As title.
From issue 16, Warhammer Visions is changing format.
It says it will be twice the size. It's not clear from the note that came with the latest issue, if this is twice the size (length/width) or twice the size in number of pages.
I'm going to assume they're going back to an old WD size format.
Apologies if this is already known or posted in the wrong forum.
Added from reds8n:
Funny how they've gone to the trouble of making a mock up front cover of issue 10 in the new size. Why not just show us the cover of the next issue?
I think I'm one of the few people who still buy it, but that's only due to the fact I get it at the old White Dwarf subscription price.
I wouldn't pay the actual cover price.
I just find it a fun thing to flick through. I'm aware there are lots of photos on the web but after a full day in front of a screen, its nice to not stare at one in all of my free time.
If they try to push a new price on me or mess with the format too much, I'm out.
It was always dumb as hell to have the "pretty pictures" magazine in tiny format, you're showing off nice pics for goodness sake, make em big ! Plus the small format gets totally lost on a magazine shelf behind other normal sized magazines.
The cynic in me would also point out that the quote of the price remaining the same is in a message apparently to a subscriber meaning that they're not increasing the price for that group... not necessarily for those few who buy it off the rack.
I think I'm one of the few that didn't cancel their subscription. It's nowhere near as good as the old wd but I do like some of the sections, plus the subscription price is good.
I hope they improve the content as well as the format. Some of the sections are great (blanchitsu, parade ground), but some I could do without. The releases section is ridiculously long.
I'm rarely interested in White Dwarf, but it isn't' carried by many shops anymore over here, having been totally replaced by Visions, which I will never buy.
it is a beautiful layout on the iPad, using the iBooks format...
much better than the WD, which uses a standard PDF format, and looks horrible on the iPad...
i'm a big fan of Blanchitsu, and of seeing the Golden Demon entries...
so, personally, i prefer Visions to WD these days...
it's always nice to have a monthly injection of pretty GW pics to inspire me in Mexico, where mini painting only exists in one or two cities, far from the beach...
You know what might help the thing? Checking what people are actually paying for it. I cannot be the only person who's paying far less than they should.
I subscribed to a WD offer about seven years ago, by direct debit. I'm still getting Visions at roughly £2.50 an issue. At that rate I never bothered cancelling. I take a cursory flick through, show the pet chemist, and just cut the painting guides out of the back.
I have noticed that occasionally the folks behind writing it are paying less attention to it than I am. One of my past issues has several pages that just say:
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in multiple languages.
I do wonder if it's going well or not for them, I haven't seen one in a while as no one I know finds any value in it. Even our resident fanboy stopped buying forever ago.
So I don't realy see this change getting more sales where I am. So would still be waiting for a better magazine, as I still love having them and reading though others.
Just hoping that the new format will also bring slight changes in content.
The weakest part of Visions of today is 1/3 being numerous photos of the newest release(s).
I would prefer more Blanchitsu, Golden Demon, readers miniatures, conversions, etc.
Apple fox wrote: I do wonder if it's going well or not for them, I haven't seen one in a while as no one I know finds any value in it. Even our resident fanboy stopped buying forever ago.
So I don't realy see this change getting more sales where I am. So would still be waiting for a better magazine, as I still love having them and reading though others.
Well, in the latest half-year report, falling magazine sales were listed as one of the reasons behind declining revenues, so I'd imagine it's not going swimmingly.
It's a testament to how utterly gak WD has become over the past years, that people now actually prefer a magazine with just pictures in it.
I feel sorry for younger games these days that don't realise what they have missed, and what an active and important part of the wargaming hobby GW's publications used to be. Even years later those WD mags are still a great read and there are a number of them that I will continue to keep and treasure.
I have noticed that occasionally the folks behind writing it are paying less attention to it than I am. One of my past issues has several pages that just say:
#########################
#########################
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in multiple languages.
Holy cow! They apparently are funding the change by firing all the copy editors. That is spectacularly embarrassing. It's one thing to miss a tiny box of text somewhere on one page (though still bad) but to miss several whole pages?
But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
I don't usually hang on to year-old recycling, I am trying to remember why I kept this particular copy.
It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.
GW will never fix their magazine format until they give it actual content. They can rename, rebrand, split, and put as many pretty pictures in it as they want. It won't help. People want content.
A4 page size would be a big improvement, if only to get rid of all those horrible split-over-two-pages photos. But their claim of 'same price per page' is a bit strange, even given GW's limited grasp of the English language - personally I'd be happy with half the page count and double the page size.
