-one expects everything, or anything, to be free. Merely fairly priced. GW further raising their obscene prices, in the midst of a pandemic that has put hundreds of millions of people out of work, when we are likely heading into a global depression, is very much "behaving badly."
I've never understood the strange way some people think that "it's the free market" is a response to a moral argument. The fact that GW doesn't care about anything besides making money is not a refutation of someone's charge that they are behaving badly; if anything, it is a confirmation of it.
Wow, I'm sorry, but there are an awful lot of problems with your argument, as you seem to be conflating several different ideas and assuming they are equivalent. I've highlighted two of the main issues above ^.
1) The free market point is *not* about morals. It's not a moral argument. Sure, you can make it a moral argument in the sense that 'capitalism=bad', but really, we're not going to bring down capitalism any time soon, so you really do need to move beyond the overly simplistic argument that rising prices is somehow immoral. After all, following your logic, everything should be free. And that of course, is a logical impossibility as the world as we know it would simply stop working.
2) Building on point #1, your second false assumption is that any sort of price rise is in somehow 'bad', and that GW are 'behaving badly'. Of course, 'bad' here is a relativistic argument. The point here is that everyone has choices. Just because GW (or any other company for that matter) raises prices, doesn't mean they are deliberately out to hurt you personally. They're certainly not 'behaving badly'. It's just economics.
I can give you a more detailed lesson on all of the above if you like, but I don't really want to bore everyone.
If you're going to shamelessly patronize someone, you should at least try to understand what they said before doing it.
Of course the free market point is not about morals. That was the whole point of my statement. If people are angry about price raises and feel betrayed by them, "it's just the free market" is not an answer to their charge that GW has behaved poorly. You are exactly the sort of person I am talking about not getting it at a basic level.
I wasn't making any "assumption" that GW was behaving badly. I was stating that "it's just the market" is not an answer to a charge of bad behavior. I never made the argument that raising prices was necessarily immoral. You made that stuff up because it was an easier to address straw man.
What I did say: "It's just economics" is not a refutation of "GW have treated their customers badly here." It is an explanation in the sense it is saying "GW doesn't care if it behaves poorly, it only cares about $." But that doesn't mean it hasn't behaved poorly. This is like saying a company has not behaved poorly if it cuts safety corners that led to the deaths of some of its customers, as long as it makes more money by doing so, because "that's just economics." It is neither here nor there to the moral charge. GW may or may not have behaved badly by raising prices here, but "it's just economics" is not a good argument for why they haven't.
That you've even thrown some ridiculous straw man in about everything being free shows how fundamentally unserious your response is. For someone who has bragged several times here about his job as a teacher at a prestigious institution, this is not encouraging behavior. Please try to actually understand what someone else is saying before launching into a lecture directed at a straw man.
These are big words for someone that literally just compared the price of plastic soldiers with a company that kills off its own customers through lack of safety measures.
What moral obligation does GW have to charge anything other than what it thinks it can get?
yukishiro1 wrote: I actually kinda get the guy's point re: "you will not be missed." This does feel strangely aggressive for what is an anodyne PR release that is designed to be as content-free as possible.
He's obviously exaggerating a lot re: "declaring war" on anybody and one wonders why. But it does seem weird they went out of their way to end their message on a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" note, rather than a "we're all in this together" note. It's certainly not what the PR textbook would recommend.
Honestly? I don't care if it looks like good PR or not. They supported what's going on without doing the whole #BLM hashtag, and we still had people on their post disgusted by it for whatever reason. I say: they won't be missed to me, either.
Sqorgar wrote: Just saw GW's "Warhammer Is For Everyone" black square, and my first reaction was, then why don't they make Warhammer something everyone can afford?
It's because writing "We at [large Corporate entity] are committed to fighting injustice by posting images to Twitter communicating our disapproval of injustice. To that end, we offer you this sincere apology that expresses vague solidarity with your cause. We at [large Corporate entity] hope that this encourages you to view [large Corporate entity] as an ally, and continue to support [large Corporate entity] by buying our products. Thank you", on the face of it, costs them nothing.
There were posts on the Warhammer 40,000 Facebook page wanting GW to make a statement like the one that they did finally make. Would they have made that statement otherwise? Who knows...
yukishiro1 wrote: I actually kinda get the guy's point re: "you will not be missed." This does feel strangely aggressive for what is an anodyne PR release that is designed to be as content-free as possible.
He's obviously exaggerating a lot re: "declaring war" on anybody and one wonders why. But it does seem weird they went out of their way to end their message on a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" note, rather than a "we're all in this together" note. It's certainly not what the PR textbook would recommend.
“You will not be missed” is the last line of the intro to every 40k novel so its presumably there as in joke, which is probably why it reads a bit stronger than would be usual in that sort of press release.
These are big words for someone that literally just compared the price of plastic soldiers with a company that kills off its own customers through lack of safety measures.
What moral obligation does GW have to charge anything other than what it thinks it can get?
The purpose of an analogy is to illustrate a point, not to claim that two situations are identical. Obviously raising prices on toy soldiers is not the same as killing your customers by cutting corners. The point was to show the inadequacy of "it's just economics" as a refutation of the argument that someone has behaved badly. I chose an extreme example because it mostly easily illustrates the fallacy of that line of argument.
But you have arrived at the right question: what is moral or immoral about GW raising prices? That is my entire point. If we are talking morality, we should talk morality. Not simply say "it's the free market," as if that is any answer.
I wrote the post that started this not because I felt particularly strongly myself that GW had behaved badly, but to call out all the people who were defending GW's behavior because "it's just economics." I wouldn't want to speak for the people who believed GW had behaved badly as to what their reasoning was. My point was simply that you have to engage a moral argument in moral terms. "It's the free market" is no answer to a charge of bad behavior.
But judging from their responses in this thread, the people who feel GW has behaved badly would probably say that GW, having spent decades building up a corporate image as a friend of hobbyists and a member of the gaming community rather than as a faceless corporate behemoth, has not behaved in keeping with the image it has constructed for itself by choosing to raise prices in the middle of a massive global catastrophe that has seen hundreds of millions of people lose their jobs. I would imagine they do not feel this behavior is consistent with the way GW has presented itself to the community in the past, and therefore, that it is two-faced and morally objectionable, and a betrayal of the people who bought into that image. You'd have to ask them to know for sure, though.
yukishiro1 wrote: I actually kinda get the guy's point re: "you will not be missed." This does feel strangely aggressive for what is an anodyne PR release that is designed to be as content-free as possible.
He's obviously exaggerating a lot re: "declaring war" on anybody and one wonders why. But it does seem weird they went out of their way to end their message on a "don't let the door hit you on the way out" note, rather than a "we're all in this together" note. It's certainly not what the PR textbook would recommend.
“You will not be missed” is the last line of the intro to every 40k novel so its presumably there as in joke, which is probably why it reads a bit stronger than would be usual in that sort of press release.
Ah, that's interesting information to have. Thanks for pointing it out. That probably is what is going on - which kinda illustrates the danger of putting "in jokes" into messages that are going to a wider audience. Not that I think this particular one is all that big a deal either way, mind you.
soviet13 wrote: I just went back to re-read the Warhammer is for Everyone thing in case I'd missed something. How could anyone possibly feel attacked or excluded by that?
How does "you will not be missed" not indicate an intent to exclude people?
Can't I just have one fething thing that isn't political? I do not subscribe to the belief that people who disagree with me are evil. I think that I am not always right, that issues are always complicated, and that it is through debate that understanding is reached. I think open discussion is so important, and so absent these days, that there is probably nothing more important right now. I'm not going to willingly participate in a product which suggests that there is no room for debate, because I don't think a company that makes toy goblins should decide where I draw the line on what I'm going to talk about and with whom.
As notes, 'you will not be missed' is a reincorporation of a classic 40k blurb. I don't want to get political here either but I don't see how anyone could disagree with GW's broad statement of inclusion unless they were someone who sought to exclude particular groups themselves? I'm not saying that applies to you. I'm just trying to understand where the controversy is.
I've never understood the strange way some people think that "it's the free market" is a response to a moral argument. The fact that GW doesn't care about anything besides making money is not a refutation of someone's charge that they are behaving badly; if anything, it is a confirmation of it.
Wow, I'm sorry, but there are an awful lot of problems with your argument, as you seem to be conflating several different ideas and assuming they are equivalent. I've highlighted two of the main issues above ^.
1) The free market point is *not* about morals. It's not a moral argument. Sure, you can make it a moral argument in the sense that 'capitalism=bad', but really, we're not going to bring down capitalism any time soon, so you really do need to move beyond the overly simplistic argument that rising prices is somehow immoral. After all, following your logic, everything should be free. And that of course, is a logical impossibility as the world as we know it would simply stop working.
2) Building on point #1, your second false assumption is that any sort of price rise is in somehow 'bad', and that GW are 'behaving badly'. Of course, 'bad' here is a relativistic argument. The point here is that everyone has choices. Just because GW (or any other company for that matter) raises prices, doesn't mean they are deliberately out to hurt you personally. They're certainly not 'behaving badly'. It's just economics.
I can give you a more detailed lesson on all of the above if you like, but I don't really want to bore everyone.
You are correct- the "free market" is amoral. The trouble with capitalism is that is is a system of exploitation and endless greed- the cause of most of the world's problems. The pursuit of profit is not an inherent good. Nice slippery-slope fallacy, by the way. No-one expects everything, or anything, to be free. Merely fairly priced. GW further raising their obscene prices, in the midst of a pandemic that has put hundreds of millions of people out of work, when we are likely heading into a global depression, is very much "behaving badly."
Why? Nobody needs toy soldiers so what is ‘fairly priced’ other than what people are willing to pay? It’s not like they’re gouging people for basic necessities, if they price too high less people will simply buy their stuff and they’ll lose money. It’s not really a moral question at all.
They also need to continue pay their employees, suppliers and shareholders (many of whom will be pension funds), all of whom are being affected by the global pandemic.
And despite its many faults capitalism is the source of most of the world’s wealth - including the high standard of living that enables us to argue on the internet about whether our luxury toys are priced ‘immorally’ high...
Lord Zarkov wrote: “You will not be missed” is the last line of the intro to every 40k novel so its presumably there as in joke...
I just checked the novels I have, and it is not in the intro for any of them. It is, however, in the intro the 40k rulebook. It says something like "It's a big universe, and whatever happens, you will not be missed". Seems like a VERY different connotation than "If you agree with us, you are welcome in the Warhammer community. If not, you will not be missed". It may have been an inside joke, but I think the sentiment was not.
Lord Zarkov wrote: “You will not be missed” is the last line of the intro to every 40k novel so its presumably there as in joke...
I just checked the novels I have, and it is not in the intro for any of them. It is, however, in the intro the 40k rulebook. It says something like "It's a big universe, and whatever happens, you will not be missed". Seems like a VERY different connotation than "If you agree with us, you are welcome in the Warhammer community. If not, you will not be missed". It may have been an inside joke, but I think the sentiment was not.
Which part of their message of inclusion do you disagree with?
Well, GW put nicely into words how them releasing more female models and more models that are not caucasian (and characters outside of the model range) in the future was not up for debate, and I think it is entirely their right to state their decision and say it's not something they are willing to compromise on.
I think it is fair to say that this, precisely this, is what the message is saying. Sqorgar, you seem to believe that it involves a whole lot more than this, like wanting to ban people that liked the old repentia better, or them releasing female space marines, but I don't see any of that in the actual message.
And yes, they stated things in a very strong, almost belligerent way. That doesn't diminish my opinion of them, though, if I am being honest. I like that they took a stand and didn't just offer a generic, toothless statement with no actual content in it. Now, at least, we do know that they want to have more female and non-caucasian characters, that this is an explicit plan of them, and that they won't compromise on it. Good. Things are explicitly out, for everyone to see and decide how they feel about it. It's all in the open.
But then, I have been using only black-skinned female models in my 40k armies since I started in 2003, so of course I'm on board with more female and non-caucasian models .
Arbitrator wrote: The only people who I've seen take issue with it were those who felt it was patronising and 'PR speak'. I'm sure we've all seen the "We at [Brand] stand in solidarity without actually doing anything, but this is good PR spin."
I think the parody is hilarious and very onpoint with a lot of brand, but I think GW's message is different for two reasons :
- First, I think their statement that they want to increase the number of female and non-caucasian models is very coherent with my observations on their release lately. AoS chaos is a pretty good example imo.
- Second, I think the "You won't be missed" is very, very far from the consensual tone that is the staple of those noncommittal PR messages.
Warhammer is a niche luxury interest, there arguments to be made regarding GW's pricing, but if they want to present themselves as the high end premium "Acura" brand to the broader less expensive "Honda" tabletop gaming hobby universe, that's their choice. Purchase accordingly, and I will be the first to admit this often plays into my own purchasing decisions. Likewise, discussing issues of canon or model preference is fine and encouraged, and there are absolutely plenty of respectful ways to do so and room for that here and on other Warhammer related discussion groups, but be aware that Canon has never been a particularly consistent nor immutable thing with GW.
Beyond that...
I am going to say this once, and once only, for the benefit of everyone reading here.
GW's statement of "Warhammer is for Everyone" has nothing to do with pricing. The point is that they do not accept or condone prejudice, hatred, or abuse, and do not wish to be associated with those who engage in such behaviors, nor do they wish their dystopias to be seen as anything to emulate in the real world. Neither do we here on Dakka Dakka. If you have a problem with that fundamental premise, then to echo Games Workshop, just as the intro to every edition of Warhammer 40,000 states, You Will Not Be Missed.
If you have any questions on this issue, I encourage you to please PM me or any other moderator. Thanks!
And, as evident by the threads like this that pop up every time, it does cost them some goodwill towards them as an organisation - and you get replies which are as though drugs have been taken away from an addict, which it is like in some ways, and produces a similar reaction where people are not able to just 'walk away'.
Wargaming isn't drugs. And drug dealers don't care for their customer's goodwill.
I think in some ways it actually is very similar! If people were able to just 'walk away', you wouldn't get threads like this with people gnashing their teeth.
And in a similar way, the seller can keep treating their customers like dirt, and knowing that they need their product and so will put up with it.
I'll stop there though as I think the comparison ends there
Anyway, am checking out of this thread now as reading back over the last few pages here (and am not referring to you at all here Jidmah), the tone has got pretty nasty.
I think "cult" is a better analogy than drug dealer.
Before anyone gets their arse in their hands, this is a legitimate marketing approach to brand building, I'm not accusing anyone of anything that they might feel offended by.
But the concept of say an Apple fan who rages at everything they change on the latest iteration of device (or don't change, or change in a way different to the way they wanted) then is first in the queue,camping in the street, for a new release bears more than a passing similarity to the behaviour of many a GW fan.
"I hate it, I'm only buying two" is not as far from statements I've read here as you might think.
People are invested in GW as a brand on an emotional level, and everyone has to "go clear" when they're ready in their own way.
To be honest with 8th edition Warhammer is really for everyone. I mean rules are free and you can alwasy play with bottle caps instead of infantry models and cans for tanks. If the goal is just to play the game against a friend or relative you can easily play without investing a single penny other the price of the codex. It's still 40k somehow, and actually when I started the hobby at 12-13 I played a lot like that since I couldn't afford the models, not in a short term at least. Now it's even easier than 3rd edition times as with the internet every size/dimensions of the models are well known and available so we can efficiently proxy everything.
Most gamers here remember when GW sued Chapterhouse or went after Spots the Space Marine and a bunch of fan sites, and shut down legal avenues for purchasing their products at the actual exchange rate. The scale of evil is not the same as some giant corporation, but feels more personal.
Ok, the thread is being re-opened, please lets keep the politics discussions for venues better suited to it than a board for plastic fantasy soldiers. Any further deviations will see warnings and possible suspensions and a permanent closure of the thread. If anyone has any questions, PM me please, don't risk closure of the thread with off topic postings.
I apologize if any of my comments were perceived as political. It certainly wasn't my intent. My point was simply that when a company presents itself as a friend of hobbyists and as a moral force for good rather than a faceless corporation intent only on maximizing its own profits, it naturally opens itself up to accusations of hypocrisy when it behaves in ways that conflict with that image, for example by raising prices during a global catastrophe.
It doesn't really work logically or morally to be "mes que un club" for some stuff and then "it's just economics" for other stuff.
Wargaming isn't drugs. And drug dealers don't care for their customer's goodwill.
I think in some ways it actually is very similar! If people were able to just 'walk away', you wouldn't get threads like this with people gnashing their teeth.
And in a similar way, the seller can keep treating their customers like dirt, and knowing that they need their product and so will put up with it.
I'll stop there though as I think the comparison ends there
Anyway, am checking out of this thread now as reading back over the last few pages here (and am not referring to you at all here Jidmah), the tone has got pretty nasty.
No offense taken, I guess I'm lucky I missed the part that required the mod action. Raising prices is not the same as treating customers like dirt though. As Ork player, I actually felt like being treated like dirt during 7th and I actually walked away from the game because of that. Due to a lucky coincidence, the guy who bought my orks never came to pick them up, so I still had them available when 8th dropped. GW's prices had little to do with either decision, pricing is just a small parts of the big package that makes up 40k.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Most gamers here remember when GW sued Chapterhouse or went after Spots the Space Marine and a bunch of fan sites, and shut down legal avenues for purchasing their products at the actual exchange rate. The scale of evil is not the same as some giant corporation, but feels more personal.
And got rid of Warhammer Fantasy. Which is now supposedly making a comeback...
...presumably because GW think either a) they made a mistake, b) can gouge veteran players/collectors even more, or c) both...
yukishiro1 wrote: I apologize if any of my comments were perceived as political. It certainly wasn't my intent. My point was simply that when a company presents itself as a friend of hobbyists and as a moral force for good rather than a faceless corporation intent only on maximizing its own profits, it naturally opens itself up to accusations of hypocrisy when it behaves in ways that conflict with that image, for example by raising prices during a global catastrophe.
As posted upthread...
Inquisitor Gideon wrote: It's month 2 of the new tax year. Much easier to keep the books in control if you do changes like this as close to the beginning as you can. And honestly i think there's going to be a lot of price increases from a lot of different businesses over the next few months to try and help cope with what's been going on. I've already seen it in a few cafes and such. Prices have gone up to try and cover what's been lost.
The pandemic has nothing to do with this price increase. It was most likely planned long ago and to occur at the same time of year that they usually do these price increases. Their options were to either go through with the planned price increase or wait until next year and have a price increase that covers the lost income from both the delayed increase and the impact that COVID-19 will have on their business. I'd rather see the price increase now if it means the next one won't be even worse.
GW is fortunate in that their market kept active during the pandemic and bounced back super fast once GW was open again. Whilst they've had to weather it I suspect that they will rise up quite well after this, if not actually doing better than estimated (at least for total sales in volume sold - accepting that they might lose out on store rent).
I suspect that 3rd party model makers will also have done generally ok - problems will be for retail outlets that didn't have online stores and couldn't network enough locally to generate sales - plus when run close to the line anyway.
There's other markets taking much bigger hits such as most of the food, leisure and tourism industries. That's where much of the pain will be because even once lockdowns relax that's one segment that relies on heavy volume of people to run. So not only do they take a huge 3 month or so loss, but they also can't re-open at full capacity. Some might even have to operate at a near loss with reduced capacity just to get the doors open and people coming in again. The best we can hope for them is that 2021 sees a cure/vaccine/reduced transmission etc.. to the point where the tourism industry can recover.
Another option was not to raise prices at all. They have incredible profit margins. It wasn't a case that they needed to do this to stay afloat. There's no rule of the universe that says that they need to maintain the same profit margin even during a global catastrophe.
They made a choice to raise prices, probably before the pandemic. Then they made another choice to go through with it despite the pandemic. These were both choices that GW made and is responsible for. You can say it was a foregone conclusion because GW raises prices no matter what, and that may be true - but that itself is a choice they are responsible for making.
yukishiro1 wrote: Another option was not to raise prices at all. They have incredible profit margins. It wasn't a case that they needed to do this to stay afloat. There's no rule of the universe that says that they need to maintain the same profit margin even during a global catastrophe.
No. That's not an option and you know it. The world has gotten more expensive for everybody, Games Workshop included.
Don't forget materials like metal (moulds) plastics and overseas imports have all likely gone up; plus any shipping by air has likely gone up too. In addition we might be seeing slower shipping in general even at the company level with large orders not just at our own personal level.
It's going to take years for the world to recover from Corona.
So oil has dropped so low that it was negatively priced, and many businesses have reduced or ceased trading and therefore demand on shipping services will also be proportionately affected, yet plastic and logistics have gone up?
I don't have any evidence to tell you you're wrong, but I'd be interested if you have any to support that idea.
yukishiro1 wrote: Another option was not to raise prices at all. They have incredible profit margins. It wasn't a case that they needed to do this to stay afloat. There's no rule of the universe that says that they need to maintain the same profit margin even during a global catastrophe.
No. That's not an option and you know it. The world has gotten more expensive for everybody, Games Workshop included.
Do you have any data at all to back up the claim that GW would not have been able to turn a profit at the prior price level?
Because the last I saw, GW's profit margins are incredible, in the 20%+ range. Given that the price increase was about 10% on about half their line, it's about a 5% overall increase in prices. If they have 20% margins, they could have not only increased prices, but cut them significantly, and still been profitable even on identical sales.
This is about maintaining their very large profit margin, not about staying afloat. If you have any data to suggest otherwise feel free to cite it, but everything I've seen suggests that GW would still be making hefty profits without the price hike.
So perhaps they should increase prices a bit more, get the margins up to 30% and then give all their employees payouts in stock/profit sharing to the point that their margins are back at 20%
Just because they have high margins doesn't mean the right thing to do is lower prices. It could be the right thing to do is increase the ownership of the company itself among employees to bolster morale and productivity and make the workplace more democratic.
deano2099 wrote: For a lot of people, GW, or 40K, is the hobby. Not "mini wargaming".
Blackie wrote: It's not the single hobby I have but I'm not into mini wargaming, I'm only interested in 40k, more specifically in 40k orks.
I think it is important to point out that even if people stick with a single brand, it still is the miniature wargaming hobby. Whether GW or other popular games like Infinity, Bolt Action, Kings of War, Frostgrave and myriads of other fantasy and historical games they're all related and share the same general methodolgy in that you're pushing painted models around a table to simulate the field of battle.
I mean, that's true, if they're pushing painted models around a table to simulate the field of battle. God knows the game is the least interesting part of 40K to me. I enjoy the setting and building and painting the models but the game doesn't see that much play versus the few hundred other board games I have as an option.
I'd wager a significant portion of GW's audience don't play either at all, or in any significant way.
Overread wrote: I suspect that 3rd party model makers will also have done generally ok -
Indeed. April was our best month in almost two years, even without any current releases thanks to production being shut down. Slowed down somewhat once GW announced their plans to reopen, but was nice while it lasted
I mean, that's true, if they're pushing painted models around a table to simulate the field of battle. God knows the game is the least interesting part of 40K to me. I enjoy the setting and building and painting the models but the game doesn't see that much play versus the few hundred other board games I have as an option.
I'd wager a significant portion of GW's audience don't play either at all, or in any significant way.
That's kind of irrelevant.
However you consume 40K, you're still in a sub set of a wider interest, even if all you do is consume 40K related stuff.
Azreal13 wrote: So oil has dropped so low that it was negatively priced, and many businesses have reduced or ceased trading and therefore demand on shipping services will also be proportionately affected, yet plastic and logistics have gone up?
I don't have any evidence to tell you you're wrong, but I'd be interested if you have any to support that idea.
Some years back, when they were discussing the volatile tin prices, there was a mention in GW's financials that material cost is a very, very small percentage of the overall cost of production (less than 3%, IIRC). So oil bottoming out would presumably have a much lower effect on their prices than just about everything else.
yukishiro1 wrote: Another option was not to raise prices at all. They have incredible profit margins. It wasn't a case that they needed to do this to stay afloat. There's no rule of the universe that says that they need to maintain the same profit margin even during a global catastrophe.
No. That's not an option and you know it. The world has gotten more expensive for everybody, Games Workshop included.
Do you have any data at all to back up the claim that GW would not have been able to turn a profit at the prior price level?
Because the last I saw, GW's profit margins are incredible, in the 20%+ range. Given that the price increase was about 10% on about half their line, it's about a 5% overall increase in prices. If they have 20% margins, they could have not only increased prices, but cut them significantly, and still been profitable even on identical sales.
This is about maintaining their very large profit margin, not about staying afloat. If you have any data to suggest otherwise feel free to cite it, but everything I've seen suggests that GW would still be making hefty profits without the price hike.
This shows 28% net profit margins for 2019. That's immense.
It wasn't half their line. Their announcement, which was quoted in the OP of this thread, states it was about 400 items out of more than 3,000. That's what, just over 13%. Mostly older stuff or big monsters and vehicles rather than Start Collecting boxes and game books. Not particularly things that will stop new players coming in.
We know that only a few years ago GW was struggling. Now they are doing well, but no-one knows the full effect of coronavirus. They run their own factories, they have a global network of stores, they have loads of staff, they need raw materials, they need to use international shipping, and they get various components (including books?) manufactured in China. This is a lot of areas of potential vulnerability. The notion that they have been earning too much money and should cut down their profits voluntarily is ludicrous. Why would they be expected to do that?
Azreal13 wrote: So oil has dropped so low that it was negatively priced, and many businesses have reduced or ceased trading and therefore demand on shipping services will also be proportionately affected, yet plastic and logistics have gone up?
I don't have any evidence to tell you you're wrong, but I'd be interested if you have any to support that idea.
Some years back, when they were discussing the volatile tin prices, there was a mention in GW's financials that material cost is a very, very small percentage of the overall cost of production (less than 3%, IIRC). So oil bottoming out would presumably have a much lower effect on their prices than just about everything else.
Oh I agree, but the price of plastic increasing was nevertheless cited and I fail to see how the price of the raw material needed to make it being at record low prices could somehow drive prices up.
If producers had shut down and therefore that price drop was offset by limited supply then that might be different, hence I sought clarification, as knowledge of the no doubt complex supply chain of petroleum based manufacturing isn't top of my CV
Well as I said before it vanished into the void, GW is making the game cheaper with the raised point values this coming edition, punishing multiple detachments with costing CP. In a way they are making you need less so at least for the short term you may be able to avoid buying stuff, and have less incentive to pick up allies. At least until they change their mind on that.
As for them citing plastic costs for price rises I think that was all a line anyways to try and justify cost rises. At this point they don't even bother explaining why things go up other than to say " We want to raise the prices " Can't have anything looking like cheap buys after all.
Chamberlain wrote: So perhaps they should increase prices a bit more, get the margins up to 30% and then give all their employees payouts in stock/profit sharing to the point that their margins are back at 20%
Just because they have high margins doesn't mean the right thing to do is lower prices. It could be the right thing to do is increase the ownership of the company itself among employees to bolster morale and productivity and make the workplace more democratic.
I didn't say it was. I was just refuting the claim that raising prices was required to keep themselves in the black.
It wasn't half their line. Their announcement, which was quoted in the OP of this thread, states it was about 400 items out of more than 3,000. That's what, just over 13%. Mostly older stuff or big monsters and vehicles rather than Start Collecting boxes and game books. Not particularly things that will stop new players coming in.
We know that only a few years ago GW was struggling. Now they are doing well, but no-one knows the full effect of coronavirus. They run their own factories, they have a global network of stores, they have loads of staff, they need raw materials, they need to use international shipping, and they get various components (including books?) manufactured in China. This is a lot of areas of potential vulnerability. The notion that they have been earning too much money and should cut down their profits voluntarily is ludicrous. Why would they be expected to do that?
Ok, so if it was on an even smaller percentage of their line, it work out to an even smaller revenue increase. Making the argument that it was an economic necessity even weaker.
And again, I didn't say they should cut prices. Just that they could, and still be very profitable. I was refuting the claim that they were required to raise prices to stay profitable. This is simply not true.
The notion that GW expect people to absorb year on year price rises is ludicrous also. Most people's incomes don't work like that.
Given the news about Combat Patrols and Incursions having scenarios actually meant for smaller games in the new version of 40k and how the last General's Handbook for AoS was all about smaller games on smaller areas, I think GW is hoping that people will accept fewer miniatures for more money. But given that a start collecting and maybe one other thing is pretty much a Combat Patrol army, even price hikes, it's not really out of reach.
I honestly do think there are enough people who will simply accept less miniatures for the same money and play smaller games.
Chamberlain wrote: So perhaps they should increase prices a bit more, get the margins up to 30% and then give all their employees payouts in stock/profit sharing to the point that their margins are back at 20%
Just because they have high margins doesn't mean the right thing to do is lower prices. It could be the right thing to do is increase the ownership of the company itself among employees to bolster morale and productivity and make the workplace more democratic.
I didn't say it was. I was just refuting the claim that raising prices was required to keep themselves in the black.
It wasn't half their line. Their announcement, which was quoted in the OP of this thread, states it was about 400 items out of more than 3,000. That's what, just over 13%. Mostly older stuff or big monsters and vehicles rather than Start Collecting boxes and game books. Not particularly things that will stop new players coming in.