The other obvious improvement would be to describe the contents on the cover (presuming they keep the mag in its porno-style plastic bag) - currently potential customers can't see what's in it, which hardly helps casual sales...
Maybe the next innovation will be to combine WD and Visions into one magazine, so there'll be something for everyone. With a healthy price-rise, of course.
Kirasu wrote: VIsions is great for people who like to PAY money to do google searches.
It would almost make sense if the execution of the concept didn't suck. A lot of people pay money for books of images they could get online for free because there's more to enjoying art than just having access to a digital copy of it on your computer screen. But instead of making a decent art book that would be worth the money we get a bunch of low-effort pictures of the same boring models GW uses in every other place, along with stuff like this:
yeah,
Other people don't like it... meh sucks to be them.
I enjoy Visions as a hobby catalyst, I find the variety in the collected images inspiring.
It's easy to pick up for 10 mins between painting something without going online and searching for stuff.
Kirasu wrote: VIsions is great for people who like to PAY money to do google searches.
Not true. Most of the content in it isn't available on the internet, at least without sifting through tonnes and tonnes rubbish.
Even if it was, it's a fairly common thing to have someone curate content for you. Look at every fashion magazine ever created. In your opinion everyone that read that should have looked at the clothes of the people walking down the street beside them.
The only time I've ever picked up Visions was when Orks were featured. I still thumb through my copy looking for inspiration when I'm about to start a new painting project.
Unless there is another Ork-centric issue, I doubt I'll be picking up another one any time soon, even if the pages are larger in size.
Panic wrote: yeah,
Other people don't like it... meh sucks to be them.
I enjoy Visions as a hobby catalyst, I find the variety in the collected images inspiring.
It's easy to pick up for 10 mins between painting something without going online and searching for stuff.
Panic...
I think that, from the issue due this Saturday, they will be featuring more Armies on Parade from gamers rather than staff so there may be some good ideas on display.
Not true. Most of the content in it isn't available on the internet, at least without sifting through tonnes and tonnes rubbish.
That must have changed at some point, then. Because what was shown of the first few issues was all Demon winners and studio photos from the webstore.
Yeah that's the stuff I dislike. But blanchitsu, parade ground, sprues and glue, army of the month, kit bash make up a large portion of the magazine. For the price I'm paying, it's worth it.
Even the Golden Demon winners section adds to it actually, because I'd rather look at printed photos of the models than on my computer screen. I spend the rest of my day doing that.
Making the pages bigger doesn't change the fact that it's just a picture book with no content. How sustainable is that month after month for what they charge? I'd be interested to know the sales figures, I can't imagine they're good. It doesn't help that it's competing against the weekly WD which has words in it.
And I say competing because I'd be even further surprised if there were many people buying both. A month's worth of WD and Visions is about £20, that's a hell of a lot to get your GW fix given the poor quality of what is produced, that you can get great hobby content free online, and the fact that prior to all this WD was about £5 a month.
Kind of reminiscent of when Cadburys made a stealth size reduction by changing packaging, and then six months later trumpeted about how they were increasing the size... To something that was still less than they had started with.
Howard A Treesong wrote: Making the pages bigger doesn't change the fact that it's just a picture book with no content. How sustainable is that month after month for what they charge? I'd be interested to know the sales figures, I can't imagine they're good. It doesn't help that it's competing against the weekly WD which has words in it.
And I say competing because I'd be even further surprised if there were many people buying both. A month's worth of WD and Visions is about £20, that's a hell of a lot to get your GW fix given the poor quality of what is produced, that you can get great hobby content free online, and the fact that prior to all this WD was about £5 a month.
There's lots of "photo book" type magazines out there and about that price however they usually run quarterly. And often have articles as well as the pretty pictures. The paper is usually of a higher quality also.
It won't make me buy it. This weeks WD was the first I bought in a long time. And only for the Skitari stuff. Ill pick up the next two but after that it will probably be ignored again.
I subscribed to a WD offer about seven years ago, by direct debit. I'm still getting Visions at roughly £2.50 an issue. At that rate I never bothered cancelling. I take a cursory flick through, show the pet chemist, and just cut the painting guides out of the back.
Harriticus wrote: GW will never fix their magazine format until they give it actual content. They can rename, rebrand, split, and put as many pretty pictures in it as they want. It won't help. People want content.
Clang wrote: But their claim of 'same price per page' is a bit strange, even given GW's limited grasp of the English language - personally I'd be happy with half the page count and double the page size.