We know that only a few years ago GW was struggling. Now they are doing well, but no-one knows the full effect of coronavirus. They run their own factories, they have a global network of stores, they have loads of staff, they need raw materials, they need to use international shipping, and they get various components (including books?) manufactured in China. This is a lot of areas of potential vulnerability. The notion that they have been earning too much money and should cut down their profits voluntarily is ludicrous. Why would they be expected to do that?
Ok, so if it was on an even smaller percentage of their line, it work out to an even smaller revenue increase. Making the argument that it was an economic necessity even weaker.
And again, I didn't say they should cut prices. Just that they could, and still be very profitable. I was refuting the claim that they were required to raise prices to stay profitable. This is simply not true.
To be fair they (and we) don't know how things are going to pan out and it may well be true. Who can say.
But as I posted in the early days of this thread, I suspect the primary motivation here is as a short term cash drive. They're just re-opening after an extended period of not trading, they have a bunch of old stock taking up space in the warehouse, why not make some room and generate a quick cash injection by getting everyone who was planning to buy these kits in the future to go ahead and buy them right now? That's why they trailed it in advance rather than just doing it overnight.
Oh I agree, but the price of plastic increasing was nevertheless cited and I fail to see how the price of the raw material needed to make it being at record low prices could somehow drive prices up.
That's easy to explain, if the cost of labour, electricity, transport (ie: everything else involved in the process) went up by more than enough to offset the amount the raw material went down.
Or simply because those places producing the raw plastic were all shut down for the last 5 months, resulting in shortages and therefore increased price of the dwindling supplies of raw plastic. The cost of the oil is irrelevant if nobody's actually currently using it to buy plastic, or is still using up their supplies purchased at a previous, higher price.
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Rob Lee wrote: The notion that GW expect people to absorb year on year price rises is ludicrous also. .
They don't. From previous chatter, they expect that most people who buy into the hobby don't last more than a year, and those who do generally only last 3-5. Their prices aren't aimed at vets who have already largely collected an army, they're aimed at the people walking into a store prepared to drop the contents of their wallet on a new game. A strategy that, despite the criticism from the internet, seems to have been largely working for them for the last 30 years to varying degrees of actual success.
yukishiro1 wrote: My point was simply that when a company presents itself as a friend of hobbyists and as a moral force for good rather than a faceless corporation intent only on maximizing its own profits, it naturally opens itself up to accusations of hypocrisy
I'll ignore your quite offensive remarks to my previous post, however, I can't ignore your later comment, which is quite patently false and absurd, and shows a fundamental lack of understanding on your part.
Quite simply: GWdoes notpresent itself as a moral force for good. The notion that they do is completely fabricated by you, and exists only in your head. Furthermore, it's clear at this stage that you don't understand what the term 'moral' means, nor indeed what 'ethics' are in the context of this discussion.
Ok, so sure, GW raises prices and you have a problem with that -- I get it. However, it is in no way unethical or hypocritical.
I'd ask that you take your snide, rude comments about myself and my background elsewhere.
I apologize for referencing your background; even though you brought it up yourself to try to grant yourself an unwarranted aura of authority, I should have resisted the temptation to do turn that back around against you. Your profession is completely irrelevant to this discussion, and the fact that you behaved otherwise doesn't mean I should have as well. I should have been the bigger person, and I apologize for failing.
In my defense, I simply cannot stand condescension, and your posts here were absolutely dripping with it. It is a form of intellectual bullying, and I cannot abide by it, especially when it is not backed up by substance.
Of course GW presents itself as a moral force for good. We literally just had three pages of posts here about a statement they recently released doing just that. I will assume you are not even contesting the friend of hobbyists part of the statement, as it is so obvious.
The rest of your post is essentially just an admission that you have lost the argument. "You clearly don't understand" is not an argument. Nor is repeating "it is in no way unethical or hypocritical" an argument either.
I have stated my position, and instead of refuting it through explanation, you've simply said "you're wrong and you don't understand." Which is fine - this is the internet, after all - but it's not going to convince anybody.
yukishiro1 wrote: Another option was not to raise prices at all. They have incredible profit margins. It wasn't a case that they needed to do this to stay afloat. There's no rule of the universe that says that they need to maintain the same profit margin even during a global catastrophe.
They made a choice to raise prices, probably before the pandemic. Then they made another choice to go through with it despite the pandemic. These were both choices that GW made and is responsible for. You can say it was a foregone conclusion because GW raises prices no matter what, and that may be true - but that itself is a choice they are responsible for making.
Yes they could keep prices same. That would result in less profits than with.
You keep thinking gw is doing this just for kind heart and charity. It's not. It's in for profit. If move a gives more profit than move b it's what gw does. In fact what companies do.
It's even hard for them to increase sales as they can't keep things stocked all the time as well. Demand is basically greater than supply. This in itself shows price can be raised.
There's no rule in universe that says gw must take lower profits voluntarily.
yukishiro1 wrote: Another option was not to raise prices at all. They have incredible profit margins. It wasn't a case that they needed to do this to stay afloat. There's no rule of the universe that says that they need to maintain the same profit margin even during a global catastrophe.
They made a choice to raise prices, probably before the pandemic. Then they made another choice to go through with it despite the pandemic. These were both choices that GW made and is responsible for. You can say it was a foregone conclusion because GW raises prices no matter what, and that may be true - but that itself is a choice they are responsible for making.
Yes they could keep prices same. That would result in less profits than with.
You keep thinking gw is doing this just for kind heart and charity. It's not. It's in for profit. If move a gives more profit than move b it's what gw does. In fact what companies do.
It's even hard for them to increase sales as they can't keep things stocked all the time as well. Demand is basically greater than supply. This in itself shows price can be raised.
There's no rule in universe that says gw must take lower profits voluntarily.
I have never once said anywhere in this thread that I think GW doing this for "kind heart and charity." Please don't ascribe positions to people they haven't made in order to make it easier to refute their argument. It's not a good way of arguing. It just makes everyone waste time.
My statement was specifically refuting someone who said the only options were raising prices this year, or raising prices by 2x as much next year instead. I was simply pointing out that this is objectively wrong. The fact that they did not need to raise prices does not mean I think they needed to not raise prices; you can't reverse logical propositions that way. My point was simply that they made a choice to raise prices during a global catastrophe so it is fair to hold them responsible for it; it was not forced upon them by necessity or circumstance.
But doesn't that serve to illustrate an important point - namely, that nobody actually, really buys into the idea that corporations should be soulless profit-maximizers with no responsibilities to their customers or the world as a whole beyond self-enrichment?
That's always been the problem with the "greed is good" philosophy of maximizing shareholder gains: nobody (well, maybe 1% or 0.1%) actually believes in it when push comes to shove. The average customer certainly doesn't buy into it.
GW and every other major corporation in the world at least pretends to care about more than just its own bottom line because being perceived to care about more than just your own bottom line sells.
Azreal13 wrote: So oil has dropped so low that it was negatively priced, and many businesses have reduced or ceased trading and therefore demand on shipping services will also be proportionately affected, yet plastic and logistics have gone up?
I don't have any evidence to tell you you're wrong, but I'd be interested if you have any to support that idea.
I can't tell you details for obvious reasons, but I'm working for a large company selling premium product (read: overly expensive stuff you could easily substitute with similar things costing a fraction) and the sales figures for Italy, Spain and Germany have only decreased slightly or even increased during the lock-down.
People who have not taken a financial hit because they could continue working as before (home office, well-paid essential personal) now have an abundance of cash due to the lack of possibilities to spend it, since people can't go out, attend festivals or go in vacation. Apparently, those people invest that cash in things they can use while staying at home, and I'd be surprised if GW were vastly different in that regard than our company.
GW obviously suffered a hit to sales when its factory was closed. That was what, about two months?
But it also got absolutely slammed with orders as soon as it opened up, suggesting that a large portion of those losses have probably been recouped or are in the process of being recouped, with or without a price increase. Most of those sales weren't lost, they were just delayed.
Azreal13 wrote: So oil has dropped so low that it was negatively priced, and many businesses have reduced or ceased trading and therefore demand on shipping services will also be proportionately affected, yet plastic and logistics have gone up?
I don't have any evidence to tell you you're wrong, but I'd be interested if you have any to support that idea.
I can't tell you details for obvious reasons, but I'm working for a large company selling premium product (read: overly expensive stuff you could easily substitute with similar things costing a fraction) and the sales figures for Italy, Spain and Germany have only decreased slightly or even increased during the lock-down.
People who have not taken a financial hit because they could continue working as before (home office, well-paid essential personal) now have an abundance of cash due to the lack of possibilities to spend it, since people can't go out, attend festivals or go in vacation. Apparently, those people invest that cash in things they can use while staying at home, and I'd be surprised if GW were vastly different in that regard than our company.
I'm sure all of that is correct. But GW's business model is dependent on a whole load of potential vulnerabilities such as their staff, their shops, distribution networks, foreign manufacturers for some components, etc. No-one knows what the impact of coronavirus will be in the medium or long term and the pressures that could put on various businesses. No-one, GW included, is going to feel on solid enough ground to say 'no, that's enough profit for me thank you'.
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yukishiro1 wrote: GW obviously suffered a hit to sales when its factory was closed. That was what, about two months?
But it also got absolutely slammed with orders as soon as it opened up, suggesting that a large portion of those losses have probably been recouped or are in the process of being recouped, with or without a price increase. Most of those sales weren't lost, they were just delayed.
If I ran a business selling non-essential goods, and the second my webstore opened up again after a break it was slammed with orders to the extent that I have to impose a queue system for a while, I would probably think 'I can get away with increasing some of my prices'.
I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
?
'I wonder if I can get away with stopping for some food before the movie starts'.
You keep assigning these vague moral obligations to GW regarding the prices they charge and I don't think I've seen you explain why.
Is GW wrong to raise its prices and if it is, why?
I don't think it's wrong for GW to raise its prices in the abstract. I do think it is out of keeping with the corporate image GW tries to construct for itself to raise prices during a global pandemic. If you didn't see my prior posts explaining this, I can type it out again, but it's right there if you go looking.
Essentially, the point is that GW presents itself as more than a faceless corporate behemoth interested only in maximizing its own profits. It presents itself as a friendly partner in "the hobby" and a promoter of good values (see: statement on anti-racism, recent press release on the catachan colonel model being distributed for free to FLGS to help them out during a difficult time, etc). It does seem pretty inconsistent with this image to raise prices right at the precise time when hundreds of millions of people all over the world have lost their jobs as a result of a massive global catastrophe.
In other words, the problem is that GW loves to talk the talk, but it doesn't walk the walk. And it's in significant contrast to the actions taken by many other major corporations, which have responded to the crisis not by raising prices but by cutting them, or by adopting other customer-friendly policies (e.g. granting customers forbearance on payments, not cutting people off monthly services if they can't pay, etc etc). Now very likely these corporations have done this not out of true compassion but because they believe it will help their sales in the long run - but the point is that GW has reacted in the exact opposite of the way many corporations have reacted, and in a way that is difficult to square with the image it tries to construct.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think it's wrong for GW to raise its prices in the abstract. I do think it is out of keeping with the corporate image GW tries to construct for itself to raise prices during a global pandemic. If you didn't see my prior posts explaining this, I can type it out again, but it's right there if you go looking.
Essentially, the point is that GW presents itself as more than a faceless corporate behemoth interested only in maximizing its own profits. It presents itself as a friendly partner in "the hobby" and a promoter of good values (see: statement on anti-racism, recent press release on the catachan colonel model being distributed for free to FLGS to help them out during a difficult time, etc). It does seem pretty inconsistent with this image to raise prices right at the precise time when hundreds of millions of people all over the world have lost their jobs as a result of a massive global catastrophe.
I don't see why. GW is a luxury, a hobby, not an essential that people absolutely must purchase.
It seems to me that if someone has lost their job and is in some state of financial peril, the fact that Khorne Berzerkers went up by £2.50 is not that relevant.
yukishiro1 wrote: In other words, the problem is that GW loves to talk the talk, but it doesn't walk the walk. And it's in significant contrast to the actions taken by many other major corporations, which have responded to the crisis not by raising prices but by cutting them, or by adopting other customer-friendly policies (e.g. granting customers forbearance on payments, not cutting people off monthly services if they can't pay, etc etc). Now very likely these corporations have done this not out of true compassion but because they believe it will help their sales in the long run - but the point is that GW has reacted in the exact opposite of the way many corporations have reacted, and in a way that is difficult to square with the image it tries to construct.
Those companies that have granted forebearance and so on have done so because they provide essential services and if people were evicted from their homes or had their phones and electricity cut off, etc, then it would do those people great harm (and therefore ultimately give those companies a lot of bad PR). What great harm is caused by someone suddenly not being able to afford that Land Raider they wanted?
So here is my attempt at trying to restate yukishiro1's position in a way that he would accept.
1) There are some number of people who could purchase at the previous price but now can't afford it.
2) Being able to no longer buy something you previous could buy causes some amount of mental anguish
3) Keeping the prices where they were avoid causing that anguish
4) GW does not actually need to protect their margins at their current levels, so the price increases are not necessary for the stability of the company or the well being of the employees
5) The more people that can't get into GW games the less participants there will be in a given local area
Now, I disagree with the importance of some points and conclusions drawn from them.
Not being able to buy a kit at the current price but being able to buy it at a previous price is not actually human suffering worth considering. A massive financial reversal like a job loss, house burning down, getting sick are all the kinds of things that do require our compassion, but have 50 pounds to spend and the thing you want is now 55 is not one of those things.
Money is fungible. Money spent on more expensive land raiders is money that can't be spent on other things. Raising prices even on non-essential goods during a time of economic difficulty makes it more difficult for people to make ends meet while still enjoying the things they enjoy doing. Just because something isn't "essential" doesn't mean that raising its price does not impact peoples' standards of living. GW's raising prices negatively impacts the lives of at least a significant number people who buy GW products, at a time when they are struggling. That doesn't change just because they can choose not to buy land raiders at all.
But if you disagree that raising prices during a pandemic is out of keeping with GW's image as a friend of hobbyists and a general force for good in the world, we're obviously not going to be able to come to any consensus on this point, because that's just a fundamental disagreement about basic ethical propositions.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
?
'I wonder if I can get away with stopping for some food before the movie starts'.
You keep assigning these vague moral obligations to GW regarding the prices they charge and I don't think I've seen you explain why.
Is GW wrong to raise its prices and if it is, why?
...does anyone actually say something like that, instead of "I wonder if I have time to stop for some food before the movie starts", for example?
Actually asking here, english is not my native language.
Chamberlain wrote: So here is my attempt at trying to restate yukishiro1's position in a way that he would accept.
1) There are some number of people who could purchase at the previous price but now can't afford it.
2) Being able to no longer buy something you previous could buy causes some amount of mental anguish
3) Keeping the prices where they were avoid causing that anguish
4) GW does not actually need to protect their margins at their current levels, so the price increases are not necessary for the stability of the company or the well being of the employees
5) The more people that can't get into GW games the less participants there will be in a given local area
Now, I disagree with the importance of some points and conclusions drawn from them.
Not being able to buy a kit at the current price but being able to buy it at a previous price is not actually human suffering worth considering. A massive financial reversal like a job loss, house burning down, getting sick are all the kinds of things that do require our compassion, but have 50 pounds to spend and the thing you want is now 55 is not one of those things.
That's a fair summary of the argument, though there should also be another point or two in there about how it contradicts GW's PR about looking out for "the hobby" and being generally good guys, too.
I would point out, though, that your argument that not being able to hobby is not a form of human suffering worth considering is fundamentally at odds with the reason we all buy GW products. GW's whole argument as a company is that spending large amounts of money on toy soldiers is a good value proposition because it makes people happy. The converse of that is necessarily that not being able to spend that money on toy soldiers leads to the loss of that happiness. If we argue that the unhappiness from not being able to hobby is not a form of unhappiness worth considering, the converse must also be true: that the happiness created from hobbying is not significant. But this argument is refuted by the fact that we *do* spend large sums of money on toy soldiers, because that happiness *is* significant.
If we start saying that spending lots of money on toy soldiers is fundamentally a frivolous waste of money that does not produce significant happiness, that undermines the whole rationale for hobbying in the first place.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
?
'I wonder if I can get away with stopping for some food before the movie starts'.
You keep assigning these vague moral obligations to GW regarding the prices they charge and I don't think I've seen you explain why.
Is GW wrong to raise its prices and if it is, why?
...does anyone actually say something like that, instead of "I wonder if I have time to stop for some food before the movie starts", for example?
Actually asking here, english is not my native language.
It is a legitimate use of the phrase, but not in use much any more (see definition #2).
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
?
'I wonder if I can get away with stopping for some food before the movie starts'.
You keep assigning these vague moral obligations to GW regarding the prices they charge and I don't think I've seen you explain why.
Is GW wrong to raise its prices and if it is, why?
...does anyone actually say something like that, instead of "I wonder if I have time to stop for some food before the movie starts", for example?
Actually asking here, english is not my native language.
Yes and no. Nobody talks like that in America. You do hear people occasionally say something like that in the UK - but that doesn't mean the phrase isn't morally charged. The phrase is used in that context precisely because it is jokingly ascribing a certain cheekiness to the behavior.
For example, even in the UK, nobody would ever say "I wonder if I can get away with donating some money to the local homeless shelter before the movie starts." They might say it with regard to getting food, because that is an indulgence, and therefore vaguely morally suspicious.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
?
'I wonder if I can get away with stopping for some food before the movie starts'.
You keep assigning these vague moral obligations to GW regarding the prices they charge and I don't think I've seen you explain why.
Is GW wrong to raise its prices and if it is, why?
...does anyone actually say something like that, instead of "I wonder if I have time to stop for some food before the movie starts", for example?
Actually asking here, english is not my native language.
Yes and no. Nobody talks like that in America. You do hear people occasionally say something like that in the UK - but that doesn't mean the phrase isn't morally charged. The phrase is used in that context precisely because it is jokingly ascribing a certain cheekiness to the behavior.
For example, even in the UK, nobody would ever say "I wonder if I can get away with donating some money to the local homeless shelter before the movie starts." They might say it with regard to getting food, because that is an indulgence, and therefore vaguely morally suspicious.
No, you might also wonder if you could get away with dropping your dry cleaning off, or finishing undercoating this model. It's a calculation of risk. Here it means 'do I have time to do this, or will it make me late?'. In relation to GW's prices, it means 'can I raise my prices and simply make more money, or will I lose money elsewhere through reduced sales'.
But that's also because they are things that benefit yourself, and therefore vaguely morally suspect.
Do you disagree that you'd never hear someone say "I wonder if I can get away with donating some money to the local homeless shelter before the movie starts?" or "I wonder if I can get away with helping that little old lady with her groceries?"
It is an interesting tangent. But I maintain the origin of the usage is precisely that slight moral opprobrium that is connected to self-care in British culture. Not that it really matters much to the discussion, I just thought it was interesting that even you chose to use that particular phrase with regard to GW's choice to raise prices.
Chamberlain wrote: So here is my attempt at trying to restate yukishiro1's position in a way that he would accept.
1) There are some number of people who could purchase at the previous price but now can't afford it. 2) Being able to no longer buy something you previous could buy causes some amount of mental anguish 3) Keeping the prices where they were avoid causing that anguish 4) GW does not actually need to protect their margins at their current levels, so the price increases are not necessary for the stability of the company or the well being of the employees 5) The more people that can't get into GW games the less participants there will be in a given local area
Now, I disagree with the importance of some points and conclusions drawn from them.
Not being able to buy a kit at the current price but being able to buy it at a previous price is not actually human suffering worth considering. A massive financial reversal like a job loss, house burning down, getting sick are all the kinds of things that do require our compassion, but have 50 pounds to spend and the thing you want is now 55 is not one of those things.
That's a fair summary of the argument, though there should also be another point or two in there about how it contradicts GW's PR about looking out for "the hobby" and being generally good guys, too.
I would point out, though, that your argument that not being able to hobby is not a form of human suffering worth considering is fundamentally at odds with the reason we all buy GW products. GW's whole argument as a company is that spending large amounts of money on toy soldiers is a good value proposition because it makes people happy. The converse of that is necessarily that not being able to spend that money on toy soldiers leads to the loss of that happiness. If we argue that the unhappiness from not being able to hobby is not a form of unhappiness worth considering, the converse must also be true: that the happiness created from hobbying is not significant. But this argument is refuted by the fact that we *do* spend large sums of money on toy soldiers, because that happiness *is* significant.
If we start saying that spending lots of money on toy soldiers is fundamentally a frivolous waste of money that does not produce significant happiness, that undermines the whole rationale for hobbying in the first place.
That doesn't follow at all. 'Either it's so bad it's a waste of money or it's so good the company is morally obliged to continue providing it to me'.
Would you say that GW are in fact obliged to reduce their prices?
What about Porsche dealerships and yacht showrooms?
yukishiro1 wrote: That doesn't change just because they can choose not to buy land raiders at all.
They can just choose to buy the land raider four weeks later, making your entire argument moot. Not to mention that you can easily participate in the hobby without buying mint condition boxes from GW. As I said before, people aren't priced out of the hobby, but out of their patience.
I don't know about you, but the main thing keeping me(and other parents) from the hobby during the pandemic is having the kids at home while me and my spouse still have to work 40 hours a week. I haven't even found the time to build the metal Badrukk that I got in March (from ebay at 50% of GW's store prices by the way). The pandemic is hard for everyone in different ways, and I'm not asking GW to watch my kids so I can paint my models either.
Last, but not least, in times of economic difficulty things like 40k is one of the first things you should stop spending money on.
yukishiro1 wrote: But that's also because they are things that benefit yourself, and therefore vaguely morally suspect.
Do you disagree that you'd never hear someone say "I wonder if I can get away with donating some money to the local homeless shelter before the movie starts?" or "I wonder if I can get away with helping that little old lady with her groceries?".
I do disagree, yes. Those usages would be perfectly correct.
That doesn't follow at all. 'Either it's so bad it's a waste of money or it's so good the company is morally obliged to continue providing it to me'.
Would you say that GW are in fact obliged to reduce their prices?
What about Porsche dealerships and yacht showrooms?
It doesn't follow, but that's because you've misrepresented the argument again. Absolutely nobody has said anywhere here that the company is morally obligated to continue providing the ability to hobby to everyone, no matter how their circumstances change. Or that GW is morally obligated to reduce its prices. Please stop making up fake arguments to attribute to people. It is a huge waste of everyone's time.
Again, to be crystal clear, in case it wasn't the first four times: the argument here is that it is out of keeping with GW's created corporate image as a friend of hobbyists and general good guys to raise prices during a global catastrophe. Not that GW is morally obligated to provide its stuff to anyone who is already a GW hobbyist regardless of ability to pay, not that GW is obliged to reduce its prices, or any other straw men we can construct.
They can just choose to buy the land raider four weeks later, making your entire argument moot.
Yes! Or buy a Rhino instead, or a Tac Squad, or whatever.
About 10% of GW's products went up by about 10% in price, with a period of notice. To hear people talk here it's like they doubled their prices overnight. This is not that big of a deal.
yukishiro1 wrote:
I would point out, though, that your argument that not being able to hobby is not a form of human suffering worth considering is fundamentally at odds with the reason we all buy GW products. GW's whole argument as a company is that spending large amounts of money on toy soldiers is a good value proposition because it makes people happy. The converse of that is necessarily that not being able to spend that money on toy soldiers leads to the loss of that happiness. If we argue that the unhappiness from not being able to hobby is not a form of unhappiness worth considering, the converse must also be true: that the happiness created from hobbying is not significant. But this argument is refuted by the fact that we *do* spend large sums of money on toy soldiers, because that happiness *is* significant.
If we start saying that spending lots of money on toy soldiers is fundamentally a frivolous waste of money that does not produce significant happiness, that undermines the whole rationale for hobbying in the first place.
I'd be willing to accept that lots of consumerist behaviour is a frivolous attempt to fill a void in people's isolated and alienated lives. Buying product being your hobby is probably not going to bring the happiness that actual hobby activity would bring. And that simply does not require the purchasing of GW's product. A single brand is not the hobby.
If we're talking about societal goods and people's well being, then perhaps people no longer being able to afford GW's offerings at 55 pounds because they only have 50 will lead them to discover better options for that money. If the case is being made that the reason price increases are bad is that it causes suffering, then I can easily say they are good because some number of those who are now priced out will find a greater source of joy.
There may also be other positive knock on effects like small businesses being supported so more creative people can make miniatures without having to relocate to Nottingham and try to get a job at GW. And it may actually have positive benefits in terms of local tax revenue because larger companies tend to pay a smaller portion of their revenue to taxes because of their access to certain corporate structures, tax credits and the ability to afford expensive expertise.
As soon as we make it a moral issues, then it's no longer a all or nothing situation, but a complex situation of all sorts of possible outcomes and priorities.
yukishiro1 wrote: That doesn't change just because they can choose not to buy land raiders at all.
They can just choose to buy the land raider four weeks later, making your entire argument moot.
But this is just silly. We are talking about marginal cases here, not people who are already comfortably affording the hobby. Obviously someone is not actually being priced out of the hobby if they are only minorly inconvenienced by the price hike. That's not the person we're talking about. If your argument is that nobody is actually priced out of the hobby by price increases because price increases are irrelevant to hobbyists in any way that matters and therefore it isn't actually inconsistent with being a friend of hobbyists and general good guys, we can argue over that, but it's not the argument anyone is discussing here.
That doesn't follow at all. 'Either it's so bad it's a waste of money or it's so good the company is morally obliged to continue providing it to me'.
Would you say that GW are in fact obliged to reduce their prices?
What about Porsche dealerships and yacht showrooms?
It doesn't follow, but that's because you've misrepresented the argument again. Absolutely nobody has said anywhere here that the company is morally obligated to continue providing the ability to hobby to everyone, no matter how their circumstances change. Or that GW is morally obligated to reduce its prices. Please stop making up fake arguments to attribute to people. It is a huge waste of everyone's time.
Again, to be crystal clear, in case it wasn't the first four times: the argument here is that it is out of keeping with GW's created corporate image as a friend of hobbyists and general good guys to raise prices during a global catastrophe. Not that GW is morally obligated to provide its stuff to anyone who is already a GW hobbyist regardless of ability to pay, not that GW is obliged to reduce its prices, or any other straw men we can construct.
I am trying to understand your position but it does not make sense to me. You say that it's out of keeping with their image as the good guys, but that it's not a moral obligation. So what kind of obligation is it, then? In what way is their price rise at odds with their image as a friend to hobbyists if they also have no moral obligation to those hobbyists?
I'm still kinda surprised there's anyone left who thinks a corporation's conduct and the way they present themselves to the public are in the least connected.
Yes, there are businesses out there who may choose their customers welfare over profit.
It's fairly obvious that many comfortably well off members here will never be able, or are just plain unwilling, to understand the impact of price hikes from the perspective of someone who isn't comfortably well off and just about manages to have a hobby involving GW products.
Really think this horse needs to be taken off the merry-go-round and be put to rest - it's insulting to so many people even under normal "world" circumstances, let alone currently.
I feel like this conversation was set way back by the deletion of two pages worth of relevant discussion. As previously discussed, humans are hardwired to require entertainment (or distraction or stimulation, whatever you want to call it) as well as food and shelter. When people are priced out of the big things, then the small things, including all the entertainment they had invested emotionally into, they get upset. When they are priced out of all of their entertainments at once, they have nothing to do but linger on that. It’s a natural and obvious consequence of static purchasing power and rising prices. A price hike that would cause grumbles ten years ago will cause quite a bit more drama during a pandemic and period of economic anxiety. GW should be savvy enough to know this or to pretend to care about this.
I would expect the investor class to remember why “bread and circuses” was a thing that kept the toiling class in line when “bread alone” wasn’t. Not that we’re doing great as a society on bread alone...
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Azreal13 wrote: I'm still kinda surprised there's anyone left who thinks a corporation's conduct and the way they present themselves to the public are in the least connected.
Yes, there are businesses out there who may choose their customers welfare over profit.
None of them are listed on the LSE.
Usually they don’t contradict themselves so closely and so publicly, though. GW: We value inclusivity. Also GW: Go away, poors.
If one person has £27.50 to spend on plastic spacemen, but the other person has £30, the difference between those people is not 'the toiling classes' and 'the investor classes'.
soviet13 wrote: If one person has £27.50 to spend on plastic spacemen, but the other person has £30, the difference between those people is not 'the toiling classes' and 'the investor classes'.
That’s not even close to what I’m saying. Read it again, please.
I’m talking about the shareholders GW is supposedly answering to with this price hike and all previous price hikes, and the need to keep regular price increases...and all the other less-customer-friendly behaviors.
Rob Lee wrote: It's fairly obvious that many comfortably well off members here will never be able, or are just plain unwilling, to understand the impact of price hikes from the perspective of someone who isn't comfortably well off and just about manages to have a hobby involving GW products.
You'd be surprised that it's not just the 'comfortably well off members' who don't agree with you.
Rob Lee wrote: It's fairly obvious that many comfortably well off members here will never be able, or are just plain unwilling, to understand the impact of price hikes from the perspective of someone who isn't comfortably well off and just about manages to have a hobby involving GW products.
You'd be surprised that it's not just the 'comfortably well off members' who don't agree with you.
Rob Lee wrote: It's fairly obvious that many comfortably well off members here will never be able, or are just plain unwilling, to understand the impact of price hikes from the perspective of someone who isn't comfortably well off and just about manages to have a hobby involving GW products.
You'd be surprised that it's not just the 'comfortably well off members' who don't agree with you.
It's not a matter of agreeing with one side or the other.
it's about understanding, empathy if you will.
And it's clear that understanding is lacking, possibly intentionally on the part of people defending GW's and their own position.
Thus this discussion keeps going round and round and round and round...
Rob Lee wrote: It's fairly obvious that many comfortably well off members here will never be able, or are just plain unwilling, to understand the impact of price hikes from the perspective of someone who isn't comfortably well off and just about manages to have a hobby involving GW products.
I've lost income due to an illness (non malignant spinal tumor) to the point where I was selling everything I owned just to make sure the lights stayed on while I was literally eating gruel. I had to wait a couple months for the surgery then recovery was a couple months. I also couldn't afford any prescription pain medication during that time. So please don't make assumptions about what people can and cannot understand.
having 50 pounds to spend on a hobby and gw raised the price of the item you wanted to 55 is just not in that category. Anyone who demands compassion for the poor guy who can't afford 55 pounds but has 50 ready to spend needs to re calibrate their idea of what suffering is. As if anyone who could afford GW at last year's prices is now somehow bereft is ludicrous.
It's people being sad they can't buy a specific brand and claiming it's somehow privation.
People can be against all forms of suffering. Saying GW is pissing us off is not mutually exclusive with being pissed off at the lack of a safety net, affordable healthcare, a world rapidly diminishing in opportunity, and a basic lack of decency from the top down. It’s disingenuous to pretend that caring about minor problems means we can’t also care about major ones.
Look, I've been in a similar situation to you Chamberlain. I was almost homeless on two occasions. I had to sell possessions I coveted, in fact I lost pretty much everything I owned. Just like you claim you have Chamberlain.
As someone who doesn't wish to go back to those times...
...As someone whose life had moved forwards until recent events...
...As someone who wants to continue moving forwards in life, because it's more enjoyable than not...
...I perfectly understand why people are aggrieved at price hikes in hobbies they have been enjoying.
Like I said - the intentional lack of understanding, not to mention the blatant and repeated disingenuousness, here is insulting to so many people and the topic carrying on going round and round does no-one any favours.
BobtheInquisitor wrote:People can be against all forms of suffering. Saying GW is pissing us off is not mutually exclusive with being pissed off at the lack of a safety net, affordable healthcare, a world rapidly diminishing in opportunity, and a basic lack of decency from the top down. It’s disingenuous to pretend that caring about minor problems means we can’t also care about major ones.
The guy who would buy warhammer kits at last year's prices but finds this years prices too high still has a massive hobby budget. Anyone who suffers as a result of that situation has tied their joy to the purchasing of a specific brand.
Rob Lee wrote: ...I perfectly understand why people are aggrieved at price hikes in hobbies they have been enjoying.
I understand that as well.
This whole circular mess all started when people made it a moral issues and started demanding compassion.
We are talking about people who could afford warhammer at 2018 or 2019 prices but now can't because of a price hike. People who can no longer afford a premium brand but still could buy hobby stuff at 2018 or 2019 GW prices.
It's like having compassion for those bereft people who have to stick with their iPhone X because they can't afford the upgrade to the 11. We should start a gofundme or something.
Why not. Show some empathy for your fellow gamer. Help out a friend, keep them able to play games with you and others (when the time we can safely do so again comes). gofundme's have started for all sorts of things.
Oh and your analogy over iPhones, again another piece of disingenousness.
As for what now? Thread should have been closed at the discussion over GW's support of the current political events.
I think most of the people upset couldn’t really afford GW at last year’s prices... but that doesn’t mean they weren’t buying.
With shelter in place, it seems like most people would have extra focus on their hobbies they can do at home. And people also have reason to go over their budgets again. So, while there are a lot of grumbles every price hike and a few rage quits, this price hike has come at a time when tensions were higher.
Why not. Show some empathy for your fellow gamer. Help out a friend, keep them able to play games with you and others.
I am all on board with that. I'm not on board with demanding people feel compassion about a price increase on a premium brand. Actually helping people be able to continue to play games is best done locally. I just packed up a box of free miniatures and bits for someone yesterday.
Oh and your analogy over iPhones, again another piece of disingenousness.
It's actually not disingenuous. It's probably the most honest assessment possible. I really do see GW as a premium, expensive brand. I really mean it when I say that someone who can afford GW at 2018 or 2019 prices has an amazing hobby budget.
It really is people making a moral issue out of it and demanding compassion because someone can no longer afford the most expensive premium brand.
The biggest piece of advice I can offer to preserve your sanity on this forum and the internet in general is to not conflate a conscious decision to disengage with an admission of defeat.
I am trying to understand your position but it does not make sense to me. You say that it's out of keeping with their image as the good guys, but that it's not a moral obligation. So what kind of obligation is it, then? In what way is their price rise at odds with their image as a friend to hobbyists if they also have no moral obligation to those hobbyists?
I think your use of the word obligation is what's causing the hangup. I don't think GW has a moral obligation per se to make sure all its existing hobbyists can still afford the hobby. That's too strong a phrasing.
If you see a little old lady trying to cross the street, do you have a moral obligation to stop and help her across? I would say no. But if you go around presenting yourself as a stand-up guy, if you plow through the intersection while honking at her, I think it's fair to say that's behavior that is morally inconsistent. Whether you had any obligation or not.
And before someone does the same thing that's happened six times already, an analogy doesn't mean something is the same in every respect, only in respect to what the analogy is illustrating. I am not saying GW raising prices is exactly the same as not helping little old ladies. I am going to try saying this ahead of time this time, since it appears that people get confused otherwise.
I'm sorry Chamberlain I just cannot be bothered responding to you other than to say, again, much of what is in this thread, and continues to appear, is insulting.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think most of the people upset couldn’t really afford GW at last year’s prices... but that doesn’t mean they weren’t buying.
With shelter in place, it seems like most people would have extra focus on their hobbies they can do at home. And people also have reason to go over their budgets again. So, while there are a lot of grumbles every price hike and a few rage quits, this price hike has come at a time when tensions were higher.
This is a very good point.
People are talking about how we might have the equivalent of the great depression going forward.
I would suggest that in such an environment, to maximize joy and minimize suffering that avoiding increasing consumer debt and considering other options other than brand new full retail of the premium brand might be on the table.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think most of the people upset couldn’t really afford GW at last year’s prices... but that doesn’t mean they weren’t buying.
With shelter in place, it seems like most people would have extra focus on their hobbies they can do at home. And people also have reason to go over their budgets again. So, while there are a lot of grumbles every price hike and a few rage quits, this price hike has come at a time when tensions were higher.
This is a very good point.
People are talking about how we might have the equivalent of the great depression going forward.
I would suggest that in such an environment, to maximize joy and minimize suffering that avoiding increasing consumer debt and considering other options other than brand new full retail of the premium brand might be on the table.
Do you honestly not realize how patronizing this is? It's like you're deliberately trying to illustrate the other guy's point about a lack of compassion. I'm really, honest to god not trying to be mean or confrontational here - it strikes me from your posts that this is something you're honestly not grasping, and I suspect it isn't only in this thread that it's going to cause people to take umbrage.
If someone tells you they've lost their job, they're not going to thank you for your "advice" when you look into their shopping cart and say "you know, you'd be better off not buying Heinz now that your economic situation has changed."
I am trying to understand your position but it does not make sense to me. You say that it's out of keeping with their image as the good guys, but that it's not a moral obligation. So what kind of obligation is it, then? In what way is their price rise at odds with their image as a friend to hobbyists if they also have no moral obligation to those hobbyists?
I think your use of the word obligation is what's causing the hangup. I don't think GW has a moral obligation per se to make sure all its existing hobbyists can still afford the hobby. That's too strong a phrasing.
If you see a little old lady trying to cross the street, do you have a moral obligation to stop and help her across? I would say no. But if you go around presenting yourself as a stand-up guy, if you plow through the intersection while honking at her, I think it's fair to say that's behavior that is morally inconsistent. Whether you had any obligation or not.
And before someone does the same thing that's happened six times already, an analogy doesn't mean something is the same in every respect, only in respect to what the analogy is illustrating. I am not saying GW raising prices is exactly the same as not helping little old ladies. I am going to try saying this ahead of time this time, since it appears that people get confused otherwise.
So I think that what you are saying here is that GW's price rise is incongruous with their presentation as a friend to hobbyists. Sort of a mild "really?' moment. Which I can understand. I just think, so what? Does this mean that GW was wrong to do it, or that they should now do something else to rectify it? Any business or individual is faced with competing demands and has to choose between them eg can I get away with helping this old lady cross the road, or will it make me late for volunteering at the homeless shelter? You might say that GW being a friend to hobbyists will also sometimes be in conflict with their status as an employer and a business. If they don't increase prices, and that means they later fall into difficulties and have to make people redundant, is that a better outcome or a worse one? What if they go bankrupt? It's a complicated issue and I think the tone of moral outrage certainly present elsewhere in this thread has been misplaced.
But nobody - not even GW itself - has made the slightest suggestion that there was any risk of falling into difficulties if they didn't raise prices now.
If GW had put out a release saying: "Look, we know this is terrible timing, we know people are hurting, and we're really sorry, but we need to raise prices now to keep the lights on" nobody would begrudge them it (if it were true).
It's the fact that everyone knows perfectly well that that is not the case that generates the bad feeling. That is what annoys people. This is about making even more money - or, at the very best, maintaining their absolutely huge existing profit margins - not about keeping the lights on.
Again, before someone misses the point, obviously GW would never say anything like that, because it'd create panic among its shareholders.
yukishiro1 wrote: But nobody - not even GW itself - has made the slightest suggestion that there was any risk of falling into difficulties if they didn't raise prices now.
They have no idea what is going to happen in the near future given the world-changing events currently happening around us.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think most of the people upset couldn’t really afford GW at last year’s prices... but that doesn’t mean they weren’t buying.
With shelter in place, it seems like most people would have extra focus on their hobbies they can do at home. And people also have reason to go over their budgets again. So, while there are a lot of grumbles every price hike and a few rage quits, this price hike has come at a time when tensions were higher.
This is a very good point.
People are talking about how we might have the equivalent of the great depression going forward.
I would suggest that in such an environment, to maximize joy and minimize suffering that avoiding increasing consumer debt and considering other options other than brand new full retail of the premium brand might be on the table.
Do you honestly not realize how patronizing this is? It's like you're deliberately trying to illustrate the other guy's point about a lack of compassion. I'm really, honest to god not trying to be mean or confrontational here - it strikes me from your posts that this is something you're honestly not grasping, and I suspect it isn't only in this thread that it's going to cause people to take umbrage.
If someone tells you they've lost their job, they're not going to thank you for your "advice" when you look into their shopping cart and say "you know, you'd be better off not buying Heinz now that your economic situation has changed."
I have compassion for people who lose their jobs and suffer hardship, but I have exactly zero compassion for people with £50 hobby budgets who want to buy £55 Land Raiders.
And they also have 28% profit margins. And are so flooded with orders that they literally can't keep up. If things change to the point that a company like that struggles to keep the lights on...we are all in a lot more trouble than just worrying how we're going to source our tiny plastic toy soldiers. Not to mention that it could raise prices then.
This is also a company that issues significant dividends back to its shareholders every year, something fundamentally incompatible with the idea that it needs to scrimp every penny for a future rainy day.
It just doesn't pass the sniff test to say that there was any economic necessity to this price increase.
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soviet13 wrote: but I have exactly zero compassion for people with £50 hobby budgets who want to buy £55 Land Raiders.
Yeah, I think that's what it comes down to. And it denotes the end of the discussion. People who have zero compassion for people who are unable to enjoy the hobby the way they used to because of being priced out are never going to see the problem with a price increase. So it seems pointless to continue discussing things.
I've skipped a lot of this thread because I know it's going to be the same excuses (about costs, molds, etc as if that hasn't been refuted a million times) and disingenuous obtuseness as every other price discussion.
So I'll leave it at this: for me it's not this price increase, as if it were just one, it's every price increase. It's this year's and next year and the year after that.
It's a completely clear belief in infinite extraction. Not some pie in the sky free market where supply and demand hit a meeting, but simple price increases marching into forever.
And before someone says inflation - if you honestly believe inflation is 10% every single year you've got some learning to do.
ScarletRose wrote: I've skipped a lot of this thread because I know it's going to be the same excuses (about costs, molds, etc as if that hasn't been refuted a million times) and disingenuous obtuseness as every other price discussion.
So I'll leave it at this: for me it's not this price increase, as if it were just one, it's every price increase. It's this year's and next year and the year after that.
It's a completely clear belief in infinite extraction. Not some pie in the sky free market where supply and demand hit a meeting, but simple price increases marching into forever.
And before someone says inflation - if you honestly believe inflation is 10% every single year you've got some learning to do.
Gw has enough of the Market covered to be an oligopol, aka near monopol, not necessarily because people wouldn't habe alternatives technically but rather a combination of community and availability of players in top.
yukishiro1 wrote: Do you honestly not realize how patronizing this is? It's like you're deliberately trying to illustrate the other guy's point about a lack of compassion. I'm really, honest to god not trying to be mean or confrontational here - it strikes me from your posts that this is something you're honestly not grasping, and I suspect it isn't only in this thread that it's going to cause people to take umbrage.
And I obviously do grasp what you're saying. I was able to even restate your position back to you (though I missed the part about GW's cultivated image-- thanks for filling that in). I just don't agree. I think if you could afford GW even at previous years prices, you have an impressive hobby budget capable of bringing loads of hobby joy even if affording GW at 2020 prices becomes borderline. I simply do no accept that someone in that position is undergoing privation requiring compassion.
If someone tells you they've lost their job, they're not going to thank you for your "advice" when you look into their shopping cart and say "you know, you'd be better off not buying Heinz now that your economic situation has changed."
The most compassionate thing someone can do for someone who is borrowing for present luxury consumption to the point of endangering their future is to say *anything* that might cause them to reflect on that potentially disastrous path. I would never do it it in a rude fashion like you outlined though. And certainly not for something trivial like the price difference of ketchup. If someone who just lost their job was obligating themselves to a multi year cell phone contract so they could have an iPhone 11 or Galaxy S10, then I might. But then only if it was appropriate for our relationship. I'd need to be able to talk to someone honestly and I would only talk about my own experiences and not what they should do.
On an internet forum though? I'll just say it's a bad idea to borrow money to consume luxury goods. Full stop.
Would you say that GW are in fact obliged to reduce their prices?
What about Porsche dealerships and yacht showrooms?
I'm fairly sure Porsche and yachts can claim they're hand made and are expensive. Whereas GW just mass produces sprues of plastic toy soldiers.
If Airfix upped they're prices by 20% a pop every year, there'd be no kids making plastic airplanes anymore. GW on the other hand have some wierd Apple-like cult that expects the high prices and even defends the price rises.
We're talking about little plastic toy soldiers here. In the UK, the government give you about 70 quid a week to *live on* if you're jobless. Thats the equivalent of about 3 hq single figures single tiny sprue plastic soldiers. Are you really saying 3 little plastic toy soldiers is the equivalent of a weeks living wage? Cars, yachts are not the same as little plastic toy soldiers. Perspective would be nice from all the whales that "have" plenty.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think most of the people upset couldn’t really afford GW at last year’s prices... but that doesn’t mean they weren’t buying.
With shelter in place, it seems like most people would have extra focus on their hobbies they can do at home. And people also have reason to go over their budgets again. So, while there are a lot of grumbles every price hike and a few rage quits, this price hike has come at a time when tensions were higher.
I'm just going to quote you as you seem reasonable to kinda hop in this. I think where the people saying " If you could afford it yesterday you can afford it today " are missing the point is if it was just a singular purchase that would be correct. However if for some that cost increase pushes that purchase from one week to the next, or one month to two, it isn't that they could never afford it. It's more that they could but the increased costs from each new item might be a much larger issue that turns a past time from attainable to unsustainable as a hobby. Which yes would make someone sad/mad.
I believe you see that but I don't think the detractors understand the snowball effect the price hikes have, especially at a time of much displeasure. Some might have made out well through all this, others are just hanging in there so compounded increase to costs could be the straw that prices them out and losing something you love stinks. However I am not surprised people have little compassion for that. If current times did anything for me it's show me my faith in humanity was misplaced as through the pandemic I saw the worst in people and the simple madness on deep display. I mean just look at the TP memes for that one.
5 bucks could very well be the breaking point for many people, as it won't be just 5, it'll be all the 5s from all the rises all at a time where people need the things that bring them peace most. I think though people would be best served to realize GW is not nor will ever be a friend if they speak of good or bad take it for it is empty company speech and we all need to take the price hikes as what they are normal par for the course. I'm sorry for those who will quit from and wish GW would ponder these things from more than just a greed is good view.
Edit: As a btw I think we kinda are on the same page I just figured to quote you as my statement sorta goes with the ones you'd been placing out there.
yukishiro1 wrote: That doesn't change just because they can choose not to buy land raiders at all.
They can just choose to buy the land raider four weeks later, making your entire argument moot.
But this is just silly. We are talking about marginal cases here, not people who are already comfortably affording the hobby. Obviously someone is not actually being priced out of the hobby if they are only minorly inconvenienced by the price hike. That's not the person we're talking about. If your argument is that nobody is actually priced out of the hobby by price increases because price increases are irrelevant to hobbyists in any way that matters and therefore it isn't actually inconsistent with being a friend of hobbyists and general good guys, we can argue over that, but it's not the argument anyone is discussing here.
Your entire argument is based on someone who has 55 GBP to spend, but not 60 GBP.
This does not happen. To no one. Literally everyone who could set aside the money to buy a landraider can still do so, it will just take them slightly longer. Or they have to buy their landraider from someone who sells it cheaper, like many resellers do, as do people selling un-build models from their pile of shame/collection they selling.
Face it, the imaginary person priced out of this hobby by this raise does not exist.
I don't think it's about a lack of understanding of snowballing costs really, it's more about a lack of sympathy for the idea that being priced out of the hobby is something GW or anyone else should care about. That's kind of where we got over 10+ pages of this: the breakdown is basically between people who think someone losing the ability to hobby the way they used to is a real loss, and people who think it isn't.
I'm not trying to state that in a pejorative way, BTW. Just to state facts. I don't think there's going to be any agreement between the "losing the ability to hobby is serious" and "losing the ability to hobby isn't serious" crowd, because that differing view is such a basic assumption that it completely determines how someone is going to feel about it. No amount of price raises are going to make someone care if they think the loss of the ability to hobby is just "first world problems" not worthy of sympathy.
yukishiro1 wrote: That doesn't change just because they can choose not to buy land raiders at all.
They can just choose to buy the land raider four weeks later, making your entire argument moot.
But this is just silly. We are talking about marginal cases here, not people who are already comfortably affording the hobby. Obviously someone is not actually being priced out of the hobby if they are only minorly inconvenienced by the price hike. That's not the person we're talking about. If your argument is that nobody is actually priced out of the hobby by price increases because price increases are irrelevant to hobbyists in any way that matters and therefore it isn't actually inconsistent with being a friend of hobbyists and general good guys, we can argue over that, but it's not the argument anyone is discussing here.
Your entire argument is based on someone who has 55 GBP to spend, but not 60 GBP.
This does not happen. To no one. Literally everyone who could set aside the money to buy a landraider can still do so, it will just take them slightly longer. Or they have to buy their landraider from someone who sells it cheaper, like many resellers do, as do people selling un-build models from their pile of shame/collection they selling.
Face it, the imaginary person priced out of this hobby by this raise does not exist.
Haha, it must be a rule of universe: just as I got done saying I don't think anyone actually seriously holds this position, someone shows up who does. Teaches me to make assumptions, I guess.
As stated before, it's not about singular raises. It's about the effect overall. Just like someone doesn't get priced out of their rent because of a single 2% increase, but they may be if those increases happen often enough. At some point, the straw breaks the camel's back.
And it doesn't even have to be "cannot afford GW products any more at all." If price increases limit a person's ability to accumulate the force they want on a reasonable timeline, it can seriously impact their enjoyment of the hobby, even if in theory, given enough time, they could slowly accumulate it. Or it could be someone who didn't used to be able to afford new minis, but who could afford to buy them off ebay...and now they can't do that, because these price increases cascade down. There are a million possibilities. It takes incredible myopia and hubris to insist it's impossible that anyone could be priced out of an enjoyable version of the hobby by this increase.
If you are stuck making the argument that price increases don't impact peoples' ability to afford things, you are generally not making a winning argument.
To add agreement to this I'd say I will take like year, or years to build a force. It's why I stay in this at all, however not everyone has that tenacity and being forced to slow down a build that slowly is pricing them out.
Believe it or not, not everyone wants to play this game for years. Strange as it may seem, wasted time is enjoyment denied and the longer it takes to build a force to play with is missing out, maybe forever as not all areas are even rich with players. So waiting a year might see a grown scene fade to nothing and then what do you have ? Nothing.
Oh I agree, but the price of plastic increasing was nevertheless cited and I fail to see how the price of the raw material needed to make it being at record low prices could somehow drive prices up.
That's easy to explain, if the cost of labour, electricity, transport (ie: everything else involved in the process) went up by more than enough to offset the amount the raw material went down.
Or simply because those places producing the raw plastic were all shut down for the last 5 months, resulting in shortages and therefore increased price of the dwindling supplies of raw plastic. The cost of the oil is irrelevant if nobody's actually currently using it to buy plastic, or is still using up their supplies purchased at a previous, higher price.
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Rob Lee wrote: The notion that GW expect people to absorb year on year price rises is ludicrous also. .
They don't. From previous chatter, they expect that most people who buy into the hobby don't last more than a year, and those who do generally only last 3-5. Their prices aren't aimed at vets who have already largely collected an army, they're aimed at the people walking into a store prepared to drop the contents of their wallet on a new game. A strategy that, despite the criticism from the internet, seems to have been largely working for them for the last 30 years to varying degrees of actual success.
This is a very cynical perspective of GW's business strategy. I hope this isn't what they base their marketing around, cause if so, man that's gross as gak. "Here spend a grand on an army and then feth off"
Also, like, the vets pay out regularly and constantly. I don't know of a single vet, myself included, that has bought an army and then just stuck with it, and I am rather conservative compared to the majority of regulars in my local community. Some buy and sell armies of a bi monthly basis, with the real whales dropping multiple grand on new product, painting it up themselves, or paying someone else to, and then dumping in for like half of what they got it for a year later to more discerning customers. And I know a few guys actually making money buying an army, painting it up beautifully, and selling the whole thing for a few hundred extra based on their work. All these people are, and have been, directly interfacing and buying GW product in large quantities for years, some decades, and I can tell you the people in the shop value having a good report and selling them on new releases as much as they do people walking in for the first time.
Then again, maybe hobby communities really are just that rare in the hobby and everything is just soulless seeking of exploiting an endless stream of rubes who'll trash their models in a year or two.
But EVEN then, how the heck do you on board the churn and burn when you're pricing out that constant influx of newcomers even harder? Is it literally just tricking someone into buying one kit and then moving on? There's got to be a point in building a community, else, why'd GW bother?
yukishiro1 wrote: My point was simply that when a company presents itself as a friend of hobbyists and as a moral force for good rather than a faceless corporation intent only on maximizing its own profits, it naturally opens itself up to accusations of hypocrisy
I'll ignore your quite offensive remarks to my previous post, however, I can't ignore your later comment, which is quite patently false and absurd, and shows a fundamental lack of understanding on your part.
Quite simply: GWdoes notpresent itself as a moral force for good. The notion that they do is completely fabricated by you, and exists only in your head. Furthermore, it's clear at this stage that you don't understand what the term 'moral' means, nor indeed what 'ethics' are in the context of this discussion.
Ok, so sure, GW raises prices and you have a problem with that -- I get it. However, it is in no way unethical or hypocritical.
I'd ask that you take your snide, rude comments about myself and my background elsewhere.
yukishiro1 wrote: Another option was not to raise prices at all. They have incredible profit margins. It wasn't a case that they needed to do this to stay afloat. There's no rule of the universe that says that they need to maintain the same profit margin even during a global catastrophe.
They made a choice to raise prices, probably before the pandemic. Then they made another choice to go through with it despite the pandemic. These were both choices that GW made and is responsible for. You can say it was a foregone conclusion because GW raises prices no matter what, and that may be true - but that itself is a choice they are responsible for making.
Yes they could keep prices same. That would result in less profits than with.
You keep thinking gw is doing this just for kind heart and charity. It's not. It's in for profit. If move a gives more profit than move b it's what gw does. In fact what companies do.
It's even hard for them to increase sales as they can't keep things stocked all the time as well. Demand is basically greater than supply. This in itself shows price can be raised.
There's no rule in universe that says gw must take lower profits voluntarily.
GW doesn't just raise prices on things that are selling. They do it on everything. Indeed under this idea of supply and demand, the prices of many of their older, less popular kits, should drop to sell more and free up space for newer, hotter kits. But they don't.
Supply and demand is not something that factors strongly into GW's business practice, and it has never actually been a panacea for the markets.
yukishiro1 wrote: But doesn't that serve to illustrate an important point - namely, that nobody actually, really buys into the idea that corporations should be soulless profit-maximizers with no responsibilities to their customers or the world as a whole beyond self-enrichment?
That's always been the problem with the "greed is good" philosophy of maximizing shareholder gains: nobody (well, maybe 1% or 0.1%) actually believes in it when push comes to shove. The average customer certainly doesn't buy into it.
GW and every other major corporation in the world at least pretends to care about more than just its own bottom line because being perceived to care about more than just your own bottom line sells.
I mean, objectivists do, and I warrant there's a few on this web board.
Azreal13 wrote: So oil has dropped so low that it was negatively priced, and many businesses have reduced or ceased trading and therefore demand on shipping services will also be proportionately affected, yet plastic and logistics have gone up?
I don't have any evidence to tell you you're wrong, but I'd be interested if you have any to support that idea.
I can't tell you details for obvious reasons, but I'm working for a large company selling premium product (read: overly expensive stuff you could easily substitute with similar things costing a fraction) and the sales figures for Italy, Spain and Germany have only decreased slightly or even increased during the lock-down.
People who have not taken a financial hit because they could continue working as before (home office, well-paid essential personal) now have an abundance of cash due to the lack of possibilities to spend it, since people can't go out, attend festivals or go in vacation. Apparently, those people invest that cash in things they can use while staying at home, and I'd be surprised if GW were vastly different in that regard than our company.
Yes, the rich remain rich and have extra money to spend for their jobs were largely not lost, and if you are in an industry that caters only to selling goods to the rich, you're probably in a grand ol' spot.
The poor can only look up and wonder at the security and privilege these people have while they lose their homes after losing their jobs.
Man do I not want GW to turn into an industry only upper middle class and rich mostly white people can afford. I can just imagine sitting around having to listen to people smarm about how the poors should really lift themselves up by their own bootstraps (I don't have to imagine actually, this is a conversation I have had to sit through more than once at my local GW). Those people are insufferable. And I know because I am one.
Azreal13 wrote: So oil has dropped so low that it was negatively priced, and many businesses have reduced or ceased trading and therefore demand on shipping services will also be proportionately affected, yet plastic and logistics have gone up?
I don't have any evidence to tell you you're wrong, but I'd be interested if you have any to support that idea.
I can't tell you details for obvious reasons, but I'm working for a large company selling premium product (read: overly expensive stuff you could easily substitute with similar things costing a fraction) and the sales figures for Italy, Spain and Germany have only decreased slightly or even increased during the lock-down.
People who have not taken a financial hit because they could continue working as before (home office, well-paid essential personal) now have an abundance of cash due to the lack of possibilities to spend it, since people can't go out, attend festivals or go in vacation. Apparently, those people invest that cash in things they can use while staying at home, and I'd be surprised if GW were vastly different in that regard than our company.
I'm sure all of that is correct. But GW's business model is dependent on a whole load of potential vulnerabilities such as their staff, their shops, distribution networks, foreign manufacturers for some components, etc. No-one knows what the impact of coronavirus will be in the medium or long term and the pressures that could put on various businesses. No-one, GW included, is going to feel on solid enough ground to say 'no, that's enough profit for me thank you'.
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yukishiro1 wrote: GW obviously suffered a hit to sales when its factory was closed. That was what, about two months?
But it also got absolutely slammed with orders as soon as it opened up, suggesting that a large portion of those losses have probably been recouped or are in the process of being recouped, with or without a price increase. Most of those sales weren't lost, they were just delayed.
If I ran a business selling non-essential goods, and the second my webstore opened up again after a break it was slammed with orders to the extent that I have to impose a queue system for a while, I would probably think 'I can get away with increasing some of my prices'.
I hope you're looking forward to a dramatic cost increase in roughly a year's time then.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
?