I'd suggest you go back and read the letter that was shown. The comment about "price per page" was made by Malika2, presumably tongue in cheek
Harriticus wrote: GW will never fix their magazine format until they give it actual content. They can rename, rebrand, split, and put as many pretty pictures in it as they want. It won't help. People want content.
Sites like this, a hundred others like dakka, video blogs like BOW and of course the internet = the golden days becoming a distant memory. I miss the old WD as well, but the world's moved on since then.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Sites like this, a hundred others like dakka, video blogs like BOW and of course the internet = the golden days becoming a distant memory. I miss the old WD as well, but the world's moved on since then.
I don't think that's true. One, back in the day, WD had modelling and painting content that beats the living daylights out of anything you can find on the net in terms of general quality of presentation. Two, it contained a lot of content that the net simply cannot provide. Mostly additional rules that always had the flair of "it came from the Studio" rather than being yet another house rule, often twinned with a nice background piece and a modelling challenge. But there was also stuff like "The tale of four gamers" and the like, something that doesn't really exist anywhere else, net or not.
Most of all, we're not exactly hard to please. Give us some rules, a few pretty pictures, a nice conversion guide, maybe a sneak peak here and there and we're going to pay.
I mean, if it was just the net killing print media, we'd be having the same old WD in cheap digital format or via regular updates to the site. But we don't.
But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
I don't usually hang on to year-old recycling, I am trying to remember why I kept this particular copy.
It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.
Lol, good thing all that empty space is so prominent on the pages but the actual model halfway disappears in the page crease. You're buying that magazine for the former, right?
Harriticus wrote: GW will never fix their magazine format until they give it actual content. They can rename, rebrand, split, and put as many pretty pictures in it as they want. It won't help. People want content.
Sites like this, a hundred others like dakka, video blogs like BOW and of course the internet = the golden days becoming a distant memory. I miss the old WD as well, but the world's moved on since then.
Has it?
I'm a faithful buyer of both No Quarter and Wargames Illustrated, they have all the different types of content that WD used to have 20 years ago and both seem to be pretty successful publications. Why would a WD based on that type of content fair any worse than the current, contentless generation of the magazine(s)?
Dicrel Seijin wrote: The only time I've ever picked up Visions was when Orks were featured. I still thumb through my copy looking for inspiration when I'm about to start a new painting project.
Unless there is another Ork-centric issue, I doubt I'll be picking up another one any time soon, even if the pages are larger in size.
Which issue was that one? Might put up an eBay search for it...
Dicrel Seijin wrote: The only time I've ever picked up Visions was when Orks were featured. I still thumb through my copy looking for inspiration when I'm about to start a new painting project.
Unless there is another Ork-centric issue, I doubt I'll be picking up another one any time soon, even if the pages are larger in size.
Which issue was that one? Might put up an eBay search for it...
The current issue (14?) has a marvelous Ork Army in it. The centerpiece battle wagon seems to be made of every 40K plastic kit going.
The Warlord Big Mek's mega armour makes him the size of a Knight!
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Sites like this, a hundred others like dakka, video blogs like BOW and of course the internet = the golden days becoming a distant memory. I miss the old WD as well, but the world's moved on since then.
I don't think that's true. One, back in the day, WD had modelling and painting content that beats the living daylights out of anything you can find on the net in terms of general quality of presentation. Two, it contained a lot of content that the net simply cannot provide. Mostly additional rules that always had the flair of "it came from the Studio" rather than being yet another house rule, often twinned with a nice background piece and a modelling challenge. But there was also stuff like "The tale of four gamers" and the like, something that doesn't really exist anywhere else, net or not.
Most of all, we're not exactly hard to please. Give us some rules, a few pretty pictures, a nice conversion guide, maybe a sneak peak here and there and we're going to pay.
I mean, if it was just the net killing print media, we'd be having the same old WD in cheap digital format or via regular updates to the site. But we don't.
You and I could do tale of four gamers tomorrow if we wanted too. It's not rocket science. I disagree with you about painting tutorials as well. On youtube, that buy painted guy (amongst others) does brilliant tutorials. As for GW battle reports, I don't miss the days of a new army release always winning the battle report just because they had new stuff out.
Harriticus wrote: GW will never fix their magazine format until they give it actual content. They can rename, rebrand, split, and put as many pretty pictures in it as they want. It won't help. People want content.
Sites like this, a hundred others like dakka, video blogs like BOW and of course the internet = the golden days becoming a distant memory. I miss the old WD as well, but the world's moved on since then.
Has it?
I'm a faithful buyer of both No Quarter and Wargames Illustrated, they have all the different types of content that WD used to have 20 years ago and both seem to be pretty successful publications. Why would a WD based on that type of content fair any worse than the current, contentless generation of the magazine(s)?