'I wonder if I can get away with stopping for some food before the movie starts'.
You keep assigning these vague moral obligations to GW regarding the prices they charge and I don't think I've seen you explain why.
Is GW wrong to raise its prices and if it is, why?
Yes. A luxury product should not be reserved for the affluent alone, and doing so increasingly divides the rich and poor in a way that drives many social ills. GW may be but a small piece in this system, but it still helps create this divide. And like, this is a website primarily about GW's products. I don't use GW as an example when I'm talking about the malaise of modern capitalism elsewhere because it's really small potatos. But that doesn't mean they deserve a pass because they aren't as important as, say, healthcare.
But there's a vocal subset of people who think poor people should be punished for their poorness by being forced to live the life of a monk if they want any help whatsoever, with no access to entertainment, or even, like, steak. And the people going "It's a luxury, who should poor people get to enjoy it?" is right along these lines. It's dehumanizing.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think it's wrong for GW to raise its prices in the abstract. I do think it is out of keeping with the corporate image GW tries to construct for itself to raise prices during a global pandemic. If you didn't see my prior posts explaining this, I can type it out again, but it's right there if you go looking.
Essentially, the point is that GW presents itself as more than a faceless corporate behemoth interested only in maximizing its own profits. It presents itself as a friendly partner in "the hobby" and a promoter of good values (see: statement on anti-racism, recent press release on the catachan colonel model being distributed for free to FLGS to help them out during a difficult time, etc). It does seem pretty inconsistent with this image to raise prices right at the precise time when hundreds of millions of people all over the world have lost their jobs as a result of a massive global catastrophe.
I don't see why. GW is a luxury, a hobby, not an essential that people absolutely must purchase.
It seems to me that if someone has lost their job and is in some state of financial peril, the fact that Khorne Berzerkers went up by £2.50 is not that relevant.
yukishiro1 wrote: In other words, the problem is that GW loves to talk the talk, but it doesn't walk the walk. And it's in significant contrast to the actions taken by many other major corporations, which have responded to the crisis not by raising prices but by cutting them, or by adopting other customer-friendly policies (e.g. granting customers forbearance on payments, not cutting people off monthly services if they can't pay, etc etc). Now very likely these corporations have done this not out of true compassion but because they believe it will help their sales in the long run - but the point is that GW has reacted in the exact opposite of the way many corporations have reacted, and in a way that is difficult to square with the image it tries to construct.
Those companies that have granted forebearance and so on have done so because they provide essential services and if people were evicted from their homes or had their phones and electricity cut off, etc, then it would do those people great harm (and therefore ultimately give those companies a lot of bad PR). What great harm is caused by someone suddenly not being able to afford that Land Raider they wanted?
Again, it comes down to the belief that poor people should not have access to luxuries. And this is unethical.
Chamberlain wrote: So here is my attempt at trying to restate yukishiro1's position in a way that he would accept.
1) There are some number of people who could purchase at the previous price but now can't afford it.
2) Being able to no longer buy something you previous could buy causes some amount of mental anguish
3) Keeping the prices where they were avoid causing that anguish
4) GW does not actually need to protect their margins at their current levels, so the price increases are not necessary for the stability of the company or the well being of the employees
5) The more people that can't get into GW games the less participants there will be in a given local area
Now, I disagree with the importance of some points and conclusions drawn from them.
Not being able to buy a kit at the current price but being able to buy it at a previous price is not actually human suffering worth considering. A massive financial reversal like a job loss, house burning down, getting sick are all the kinds of things that do require our compassion, but have 50 pounds to spend and the thing you want is now 55 is not one of those things.
That's a fair summary of the argument, though there should also be another point or two in there about how it contradicts GW's PR about looking out for "the hobby" and being generally good guys, too.
I would point out, though, that your argument that not being able to hobby is not a form of human suffering worth considering is fundamentally at odds with the reason we all buy GW products. GW's whole argument as a company is that spending large amounts of money on toy soldiers is a good value proposition because it makes people happy. The converse of that is necessarily that not being able to spend that money on toy soldiers leads to the loss of that happiness. If we argue that the unhappiness from not being able to hobby is not a form of unhappiness worth considering, the converse must also be true: that the happiness created from hobbying is not significant. But this argument is refuted by the fact that we *do* spend large sums of money on toy soldiers, because that happiness *is* significant.
If we start saying that spending lots of money on toy soldiers is fundamentally a frivolous waste of money that does not produce significant happiness, that undermines the whole rationale for hobbying in the first place.
That doesn't follow at all. 'Either it's so bad it's a waste of money or it's so good the company is morally obliged to continue providing it to me'.
Would you say that GW are in fact obliged to reduce their prices?
What about Porsche dealerships and yacht showrooms?
ethically, yes, GW would be so obliged under a number of moral systems.
We do not live in an ethical world. Unless your view of ethics is pure egoist. Or, I'd say an objectivist, but the world isn't cutthroat and profit driven ENOUGH for them.
Azreal13 wrote: I'm still kinda surprised there's anyone left who thinks a corporation's conduct and the way they present themselves to the public are in the least connected.
Yes, there are businesses out there who may choose their customers welfare over profit.
None of them are listed on the LSE.
And this is a bad thing. A very extremely, perhaps apocalyptic bad thing looking at, well, climate change.
Rob Lee wrote: It's fairly obvious that many comfortably well off members here will never be able, or are just plain unwilling, to understand the impact of price hikes from the perspective of someone who isn't comfortably well off and just about manages to have a hobby involving GW products.
You'd be surprised that it's not just the 'comfortably well off members' who don't agree with you.
I mean, there is, indeed, a number of less fortunate people who have bought into the propaganda of the rich.
I won't dwell to much on why, but it does have some relevance to current events.
Rob Lee wrote: It's fairly obvious that many comfortably well off members here will never be able, or are just plain unwilling, to understand the impact of price hikes from the perspective of someone who isn't comfortably well off and just about manages to have a hobby involving GW products.
I've lost income due to an illness (non malignant spinal tumor) to the point where I was selling everything I owned just to make sure the lights stayed on while I was literally eating gruel. I had to wait a couple months for the surgery then recovery was a couple months. I also couldn't afford any prescription pain medication during that time. So please don't make assumptions about what people can and cannot understand.
having 50 pounds to spend on a hobby and gw raised the price of the item you wanted to 55 is just not in that category. Anyone who demands compassion for the poor guy who can't afford 55 pounds but has 50 ready to spend needs to re calibrate their idea of what suffering is. As if anyone who could afford GW at last year's prices is now somehow bereft is ludicrous.
It's people being sad they can't buy a specific brand and claiming it's somehow privation.
No one is actually arguing that 55 pounds is that last bridge that has priced all poor people out of the hobby though. This is hardly the only price rise GW has committed to. It's not even the only on in a full year.
People who, 10 years ago, were able to enjoy the hobby, are less able or completely unable to. Prices have risen drastically and continuously for decades.
Can you afford GW's prices right now? Could you if GW continues a trend of 5 percent increases every year for the next ten?
BobtheInquisitor wrote:People can be against all forms of suffering. Saying GW is pissing us off is not mutually exclusive with being pissed off at the lack of a safety net, affordable healthcare, a world rapidly diminishing in opportunity, and a basic lack of decency from the top down. It’s disingenuous to pretend that caring about minor problems means we can’t also care about major ones.
The guy who would buy warhammer kits at last year's prices but finds this years prices too high still has a massive hobby budget. Anyone who suffers as a result of that situation has tied their joy to the purchasing of a specific brand.
Rob Lee wrote:
...I perfectly understand why people are aggrieved at price hikes in hobbies they have been enjoying.
I understand that as well.
This whole circular mess all started when people made it a moral issues and started demanding compassion.
We are talking about people who could afford warhammer at 2018 or 2019 prices but now can't because of a price hike. People who can no longer afford a premium brand but still could buy hobby stuff at 2018 or 2019 GW prices.
It's like having compassion for those bereft people who have to stick with their iPhone X because they can't afford the upgrade to the 11. We should start a gofundme or something.
Phones remain a horrible comparison. A good phone is a lifeline to someone who's situation is desperate.
But also, we are not talking about these people because GW prices aren't raising in isolation just this once.
Why not. Show some empathy for your fellow gamer. Help out a friend, keep them able to play games with you and others.
I am all on board with that. I'm not on board with demanding people feel compassion about a price increase on a premium brand. Actually helping people be able to continue to play games is best done locally. I just packed up a box of free miniatures and bits for someone yesterday.
Oh and your analogy over iPhones, again another piece of disingenousness.
It's actually not disingenuous. It's probably the most honest assessment possible. I really do see GW as a premium, expensive brand. I really mean it when I say that someone who can afford GW at 2018 or 2019 prices has an amazing hobby budget.
It really is people making a moral issue out of it and demanding compassion because someone can no longer afford the most expensive premium brand.
And because it is an expensive brand you don't want it tainted by the hands of the commons or something?
Like... I don't get this idea. "It's premium, so making it more affordable would hurt me because I can't lord it over those who can't afford it" is kind of what this comes off as mate. This is only really a defensible position in a collection of like minded people. So, I mean, I guess you'll get there eventually.
The funny thing is, the fact that we've got to the point where people are seriously arguing that 40k is a super premium hobby equivalent to a high end sports car...actually illustrates the opposite of the point they want to illustrate. Because it didn't start out that way. It's the constant price increases over the years that have made it into a "premium" brand. Sure, it was never cheap...but in the 80s and 90s, it was much more affordable than it is now. To take the Land Raider example that's been bandied about: in 1994, a land raider cost you 13 quid. Now, it's 55? 50? Something like that. Meanwhile, an inflation calculator will show you that 13 quid in 1994 dollars is about 23 quid now. Less than half what it costs now. Measured in land raiders, the hobby has become more than twice as expensive as it used to be.
So the same folks who on the one hand are saying "you can't be priced out of the hobby, it's only a small increase anyway, nobody is priced out by land raiders going from 50 quid to 55, stop being drama queens" are also saying "GW is a premium brand, not everyone should be able to afford it." It's a weird kind of cognitive dissonance at work.
Sure. I don't think there's any doubt GW likes the idea that it's a "premium brand." I was just pointing out that this has not really historically been the case - at least, not nearly to the extent it is now. Measured in Land Raiders - his example, not mine - the hobby is now more than twice the cost it was in the 90s. That's a dramatic difference in affordability. It is not tenable to say that nobody has been priced out by a doubling of cost, or to suggest that this latest 10% couldn't have priced out anybody who had been hanging on until now.
You don't buy your kids a Porsche for their first car.
My youngest kid wanted to try playing Age of Sigmar with me and I had all these sweet models and they got a bunch of Khorne models from the starter set. And they were like, "why can't we play with the big snake lady?" And I told them that it cost four months allowance to replace. And that one over there would cost two and a half months allowance. And they were like, "what the feth, that's nuts." And I was like "Would you rather play Monsterpocalypse instead?". And they were like, "capitalism is an unsustainable pipe dream so long as the proletariat are unable to transform their labor into comfort." And I'm like, "are you sure you are only 6 years old?", and they're like, "Control the means of production!" And I'm like, "Okay?" and they're like, "Go Galt!" and I'm like, "objectivism is diametrically opposed to communism, you can't combine the two" and sent them to their room to contemplate the true meaning of a social ruling class.
yukishiro1 wrote: Sure. I don't think there's any doubt GW likes the idea that it's a "premium brand." I was just pointing out that this has not really historically been the case - at least, not nearly to the extent it is now. Measured in Land Raiders - his example, not mine - the hobby is now more than twice the cost it was in the 90s. That's a dramatic difference in affordability. It is not tenable to say that nobody has been priced out by a doubling of cost, or to suggest that this latest 10% couldn't have priced out anybody who had been hanging on until now.
It was in 1995 that a large chunk of their product range jumped in price by 30-50%, at least here in Oz. I remember it well, because I had been saving to buy a Dreadnought, and I waited a week too long... I suspect you're falling into the common trap of thinking of the '90's as 'about ten years or so ago'... 'Historically' GW has been considerably more expensive than almost every one of their competitors for far more of their lifespan than they've been commonly regarded as offering decent value for money.
yukishiro1 wrote: Sure. I don't think there's any doubt GW likes the idea that it's a "premium brand." I was just pointing out that this has not really historically been the case - at least, not nearly to the extent it is now. Measured in Land Raiders - his example, not mine - the hobby is now more than twice the cost it was in the 90s. That's a dramatic difference in affordability. It is not tenable to say that nobody has been priced out by a doubling of cost, or to suggest that this latest 10% couldn't have priced out anybody who had been hanging on until now.
It was in 1995 that a large chunk of their product range jumped in price by 30-50%, at least here in Oz. I remember it well, because I had been saving to buy a Dreadnought, and I waited a week too long... I suspect you're falling into the common trap of thinking of the '90's as 'about ten years or so ago'... 'Historically' GW has been considerably more expensive than almost every one of their competitors for far more of their lifespan than they've been commonly regarded as offering decent value for money.
I put together a 100+ models Dark Angels army (6 tactical squads, 2 assault squads, 1 devastator squad, 1 Deathwing squad, some bikes, all the metal characters, 1 metal dreadnought, couple of rhinos, and a Mk1 Land Raider) + a few other models in the mid-late 90s. On a very tight month to month budget, before the UK had a minimum wage policy for workers or the unemployed.
In today's money that would cost £450+. £60 for a 10 man assault squad.
There is no way on the budget I was on back then, that I spent even £450 on models. I have 2 assault squads - there is no way I spent £120 on them. There is no way I spent even £60 on them. Just wasn't possible to spend £450+ on hobbies living on my own, in rented accommodation, at the time over any period of time.
Anyone who bought Games Workshop products in the 90s is not thinking the 90s was about ten years ago.
insaniak wrote: To be fair, the 'Porsche' comparison originally came from GW themselves, from one of Kirby's financial preambles...
The main issue is that people who buy things because others can't afford them are donkey-caves. Like legit, unpleasent to be around. If you buy a porsche because you dig sports cars and take it out at 3 AM to go 120 down the highway, more power to you (don't do this, you'll kill yourself). If you buy a porsche so you can sneer at people who can't afford it then, well, GW said it best, you won't be missed. Except by GW, because they want money more than they actually want exclusivity. GW becoming the porsche of hobbies in the way people mean it is fething terrible even FOR people who can afford it, because all the people you have to play with are jackoffs now. Unless you are one of those jackoffs. But, like, just don't be.
yukishiro1 wrote: Sure. I don't think there's any doubt GW likes the idea that it's a "premium brand." I was just pointing out that this has not really historically been the case - at least, not nearly to the extent it is now. Measured in Land Raiders - his example, not mine - the hobby is now more than twice the cost it was in the 90s. That's a dramatic difference in affordability. It is not tenable to say that nobody has been priced out by a doubling of cost, or to suggest that this latest 10% couldn't have priced out anybody who had been hanging on until now.
You know what else has more than doubled in price since 1990? A loaf of bread. No point, just context.
yukishiro1 wrote: Sure. I don't think there's any doubt GW likes the idea that it's a "premium brand." I was just pointing out that this has not really historically been the case - at least, not nearly to the extent it is now. Measured in Land Raiders - his example, not mine - the hobby is now more than twice the cost it was in the 90s. That's a dramatic difference in affordability. It is not tenable to say that nobody has been priced out by a doubling of cost, or to suggest that this latest 10% couldn't have priced out anybody who had been hanging on until now.
You know what else has more than doubled in price since 1990? A loaf of bread. No point, just context.
Depends which loaf. According to a quick Google an 800g white sliced loaf was on average 50p back in 1990. Even today you can still get 800g white sliced loaves for 55p in the supermarkets.
I put together a 100+ models Dark Angels army (6 tactical squads, 2 assault squads, 1 devastator squad, 1 Deathwing squad, some bikes, all the metal characters, 1 metal dreadnought, couple of rhinos, and a Mk1 Land Raider) + a few other models in the mid-late 90s. On a very tight month to month budget, before the UK had a minimum wage policy for workers or the unemployed.
You may have done that earlier than you remember... The Mk1 Land Raider wasn't available from about 1996 onwards, after the mould broke. But even so, that would have been a sizeable investment.
I got started in 1995, on a student payment (Oz's version of welfare payments for people studying full time) - my first Space Marine army was the Marine half of the starter set, the Marine bits from a couple of boxes of Space Crusade bought stupid cheap on clearance, and (after the aforementioned sudden price hike) a rhino and a couple of dreadnoughts built out of cardboard and assorted scraps.
Anyone who bought Games Workshop products in the 90s is not thinking the 90s was about ten years ago.
That was tongue in cheek. It's a not uncommon joke commentary amongst people who grew up in the '90s to underestimate how long ago it was unless they actually stop and do the maths.
You may have done that earlier than you remember...
I doubt it.
I'm only 42. I was at school until 1993, never bought GW models during my school years, it was all Prince August metal stuff and Airfix type kits. Went to college (UK college, not University) between 1993 and 1995. Again, no models bought during that time. Parents weren't keen on the hobby, seeing as it would have been their money I would have spent...
It was only after 1995, when I moved out of my parents house, that I started buying GW product. The Landraider could have been one of my first purchases from the solitary model shop selling GW stuff we had in my part of the UK...
You must have been really lucky with the Land Raider then, unless you got it second hand... People were clamoring for them by that point. They ran an article in White Dwarf in early '95 featuring a Deathwing Army that had a WWI tank subbing in for the Land Raider, because the actual kit was no longer available.
Through the whole of 2nd edition, playing in multiple cities, I think I played a single game against an army with a Land Raider.
Which White Dwarf was that? I've been looking through old White Dwarf's recently, researching a WFB building I'm going to build, 1992 through 1995. Didn't spot a Deathwing army. There's a Dark Angels 1500 point army in a bat rep in #194. No sign of any tank though.
EDIT: Apologies, that was 1996. Gone back and looked at Jan-Apr of UKWD in 1995 and still no sign of a Deathwing army.
Although GW did have localised versions of WD with occasionally differing articles. Certainly between the US and UK versions.
yukishiro1 wrote: Sure. I don't think there's any doubt GW likes the idea that it's a "premium brand." I was just pointing out that this has not really historically been the case - at least, not nearly to the extent it is now. Measured in Land Raiders - his example, not mine - the hobby is now more than twice the cost it was in the 90s. That's a dramatic difference in affordability. It is not tenable to say that nobody has been priced out by a doubling of cost, or to suggest that this latest 10% couldn't have priced out anybody who had been hanging on until now.
You know what else has more than doubled in price since 1990? A loaf of bread. No point, just context.
It's done more than just double. At least in terms of physical product. Not sure pointswise.
yukishiro1 wrote: Sure. I don't think there's any doubt GW likes the idea that it's a "premium brand." I was just pointing out that this has not really historically been the case - at least, not nearly to the extent it is now. Measured in Land Raiders - his example, not mine - the hobby is now more than twice the cost it was in the 90s. That's a dramatic difference in affordability. It is not tenable to say that nobody has been priced out by a doubling of cost, or to suggest that this latest 10% couldn't have priced out anybody who had been hanging on until now.
It was in 1995 that a large chunk of their product range jumped in price by 30-50%, at least here in Oz. I remember it well, because I had been saving to buy a Dreadnought, and I waited a week too long... I suspect you're falling into the common trap of thinking of the '90's as 'about ten years or so ago'... 'Historically' GW has been considerably more expensive than almost every one of their competitors for far more of their lifespan than they've been commonly regarded as offering decent value for money.
I don't think I'm really taking your point. There are lots of people around who started 40k at a time when it was much more affordable than it is now. It doesn't really matter how long ago that was, there still was that time.
It's like saying "Arsenal tickets have been ridiculously expensive for twenty years now," in response to someone lamenting the prices of modern football. Sure, but it doesn't really matter to someone who grew up 40 years ago when they were cheap.
GW has never been cheap, but it's also never been as expensive as it is now.
yukishiro1 wrote: Sure. I don't think there's any doubt GW likes the idea that it's a "premium brand." I was just pointing out that this has not really historically been the case - at least, not nearly to the extent it is now. Measured in Land Raiders - his example, not mine - the hobby is now more than twice the cost it was in the 90s. That's a dramatic difference in affordability. It is not tenable to say that nobody has been priced out by a doubling of cost, or to suggest that this latest 10% couldn't have priced out anybody who had been hanging on until now.
You know what else has more than doubled in price since 1990? A loaf of bread. No point, just context.
My numbers included inflation, as I noted in my initial post.
Adjusted for inflation, the price of a loaf of bread has not only not doubled...it is very close to flat. About a 5-15% increase, depending on which numbers you look at.
I think you've made my point for me: bread costs the same as it did in 1990, but GW minis cost double (more than double, but we'll round down).
Rob Lee wrote: Which White Dwarf was that? I've been looking through old White Dwarf's recently, researching a WFB building I'm going to build, 1992 through 1995. Didn't spot a Deathwing army. There's a Dark Angels 1500 point army in a bat rep in #194. No sign of any tank though.
EDIT: Apologies, that was 1996. Gone back and looked at Jan-Apr of UKWD in 1995 and still no sign of a Deathwing army.
Although GW did have localised versions of WD with occasionally differing articles. Certainly between the US and UK versions.
Yeah, I missed a year when I counted back... It would have been '96, but no idea on the issue number. May not have been a full army - had the tank, and the main Dark Angel characters painted in Deathwing colours.
Not saying your wrong though, I actually vaguely recall something like your saying.
I didn't start buying and painting GW product until I moved out of my parents house in 1995 though. Obviously, like you said, I got lucky with the Mk1 Landraider, although I wasn't aware of it at the time.
EDIT - I found it. November 1996 issue #203. It was an interview with a guy called Fred Reed. It wasn't an official GW studio squad. It was his. It does indeed say in the article the Landraider kit was no longer available. Also included some other models, one of which is a Chaos Thunderhawk.
Just as a comparison, because there's a price list in the back of old WD's, A metal Van Saar gang, back in 1996, cost AUD$34.95. A plastic Van Saar gang today is AUD$70. And Necromunda is supposedly a cheap entry point...
Can't work that out in GBP £ for 1996 though, but they were £9.99 in 1995, they cost £26 in today's money.
Interestingly, individual infantry models haven't changed much in price - the switch to much cheaper plastic has roughly offset the added margins. A 10-man tactical squad was ~£15 in 1994, which is about £25 in today's pounds; not *too* far off from the £30 it costs now.
What has changed dramatically is everything else. In particular, GW's pricing in the early 90s was based on materials cost, which meant that, for example, characters either cost the same or only a bit more than normal troopers. Now, characters typically cost at least 4x what a normal trooper costs.
Vehicles have also seen a lot larger price hikes than infantry.
Cadian Shock Troops, box of 10, in 1995 was £12.99. Today, £22.50.
Yes, granted, they were metal single pose, and now plastic "mutli" pose with extra bits.
You could buy them individually at £1.25 each. You can't buy them individually now, new at least. You have to spend £6 whether you want 1 or 5 extra models for your squad...
Metal Catachans were exactly the same price in 1995 as the Cadians. Today, not great moulds, arguably worse looking models, and plastic for £20. And they've been around since 1999. No option for buying spare models from GW. It's £20 for 10 or nothing.
Chimera was £16.99 in 1995. Now £30. Still the same model.
Leman Russ Demolisher was £19.99 in 1995. Now £35, guessing it's the same model as it was in 1995? That's a 75% increase overall, or 2.88% every year.
Debatable that people in general in the UK have seen a 75% hike in their wages since 1995. Some might have, the "average wage" has supposedly gone up by around that, but those that live in the UK know that the reported "average wage" is fiction, cost of living has also risen, and according to the BoE £10 from 1995 now costs £19!
Sqorgar wrote: You don't buy your kids a Porsche for their first car.
My youngest kid wanted to try playing Age of Sigmar with me and I had all these sweet models and they got a bunch of Khorne models from the starter set. And they were like, "why can't we play with the big snake lady?" And I told them that it cost four months allowance to replace. And that one over there would cost two and a half months allowance. And they were like, "what the feth, that's nuts." And I was like "Would you rather play Monsterpocalypse instead?". And they were like, "capitalism is an unsustainable pipe dream so long as the proletariat are unable to transform their labor into comfort." And I'm like, "are you sure you are only 6 years old?", and they're like, "Control the means of production!" And I'm like, "Okay?" and they're like, "Go Galt!" and I'm like, "objectivism is diametrically opposed to communism, you can't combine the two" and sent them to their room to contemplate the true meaning of a social ruling class.
I have to say, that's how every Monsterpocalypse game I play ends as well, glad I'm not the only one.
Just as a comparison, because there's a price list in the back of old WD's, A metal Van Saar gang, back in 1996, cost AUD$34.95. A plastic Van Saar gang today is AUD$70. And Necromunda is supposedly a cheap entry point...
.
Also for comparison, that $35 was a quarter of my weekly income back then. If I was on the equivalent student payment now, the $70 for the current gang would still be a quarter of my weekly income. We were complaining just as much about the prices in the '90s... We were just doing it face to face, because we didn't have forums yet.
To be fair, though, that was also the era of GW using plastic as cheap filler, which was handy to save money. Building armies did become more expensive when plastic fully replaced metal as their 'premium' material.
Necromunda is the 'cheap' entry point only because you theoretically need only a small number of models. It's still insanely expensive compared to most non - GW games.
Also for comparison, that $35 was a quarter of my weekly income back then. If I was on the equivalent student payment now, the $70 for the current gang would still be a quarter of my weekly income. We were complaining just as much about the prices in the '90s... We were just doing it face to face, because we didn't have forums yet.
To be fair, though, that was also the era of GW using plastic as cheap filler, which was handy to save money. Building armies did become more expensive when plastic fully replaced metal as their 'premium' material.
Necromunda is the 'cheap' entry point only because you theoretically need only a small number of models. It's still insanely expensive compared to most non - GW games.
No argument from me on that. I think we all agree GW was expensive even back then.
Just looking through other issues of WD I have access to, the Chaos Land Raider in March 2001 was £30. So that's gone up between 66% and 67% in 19 years. Can't find a price for the original Mk1 Land Raider unfortunately, but I suppose it could be argued that wouldn't be a fair comparison as it's not the same model as we have today.
Chimera was £16.99 in 1995. Now £30. Still the same model.
Leman Russ Demolisher was £19.99 in 1995. Now £35, guessing it's the same model as it was in 1995? That's a 75% increase overall, or 2.88% every year.
Just to clarify on these 2 examples, they have both been redone at least once since then. They both used to have a load of wheels inside the tracks which have been removed from the current kit. The demolisher also used to be a metal turret whereas its now plastic and includes the options for two other variant turrets as well
insaniak wrote: It's still insanely expensive compared to most non - GW games.
Is GW stuff really that much more expensive than other companies products? Saw people on here complaining about the latest price rise and saying they would be switching to Marvel Crisis Protocol, went and had a look at that and you're generally looking at £39.99 for two human sized models, so pretty close to GWs character model prices and the model quality looks a long way behind, looks similar to the FFG Star Wars Legion stuff. You do get a few cards etc. but I remember people moaning about the traitor command set for Blackstone Fortress from GW being ridiculously overpriced, and that's 2 models (one larger than human sized) and some cards (including thick cardstock) and it's £37.50.
Chimera was £16.99 in 1995. Now £30. Still the same model.
Leman Russ Demolisher was £19.99 in 1995. Now £35, guessing it's the same model as it was in 1995? That's a 75% increase overall, or 2.88% every year.
Just to clarify on these 2 examples, they have both been redone at least once since then. They both used to have a load of wheels inside the tracks which have been removed from the current kit. The demolisher also used to be a metal turret whereas its now plastic and includes the options for two other variant turrets as well
Fair enough. Wasn't sure if the demolisher had gone over to 100% plastics by 1995 or not.
yukishiro1 wrote: As stated before, it's not about singular raises. It's about the effect overall. Just like someone doesn't get priced out of their rent because of a single 2% increase, but they may be if those increases happen often enough. At some point, the straw breaks the camel's back.
And it doesn't even have to be "cannot afford GW products any more at all." If price increases limit a person's ability to accumulate the force they want on a reasonable timeline, it can seriously impact their enjoyment of the hobby, even if in theory, given enough time, they could slowly accumulate it. Or it could be someone who didn't used to be able to afford new minis, but who could afford to buy them off ebay...and now they can't do that, because these price increases cascade down. There are a million possibilities. It takes incredible myopia and hubris to insist it's impossible that anyone could be priced out of an enjoyable version of the hobby by this increase.
If you are stuck making the argument that price increases don't impact peoples' ability to afford things, you are generally not making a winning argument.
This is not hubris, I'm talking from experience.
I have been in the situation where I had absolutely no money left to spend on 40k. No money in my account (7.49€ to be exact), my wive's account was cleared out by her ex and in debt by a few thousand, a student loan to pay off, stuck with an inheritance that cost me thousands every month and a child underway.
There were times when my hobbies were in direct competition with food, gas, rent and stuff you need for the baby. I just didn't buy anything. IIRC I got two or three boxes as presents across two years, but otherwise I was stuck with what I had. I still could continue joining regular games and campaign days with the stuff I had, and sometimes borrowed models from friends. I was still able to enjoy 40k despite spending absolutely no money on it.
Things got better and I was able to set aside a few bucks per month for hobby money again. Not enough to buy most boxes, but it adds up over the months. Note that this the money is shared between all my hobbies, not just 40k, but also P&P, pc games, tabletop games, books, etc. I also dropped MtG because I had to decide between it and 40k. You just can't have two expensive hobbies when you don't have the money.
From just that money I was able to start a DG army, buy everything released for orktober, a bunch of paints and brushes and all the books that dropped in between. I even got Da Red Gobbo and Thrakka.
Today, I have a better job and need a lot less gas to drive there, I paid off all the debts and got rid of the inheritance with almost no losses. I could easily afford to start a third army, but seeing how well my previous system worked, I'd rather stay with it. My money is still finite and there are still so many things more important than 40k.
And guess what? GW still raised their prices every ear during all that - and it was utterly irrelevant to me. When the amount of money in my hobby bank enough to pay for the things I want, I order them, otherwise I wait. Right now, there is enough money in there to order War of the Spider when it goes up for pre-order and by the time 9th drops, it will be enough for those books as well. If there is enough money in there to order stuff from my wishlist, I will do so, otherwise I wont.
So to me, complaining how cruel raising prices during the pandemic and how GW is going to take away people's hobby is just whining.
If you are struck by economic crisis for any reason, not just a pandemic, you need to get your gak together and make rational decisions. Either you have extra money to spend on luxury goods, or you don't.
When you do, but you don't have lots to spend, you need to set priorities what you spend your money on.
You can't have all the newest games, the best gaming PC, consoles, competitive MtG decks, go for a drink every Saturday night, every new release from 40k for multiple armies and buy a new BL novel every time you finish one unless you are rich. Most people complaining about how expensive 40k is, are also sinking money in one or more other areas.
Make an effort to reduce the cost you are spending. I've already listed dozens of options in a previous post, not doing any of them and still complaining about prices is just being lazy and waiting for stuff to fall into your lap.
If your financial situation is so bad that none of that works and is not about to get better, you also need to make a rational decision and get out now. GW is going to raise their prices next year, the year after and in the year after that. And every time there will be a dakkadakka thread complaining - whining - about how they everybody should be entitled to consume a purely luxury product instead of finding a way to make it work for them.
People who have not taken a financial hit because they could continue working as before (home office, well-paid essential personal) now have an abundance of cash due to the lack of possibilities to spend it, since people can't go out, attend festivals or go in vacation. Apparently, those people invest that cash in things they can use while staying at home, and I'd be surprised if GW were vastly different in that regard than our company.
Yes, the rich remain rich and have extra money to spend for their jobs were largely not lost, and if you are in an industry that caters only to selling goods to the rich, you're probably in a grand ol' spot.
The poor can only look up and wonder at the security and privilege these people have while they lose their homes after losing their jobs.
Man do I not want GW to turn into an industry only upper middle class and rich mostly white people can afford. I can just imagine sitting around having to listen to people smarm about how the poors should really lift themselves up by their own bootstraps (I don't have to imagine actually, this is a conversation I have had to sit through more than once at my local GW). Those people are insufferable. And I know because I am one.
To be fair, this is a problem with a social system in the US, and not GW. The poor here Germany are usually not losing their homes (unless you own property, which kind of makes you not poor), and I know quite some jobless people who are still regularly buying 40k. In fact, the guy who brought me into the hobby build up a 4k+ points tzeench daemons army while being out of a job.
Rob Lee wrote: Cadian Shock Troops, box of 10, in 1995 was £12.99. Today, £22.50.
Yes, granted, they were metal single pose, and now plastic "mutli" pose with extra bits.
You could buy them individually at £1.25 each. You can't buy them individually now, new at least. You have to spend £6 whether you want 1 or 5 extra models for your squad...!
It's worse than that.
The plastic Cadian Shock Troops - literally the same kit we have now - used to be 20 models for £15. They're now 10 for £22.50.
Even the GW Pay Piggies will struggle to refute that as 'but inflation!'.
All I got from that is "I'm doing well for myself". Good for you. Golf clap. Would you like to brag some more about how you amassed your hobby budget (which clearly wasn't meagre at the outset) and then spent hundreds of Euro buying all Orktober releases?
I don't think there's anyone who doesn't already know the bleeding obvious that you have stated about personal financial management, whilst implying that being caught in a global crisis, or even just hit by price hikes in a hobby, is someone's own fault.
I think what annoys me most about this thread is that there are just so many people shouting into the abyss.
yukishiro1 wrote: I apologize for referencing your background; even though you brought it up yourself to try to grant yourself an unwarranted aura of authority, I should have resisted the temptation to do turn that back around against you. Your profession is completely irrelevant to this discussion, and the fact that you behaved otherwise doesn't mean I should have as well. I should have been the bigger person, and I apologize for failing.
Your comments literally embody everything that's wrong with the internet, and Dakka in particular; where people assume that their own personal opinion is worth more than the comments of a professional -- an actual expert -- who is trying to explain things to you in clear, simple terms.
My background *is* relevant, because, quite simply, I have a PhD. This is called *knowledge*, it's called *expertise*. I teach undergraduates, and postgraduates, about this very subject and related subjects, at an advanced level. I'm not just some random guy on the internet talking: I am someone with relevant background and experience, trying to help you reach some understanding.
If, after hearing what I have to say, and just ignoring it because it doesn't fit with your world view, then fine... it seems there is no helping you, or some of the other people on this thread.
I get that you don't like price rises -- none of us do. The thing is, some of us on here are realistic enough to understand the way the world works, and the way business works in particular.
Just to restate some of my key points again in case you, and anyone else has missed them:
1) Things cost money.
2) GW doesn't owe you, or anyone else, anything.
3) Raising prices is not a sign of a company 'behaving badly'.
4) Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it is either 'immoral' or 'unethical' (to call it such is to show you don't understand either term).
I'm not trying to troll you here -- I'm genuinely trying to explain things to you, and to anyone who is interested in learning more about management and marketing practice. If you want to know more, I am happy to expand. However, what I am not prepared for, is for you to get on the defensive because I've come along and presented counterarguments to your false narrative.
Rob Lee wrote: Cadian Shock Troops, box of 10, in 1995 was £12.99. Today, £22.50.
Yes, granted, they were metal single pose, and now plastic "mutli" pose with extra bits.
You could buy them individually at £1.25 each. You can't buy them individually now, new at least. You have to spend £6 whether you want 1 or 5 extra models for your squad...!
It's worse than that.
The plastic Cadian Shock Troops - literally the same kit we have now - used to be 20 models for £15. They're now 10 for £22.50.
Even the GW Pay Piggies will struggle to refute that as 'but inflation!'.
What annoys me is GW are absolutely capable of rescinding something due to enough backlash. When AoS dropped there were Stormcast in boxes of boxes of 5 for £20 IIRC, no one bought them so GW repackaged them into the current box of 10, which was £32.50 (now a fiver more ). GW had an experiment to release WHFB cavalry kits at lower price points (Cold One Knights and Chaos Knights), they quickly abandoned the idea as quite clearly correlation equalled causation as they didn't fly off of the shelves (maybe fix the underlying problem of the game system they were in, eh?). GW actually lowered the price on the plastic CSM box when people quite correctly pointed out that it was stupid they were the same price as Tactical marines who got two more in the box. They even offered partial refunds to anyone who had bought them at the old price.
But that last one is just an anomaly. I've only ever seen GW lower prices on WHFB and AoS stuff, but never really 40k. They know 40k is their golden goose and people will happily pay anything and call it ice cream. They know their customers are happy to pay for something that literally quadrupled in price overnight (those used to be 10 to a box, remember?) so will continue to do so.
Rob Lee wrote: Cadian Shock Troops, box of 10, in 1995 was £12.99. Today, £22.50.
Yes, granted, they were metal single pose, and now plastic "mutli" pose with extra bits.
You could buy them individually at £1.25 each. You can't buy them individually now, new at least. You have to spend £6 whether you want 1 or 5 extra models for your squad...!
It's worse than that.
The plastic Cadian Shock Troops - literally the same kit we have now - used to be 20 models for £15. They're now 10 for £22.50.
Even the GW Pay Piggies will struggle to refute that as 'but inflation!'.
What annoys me is GW are absolutely capable of rescinding something due to enough backlash. When AoS dropped there were Stormcast in boxes of boxes of 5 for £20 IIRC, no one bought them so GW repackaged them into the current box of 10, which was £32.50 (now a fiver more ). GW had an experiment to release WHFB cavalry kits at lower price points (Cold One Knights and Chaos Knights), they quickly abandoned the idea as quite clearly correlation equalled causation as they didn't fly off of the shelves (maybe fix the underlying problem of the game system they were in, eh?). GW actually lowered the price on the plastic CSM box when people quite correctly pointed out that it was stupid they were the same price as Tactical marines who got two more in the box. They even offered partial refunds to anyone who had bought them at the old price.
But that last one is just an anomaly. I've only ever seen GW lower prices on WHFB and AoS stuff, but never really 40k. They know 40k is their golden goose and people will happily pay anything and call it ice cream. They know their customers are happy to pay for something that literally quadrupled in price overnight (those used to be 10 to a box, remember?) so will continue to do so.
Oh I think they're definitely consciously aware of situations where they've gone too far. Fyreslayers sold like crap, so the Start Collecting bundled the Magmadroth and Vulkites together for the same price as what the standalone Magmadroth was. Rather than reduce the price of the Vulkite Berserkers (£35 for 10), in the future similar 10-man units (Nemarti Thralls, Arkanaughts) were cheaper despite arguably having more detail/poses/accessories.
As you say though, 40k is their golden goose and they know that 99.9% of the time, some whales will happily lap up whatever they'e offering. The problem is that whilst I'm the first person to criticise GW, it's really the people who complain about their prices and then KEEP BUYING who are the problem. A good example is The Outer Circle on YouTube, whio has no lack of videos criticising GW's prices both generally and in AUS... but not a month ago he posts a video about his big, new Nighthaunt army that probably cost $1000+. Until people stop complaining and actually stop buying, why should GW feel the need to change? Even a lot of their loudest critics are as bad as some of the biggest whales, if not the majority of them. I'm in the fortunate position of having almost everything I could 'need' outside of rulebooks but even defending my rulebook purchases makes me a crack addict saying, "Haha I only shot up once this month haha" and I think with their continued market dominance that's why they could care less.
All I got from that is "I'm doing well for myself". Good for you. Golf clap. Would you like to brag some more about how you amassed your hobby budget (which clearly wasn't meagre at the outset) and then spent hundreds of Euro buying all Orktober releases?
If "I'm doing well for myself" is all you got, then I'm really sorry. The orktober release were three buggies (less than 25€ at a British-based store) as well as the speed freeks box (~80€). I got them 10 months worth of wages after their original pre-order date, 13 month after their first announcement. I did not buy any models in the meantime. If you can't even afford to save up that much, they game simply isn't for you and a 10% raise on a landraider does not change that.
implying that being caught in a global crisis, or even just hit by price hikes in a hobby, is someone's own fault.
Don't put words in my mouth, that's a blatant lie. I'm saying that when you are hit by a crisis you should either take actions to stay with your hobby, or find a hobby that is more suitable to your new financial situation. I did that, so can everyone else. Whining and complaining about how GW is cruel is the lazy option.
Partially: 40k has ceased to.have value to me. I might drop back in if new guard set get released to do some modeling and conversions and painting for my own enjoyment, but not.anything playable.
At the moment only.fantasy gives me models that that I'm willing to buy in enough quantity to theoretically play a game.with (Though I havent) and in particular its warcry and underworlds that are the most.appealing.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Out of buying GW product? Technically I have. Prices have risen on what I was considering buying this year. I have other things that money could be spent on. The least expensive purchases get made first.
Given that I am currently locked down, as we all technically are (not that you'd know it given how some are carrying on), under advice to shield until June 30th, don't drive so rely on public transport that has been decimated in my area, cannot visit my regular gaming buddy some 20 miles away as a result, it is a case of being able to justify purchasing GW products.
Rob Lee wrote: Oh, there you go again, bragging about what you scored.
Your hobby budget was clearly of sufficient level already, given the multiple hobbies you've stated it funds. Such a difficulty having to choose between MtG or 40k, whilst having multiple other hobbies.
And your right, I don't need to put words into your mouth, your doing a good job of that yourself. Not everyone is you. Not everyone lives in Germany. Your situation, financial or otherwise, is not the same as someone else's.
Please look up the English terms condescension and patronising. Do you get how you come across? I believe that's been said before, if not to you, about persons such as you.
Don't know about anyone else but I've heard enough from the "you're lazy, I have no empathy" brigade.
None of you ever add any value to the discussion, the community, or the hobby as a whole, and you don't do yourself any favours - you just come across as a, a word that I probably cannot use here, whilst trying to keep at least a level of politeness.
I believe several people have stated that already. There's a very good response to multiple people's points a page or two back, a very long one. Suggest you go read it and take it on board if you haven't already.
Or, you can carry on telling people they're lazy and whining, as though you are some superior being.
No more bizarre than his continual assertion that if people aren't doing as he does, continue to be aggrieved by price hikes, they're all lazy and whining.
No more bizarre than his continual assertion that if people aren't doing as he does, continue to be aggrieved by price hikes, they're all lazy and whining.
Show me where he said you or anyone else is lazy please.
No more bizarre than his continual assertion that if people aren't doing as he does, continue to be aggrieved by price hikes, they're all lazy and whining.
Show me where he said you or anyone else is lazy please.
I'll assume you've read his posts and can't see it...
No more bizarre than his continual assertion that if people aren't doing as he does, continue to be aggrieved by price hikes, they're all lazy and whining.
Show me where he said you or anyone else is lazy please.
I'll assume you've read his posts and can't see it...
I have. I didn't see the repeated claims that you're lazy. Can you quote them please?
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Yup.
Value for money however does not correlate with being unable to afford something. I can afford GW's prices, it does not mean I won't balk at what they're asking. I want to get a GSC army, and frankly it is simply not worth my money and the investment, so yes- GW have priced me out and I'm not going to enable them by paying their prices.
What I've done instead is buy some lovely Koralon minis from Void (as they are now available again from Seb Games, who is also in the process of reviving said game) as those Arakton minis are still great even 20 years later and they make a nice affordable core for playing any number of games, and can even be used as GSC minis if need be. If I do buy a GW kit for one of my armies, I'll use parts from Reaper Bones to stretch it as far as possible. With a little green stuffing and some cheap donor bits from Reaper, you can get 10 Blightkings out of a single box for example.
I have. I didn't see the repeated claims that you're lazy. Can you quote them please?
No I won't quote them. There is no need to. If you have read them you know full well he hasn't specified any one person. Nor did I say he has.
It's his general attitude. One shared by several people commenting here.
I am not the only, nor the first, to call it.
Oh I see. You could quote them, but there's no need, so you won't. Also, he hasn't specified anyone is lazy (nor even written the word "Lazy" or any recognised synonyms of the word), and also it's actually his attitude that is the problem. Thanks, that's a lot clearer and makes loads of sense.
I have. I didn't see the repeated claims that you're lazy. Can you quote them please?
No I won't quote them. There is no need to. If you have read them you know full well he hasn't specified any one person. Nor did I say he has.
It's his general attitude. One shared by several people commenting here.
I am not the only, nor the first, to call it.
Oh I see. You could quote them, but there's no need, so you won't. Also, he hasn't specified anyone is lazy (nor even written the word "Lazy" or any recognised synonyms of the word), and also it's actually his attitude that is the problem. Thanks, that's a lot clearer and makes loads of sense.
I've no idea who either of you are talking about as you're both playing the pronoun game but there are numerous instances of this word ITT, and not just on this page.
I won't quote them, because you can read the same posts. I'm sure you're quite capable.
Yeah but you know where he's said it and I don't, I'll have to read a ton in an attempt to prove a claim you've made, whereas you can easily just point to the evidence that substantiates your accusation. So has he actually said it, or he hasn't, and it's his attitude that you don't like? I think I was a bit hasty now in declaring the clarity of your argument.
I have. I didn't see the repeated claims that you're lazy. Can you quote them please?
No I won't quote them. There is no need to. If you have read them you know full well he hasn't specified any one person. Nor did I say he has.
It's his general attitude. One shared by several people commenting here.
I am not the only, nor the first, to call it.
Oh I see. You could quote them, but there's no need, so you won't. Also, he hasn't specified anyone is lazy (nor even written the word "Lazy" or any recognised synonyms of the word), and also it's actually his attitude that is the problem. Thanks, that's a lot clearer and makes loads of sense.
I've no idea who either of you are talking about as you're both playing the pronoun game but there are numerous instances of this word ITT, and not just on this page.
What precisely has it to do with you anyhow? No-one was responding to you and as far as I'm aware you've not been a part of the discourse this past few hours.
Rob Lee wrote: What precisely has it to do with you anyhow? No-one was responding to you and as far as I'm aware you've not been a part of the discourse this past few hours.
Rob Lee wrote: What precisely has it to do with you anyhow? No-one was responding to you and as far as I'm aware you've not been a part of the discourse this past few hours.
Technically you're still not as your trolling.
Do carry on though.
Again, bizarre. "What makes you think it's appropriate for you to reply to public messages on a public forum unless you're invited by name, especially if what your replying to is more than [arbitrary measurement of time] old?
You were right about him accusing people of laziness though, as has been shown.
I'm struggling to see what you actually want to happen. As with every hobby, you cut your cloth accordingly. If you can't or won't or you can but feel GW doesn't offer value for money any more, then you either make do with what you have or you play another game that does offer value for money or you find another hobby that you can stomach the prices for. Beyond that, what else do you want?
Rob Lee wrote: What precisely has it to do with you anyhow? No-one was responding to you and as far as I'm aware you've not been a part of the discourse this past few hours.
Technically you're still not as your trolling.
Do carry on though.
Again, bizarre. "What makes you think it's appropriate for you to reply to public messages on a public forum unless you're invited by name, especially if what your replying to is more than [arbitrary measurement of time] old?
You were right about him accusing people of laziness though, as has been shown.
Whatev.
You want to troll on my comments, fill your boots.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
This particular price rise? Not as such, more the continual price rises far above inflation. The 'straw' is having to go through the cost of yet another version, all the re-released rules, codices etc, just to keep up. Nah. This will be the first edition of 40k I haven't bothered with since 3rd when I started.
So this is the final warning for posters in general in this thread.
People are going to have different views on what is or isn't acceptable prices or the like and it's fine to express your view either way.
What doesn't help and we do not want is just endless back and forth sniping, essentially raking over the same old ground ad nauseam, this is especially true if degenerates further into little more than bickering about what people may or may not have said. Comes a point you have to accept the other person disagrees and move on, in the hope that there might be something relevant to discuss or let other people post something on the topic.
I'm sure you're right though that it is 'GW prices' that stop you finding a gaming club that works out.
Yep, I'm sure that's it. Not the venue prices, insurance, and pushy parents, putting paid to the two clubs that did try to get off the ground in my local area over 10 years.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
This particular price rise? Not as such, more the continual price rises far above inflation. The 'straw' is having to go through the cost of yet another version, all the re-released rules, codices etc, just to keep up. Nah. This will be the first edition of 40k I haven't bothered with since 3rd when I started.
I definitely hear that. I haven't played 40k for a long time anyway, I just collect the models, but right up until 5th edition or so I was still buying codexes to keep up with the lore. These big glossy hardcovers full of typos that are replaced in almost no time and all the other cards and general DLC kills any interest I might have had to get back into it. It's definitely what stopped me from picking up Necromunda too, which I used to love back in the day.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Interesting thread, as to your question in particular. For army sized collections..? Yes. I don't see the value for money in it as I once did. Underworlds, Warcry and Kill Team will no doubt still draw my interest, as the price point for playing those is more palatable, if only because you don't need such a sizable volume of models to play and I'm a sucker for nice plastic sculpts. That being said, some of the newer infantry kits have hit a price point that I'm uncomfortable paying, £27 for 10 battle sisters and £20 for a (admittedly nice looking) named character? That's through discounters as well.
(How GW have an Antipodean audience is beyond me!)
In short... Can I afford it? Yes. Do I now want to stump up the cash? As nice as they are, grudgingly, no. (You can bet I'll keep an eye out for the Christmas deals and box splitting via e-bay though.)
I bear GW no ill will either, I think they are brilliant at what they do and in terms of current releases and plastic content they're as good and exciting they've ever been in the times I've been playing their games, on and off since 2000.
In short then; just as I no longer bother with other boutique luxuries in my life, I'll be paying a lot less attention to GW going forward.
For what it is worth, I decided the GW hobby wasn't worth the money for me a little more than ten years ago.
The vast majority of my money has been going elsewhere, despite the fact that I wouldn't have to eat white rice or something to afford their kits now. I've gone multiple years without buying anything branded GW, even if I still pick up the occasional kit secondhand on eBay these last couple years.
To those of you put off by this price increase: There are a ton of alternatives out there which offer better games, better prices, and nice miniatures. I haven't regretted a minute.
It might be a bit harder to find a game with a random person in a store, but honestly, my impression is that most games of 40k are not in fact... Fun.
Give something else a try! You might like it more than you think! I still stick around here to ogle the new and largely cool miniatures GW puts out. But you don't have to own artwork to appreciate it, and I get roughly the same enjoyment out of seeing the cool miniatures someone else painted as buying them and adding them to the mountain of shame. The mountain of shame mostly consists of things that aren't fun to play with...
Best of luck to all, but GW will continue to raise prices every year until enough people stop buying. The Start Collecting boxes were largely a response to their lack of sales (imo).
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Yes and no. I mean, I could afford them still, because fortunately I don't have money issues currently. But most of the stuff (mainly, anything except starters and some SC boxes) are IMHO clearly not worth what they ask, so I won't be buying any. The current raise has made me revisit what would I consider worth it.
The price hikes havent excluded me but they were a nudge to wander into the non-gw wilds to dabble with strange new games, which i get isnt always an option if GW is the only game in your town
So not priced out but it would take a level of rules compentcy that with current sales GW dont have to indulge me with to pull me back in
Ill skim the freeby 9e rules as being one of the cat herders for my club I wouldnt like anyone to not get a game on any given night
Turnip Jedi wrote: Im broadly with Gallahad
The price hikes havent excluded me but they were a nudge to wander into the non-gw wilds to dabble with strange new games, which i get isnt always an option if GW is the only game in your town
So not priced out but it would take a level of rules compentcy that with current sales GW dont have to indulge me with to pull me back in
Ill skim the freeby 9e rules as being one of the cat herders for my club I wouldnt like anyone to not get a game on any given night
this so much. The prices went slowly into the territory where i started to look for alternatives, first for units i don't like the GW model for price and later also becasue some of the rules were just ehh.
Also in my case it helped that GW decided to stop R&H as a line, throwing me into the wild.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Out of buying GW product? Technically I have. Prices have risen on what I was considering buying this year. I have other things that money could be spent on. The least expensive purchases get made first.
Given that I am currently locked down, as we all technically are (not that you'd know it given how some are carrying on), under advice to shield until June 30th, don't drive so rely on public transport that has been decimated in my area, cannot visit my regular gaming buddy some 20 miles away as a result, it is a case of being able to justify purchasing GW products.
Guessing we won't be seeing your hand though...
So, I had a whole post typed up about how you can , but deleted it.
Let's try being constructive instead of destructive instead, because the part that you clearly didn't get from my posts is that I know how you feel and that it sucks to have no money for your hobbies. It was much less about how I'm better than you, but more about how you can stay in the hobby despite having little to spend.
This is what I did to get out of the mess, maybe it helps you staying with the hobby as well:
1) Find out how much money you can afford to set aside for your hobbies. Know that the sad answer to this can be 0 if you really are with you back to the wall, but more on that later.
I had a physical jar of money where I could drop spare change, but also tried to put in a 20 at the end of the month. In some months it simply didn't work out, in many it did. Taking the money "out of the system" helps with actually making sure you don't spend it on other things, while protecting your fragile financial situation from overspending when you feel like you can afford buying some fun in hard times, but actually can't.
Note that it doesn't need to be a 20, even 10 GBP will add up to 120 per year. For me to buy all of orktober required saving less than 14 GBP per month, which is roughly equivalent to drinking a single pint of beer every Saturday.
2) What others hobbies do you have, and how much do you spend on each of them? Do you really need to spend money on them?
Make an honest assessment of how happy each of them makes you. The main reason I dropped MtG was not because it was more expensive than 40k (to me, it wasn't), but because I cared less about the gaming group, and some of them were playing 40k anyways.
When I did this, I have found that I kept spending money on games despite having a rather large steam backlog of 20+ games, I kept buying books I found interesting despite still having some I haven't read. Some hobbies were just about killing time, and it's not hard to kill time without spending money. In general, optimize spending money you are spending in your free time, like eating at home/bringing food and drinks from home rather than ordering pizza with the guys, staying sober on a night out and similar things can quickly free up funds - not only for your hobby, but also for the financial problems you are facing.
3) Stay with the hobby. There were times for me when there was just an empty jar, and it remained empty for months. However, you probably already have an fully functional army sitting around, so you can always keep playing. If the meta has shifted and your army sucks (6th/7th edition orks for me), you can still ask your opponents to tone down their lists, play narrative games and/or campaigns or play multiplayer games where your allies help you out.
If you are more focused on modelling or painting, every gaming group has at least one person who hates to paint and/or build their models. Offer to paint or magnetize their models for them, for a small charge. That way you can keep painting/modeling and earn money to put into your hobby jar.
I never had a pile of shame, but if you have one, try to reduce that first - either by building and painting the things in there, or by selling or trading them.
4) Organize your hobby spendings. Make a list of things you planned and make sure to put all your remaining hobbies on the list. Also, don't forget stuff that will be released in future, like 9th edition, CA and maybe your next codex. If you plan on buying them, you need those things pretty much as soon as they drop, so having money in your jar to pre-order them feels really good. Also don't forget paints and primer. Prioritize that list with the things you want most first and the things you don't need last. You add, remove and reorder that list at any time. but don't every spend money on something that is not on the list. Impulse buys are taking away money from the things you actually want.
Since playing is more important that painting to me, I also organized all my planed purchases into packages of things that mades sense to play. Taking the orktober example, a single buggy wouldn't have made sense, as my collection was mostly infantry, walkers and battlewagons, so a single fast ork unit wouldn't have fit in. So I saved up until I could actually get enough stuff to field an army that made sense and bought it all at once - saving me shipping costs in the process. While doing so, I pushed back most DG purchases and thanks to Thrakka, I still don't have any Deathshrouds.
5) Be patient, and get your stuff as cheap as possible. Never, ever buy from GW directly, go to a FLGS with good discounts or an online retailer instead. When you order from online retailers, make sure check multiple stores - I currently have three who might or might not be the cheapest, depending on what you buy. Make sure to get free shipping any time your order, ask other players if they need stuff as well. Make sure to let your friends and relatives know what you want before your birthday and Christmas (or equivalent holiday) or have them gift you vouchers/money for your jar. Having your sister buy you a box of ork warbikers totally beats getting socks again. Regularly check ebay for the things you want, check if any of the online stores are having a sale. For BL books, keep an eye out for humble bundles. It might be obvious, but do the same for your other hobbies you decided to keep.
If you are talented (I'm not), try recasting models/bits or paper-craft. We have a player who (also due to money troubles) build 3k points of guard vehicles to go with his infantry from paper, and they look awesome. Third party models and 3D printing are an option as well, but you have to decide whether that's for you. Personally, I prefer GW's look for orks and DG.
And for the record, I did not call anyone lazy. I said that complaining instead of taking action to improve your situation is lazy.
5) Be patient, and get your stuff as cheap as possible. Never, ever buy from GW directly, go to a FLGS with good discounts or an online retailer instead. When you order from online retailers, make sure check multiple stores - I currently have three who might or might not be the cheapest, depending on what you buy. Make sure to get free shipping any time your order, ask other players if they need stuff as well.
You are aware if you already get a nice hefty 20% discount from your flgs/dealer. Then GW put the price up 20%. You are still paying 20% more now than before even with your kind flgs/dealer's 20% off.
Shopping for a discount percentage doesn't dodge the same exact GW price increase.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Yes. Ir isn't merely this one increase, it is the regular increases on already overpriced products, which A) made many kits simply unattainable for me or B) made them quite poor value. The rules and the wonky balance also discourage me from buying, since I never know when a unit will be put back on the shelf for an indefinite period of time. I quit playing 40k late 7th (before 8th was announced) in no small part due to needing to buy a full new army to avoid losing the vast majority of games, (not having a shot just isn't fun) simply because I wasn't spamming RBKs.
I get more value from a Malifaux kit despite the lower model count, Reaper stuff, and MEDGe to pay GW prices again. The games are better, too.
MJRyder wrote: I think what annoys me most about this thread is that there are just so many people shouting into the abyss.
yukishiro1 wrote: I apologize for referencing your background; even though you brought it up yourself to try to grant yourself an unwarranted aura of authority, I should have resisted the temptation to do turn that back around against you. Your profession is completely irrelevant to this discussion, and the fact that you behaved otherwise doesn't mean I should have as well. I should have been the bigger person, and I apologize for failing.
Your comments literally embody everything that's wrong with the internet, and Dakka in particular; where people assume that their own personal opinion is worth more than the comments of a professional -- an actual expert -- who is trying to explain things to you in clear, simple terms.
My background *is* relevant, because, quite simply, I have a PhD. This is called *knowledge*, it's called *expertise*. I teach undergraduates, and postgraduates, about this very subject and related subjects, at an advanced level. I'm not just some random guy on the internet talking: I am someone with relevant background and experience, trying to help you reach some understanding.
If, after hearing what I have to say, and just ignoring it because it doesn't fit with your world view, then fine... it seems there is no helping you, or some of the other people on this thread.
I get that you don't like price rises -- none of us do. The thing is, some of us on here are realistic enough to understand the way the world works, and the way business works in particular.
Just to restate some of my key points again in case you, and anyone else has missed them:
1) Things cost money.
2) GW doesn't owe you, or anyone else, anything.
3) Raising prices is not a sign of a company 'behaving badly'.
4) Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it is either 'immoral' or 'unethical' (to call it such is to show you don't understand either term).
I'm not trying to troll you here -- I'm genuinely trying to explain things to you, and to anyone who is interested in learning more about management and marketing practice. If you want to know more, I am happy to expand. However, what I am not prepared for, is for you to get on the defensive because I've come along and presented counterarguments to your false narrative.
You've repeatedly failed to support your assertions with any sort of actual evidence or argument. Point 1) is self-evident; no one is disagreeing. Point 2) is an unsupported moral assertion, and moreover is largely irrelevant to the discussion. Point 3) is the heart of the discussion, and is yet another unsupported moral assertion. Unlike other posters in this thread who take your position, you have failed to support this moral assertion with anything other than "look at my PhD!" Point 4) is partly an irrelevant truism that nobody disputes, with a parenthetical unsupported ad hominem and/or declaration of victory. "You don't understand" is not an argument.
What you have done in this thread is not made an actual argument. You've simply declared that other people are wrong and don't understand things, and that you are right because you have a PhD. This is not a convincing way to argue. Other posters in this thread - Soviet, Chamberlain, a few others whose names aren't coming to mind immediately - have done a vastly better job at supporting your side the of the argument than you have. We've had a fairly productive discussion, even if we agreed to disagree.
Finally, and I would not go here except that you have repeatedly invoked your own qualifications to try to bolster the weakness of your argument....your CV says you are a newly-minted PhD in English, and you appear to be a teaching assistant or lecturer at a university. To be totally clear: I am not demeaning either of these things in any way. But it is borderline farcical for someone with a CV like that to try to be claiming that his qualifications establish why his unsupported opinions should be deferred to on an internet forum. Your post would be embarrassing enough if it was from a Harvard economics professor, and an appeal to authority is always a logical fallacy; but an appeal to authority from someone who doesn't even have that authority is especially comedic.
Qualifications aren't a reason people should listen to you. Qualifications are a reason you should be worth listening to. You seem to have mixed up the two.
Now if you have any actual arguments to make - you know, by actually supporting the value statements you're making, not just stating them - I'm happy to listen to them. Not because you have a PhD, but because anyone who is genuinely making an argument deserves respect.
Note to mods: I am not trying to engage in a personal attack here. I just don't know how anyone can possibly respond to "listen to me because of my PhD!" in any other way. Discussion here should be about the topic, not about individuals; but since the other poster has brought himself into the discussion and cited his own qualifications as the reason he is correct, there's no way to respond except to engage with that argument.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
I went from saving up (grit more than money) to buy a Sisters box, some Newcromunda dudes and maybe some new Necron thing that might be kitbashed into a BFG ship ...to definitely not doing any of those things. The previous price hikes had pretty much killed my enthusiasm, but this one took its heart, staked it, burned it and salted the ashes.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
Business isn't about morality. It's supply and demand. Gw isn't only or minority on that. It's majority.
But see the thing is...nobody buys that. GW itself doesn't buy that. See their recent statement on Warhammer being for everyone. They didn't say "warhammer is for everyone because that makes us the most money," they said "warhammer is for everyone because that's the right thing to do."
Now maybe GW really does think "warhammer is for everyone because it makes us the most money." But there's a reason it doesn't say that out loud, and the reason is that normal people don't think that way, and they want to appeal to normal people.
"Corporations have no social responsibility and should just be amoral profit maximizers" is not a theory anyone actually believes or follows in the real world. Every major corporation in the world now engages in a wide variety of CSR activities and marketing strategies, GW included. At least in public, GW itself would vociferously disagree with your statement.
And once a corporation starts embracing the idea that its remit is more than just being an amoral profit maximizer, it can't then turn around and say "well just making money LOL" as a response to a charge of bad behavior. That's having one's cake and eating it too. Once you venture into those waters, you can't easily get back out, at least not without people accusing you of being two-faced.
filbert wrote: I'm struggling to see what you actually want to happen. As with every hobby, you cut your cloth accordingly. If you can't or won't or you can but feel GW doesn't offer value for money any more, then you either make do with what you have or you play another game that does offer value for money or you find another hobby that you can stomach the prices for. Beyond that, what else do you want?
I mean, human beings do form emotional attachments to things they associate with for years. People want to continue to enjoy things rather than suddenly switch off meatbag emotions and walk away all rationally. People like to express their emotions, positive and negative. People want things that make them happy and want to express frustration with things that take away happy. These squishy emotions make humans human.
The "irrational" emotional attachment people create to tiny plastic toy soldiers is precisely why GW is a successful company. The "get rational" argument has always struck me as especially funny when directed at this particular hobby.
40k is fundamentally ridiculous. It survives off the irrationality of the human mind.
insaniak wrote: It's still insanely expensive compared to most non - GW games.
Is GW stuff really that much more expensive than other companies products? Saw people on here complaining about the latest price rise and saying they would be switching to Marvel Crisis Protocol, went and had a look at that and you're generally looking at £39.99 for two human sized models, so pretty close to GWs character model prices and the model quality looks a long way behind, looks similar to the FFG Star Wars Legion stuff. You do get a few cards etc. but I remember people moaning about the traitor command set for Blackstone Fortress from GW being ridiculously overpriced, and that's 2 models (one larger than human sized) and some cards (including thick cardstock) and it's £37.50.
I haven't bought crisis protocol, but I have seen many of the models and... they look just as good as GW models. I don't know why you're slagging them off for their appearance. They're good models.
MJRyder wrote: I think what annoys me most about this thread is that there are just so many people shouting into the abyss.
yukishiro1 wrote: I apologize for referencing your background; even though you brought it up yourself to try to grant yourself an unwarranted aura of authority, I should have resisted the temptation to do turn that back around against you. Your profession is completely irrelevant to this discussion, and the fact that you behaved otherwise doesn't mean I should have as well. I should have been the bigger person, and I apologize for failing.
Your comments literally embody everything that's wrong with the internet, and Dakka in particular; where people assume that their own personal opinion is worth more than the comments of a professional -- an actual expert -- who is trying to explain things to you in clear, simple terms.
My background *is* relevant, because, quite simply, I have a PhD. This is called *knowledge*, it's called *expertise*. I teach undergraduates, and postgraduates, about this very subject and related subjects, at an advanced level. I'm not just some random guy on the internet talking: I am someone with relevant background and experience, trying to help you reach some understanding.
If, after hearing what I have to say, and just ignoring it because it doesn't fit with your world view, then fine... it seems there is no helping you, or some of the other people on this thread.
I get that you don't like price rises -- none of us do. The thing is, some of us on here are realistic enough to understand the way the world works, and the way business works in particular.
Just to restate some of my key points again in case you, and anyone else has missed them:
1) Things cost money.
2) GW doesn't owe you, or anyone else, anything.
3) Raising prices is not a sign of a company 'behaving badly'.
4) Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it is either 'immoral' or 'unethical' (to call it such is to show you don't understand either term).
I'm not trying to troll you here -- I'm genuinely trying to explain things to you, and to anyone who is interested in learning more about management and marketing practice. If you want to know more, I am happy to expand. However, what I am not prepared for, is for you to get on the defensive because I've come along and presented counterarguments to your false narrative.
Marketing isn't business ethics, nor is it ethics of any sort. You're not a PhD in philosophy. Indeed, marketing classes are more focused on technique. You are injecting your own ethical structure into your profession, in a "It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It" level.
yukishiro1 wrote: I don't think anyone is disputing whether they can "get away with it." At least not any of the regulars responding to this thread. Though I think that choice of phrasing is telling for the larger discussion re: morality. We don't generally use the phrase "get away with" for morally positive or even morally neutral actions.
Business isn't about morality. It's supply and demand.
GW still doesn't operate off of supply and demand.
Supply and demand isn't how many businesses operate, and many businesses thrive on creating inelastic supply so they can charge thousands for, say, insulin, something that people need or they die. Supply and demand only works on the most general level, but companies have spent billions figuring out how best to mitigate any drops in demand. It takes things like literally the world shutting down from a pandemic to really shake demand.
What GW's done is attempt to create themselves a monopoly, with some success. Strictly they aren't one world wide, but in many areas and gaming communities they really are the only game in town and you can either play GW or not wargame. This allows them to charge much higher rates then any of their supposed competitors. They rely on this dominance to create even more barriers to switching out of their products via peer pressure. They then funnel money into marketing and licensing to make it seem to low info consumers (eg, most) that they are the only hobby company out there. All of this allows for them to manage demand. And, from a strictly free market perspective, super unethical. But free markets are a pipe dream and, essentially, prayer mantra that don't exist. They're as realistic as a truly communist state.
The price increase was a little over 10% on most cheaper kits, and a little under 10% on most expensive ones; I don't think it was 5% on anything, though I could be wrong.
Your basic point is still arguably valid, though it arguably ignores how people actually make purchases in the real world (aside from the super competitive, people tend to measure their purchases by models, not by points), and the lack of granularity - you can't buy 85% of a kit, you have to buy the whole box whether you're going to use all the models or not.
filbert wrote: I'm struggling to see what you actually want to happen. As with every hobby, you cut your cloth accordingly. If you can't or won't or you can but feel GW doesn't offer value for money any more, then you either make do with what you have or you play another game that does offer value for money or you find another hobby that you can stomach the prices for. Beyond that, what else do you want?
I mean, human beings do form emotional attachments to things they associate with for years. People want to continue to enjoy things rather than suddenly switch off meatbag emotions and walk away all rationally. People like to express their emotions, positive and negative. People want things that make them happy and want to express frustration with things that take away happy. These squishy emotions make humans human.
I understand the attachment, after all, I still play GW games even though I don't buy their product any more. But given that GW have never shown any engagement outside of their own social media platforms and have never responded to demands to lower prices at any point in the past, what we have is 30 pages of people screaming into the void. I understand and appreciate that it is cathartic to do so and have done so myself in the past but the *only* way to get GW to even consider lowering prices is to stop buying stuff from them and at the moment, there is no evidence that enough people are doing that in enough quantities to force their hand. Until and if that happens, they will continue to raise prices year on year in the same way they have done for the past 30+ years.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Priced out from the hobby not really, there are many alternatives to be priced out just by the actions of a single company, but it has certainly made me order way less GW products and focus more on D&D and other RPG's instead. Everytime they raise the prices it becomes more and more difficult to justify the expenditure and easier to be willing to change to another IP.
A while ago for 60€ I could buy a couple of 10 model units of Warhammer or a unit and a small vehicle, nowadays best case scenario for 60€ I can get a single box of 5-10 models and a character, and it seems it's shifting to a single unit and a paint pot for 60€ at this rate...
blaktoof wrote: If prices go up on some kits 5% and model points go up 10-20% then cost to own an army decreased in many cases.
First of all, that only applies to people who play the game with the brand new rules. Second, how much do the rule books that increase point values cost?
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
Who renovates a house as a hobby?
But, like, again "I can afford it, so what does it matter to poor people?"
And ALSO, nah dawg, the amount of money they spend on sculptors and artists is tiny compared to what they spend on executives and dividends.
filbert wrote: I'm struggling to see what you actually want to happen. As with every hobby, you cut your cloth accordingly. If you can't or won't or you can but feel GW doesn't offer value for money any more, then you either make do with what you have or you play another game that does offer value for money or you find another hobby that you can stomach the prices for. Beyond that, what else do you want?
I mean, human beings do form emotional attachments to things they associate with for years. People want to continue to enjoy things rather than suddenly switch off meatbag emotions and walk away all rationally. People like to express their emotions, positive and negative. People want things that make them happy and want to express frustration with things that take away happy. These squishy emotions make humans human.
I understand the attachment, after all, I still play GW games even though I don't buy their product any more. But given that GW have never shown any engagement outside of their own social media platforms and have never responded to demands to lower prices at any point in the past, what we have is 30 pages of people screaming into the void. I understand and appreciate that it is cathartic to do so and have done so myself in the past but the *only* way to get GW to even consider lowering prices is to stop buying stuff from them and at the moment, there is no evidence that enough people are doing that in enough quantities to force their hand. Until and if that happens, they will continue to raise prices year on year in the same way they have done for the past 30+ years.
Sounds like you understand most of it. The other point is agitating the online community away from GW, which introduces posters to other games or solidifies their resolve against buying strictly GW, which over time leads local IRL gaming scenes to other games, which reduces the “GW monopoly”.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
This is such a bizarre argument, and ironically kinda refutes your own claim re: who works high up in companies and who doesn't.
Companies with 28% profit margins aren't raising prices to generate funds to reinvest in the company through hiring or development. You don't run 28% profit margins if you're concerned that your payroll or R&D may not be competitive.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
Who renovates a house as a hobby?
But, like, again "I can afford it, so what does it matter to poor people?"
And ALSO, nah dawg, the amount of money they spend on sculptors and artists is tiny compared to what they spend on executives and dividends.
Because I'm not a neanderthal I'll post the quotes in spoilers. Someone who enjoys working on their house will renovate their house as a hobby? I'm going to guess you've never had a project like installing new light fixtures, putting in a patio...
Show me GW's budget of sculptors and artists vs executives and dividends if you have that so readily available. Generally personnel are the most expensive/flexible portion of the budget when it comes to running a Company- which is why companies will lay off or flex employees to save on money.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
This is such a bizarre argument, and ironically kinda refutes your own claim re: who works high up in companies and who doesn't.
Companies with 28% profit margins aren't raising prices to generate funds to reinvest in the company through hiring or development. That's a truly silly suggestion. You don't run 28% profit margins if you're concerned that your payroll or R&D may not be competitive.
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
What GW's done is attempt to create themselves a monopoly, with some success. Strictly they aren't one world wide, but in many areas and gaming communities they really are the only game in town and you can either play GW or not wargame. This allows them to charge much higher rates then any of their supposed competitors. They rely on this dominance to create even more barriers to switching out of their products via peer pressure. They then funnel money into marketing and licensing to make it seem to low info consumers (eg, most) that they are the only hobby company out there. All of this allows for them to manage demand. And, from a strictly free market perspective, super unethical. But free markets are a pipe dream and, essentially, prayer mantra that don't exist. They're as realistic as a truly communist state.
Gotta agree with that. GW have engineered it, from the closed ecosystem of their shops and renaming them to "Warhammer" (as many people equate wargaming=Warhammer and GW is colloquially known as "The Warhammer shop". The latter reason being GW's own reasoning, before any white knight jumps down from their horse and accuse me of some kind of tinfoil hat theory...). Too many people only know GW, even in an environment where GW should have no control.
I've seen it happen where I live, to varying degrees of what some might call "success". There are many places I dub "GW towns", where GW has been the only game in town for so long people are reluctant to look outside of the bubble, even when the opportunity presents itself. Certain people within our local club wanted at one point it to be a "GW only" club, with no other games being played; despite GW having zero authority on said subject (one of the more misguided members was convinced they did due to the club being a part of the GCN, which was run by GW...), the irony being that a few years back for the first time ever the club had zero GW games being played one night, with WMH, X-Wing and Bolt Action taking place instead.
We got our first FLGS 6 years ago, and even there after the initial burst of people playing other games down there for the sheer novelty it wore off pretty quick, now I firmly believe this is a one-two punch of what I mentioned plus (as said FLGS owner puts it) gamers being the "flakiest bunch of people he's ever met". no-one wanting to play anything. I tried for many many wasted months to get our small group of WMH players expanded but to no avail, the players were firmly entrenched in playing 40k and/or claiming they "could not afford it" (Yes you can. Just don't buy a fething Domino's for one day... ). You have an FLGS, where GW should have zero influence in what is played there yet here we are.
Marketing isn't business ethics, nor is it ethics of any sort. You're not a PhD in philosophy. Indeed, marketing classes are more focused on technique.
Methinks you're confusing marketing for advertising. Advertising is a subset of marketing. Marketing is the understanding, managing, and communicating of the value chain and relational exchanges. It is how one determines what the market wants, what markets or segments you want to serve, how you create products and work with customers to best meet those needs and communicate the presence and value of your product (the advertising bit) to the market, and, in a for profit enterprise, in a way that maximizes return.
GW still doesn't operate off of supply and demand.
Supply and demand isn't how many businesses operate, and many businesses thrive on creating inelastic supply so they can charge thousands for, say, insulin, something that people need or they die. Supply and demand only works on the most general level, but companies have spent billions figuring out how best to mitigate any drops in demand. It takes things like literally the world shutting down from a pandemic to really shake demand.
What GW's done is attempt to create themselves a monopoly, with some success. Strictly they aren't one world wide, but in many areas and gaming communities they really are the only game in town and you can either play GW or not wargame. This allows them to charge much higher rates then any of their supposed competitors. They rely on this dominance to create even more barriers to switching out of their products via peer pressure. They then funnel money into marketing and licensing to make it seem to low info consumers (eg, most) that they are the only hobby company out there. All of this allows for them to manage demand. And, from a strictly free market perspective, super unethical. But free markets are a pipe dream and, essentially, prayer mantra that don't exist. They're as realistic as a truly communist state.
GW's products do not have inelastic demand. They have run into such issues before, the cost of getting into WHFB by its 8th edition tanked that product line, and their mishandling of the 40k 6E-7E era saw 40k get knocked off the top selling tabletop wargaming perch (albeit not permanently) for the first time in a generation and competition from other games (especially FFG's X-Wing) ate their lunch, and they have more meaningful competition than they did in previous eras. They very much operate off of supply and demand. They have however, increasingly chosen to serve a higher end market segment than they previously did. This is expressed in many ways, such as how they don't do paperback B&W codex books anymore but instead do more expensive hardcover full color books. Characters that used to be simple infantry models or that used to be roughly Dreadnought sized often are redone to be truly huge and impressive centerpieces (Greater Daemons, Nagash, etc).
Likewise GW did not create a monopoly, they don't force retailers to only carry their product, or only host events for their games. While in many places they often are the only consistent game in town, this is much less true now in 2020 than it was in years gone by, and it's not because GW ran all the other games out of town or did something to prevent them from being played.
yukishiro1 wrote: The price increase was a little over 10% on most cheaper kits, and a little under 10% on most expensive ones; I don't think it was 5% on anything, though I could be wrong.
Your basic point is still arguably valid, though it arguably ignores how people actually make purchases in the real world (aside from the super competitive, people tend to measure their purchases by models, not by points), and the lack of granularity - you can't buy 85% of a kit, you have to buy the whole box whether you're going to use all the models or not.
That's a fair point, a lot of people don't plan out "here is the army I'm going to build" and purchase only those models.
It is possible to buy 1%-99% of a kit through 3rd party but usually at a price.
Having played in editions before when things were "cheaper" I think one of the big problems is points cost/money cost. Adjusting the numerator slides things back into affordability and accessabilty.
Accessabilty isn't just cost but how much you have, needing to paint 45 models vs 60 models at x points due to y cost for example; less models to paint is a lower barrier to entry than more models.
I think for the past few years with the apoc bundles, the army bundles, and the boxes set bundles despite the cost of individual packs of models going up the coat to enter the hobby has gone down relative to 5th-7th edition. This of course is the cost to have models to at at x points, not necessarily specific models you want.
For example I was able to purchase 3 craftworld batrlehosts for 145 USD each after 15% off. That's 2500pts for 435 USD, you couldn't buy a 1850 or army for that much in 5th-6th. This again comes with the caveat that you are using very specific models to at with at that point, but one of these and a wake the dead set and a few other boxes would build a decent army to play with friends/club for example.
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
What GW's done is attempt to create themselves a monopoly, with some success. Strictly they aren't one world wide, but in many areas and gaming communities they really are the only game in town and you can either play GW or not wargame. This allows them to charge much higher rates then any of their supposed competitors. They rely on this dominance to create even more barriers to switching out of their products via peer pressure. They then funnel money into marketing and licensing to make it seem to low info consumers (eg, most) that they are the only hobby company out there. All of this allows for them to manage demand. And, from a strictly free market perspective, super unethical. But free markets are a pipe dream and, essentially, prayer mantra that don't exist. They're as realistic as a truly communist state.
Gotta agree with that. GW have engineered it, from the closed ecosystem of their shops and renaming them to "Warhammer" (as many people equate wargaming=Warhammer and GW is colloquially known as "The Warhammer shop". The latter reason being GW's own reasoning, before any white knight jumps down from their horse and accuse me of some kind of tinfoil hat theory...). Too many people only know GW, even in an environment where GW should have no control.
I've seen it happen where I live, to varying degrees of what some might call "success". There are many places I dub "GW towns", where GW has been the only game in town for so long people are reluctant to look outside of the bubble, even when the opportunity presents itself. Certain people within our local club wanted at one point it to be a "GW only" club, with no other games being played; despite GW having zero authority on said subject (one of the more misguided members was convinced they did due to the club being a part of the GCN, which was run by GW...), the irony being that a few years back for the first time ever the club had zero GW games being played one night, with WMH, X-Wing and Bolt Action taking place instead.
We got our first FLGS 6 years ago, and even there after the initial burst of people playing other games down there for the sheer novelty it wore off pretty quick, now I firmly believe this is a one-two punch of what I mentioned plus (as said FLGS owner puts it) gamers being the "flakiest bunch of people he's ever met". no-one wanting to play anything. I tried for many many wasted months to get our small group of WMH players expanded but to no avail, the players were firmly entrenched in playing 40k and/or claiming they "could not afford it" (Yes you can. Just don't buy a fething Domino's for one day... ). You have an FLGS, where GW should have zero influence in what is played there yet here we are.
GW do not have a monopoly LOL. It sounds to me like the people you describe simply prefer Games Workshop stuff.
What GW's done is attempt to create themselves a monopoly, with some success. Strictly they aren't one world wide, but in many areas and gaming communities they really are the only game in town and you can either play GW or not wargame. This allows them to charge much higher rates then any of their supposed competitors. They rely on this dominance to create even more barriers to switching out of their products via peer pressure. They then funnel money into marketing and licensing to make it seem to low info consumers (eg, most) that they are the only hobby company out there. All of this allows for them to manage demand. And, from a strictly free market perspective, super unethical. But free markets are a pipe dream and, essentially, prayer mantra that don't exist. They're as realistic as a truly communist state.
Gotta agree with that. GW have engineered it, from the closed ecosystem of their shops and renaming them to "Warhammer" (as many people equate wargaming=Warhammer and GW is colloquially known as "The Warhammer shop". The latter reason being GW's own reasoning, before any white knight jumps down from their horse and accuse me of some kind of tinfoil hat theory...). Too many people only know GW, even in an environment where GW should have no control.
I've seen it happen where I live, to varying degrees of what some might call "success". There are many places I dub "GW towns", where GW has been the only game in town for so long people are reluctant to look outside of the bubble, even when the opportunity presents itself. Certain people within our local club wanted at one point it to be a "GW only" club, with no other games being played; despite GW having zero authority on said subject (one of the more misguided members was convinced they did due to the club being a part of the GCN, which was run by GW...), the irony being that a few years back for the first time ever the club had zero GW games being played one night, with WMH, X-Wing and Bolt Action taking place instead.
We got our first FLGS 6 years ago, and even there after the initial burst of people playing other games down there for the sheer novelty it wore off pretty quick, now I firmly believe this is a one-two punch of what I mentioned plus (as said FLGS owner puts it) gamers being the "flakiest bunch of people he's ever met". no-one wanting to play anything. I tried for many many wasted months to get our small group of WMH players expanded but to no avail, the players were firmly entrenched in playing 40k and/or claiming they "could not afford it" (Yes you can. Just don't buy a fething Domino's for one day... ). You have an FLGS, where GW should have zero influence in what is played there yet here we are.
GW do not have a monopoly LOL. It sounds to me like the people you describe simply prefer Games Workshop stuff.
I suggest you look up the word "de facto" and come back once you understand what that means and what we are saying....
insaniak wrote: It's still insanely expensive compared to most non - GW games.
Is GW stuff really that much more expensive than other companies products? Saw people on here complaining about the latest price rise and saying they would be switching to Marvel Crisis Protocol, went and had a look at that and you're generally looking at £39.99 for two human sized models, so pretty close to GWs character model prices and the model quality looks a long way behind, looks similar to the FFG Star Wars Legion stuff. You do get a few cards etc. but I remember people moaning about the traitor command set for Blackstone Fortress from GW being ridiculously overpriced, and that's 2 models (one larger than human sized) and some cards (including thick cardstock) and it's £37.50.
I haven't bought crisis protocol, but I have seen many of the models and... they look just as good as GW models. I don't know why you're slagging them off for their appearance. They're good models.
One can't argue the aesthetic, if he thinks MCP models look worse then so be it. I mean, being as objective as you can they all have a very clearly established base line for how they are supposed to look, given some of the characters have been around for approaching a century, they mostly very closely resemble what they're supposed to. I don't know what else you'd want?
As for price? Well that's a massive red herring.
The cost per model is high, but you only need 3 or 4 to play a game, from a choice of 10 (the points size of a game is arrived at as part of the game set up, so you "draft" a team from your roster of 10, you only actually need 3-5 models for a game, so that can be worked around with a cooperative opponent.) All rules are included with the model, so there is no cost of rules supplements and the core rules are free to download.
I wouldn't hold it up as a paragon of economy wargaming (the mouse needs his pound of flesh after all) but it is still much easier to experience the game in a full and rounded fashion for much less money than you can with 40K.
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
I don't understand what you're arguing now? Yes GW is currently running a 28% profit margin - Companies don't plan out that kind of profit margin it happens when things go right for a Company. They are also using that profit margin to exponentially expand - films, tv shows, kids shows, phone games, videogames, etc... To expand into those kinds of 'unexplored' avenues for a company that makes plastic toy Soldiers they have to find the right talent and right executives to explore those avenues.
If they weren't making a profit do you think they would expand?
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
It isn't just a question of whether the business survives or not though. I want GW not just to survive but to prosper, because I want them to still be there in 5 years and 10 years and forever on. I want them to still have a store near me so I can get my models and paints whenever suits me. I want them to continue raising the bar on detailed, spectacular, centrepiece kits. I want them to take risks by making new factions like the Arkanauts and reworking old factions like Sisters and Necrons (and OMG hopefully one day Eldar). I want them to make plastic kits for niche options like Salamander accessory sprues and female Genestealer Magi that might not sell as much as other options.
All of these things come from a business that prospers but they probably don't come from a business that just gets by.
What GW's done is attempt to create themselves a monopoly, with some success. Strictly they aren't one world wide, but in many areas and gaming communities they really are the only game in town and you can either play GW or not wargame. This allows them to charge much higher rates then any of their supposed competitors. They rely on this dominance to create even more barriers to switching out of their products via peer pressure. They then funnel money into marketing and licensing to make it seem to low info consumers (eg, most) that they are the only hobby company out there. All of this allows for them to manage demand. And, from a strictly free market perspective, super unethical. But free markets are a pipe dream and, essentially, prayer mantra that don't exist. They're as realistic as a truly communist state.
Gotta agree with that. GW have engineered it, from the closed ecosystem of their shops and renaming them to "Warhammer" (as many people equate wargaming=Warhammer and GW is colloquially known as "The Warhammer shop". The latter reason being GW's own reasoning, before any white knight jumps down from their horse and accuse me of some kind of tinfoil hat theory...). Too many people only know GW, even in an environment where GW should have no control.
I've seen it happen where I live, to varying degrees of what some might call "success". There are many places I dub "GW towns", where GW has been the only game in town for so long people are reluctant to look outside of the bubble, even when the opportunity presents itself. Certain people within our local club wanted at one point it to be a "GW only" club, with no other games being played; despite GW having zero authority on said subject (one of the more misguided members was convinced they did due to the club being a part of the GCN, which was run by GW...), the irony being that a few years back for the first time ever the club had zero GW games being played one night, with WMH, X-Wing and Bolt Action taking place instead.
We got our first FLGS 6 years ago, and even there after the initial burst of people playing other games down there for the sheer novelty it wore off pretty quick, now I firmly believe this is a one-two punch of what I mentioned plus (as said FLGS owner puts it) gamers being the "flakiest bunch of people he's ever met". no-one wanting to play anything. I tried for many many wasted months to get our small group of WMH players expanded but to no avail, the players were firmly entrenched in playing 40k and/or claiming they "could not afford it" (Yes you can. Just don't buy a fething Domino's for one day... ). You have an FLGS, where GW should have zero influence in what is played there yet here we are.
GW do not have a monopoly LOL. It sounds to me like the people you describe simply prefer Games Workshop stuff.
I suggest you look up the word "de facto" and come back once you understand what that means and what we are saying....
De facto is two words and I know what it means. What do you think they have a de facto monopoly on? Wargaming? Their own models? How do they maintain this monopoly?
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
I don't understand what you're arguing now? Yes GW is currently running a 28% profit margin - Companies don't plan out that kind of profit margin it happens when things go right for a Company. They are also using that profit margin to exponentially expand - films, tv shows, kids shows, phone games, videogames, etc... To expand into those kinds of 'unexplored' avenues for a company that makes plastic toy Soldiers they have to find the right talent and right executives to explore those avenues.
If they weren't making a profit do you think they would expand?
What I don't think you've got is he's talking about the money left over after they've paid for all the things you're talking about.
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
I don't understand what you're arguing now? Yes GW is currently running a 28% profit margin - Companies don't plan out that kind of profit margin it happens when things go right for a Company. They are also using that profit margin to exponentially expand - films, tv shows, kids shows, phone games, videogames, etc... To expand into those kinds of 'unexplored' avenues for a company that makes plastic toy Soldiers they have to find the right talent and right executives to explore those avenues.
If they weren't making a profit do you think they would expand?
What I don't think you've got is he's talking about the money left over after they've paid for all the things you're talking about.
For maintaining existing staff yes but any new hires would have to be paid for out of that profit margin.
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
I don't understand what you're arguing now? Yes GW is currently running a 28% profit margin - Companies don't plan out that kind of profit margin it happens when things go right for a Company. They are also using that profit margin to exponentially expand - films, tv shows, kids shows, phone games, videogames, etc... To expand into those kinds of 'unexplored' avenues for a company that makes plastic toy Soldiers they have to find the right talent and right executives to explore those avenues.
If they weren't making a profit do you think they would expand?
What I don't think you've got is he's talking about the money left over after they've paid for all the things you're talking about.
Doubtful. If you have a good source that GW just has a vault of money for them to McScrooge Duck dive into I'd like to see that.
De facto is two words and I know what it means. What do you think they have a de facto monopoly on? Wargaming? Their own models? How do they maintain this monopoly?
Ah yes, we're going back to the well of pedantry because we are losing the argument...
I notice you are a relatively new player based on the basic painting question you asked elsewhere on this forum, trust me; I've been around the block- whilst GW does not have a monopoly in the literal sense it essentially has one due to several internal and external factors. Even in environments where this should not be the case with gamers having multiple options available to them they only choose to stick with GW because they know it is a safe bet due to the sheer dominance they have.
I've played in several locations and the story is the same everywhere. It's cyclical as people only play GW games as GW games are the only games people play. Gamers are reluctant to break away from it for whatever reason so GW knows they can rake them over the coals and know they'll either have to lap it up or go elsewhere, which they cannot do on their own as, much like social media or a phone network a player base is exponentially more valuable the more people that make it up, one player is useless as you need at least two.
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
I don't understand what you're arguing now? Yes GW is currently running a 28% profit margin - Companies don't plan out that kind of profit margin it happens when things go right for a Company. They are also using that profit margin to exponentially expand - films, tv shows, kids shows, phone games, videogames, etc... To expand into those kinds of 'unexplored' avenues for a company that makes plastic toy Soldiers they have to find the right talent and right executives to explore those avenues.
If they weren't making a profit do you think they would expand?
What I don't think you've got is he's talking about the money left over after they've paid for all the things you're talking about.
Doubtful. If you have a good source that GW just has a vault of money for them to McScrooge Duck dive into I'd like to see that.
I am not trying to be rude here, but do you understand what a profit margin is? Because your comment kinda makes it sound like you don't.
If you want to know about GW's financials, that's all available online in detail. I'm not privy to some special source of secret info that gave me their numbers.
Suffice to say that they literally have more money coming in than they can do anything productive with. That's why they have a 28% profit margin. Companies that have things to spend their money on to generate returns don't run 28% margins, it makes no economic sense, it's just giving money to the taxman for no reason, which sophisticated companies don't do.
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
I don't understand what you're arguing now? Yes GW is currently running a 28% profit margin - Companies don't plan out that kind of profit margin it happens when things go right for a Company. They are also using that profit margin to exponentially expand - films, tv shows, kids shows, phone games, videogames, etc... To expand into those kinds of 'unexplored' avenues for a company that makes plastic toy Soldiers they have to find the right talent and right executives to explore those avenues.
If they weren't making a profit do you think they would expand?
What I don't think you've got is he's talking about the money left over after they've paid for all the things you're talking about.
Doubtful. If you have a good source that GW just has a vault of money for them to McScrooge Duck dive into I'd like to see that.
Their accounts are a matter of fething public record mate. The fact you don't understand this has pretty much torpedoed any credibility you have.
Ah you're taking my statement and changing what I said to drive your narrative. I didn't say the company was increasing prices to reinvest hiring or development. I said they have to run a profit to do those things. A company doesn't have the available funds to bring in competitive talent or conduct R&D if they are barely breaking even.
No, I'm taking your statement and applying it to GW, which runs 28% profit margins. 28% profit margins are not "barely breaking even." 28% profit margins are incredible. A company does not run profit margins anywhere near that high if it is concerned about its talent pool; it uses that money to invest in shoring up that weakness.
The only reason a company ever runs margins that high (aside from a one-time windfall or something like that, which is not the case here) is because it literally does not have anything it can do with that money to grow its business.
I don't understand what you're arguing now? Yes GW is currently running a 28% profit margin - Companies don't plan out that kind of profit margin it happens when things go right for a Company. They are also using that profit margin to exponentially expand - films, tv shows, kids shows, phone games, videogames, etc... To expand into those kinds of 'unexplored' avenues for a company that makes plastic toy Soldiers they have to find the right talent and right executives to explore those avenues.
If they weren't making a profit do you think they would expand?
What I don't think you've got is he's talking about the money left over after they've paid for all the things you're talking about.
Doubtful. If you have a good source that GW just has a vault of money for them to McScrooge Duck dive into I'd like to see that.
investor.games-workshop.com
Knock yourself out. All the info Azreal is quoting is there. GW are a publicly traded company.
Suffice to say that they literally have more money coming in than they can do anything productive with. That's why they have a 28% profit margin. Companies that have things to spend their money on to generate returns don't run 28% margins, it makes no economic sense, it's just giving money to the taxman for no reason, which sophisticated companies don't do.
Precisely this, the profit they declare is (or should be at least assuming their accountant is even slightly competent) the smallest figure they can feasibly get away with.
De facto is two words and I know what it means. What do you think they have a de facto monopoly on? Wargaming? Their own models? How do they maintain this monopoly?
Ah yes, we're going back to the well of pedantry because we are losing the argument...
I notice you are a relatively new player based on the basic painting question you asked elsewhere on this forum, trust me; I've been around the block- whilst GW does not have a monopoly in the literal sense it essentially has one due to several internal and external factors. Even in environments where this should not be the case with gamers having multiple options available to them they only choose to stick with GW because they know it is a safe bet due to the sheer dominance they have.
I've played in several locations and the story is the same everywhere. It's cyclical as people only play GW games as GW games are the only games people play. Gamers are reluctant to break away from it for whatever reason so GW knows they can rake them over the coals and know they'll either have to lap it up or go elsewhere, which they cannot do on their own as, much like social media or a phone network a player base is exponentially more valuable the more people that make it up, one player is useless as you need at least two.
I've been in this hobby since 1988. Thanks though.
If GW have a monopoly then how do you explain the people in this thread talking about all the cool and cheaper alternatives?
Their accounts are a matter of fething public record mate. The fact you don't understand this has pretty much torpedoed any credibility you have.
The credibility of someone arguing on a public forum. Besides the public information you don't have anything of the Companies strategy? So everything you're going off is public record only?
GW doesn't have a monopoly, but what it does have is extremely strong brand commitment and a closed hobby universe, both of which have similar results to a monopoly in terms of how it creates demand curves that are inelastic to price pressure.
Their accounts are a matter of fething public record mate. The fact you don't understand this has pretty much torpedoed any credibility you have.
The credibility of someone arguing on a public forum. Besides the public information you don't have anything of the Companies strategy? So everything you're going off is public record only?
Their accounts are a matter of fething public record mate. The fact you don't understand this has pretty much torpedoed any credibility you have.
The credibility of someone arguing on a public forum. Besides the public information you don't have anything of the Companies strategy? So everything you're going off is public record only?
You don't need confidential business information to read a financial report. You were the one who raised an objection to the profit margin that didn't really make much sense if you understood what a profit margin was, and demanded proof of GW's financials. That proof was provided.
The fact is that for several years now GW has been making substantially more money than it can put to productive use. That's why it has the margins it is, margins that would make no economic sense for a business that does have productive uses for that money.
Review of GW's financials shows pretty clearly there is no reinvestment purpose behind this price increase. It's designed to maintain or increase margins, not to fund reinvestment.
Their accounts are a matter of fething public record mate. The fact you don't understand this has pretty much torpedoed any credibility you have.
The credibility of someone arguing on a public forum. Besides the public information you don't have anything of the Companies strategy? So everything you're going off is public record only?
You don't need confidential business information to read a financial report. You were the one who raised an objection to the profit margin that didn't really make much sense if you understood what a profit margin was, and demanded proof of GW's financials. That proof was provided.
The fact is that for several years now GW has been making substantially more money than it can put to productive use. That's why it has the margins it is, margins that would make no economic sense for a business that does have productive uses for that money.
Review of GW's financials shows pretty clearly there is no reinvestment purpose behind this price increase. It's designed to maintain or increase margins, not to fund reinvestment.
You guys got me. Great job you won an argument on the internet about the financial decisions of a billion dollar corporation. Here is a gold star for you.
Their accounts are a matter of fething public record mate. The fact you don't understand this has pretty much torpedoed any credibility you have.
The credibility of someone arguing on a public forum. Besides the public information you don't have anything of the Companies strategy? So everything you're going off is public record only?
You don't need confidential business information to read a financial report. You were the one who raised an objection to the profit margin that didn't really make much sense if you understood what a profit margin was, and demanded proof of GW's financials. That proof was provided.
The fact is that for several years now GW has been making substantially more money than it can put to productive use. That's why it has the margins it is, margins that would make no economic sense for a business that does have productive uses for that money.
Review of GW's financials shows pretty clearly there is no reinvestment purpose behind this price increase. It's designed to maintain or increase margins, not to fund reinvestment.
You guys got me. Great job you won an argument on the internet about the financial decisions of a billion dollar corporation. Here is a gold star for you.
“We talk about it for 20 minutes and then we decide I was right” -Brian Clough
Marketing isn't business ethics, nor is it ethics of any sort. You're not a PhD in philosophy. Indeed, marketing classes are more focused on technique.
Methinks you're confusing marketing for advertising. Advertising is a subset of marketing. Marketing is the understanding, managing, and communicating of the value chain and relational exchanges. It is how one determines what the market wants, what markets or segments you want to serve, how you create products and work with customers to best meet those needs and communicate the presence and value of your product (the advertising bit) to the market, and, in a for profit enterprise, in a way that maximizes return.
GW still doesn't operate off of supply and demand.
Supply and demand isn't how many businesses operate, and many businesses thrive on creating inelastic supply so they can charge thousands for, say, insulin, something that people need or they die. Supply and demand only works on the most general level, but companies have spent billions figuring out how best to mitigate any drops in demand. It takes things like literally the world shutting down from a pandemic to really shake demand.
What GW's done is attempt to create themselves a monopoly, with some success. Strictly they aren't one world wide, but in many areas and gaming communities they really are the only game in town and you can either play GW or not wargame. This allows them to charge much higher rates then any of their supposed competitors. They rely on this dominance to create even more barriers to switching out of their products via peer pressure. They then funnel money into marketing and licensing to make it seem to low info consumers (eg, most) that they are the only hobby company out there. All of this allows for them to manage demand. And, from a strictly free market perspective, super unethical. But free markets are a pipe dream and, essentially, prayer mantra that don't exist. They're as realistic as a truly communist state.
GW's products do not have inelastic demand. They have run into such issues before, the cost of getting into WHFB by its 8th edition tanked that product line, and their mishandling of the 40k 6E-7E era saw 40k get knocked off the top selling tabletop wargaming perch (albeit not permanently) for the first time in a generation and competition from other games (especially FFG's X-Wing) ate their lunch, and they have more meaningful competition than they did in previous eras. They very much operate off of supply and demand. They have however, increasingly chosen to serve a higher end market segment than they previously did. This is expressed in many ways, such as how they don't do paperback B&W codex books anymore but instead do more expensive hardcover full color books. Characters that used to be simple infantry models or that used to be roughly Dreadnought sized often are redone to be truly huge and impressive centerpieces (Greater Daemons, Nagash, etc).
Likewise GW did not create a monopoly, they don't force retailers to only carry their product, or only host events for their games. While in many places they often are the only consistent game in town, this is much less true now in 2020 than it was in years gone by, and it's not because GW ran all the other games out of town or did something to prevent them from being played.
None of that has anything to do with ethical business practice though. Indeed, most businesses are not ethical at all. Particularly the more successful ones.
The example of inelastic demand is to underline the point that business is NOT ethical. It doesn't work for the benefit of the consumer. When demand is inelastic, like health services, we get to see just how badly behaved businesses are. Unethical behavior for pursuit of profit is the norm, restrained only somewhat by government intervention and public will. Both of which companies spend billions to manage in lobbying, PR, and marketing. And GW is, structurally, not so different from a company like Eli Lily. They just don't have a product that the lack of which will kill you.
GW does try to create an effective monopoly, and they DO see success at this. Ironically, their ridiculous pricing is kind of counter productive to this, since they could likely afford to amazon a number of their competitors in aggressive savings, kill them, and then jack the prices up again. Actually, they did do this. Over this edition. They utilized more aggressive cost saving measure like bundles and smaller games to help undercut other hobby companies. And now that the damage of the kirby years is undone, well boy are prices starting to rise dramatically across the board again. Funny that.
GW doesn't need to "force" retailers to sell their games. FLGS aren't their competitors. They're just retailers, GW isn't a retail company. GW is more than happy to work through FLGS that survive the pandemic. GW tries to get people that buy from retailers, and the retailers themselves, to buy mostly THEIR product, and not the product of their competitors. GW would likely be willing to put the screws on FLGS is, well, they were the biggest fish in the pond. But, man, GW has no candle to MTG, and Hasbro DOES put the thumbscrews on FLGS from time to time. And don't get me started on MTG's business model.
As for events, GW is taking a much bigger role in dictating their direction. I suspect, in the not to distant future, some events for the smaller companies will drop off. But Asmodee (owners of FFG, and themselves owned in that standard business nestled nonsense by an investment group so trying to tell who has say in what is pretty damn difficult) isn't going anywhere, and they have an actual leg to stand on to fight GW with the star wars license (also, ironically, super over priced products). Big events are big enough to not be forced to choose. Most communities do not have this luxury.
GW is doing what all companies try to, and that is to create for themselves a monopoly. This is just what companies do, the natural end state of success. They aren't fantastically successful, sure. But they do experience a fair bit of success in the wargaming market, thank in large part to just being the biggest dedicated fish in the pond. But remember, it's a small pond. At any moment a real shark could come in and swallow the market whole. And most people would cheer, since the prices would drop. At least until GW and most other hobby companies were dead, or bought out.
De facto is two words and I know what it means. What do you think they have a de facto monopoly on? Wargaming? Their own models? How do they maintain this monopoly?
Ah yes, we're going back to the well of pedantry because we are losing the argument...
I notice you are a relatively new player based on the basic painting question you asked elsewhere on this forum, trust me; I've been around the block- whilst GW does not have a monopoly in the literal sense it essentially has one due to several internal and external factors. Even in environments where this should not be the case with gamers having multiple options available to them they only choose to stick with GW because they know it is a safe bet due to the sheer dominance they have.
I've played in several locations and the story is the same everywhere. It's cyclical as people only play GW games as GW games are the only games people play. Gamers are reluctant to break away from it for whatever reason so GW knows they can rake them over the coals and know they'll either have to lap it up or go elsewhere, which they cannot do on their own as, much like social media or a phone network a player base is exponentially more valuable the more people that make it up, one player is useless as you need at least two.
I've been in this hobby since 1988. Thanks though.
If GW have a monopoly then how do you explain the people in this thread talking about all the cool and cheaper alternatives?
GW have an Oligopol, they are the market leader due to their Closed system approach, no other miniature or TG company that produces similar type games comes close, there are others but they are entirely dependant on GW especially in regards to 3rd parties. GW goes up, they go up aswell.
No they don't, an oligopoly is a market dominated by a small number of suppliers.
Realistically they're simply the market leader. There might be an argument that they're a legal monopoly (they're in a place of disproportionate influence on the market) but they're not an economic one.
Azreal13 wrote: No they don't, an oligopoly is a market dominated by a small number of suppliers.
Realistically they're simply the market leader. There might be an argument that they're a legal monopoly (they're in a place of disproportionate influence on the market) but they're not an economic one.
i'd have put them under Price setters, because of the massive influence they have over other suppliers in that regard which would put them into an oligopolist position but yeah a legal monopoly is also likely.
soviet13 wrote: If GW have a monopoly then how do you explain the people in this thread talking about all the cool and cheaper alternatives?
See, thing is... GW games are the D&D of tabletop miniature games. Yes, they're by no means the only one (hell, there's literally thousands of RPGs out there), and once in a blue moon they might have been somewhat in trouble (the start of the V:tM era, the end of the OGL and the rise of Pathfinder... although I'm not even sure that one counts, because it's D&D in anything but the name), but... they're the one that counts.
And for many, many people (one could probably argue "most"), "D&D" and "RPG" are synonyms. Whenever most people say something about RPGs? They're talking about D&D. And the very same happens with "GW" and "miniature tabletop games": for most people, they're one and the same.
People who go online to talk about RPGs or miniature tabletop games? We're a drop in the pond. We're not representative of almost anything about these hobbies.
Azreal13 wrote: No they don't, an oligopoly is a market dominated by a small number of suppliers.
Realistically they're simply the market leader. There might be an argument that they're a legal monopoly (they're in a place of disproportionate influence on the market) but they're not an economic one.
i'd have put them under Price setters, because of the massive influence they have over other suppliers in that regard which would put them into an oligopolist position but yeah a legal monopoly is also likely.
There can't be any sort of oligopoly because there's nobody even close to GW's economic position, let alone two.
I'm not sure you're using the word in the way you intend.
Azreal13 wrote: No they don't, an oligopoly is a market dominated by a small number of suppliers.
Realistically they're simply the market leader. There might be an argument that they're a legal monopoly (they're in a place of disproportionate influence on the market) but they're not an economic one.
i'd have put them under Price setters, because of the massive influence they have over other suppliers in that regard which would put them into an oligopolist position but yeah a legal monopoly is also likely.
There can't be any sort of oligopoly because there's nobody even close to GW's economic position, let alone two.
I'm not sure you're using the word in the way you intend.
could be, long time away from my economic classes.
Fact is they are in a position to dominate the market to an nigh absolute degree.
If you think GW isn't retail, I don't think this conversation is going to go anywhere, as their products are primarily sold, supported, and used through retail establishments, and they have hundreds of their own retail Warhammer stores. Not quite sure what to say about that.
Likewise, bundles aren't new, they've done those literally every edition of every game they've made, they just sucked in terms of value in some editions (but not all).
Not sure why we're harping on GW's ethics for catering to an expensive segment, nobody is forcing people to buy their luxury hobby pastime product, comparisons to inelastic demand issues or large megacorps are rather silly. As for GW being a monopoly, again, there's all sorts of other games out there, GW doesn't do anything to force retailers to carry their product or not carry those of their competitors, and there's plenty of room for those competitors to operate. They are the biggest fish in the pond, but that's it. If people are really that concerned about GW's hold, Play Something Else or stop buying new product. Their price increases have certainly meant that's my choice. The GK army I'm painting now doesn't have any new purchased in the last 5 or 6 years, mostly it's all second hand hand 3E models, GW isn't seeing a dime from me on that count, and I've instead put a lot more money into building a collection of Heavy Gear mini's.
could be, long time away from my economic classes.
Fact is they are in a position to dominate the market to an nigh absolute degree.
Lol, I bet it's not as long a time as me!
There's no way you could argue they're not hugely influential, I'm just loathe to throw around words like monopoly when we don't have a clear idea of the overall size of the market globally, and even the definition of what GW's market really is. Model kits is a much larger creature than wargaming models, and model kits itself is a subset of construction toys.
So earlier someone, maybe Filbert, asked what we expected to accomplish, and I gave a flippant answer. I’d like to give a better one now.
Many posters here have noted that GW is a business, and businesses have goals, and tools they use to reach those goals. And they seem to accept that. But at the same time they lash out at consumers using consumers’ tools to achieve consumers’ goals.
Now, unless you’re happy that the prices are getting even higher, almost all of GW’s customers have the same goal: to keep the prices from going up again, or to make prices more reasonable for varying values of reasonable. Consumers’ tools are mostly social; we have a better ability to affect the discourse around a product and the shape of public opinion of that object than we have of directly influencing any of GW’s actual decision makers. When every conversation of GW products becomes about their displeasing pricing habits and every conversation about their rules becomes a reminder that there are better games available for cheaper, we will start to have an impact. When we shift public perception again, we’ll have an impact. When customers near-uniformly feel a sense that they are being ripped off on price or rules or community, we’ll see an impact. When local gaming groups decide to try new games or whales hesitate on their way to the register GW will start to feel the impact.
Don’t say it can’t be done. We’ve done it before. We saw the impact the consumers can have on the company at the end of the Kirby era.
Remember the promises of 8th, rules in Indexes , better balance etc.
Don't get me wrong but the social discourse is difficult for us consumers to organise because we are alot of people. It also doesn't help that our most organized Group the tournament Lot, rather Bend the knee over for monetary gain then to actually Stop the nonsense of playtesting practices of gw or Table shortening etc.
They literally had an article about codexes on Warhammer Community a week before the 8th edition rules were released, so what promises on Indexes didn't they keep?
Ghaz wrote: so what promises on Indexes didn't they keep?
there was nothing about that the Index Books did not contain all the features of the new Editions like Stratagems etc
making the promis of balance invalid as soon as the first Codex hit
at least here in the local club a lot of people who pre-ordered were really put down as the saw that the exicting new stuff is not there and they still need to wait for their Codex
Ghaz wrote: so what promises on Indexes didn't they keep?
there was nothing about that the Index Books did not contain all the features of the new Editions like Stratagems etc
making the promis of balance invalid as soon as the first Codex hit
at least here in the local club a lot of people who pre-ordered were really put down as the saw that the exicting new stuff is not there and they still need to wait for their Codex
Yes this, well and how the balance Overall developped with ynnari , castellan and his 32 oathsworn and then the great 70% winrate underpowered marines .
From the Warhammer Community article in my previous post...
What’s in a codex? Each codex is a dedicated book about a single faction from the Warhammer 40,000 setting and game. They contain a wealth of inspirational background, artwork, heraldry and miniatures photography for that army, and because that faction is the sole focus of the book, they also contain far more detailed army-specific rules than we could hope to cover in the index books.
What’s in the codex that’s not in the index? Good question.
Codexes, of course, allow us to focus on a faction in more detail than we could ever hope to in an index book. Alongside new expanded and updated background, you’ll find a wealth of rules content: army specific Stratagems, Relics, Warlord Traits, Tactical Objectives, psychic powers and more besides. We’ve listened carefully to what you liked in your codexes in the last edition of Warhammer 40,000, and what you wanted to see this time around, and we’re pretty confident we got it all in.
So it seems that they were pretty straightforward in stating that the indexes were not going to be on par with the codexes.
stratigo wrote: The example of inelastic demand is to underline the point that business is NOT ethical. It doesn't work for the benefit of the consumer.
These two things are not related.
Of course a retailer doesn't work for the benefit of the consumer. The purpose of a retail business is to sell things to consumers. The only 'benefit' to the consumer is that they can buy things that they want or need.
An ethical business is one that conducts their business in an ethical fashion. Choosing to raise your prices on a luxury product is nothing whatsoever to do with ethical practices.
Ghaz wrote: From the Warhammer Community article in my previous post...
What’s in a codex? Each codex is a dedicated book about a single faction from the Warhammer 40,000 setting and game. They contain a wealth of inspirational background, artwork, heraldry and miniatures photography for that army, and because that faction is the sole focus of the book, they also contain far more detailed army-specific rules than we could hope to cover in the index books.
What’s in the codex that’s not in the index? Good question.
Codexes, of course, allow us to focus on a faction in more detail than we could ever hope to in an index book. Alongside new expanded and updated background, you’ll find a wealth of rules content: army specific Stratagems, Relics, Warlord Traits, Tactical Objectives, psychic powers and more besides. We’ve listened carefully to what you liked in your codexes in the last edition of Warhammer 40,000, and what you wanted to see this time around, and we’re pretty confident we got it all in.
So it seems that they were pretty straightforward in stating that the indexes were not going to be on par with the codexes.
as far as I can tell the idea that indiexes where anything more then a stopgap is a delusion powered by the fans
Those upset about higher GW prices are absolutely allowed to stop buying. We are not talking about bread. Those willing to pay those prices are, likewise, allowed to pay those prices. GW will charge the price that the market will bear.
I find GW expensive, but generally good value. I consider before I buy. Will this box of toy soldiers bring me happiness? Will I enjoy having it? Will I enjoy building and painting it? Will I enjoy playing it? How much will I play it?
Those three boxes of Ravenwing Black Knights cost me $180 CAD or roughly $20 CAD per model. I enjoyed adding them to my army. I actually enjoyed assembling them over a few evenings: enough flexibility in posing to have a little freedom without getting out of my depth. Painting was a pleasant week. How many games have I played with them? Looking over my notes at least 50 competitive Matched Play/Tournament games over 3 years, never mind games of basement-hammer. I think I got my money's worth.
Will I buy another Land Raider? Probably not. I've had maybe five games over 20 years with it. Its a nice display piece, but I won't rush out and buy another. Someone else, however, might get great value out of a Land Raider purchase. Did the money I spent on metal Gargoyles for my kid's Xmas stocking seem worth it when the models were very hard to assemble and they constantly fell over on the tabletop to point that they ended up in the bottom of the bitz drawer? You win some and you lose some.
Not Online!!! wrote: Abusing monopolistic Market Position is pretty unethical though especially if you play twoface. Heck even Smith knew that.
While they are a large producer and undoubtedly the 'big dog' in the industry, it is blatantly false to claim that GW has any kind of 'monopoly' on miniatures gaming. There are tons of alternatives at all kinds of price points and quality for fantasy, scifi, and historical miniatures gaming. GW = monopoly FAIL. The only 'monopoly' they have is on their own products. Which one is totally free not to buy and seek out the many alternatives. Doesn't sound like such a great 'monopoly' to me. When GW is the only company out there and they are forcing you to buy their products at their prices, come back to me.
Not Online!!! wrote: Abusing monopolistic Market Position is pretty unethical though especially if you play twoface. Heck even Smith knew that.
While they are a large producer and undoubtedly the 'big dog' in the industry, it is blatantly false to claim that GW has any kind of 'monopoly' on miniatures gaming. There are tons of alternatives at all kinds of price points and quality for fantasy, scifi, and historical miniatures gaming. GW = monopoly FAIL. The only 'monopoly' they have is on their own products. Which one is totally free not to buy and seek out the many alternatives. Doesn't sound like such a great 'monopoly' to me. When GW is the only company out there and they are forcing you to buy their products at their prices, come back to me.
Depends on where you're at doesn't it? For many people gw is the only option, unless you want to play games by yourself. If everyone in your area is only playing gw games and you want to play a game then your only option is gw.
Not Online!!! wrote: Abusing monopolistic Market Position is pretty unethical though especially if you play twoface. Heck even Smith knew that.
While they are a large producer and undoubtedly the 'big dog' in the industry, it is blatantly false to claim that GW has any kind of 'monopoly' on miniatures gaming. There are tons of alternatives at all kinds of price points and quality for fantasy, scifi, and historical miniatures gaming. GW = monopoly FAIL. The only 'monopoly' they have is on their own products. Which one is totally free not to buy and seek out the many alternatives. Doesn't sound like such a great 'monopoly' to me. When GW is the only company out there and they are forcing you to buy their products at their prices, come back to me.
Depends on where you're at doesn't it? For many people gw is the only option, unless you want to play games by yourself. If everyone in your area is only playing gw games and you want to play a game then your only option is gw.
I don't think that any person in the world is in this position.
Not Online!!! wrote: Abusing monopolistic Market Position is pretty unethical though especially if you play twoface. Heck even Smith knew that.
While they are a large producer and undoubtedly the 'big dog' in the industry, it is blatantly false to claim that GW has any kind of 'monopoly' on miniatures gaming. There are tons of alternatives at all kinds of price points and quality for fantasy, scifi, and historical miniatures gaming. GW = monopoly FAIL. The only 'monopoly' they have is on their own products. Which one is totally free not to buy and seek out the many alternatives. Doesn't sound like such a great 'monopoly' to me. When GW is the only company out there and they are forcing you to buy their products at their prices, come back to me.
What's more, nothing they make is important to society. GW's business isn't food or water or housing or transportation or information or healthcare or energy, etc. It could monopolize tabletop wargaming and it'd hardly matter, ethically speaking. Ultimately GW operates in the tiniest sliver of the big pie of leisure time entertainment. GW has PLENTY of competition for time and money no matter how much they dominate their little sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sector.
I think some people confuse Monopoly on miniatures with monopoly on GW IP minatures. And Gw does for better or worse have a monopoly on GW Ip minatures. So I get why a price rise might feel unjust due to this.
Do you feel there is value in the product? If so you pay and consume and if you don't you don't. This is perhaps why I cant understand peoples position because its a fairly simple choice in my mind.
Regarding the show of hands: I haven't been priced out of "GW hobby" just yet but its certainly gave me pause for though and I have been looking at other stuff.
I have slowly started to diverge into other avenues of wargaming/minatures. even bought my first non GW minatures from Mierce this year for painting. Planing on getting a bunch more
Certainly if it wasn't for ebay and a good deal of wheeling and dealing and I had to get GW stuff at GW prices Id probably be in another system/hobby because their prices are stupid. But also.. GW can charge whatever GW wants *shrugs*
ALSO: Some great tips on budgeting thrifting etc. Sometime you just have to be patient or do some extra leg work if money is tight (Im all about stripping those OOP metals warp spiders...)
Not Online!!! wrote: Abusing monopolistic Market Position is pretty unethical though especially if you play twoface. Heck even Smith knew that.
While they are a large producer and undoubtedly the 'big dog' in the industry, it is blatantly false to claim that GW has any kind of 'monopoly' on miniatures gaming. There are tons of alternatives at all kinds of price points and quality for fantasy, scifi, and historical miniatures gaming. GW = monopoly FAIL. The only 'monopoly' they have is on their own products. Which one is totally free not to buy and seek out the many alternatives. Doesn't sound like such a great 'monopoly' to me. When GW is the only company out there and they are forcing you to buy their products at their prices, come back to me.
Depends on where you're at doesn't it? For many people gw is the only option, unless you want to play games by yourself. If everyone in your area is only playing gw games and you want to play a game then your only option is gw.
I don't think that any person in the world is in this position.
Sorry, maybe I should have been more specific. If you want to play a wargame and not travel long distances. Where I live (rural Appalachia) if you want to play a wargame and don't want to travel over 50 miles? It's probably going to be a gw game. It's just the most common thing. So if you want to play a wargame you need some gw stuff. Does this bother me? No, I like gw's games for the most part and love the setting. Doesn't change the fact. If you like some other wargame but the few other gamers in your county don't? You play what they like or you don't play without travelling to find someone who wants to play your game. Everyone doesn't have equal capacity to travel.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
You're well-off enough to spend $300-$400 a month on just one of your hobbies. Good for you. Saying it is "obvious" which of us has "worked top/mid/low level jobs" is unnecessary, condescending, and classist. Peoples' circumstances vary widely, Comparing plastic model kits to a sports car, or renovating your house is absurd. These things are not similar. GW minis may be less expensive than loading your ferrari onto your yacht to take to a race somewhere, but GW minis are quite poor value- this is what many in the thread are failing to grasp- for what you receive in the box in exchange for your $$$. The expectation many players have is that toy soldiers is a hobby easily enjoyed by the middle-class.
As for the " sculptors, artists, authors, and painters"........... most of those employed by GW are far from "top tier." It's quite clear that the majority of the sculptors lack any artistic talent, nor do they do any research for their projects.. The art is generic and frankly cheap-looking. Now, I haven't read many of the books, but it appears the near-universal agreement is that they are very inconsistent in quality, Whomever paints GW minis now does a terrible job, with the insistence on drawing attention to every. single. piece. of. detail. on. every. model.. GW has not improved their product as a whole (though some are quite good, like new Sisters). The greatest improvement made by the Rountree regime is in marketing.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
You're well-off enough to spend $300-$400 a month on just one of your hobbies. Good for you. Saying it is "obvious" which of us has "worked top/mid/low level jobs" is unnecessary, condescending, and classist. Peoples' circumstances vary widely, Comparing plastic model kits to a sports car, or renovating your house is absurd. These things are not similar. GW minis may be less expensive than loading your ferrari onto your yacht to take to a race somewhere, but GW minis are quite poor value- this is what many in the thread are failing to grasp- for what you receive in the box in exchange for your $$$. The expectation many players have is that toy soldiers is a hobby easily enjoyed by the middle-class.
As for the " sculptors, artists, authors, and painters"........... most of those employed by GW are far from "top tier." It's quite clear that the majority of the sculptors lack any artistic talent, nor do they do any research for their projects.. The art is generic and frankly cheap-looking. Now, I haven't read many of the books, but it appears the near-universal agreement is that they are very inconsistent in quality, Whomever paints GW minis now does a terrible job, with the insistence on drawing attention to every. single. piece. of. detail. on. every. model.. GW has not improved their product as a whole (though some are quite good, like new Sisters). The greatest improvement made by the Rountree regime is in marketing.
So it's a terrible product and you're furious you can't afford more of it? LOL.
Not Online!!! wrote: Abusing monopolistic Market Position is pretty unethical though especially if you play twoface. Heck even Smith knew that.
While they are a large producer and undoubtedly the 'big dog' in the industry, it is blatantly false to claim that GW has any kind of 'monopoly' on miniatures gaming. There are tons of alternatives at all kinds of price points and quality for fantasy, scifi, and historical miniatures gaming. GW = monopoly FAIL. The only 'monopoly' they have is on their own products. Which one is totally free not to buy and seek out the many alternatives. Doesn't sound like such a great 'monopoly' to me. When GW is the only company out there and they are forcing you to buy their products at their prices, come back to me.
Depends on where you're at doesn't it? For many people gw is the only option, unless you want to play games by yourself. If everyone in your area is only playing gw games and you want to play a game then your only option is gw.
I don't think that any person in the world is in this position.
Sorry, maybe I should have been more specific. If you want to play a wargame and not travel long distances. Where I live (rural Appalachia) if you want to play a wargame and don't want to travel over 50 miles? It's probably going to be a gw game. It's just the most common thing. So if you want to play a wargame you need some gw stuff. Does this bother me? No, I like gw's games for the most part and love the setting. Doesn't change the fact. If you like some other wargame but the few other gamers in your county don't? You play what they like or you don't play without travelling to find someone who wants to play your game. Everyone doesn't have equal capacity to travel.
OK I hear what you're saying but it doesn't make GW a monopoly even in your area. There will always be someone who will try a non-GW game, whether that is a GW fanboy trying something different just once or even a non-wargaming friend or family member you can convince to give it a go. There is literally no barrier to any other game being played anywhere except for the personal preferences of individual customers. That's not a monopoly.
Criticizing the quality of GW's models seems a bit churlish. They're not uniformly wonderful, and there are a few kits that are really bad, usually more in terms of design than style (e.g. Eldar Support Weapon platforms where the seated crew member doesn't have a specially sculpted torso, so it doesn't fit right on top of the seated legs or into the chair provided). There's even a few kits that really are just bad quality - electropriests come to mind here. But in general, there isn't another miniatures company out there with either higher overall quality or better overall design.
It's fair to question whether a lot of the kits are good value for money, but not their quality in the abstract.
The exception to this is the failcast series, I think those deserve all the scorn you can heap on them. Luckily they have stopped making them.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
I haven't. I've been spending 20€ a month on 40k for some time and will continue to do so. If the stuff I want got more expensive (most didn't), my order will be send out a month later or so.
I guess eventually there will be a theoretical point in time when I'm priced out of the hobby, that's at least a decade of raising prices down the road.
That said, there are some kits I just don't being see worth their price - most notably the single plague marines blisters or chaos spawns. The simple solution is to just not buy them or get them cheap when scalpers sell parts of the conquest magazine.
yukishiro1 wrote: Criticizing the quality of GW's models seems a bit churlish. They're not uniformly wonderful, and there are a few kits that are really bad, usually more in terms of design than style (e.g. Eldar Support Weapon platforms where the seated crew member doesn't have a specially sculpted torso, so it doesn't fit right on top of the seated legs or into the chair provided). There's even a few kits that really are just bad quality - electropriests come to mind here. But in general, there isn't another miniatures company out there with either higher overall quality or better overall design.
It's fair to question whether a lot of the kits are good value for money, but not their quality in the abstract.
The exception to this is the failcast series, I think those deserve all the scorn you can heap on them. Luckily they have stopped making them.
Agreed here. I've built a wide variety of models during lockdown (tackling the pile of shame) and I've seen very clearly the improvement from some older plastics like burna boyz and the OG landspeeder to the new stuff like primaris and sisters which were just a joy to work on. I've also put together some old metals like the khorne champion on juggernaught and remembered how much of a PITA they were. Never had the pleasure of failcast though (and never will!).
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
You're well-off enough to spend $300-$400 a month on just one of your hobbies. Good for you. Saying it is "obvious" which of us has "worked top/mid/low level jobs" is unnecessary, condescending, and classist. Peoples' circumstances vary widely, Comparing plastic model kits to a sports car, or renovating your house is absurd. These things are not similar. GW minis may be less expensive than loading your ferrari onto your yacht to take to a race somewhere, but GW minis are quite poor value- this is what many in the thread are failing to grasp- for what you receive in the box in exchange for your $$$. The expectation many players have is that toy soldiers is a hobby easily enjoyed by the middle-class.
As for the " sculptors, artists, authors, and painters"........... most of those employed by GW are far from "top tier." It's quite clear that the majority of the sculptors lack any artistic talent, nor do they do any research for their projects.. The art is generic and frankly cheap-looking. Now, I haven't read many of the books, but it appears the near-universal agreement is that they are very inconsistent in quality, Whomever paints GW minis now does a terrible job, with the insistence on drawing attention to every. single. piece. of. detail. on. every. model.. GW has not improved their product as a whole (though some are quite good, like new Sisters). The greatest improvement made by the Rountree regime is in marketing.
So it's a terrible product and you're furious you can't afford more of it? LOL.
What a juvenile response.
Many of the recent kits, i.e., AOS and 8th edition 40k, are pretty awful. Not all, mind you, but many. Mostly by being cluttered with detail for the sake of detail, or bad poses. For every Intercessor there are 2-3 flying lobster marines, etc. I would certainly be happy to see AdMech, mini marines, sky dwarves, and some others' prices enter the realm of sanity, yes. I no longer play 40k, and won't so long as the rules remain oversimplified, messy, and poorly balanced, but for those GW minis I do like, there are other games in which to play them.
I'm actually just jumping back into LOTR, and picked up the Pelennor Fields box (paid for in part by a gift card), after several years of not buying GW, and may go no further with it considering the prices even on LOTR kits have become unreasonable- not to mention the fact that GW separated the core rules and model profiles and into two separate $60 books.......
Sorry, maybe I should have been more specific. If you want to play a wargame and not travel long distances. Where I live (rural Appalachia) if you want to play a wargame and don't want to travel over 50 miles? It's probably going to be a gw game. It's just the most common thing. So if you want to play a wargame you need some gw stuff. Does this bother me? No, I like gw's games for the most part and love the setting. Doesn't change the fact. If you like some other wargame but the few other gamers in your county don't? You play what they like or you don't play without travelling to find someone who wants to play your game. Everyone doesn't have equal capacity to travel.
Bluntly, one of the worst things to have to put up with in trying to get traction with other games here in the US? You have to be willing to do the legwork to get it traction.
You have to:
-Convince a shopowner to stock the product's "core" range.
-Run demos. This means getting the shopowner to get you table space for gaming too!
-Be willing to put your money where your mouth is and get not just the army you're interested in, but a small sampling of the factions to let people see what there is.
It's a lot of work and it requires a patience and/or devotion of time and effort that not many people have available, and that's not even factoring in the whole bit about finding a friendly shop to work in tandem with.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
You're well-off enough to spend $300-$400 a month on just one of your hobbies. Good for you. Saying it is "obvious" which of us has "worked top/mid/low level jobs" is unnecessary, condescending, and classist. Peoples' circumstances vary widely, Comparing plastic model kits to a sports car, or renovating your house is absurd. These things are not similar. GW minis may be less expensive than loading your ferrari onto your yacht to take to a race somewhere, but GW minis are quite poor value- this is what many in the thread are failing to grasp- for what you receive in the box in exchange for your $$$. The expectation many players have is that toy soldiers is a hobby easily enjoyed by the middle-class.
As for the " sculptors, artists, authors, and painters"........... most of those employed by GW are far from "top tier." It's quite clear that the majority of the sculptors lack any artistic talent, nor do they do any research for their projects.. The art is generic and frankly cheap-looking. Now, I haven't read many of the books, but it appears the near-universal agreement is that they are very inconsistent in quality, Whomever paints GW minis now does a terrible job, with the insistence on drawing attention to every. single. piece. of. detail. on. every. model.. GW has not improved their product as a whole (though some are quite good, like new Sisters). The greatest improvement made by the Rountree regime is in marketing.
So it's a terrible product and you're furious you can't afford more of it? LOL.
What a juvenile response.
Many of the recent kits, i.e., AOS and 8th edition 40k, I find to be pretty awful. Not all, mind you, but many. Mostly by being cluttered with detail for the sake of detail, or bad poses. For every Intercessor there are 2-3 flying lobster marines, etc. I would certainly be happy to see AdMech, mini marines, sky dwarves, and some others' prices enter the realm of sanity, yes. I no longer play 40k, and won't so long as the rules remain oversimplified, messy, and poorly balanced, but for those GW minis I do like, there are other games in which to play them.
I'm actually just jumping back into LOTR, and picked up the Pelennor Fields box (paid for in part by a gift card), after several years of not buying GW, and may go no further with it considering the prices even on LOTR kits have become unreasonable- not to mention the fact that GW separated the core rules and model profiles and into two separate $60 books.......
Not going to defend GWs pricing across the board but the LotR Army books are pretty fantastic value compared to the other two systems.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
You're well-off enough to spend $300-$400 a month on just one of your hobbies. Good for you. Saying it is "obvious" which of us has "worked top/mid/low level jobs" is unnecessary, condescending, and classist. Peoples' circumstances vary widely, Comparing plastic model kits to a sports car, or renovating your house is absurd. These things are not similar. GW minis may be less expensive than loading your ferrari onto your yacht to take to a race somewhere, but GW minis are quite poor value- this is what many in the thread are failing to grasp- for what you receive in the box in exchange for your $$$. The expectation many players have is that toy soldiers is a hobby easily enjoyed by the middle-class.
As for the " sculptors, artists, authors, and painters"........... most of those employed by GW are far from "top tier." It's quite clear that the majority of the sculptors lack any artistic talent, nor do they do any research for their projects.. The art is generic and frankly cheap-looking. Now, I haven't read many of the books, but it appears the near-universal agreement is that they are very inconsistent in quality, Whomever paints GW minis now does a terrible job, with the insistence on drawing attention to every. single. piece. of. detail. on. every. model.. GW has not improved their product as a whole (though some are quite good, like new Sisters). The greatest improvement made by the Rountree regime is in marketing.
So it's a terrible product and you're furious you can't afford more of it? LOL.
What a juvenile response.
Many of the recent kits, i.e., AOS and 8th edition 40k, I find to be pretty awful. Not all, mind you, but many. Mostly by being cluttered with detail for the sake of detail, or bad poses. For every Intercessor there are 2-3 flying lobster marines, etc. I would certainly be happy to see AdMech, mini marines, sky dwarves, and some others' prices enter the realm of sanity, yes. I no longer play 40k, and won't so long as the rules remain oversimplified, messy, and poorly balanced, but for those GW minis I do like, there are other games in which to play them.
I'm actually just jumping back into LOTR, and picked up the Pelennor Fields box (paid for in part by a gift card), after several years of not buying GW, and may go no further with it considering the prices even on LOTR kits have become unreasonable- not to mention the fact that GW separated the core rules and model profiles and into two separate $60 books.......
Not going to defend GWs pricing across the board but the LotR Army books are pretty fantastic value compared to the other two systems.
$60 each? Admittedly they're condensed into two books (Armies of The Lord of the Rings and Armies of The Hobbit), but how much of each book you'll need depends on how many armies in that book you play.
There aren't really Lord of the Ring "army books". They're more akin to campaign books once you go past the "Armies of Lord of the Rings"/"Armies of The Hobbit" bit.
I cannot recommend those faction cards enough though.
Stuff like this?
- 15x profile cards for the army of Rivendell
- 12x profile cards for the army of Lothlórien
- 19x profile cards for the army of The Kingdom of Khazad-dûm
- 3x Army Bonus cards
- 6x blank profile cards
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
You're well-off enough to spend $300-$400 a month on just one of your hobbies. Good for you. Saying it is "obvious" which of us has "worked top/mid/low level jobs" is unnecessary, condescending, and classist. Peoples' circumstances vary widely, Comparing plastic model kits to a sports car, or renovating your house is absurd. These things are not similar. GW minis may be less expensive than loading your ferrari onto your yacht to take to a race somewhere, but GW minis are quite poor value- this is what many in the thread are failing to grasp- for what you receive in the box in exchange for your $$$. The expectation many players have is that toy soldiers is a hobby easily enjoyed by the middle-class.
As for the " sculptors, artists, authors, and painters"........... most of those employed by GW are far from "top tier." It's quite clear that the majority of the sculptors lack any artistic talent, nor do they do any research for their projects.. The art is generic and frankly cheap-looking. Now, I haven't read many of the books, but it appears the near-universal agreement is that they are very inconsistent in quality, Whomever paints GW minis now does a terrible job, with the insistence on drawing attention to every. single. piece. of. detail. on. every. model.. GW has not improved their product as a whole (though some are quite good, like new Sisters). The greatest improvement made by the Rountree regime is in marketing.
So it's a terrible product and you're furious you can't afford more of it? LOL.
What a juvenile response.
Many of the recent kits, i.e., AOS and 8th edition 40k, I find to be pretty awful. Not all, mind you, but many. Mostly by being cluttered with detail for the sake of detail, or bad poses. For every Intercessor there are 2-3 flying lobster marines, etc. I would certainly be happy to see AdMech, mini marines, sky dwarves, and some others' prices enter the realm of sanity, yes. I no longer play 40k, and won't so long as the rules remain oversimplified, messy, and poorly balanced, but for those GW minis I do like, there are other games in which to play them.
I'm actually just jumping back into LOTR, and picked up the Pelennor Fields box (paid for in part by a gift card), after several years of not buying GW, and may go no further with it considering the prices even on LOTR kits have become unreasonable- not to mention the fact that GW separated the core rules and model profiles and into two separate $60 books.......
Not going to defend GWs pricing across the board but the LotR Army books are pretty fantastic value compared to the other two systems.
Good to hear. Looking at all the books available was a bit concerning.
Kanluwen wrote:There aren't really Lord of the Ring "army books". They're more akin to campaign books once you go past the "Armies of Lord of the Rings"/"Armies of The Hobbit" bit.
I cannot recommend those faction cards enough though.
Stuff like this?
- 15x profile cards for the army of Rivendell
- 12x profile cards for the army of Lothlórien
- 19x profile cards for the army of The Kingdom of Khazad-dûm
- 3x Army Bonus cards
- 6x blank profile cards
It's pretty dang helpful to have.
Yeah, it was Armies of the Lord of the Rings I had in mind. I need that in addition to the main book that came in the box set if i want to expand my Riders or Mordor/Angmar. I enjoyed having everything in one book back when the range was smaller. I'll have to look those cards up, they do sound useful.
soviet13 wrote: Quick show of hands: has anyone in this thread been priced out of the hobby by this price increase?
Not in the slightest. This is the cheapest hobby I have and usually if my hobby budget is low I'll buy something from my FLGS.
Check the costs for modding a sports car, the cost of fishing, and the cost of renovating your house if you want to see expensive hobbies/projects. I don't even own a boat and I drop $300-$400 a month fishing. This is also the more low risk consistent reward for hobbying as well.
My beer math is the cost of what I buy vs the amount of time I use it is my overall product value. If I buy a $60 dollar box of Space Marines and I gain the enjoyment of building, priming, and assembling them for 15 hrs this means to me they are valued $4 an hour. That is much cheaper than going to a movie or some of my other hobbies. My Roush Cold Air Intake was $500. That took me an hour to two hours to install. It works for me every time I drive my car but it was a luxury install for me to get to work on my car. Thats one of the cheaper mods I've put on my car.
Its also obvious in this thread who has worked in top/mid/low level jobs. Profits drive so much more for a Company than just lining the pockets of the CEO, COO, or shareholders. If you want those top tier sculptors, artists, authors, and painters to work for GW they need to have the monetary edge to hire/develop that level of talent.
If you don't want to buy into the hobby or continue purchasing from a specific company then don't. But don't blame the company for running a successful business and improving their product.
You're well-off enough to spend $300-$400 a month on just one of your hobbies. Good for you. Saying it is "obvious" which of us has "worked top/mid/low level jobs" is unnecessary, condescending, and classist. Peoples' circumstances vary widely, Comparing plastic model kits to a sports car, or renovating your house is absurd. These things are not similar. GW minis may be less expensive than loading your ferrari onto your yacht to take to a race somewhere, but GW minis are quite poor value- this is what many in the thread are failing to grasp- for what you receive in the box in exchange for your $$$. The expectation many players have is that toy soldiers is a hobby easily enjoyed by the middle-class.
As for the " sculptors, artists, authors, and painters"........... most of those employed by GW are far from "top tier." It's quite clear that the majority of the sculptors lack any artistic talent, nor do they do any research for their projects.. The art is generic and frankly cheap-looking. Now, I haven't read many of the books, but it appears the near-universal agreement is that they are very inconsistent in quality, Whomever paints GW minis now does a terrible job, with the insistence on drawing attention to every. single. piece. of. detail. on. every. model.. GW has not improved their product as a whole (though some are quite good, like new Sisters). The greatest improvement made by the Rountree regime is in marketing.
So it's a terrible product and you're furious you can't afford more of it? LOL.
What a juvenile response.
Many of the recent kits, i.e., AOS and 8th edition 40k, I find to be pretty awful. Not all, mind you, but many. Mostly by being cluttered with detail for the sake of detail, or bad poses. For every Intercessor there are 2-3 flying lobster marines, etc. I would certainly be happy to see AdMech, mini marines, sky dwarves, and some others' prices enter the realm of sanity, yes. I no longer play 40k, and won't so long as the rules remain oversimplified, messy, and poorly balanced, but for those GW minis I do like, there are other games in which to play them.
I'm actually just jumping back into LOTR, and picked up the Pelennor Fields box (paid for in part by a gift card), after several years of not buying GW, and may go no further with it considering the prices even on LOTR kits have become unreasonable- not to mention the fact that GW separated the core rules and model profiles and into two separate $60 books.......
Not going to defend GWs pricing across the board but the LotR Army books are pretty fantastic value compared to the other two systems.
$60 each? Admittedly they're condensed into two books (Armies of The Lord of the Rings and Armies of The Hobbit), but how much of each book you'll need depends on how many armies in that book you play.
Fair. But as the game is typically a smaller model count it's not unusual to have multiple forces. The LotR one is 244 pages covering every faction from the trilogy with 11 scenarios for recreating scenes from the books/films and no fluff (because that's obviously done better elsewhere)
It also has the strength of being useful to sell the game as anyone you show the game to who's interested can see how their favourite faction from the story plays right in your book. Nice little benefit for a game without a juggernaut playerbase.
Just seems to me that's far more appealing than the wasted space of recycled lore and a short rule section in the back of the other games.
Good to hear. Looking at all the books available was a bit concerning.
"War in Rohan" and "Gondor in Flames" are effectively 'supplement books'.
Kanluwen wrote:There aren't really Lord of the Ring "army books". They're more akin to campaign books once you go past the "Armies of Lord of the Rings"/"Armies of The Hobbit" bit.
I cannot recommend those faction cards enough though.
Stuff like this?
- 15x profile cards for the army of Rivendell
- 12x profile cards for the army of Lothlórien
- 19x profile cards for the army of The Kingdom of Khazad-dûm
- 3x Army Bonus cards
- 6x blank profile cards
It's pretty dang helpful to have.
Yeah, it was Armies of the Lord of the Rings I had in mind. I need that in addition to the main book that came in the box set if i want to expand my Riders or Mordor/Angmar. I enjoyed having everything in one book back when the range was smaller. I'll have to look those cards up, they do sound useful.
Grab them when you can, because they seem to go away after. I'm kicking myself for not getting the Gondor/Rohan ones after seeing those amazing Rangers from FW.
Sorry, maybe I should have been more specific. If you want to play a wargame and not travel long distances. Where I live (rural Appalachia) if you want to play a wargame and don't want to travel over 50 miles? It's probably going to be a gw game. It's just the most common thing. So if you want to play a wargame you need some gw stuff. Does this bother me? No, I like gw's games for the most part and love the setting. Doesn't change the fact. If you like some other wargame but the few other gamers in your county don't? You play what they like or you don't play without travelling to find someone who wants to play your game. Everyone doesn't have equal capacity to travel.
Bluntly, one of the worst things to have to put up with in trying to get traction with other games here in the US? You have to be willing to do the legwork to get it traction.
You have to:
-Convince a shopowner to stock the product's "core" range.
-Run demos. This means getting the shopowner to get you table space for gaming too!
-Be willing to put your money where your mouth is and get not just the army you're interested in, but a small sampling of the factions to let people see what there is.
It's a lot of work and it requires a patience and/or devotion of time and effort that not many people have available, and that's not even factoring in the whole bit about finding a friendly shop to work in tandem with.
Excellent points and quite true. I would add that finding such shops willing to take such risks is even harder when they are very few and far between.
I was "priced out" of gw-systems like 7 or 8 years ago. Not that i couldn t afford it, but like many here said that it didn t seem worth it value for money anymore. Plus i had gripes with the vector of the games going anyway. But value for money was the prevailent factor to start looking elsewhere.
I realized that a edition change would have cost me the same or more than starting a new subjectivly better tabletopsystem from scratch.(Moneywise not including hobbyhours). So i did it. I was very fortunate that a big enough part of my gaming group were doing the same.
I still own my painted fantasy and 40k armies, and will likely never sell them. I m still informing myself every once in a while about the gamestate and reevaluate if going back would be worth it. But the steady price increases tell me otherwise. Plus it's more than just the money now. Rules need to improve to to get me back.
Still was back for warhammer: underworlds season 1, but got priced out mid season 2 there as well... (by gws own blitzbowl no less, which scrates a similar itch for me)
Both great games btw.
Not to reignite the fire but yes GW is not a monopoly, as has been mentioned in some areas they do have quite a firm hold. That isn't just in market presence it's also in what a store will stock, and how hard it is to get a game traction as has been mentioned. Time factors in as well however and GW has stood the test of time and I'm sure many players, and buyers get into GW knowing how long they've been around as a sign a buy in isn't a waste of money or can't at worst be flipped and sold off easily enough.
If you play card games its a similar place as MTG is in. They simply are the longest lasting top dog of card games so when people see it, they see magic, Warhammer benefits from that same brand position. They got there and so far it stays in motion all its own. GW however also does well in having so many of their own stores that helps keep that ball rolling for them and their survival ends up a self fulfilled prophecy as does it being often the only game in town in you want to table top war game.
AngryAngel80 wrote: Not to reignite the fire but yes GW is not a monopoly, as has been mentioned in some areas they do have quite a firm hold. That isn't just in market presence it's also in what a store will stock, and how hard it is to get a game traction as has been mentioned. Time factors in as well however and GW has stood the test of time and I'm sure many players, and buyers get into GW knowing how long they've been around as a sign a buy in isn't a waste of money or can't at worst be flipped and sold off easily enough.
If you play card games its a similar place as MTG is in. They simply are the longest lasting top dog of card games so when people see it, they see magic, Warhammer benefits from that same brand position. They got there and so far it stays in motion all its own. GW however also does well in having so many of their own stores that helps keep that ball rolling for them and their survival ends up a self fulfilled prophecy as does it being often the only game in town in you want to table top war game.
Monopolies don't only exist on a global market. If, in one area, the only miniature game being sold and played is GW, then GW holds a monopoly in that area even though they don't have a monopoly throughout the entire world.
This is actually the norm rather than the exception for much of the history of capitalism.
If one day no-one else is logged in to dakka, does that mean you have a monopoly on posting to dakka?
Not really, right? You may temporarily be the only poster. You may even be the only poster for hours. But you have no way to leverage that status over anyone else. You can't stop me logging in two minutes later, or ten more people logging in later that evening.
If there are no barriers to another game or company competing with GW, and GW themselves are taking no steps to exploit their market dominance to crush potential competitors, then I don't see how calling them a monopoly has any value.
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They literally had an article about codexes on 