I don't doubt their success, but they are pretty niche. Print magazine sales have been falling year on year since the 1990s. Given GW's financial woes, I doubt if they'd want to sink that much money into supporting their magazines.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: You and I could do tale of four gamers tomorrow if we wanted too. It's not rocket science
I'm sure we could. I'm not sure our presentation would be anywhere close to what WD offered back in the day.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Given GW's financial woes, I doubt if they'd want to sink that much money into supporting their magazines.
Well, they used to have an open Studio that created most of the content naturally just by operating, as well as a host of independent contributors. All they had to do was pay a few editors to put it together. Now they seem to be monetizing every scrap of content that comes out of the Studio and have no freelancing contributors, as far as I can tell.
I'd wager we'd be back to quality WD every month if they could just let the creative people be creative again.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: You and I could do tale of four gamers tomorrow if we wanted too. It's not rocket science
I'm sure we could. I'm not sure our presentation would be anywhere close to what WD offered back in the day.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Given GW's financial woes, I doubt if they'd want to sink that much money into supporting their magazines.
Well, they used to have an open Studio that created most of the content naturally just by operating, as well as a host of independent contributors. All they had to do was pay a few editors to put it together. Now they seem to be monetizing every scrap of content that comes out of the Studio and have no freelancing contributors, as far as I can tell.
I'd wager we'd be back to quality WD every month if they could just let the creative people be creative again.
We live in an age of quality cameras at decent prices, quality web cams at decent prices, open source software for desktop publishing, crowdfunding etc etc
It would take some work, but it wouldn't be that hard to get the equipment together to produce magazine quality battle reports.
I subscribed to a WD offer about seven years ago, by direct debit. I'm still getting Visions at roughly £2.50 an issue. At that rate I never bothered cancelling. I take a cursory flick through, show the pet chemist, and just cut the painting guides out of the back.
We live in an age of quality cameras at decent prices, quality web cams at decent prices, open source software for desktop publishing, crowdfunding etc etc
It would take some work, but it wouldn't be that hard to get the equipment together to produce magazine quality battle reports.
I suspect more people don't do that because alot of folks aren't willing to pay directly for that from indy sources. There are wargaming magazines out there but they've increasingly become single company rags with the indies largely going either to modelling more than gaming (those customers do seem a bit more willing to pay for painting equivalent of porn) or going free online downloads. In the modern era of blogs, forums, and youtube channels, the battle reports you get from those free sources are "good enough" for most folks.
I subscribed to a WD offer about seven years ago, by direct debit. I'm still getting Visions at roughly £2.50 an issue. At that rate I never bothered cancelling. I take a cursory flick through, show the pet chemist, and just cut the painting guides out of the back.
You have a pet chemist?
Spoiler:
Doesn't everyone?
In all seriousness, I live with a veteran formulation chemist. I mostly keep him around because what the man doesn't know about stripping could be written on a very small piece of card (and you know, liking him a lot).
Some day I'll coerce him into writing up a stripping guide and word it up nicely in the tutorial/article section.
Automatically Appended Next Post: ...By which I mean a guide on the chemical ingredients to look for/avoid on SDS and packaging. metals vs plastics and resins and how to avoid setting paint residue onto things.
...and not you know, poles and dollars.
I subscribed to a WD offer about seven years ago, by direct debit. I'm still getting Visions at roughly £2.50 an issue. At that rate I never bothered cancelling. I take a cursory flick through, show the pet chemist, and just cut the painting guides out of the back.
You have a pet chemist?
Spoiler:
Doesn't everyone?
In all seriousness, I live with a veteran formulation chemist. I mostly keep him around because what the man doesn't know about stripping could be written on a very small piece of card (and you know, liking him a lot).
Some day I'll coerce him into writing up a stripping guide and word it up nicely in the tutorial/article section.
Automatically Appended Next Post: ...By which I mean a guide on the chemical ingredients to look for/avoid on SDS and packaging. metals vs plastics and resins and how to avoid setting paint residue onto things.
...and not you know, poles and dollars.
But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
I don't usually hang on to year-old recycling, I am trying to remember why I kept this particular copy.
It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.
Wow... I try not to participate in piling on about GW, but seriously - that pretty clearly shows they don't know what the heck they're doing regarding this publication.
It's smart to put it back at the original size, so at least they're fixing the mistake.
But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
I don't usually hang on to year-old recycling, I am trying to remember why I kept this particular copy.
It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.
Wow... I try not to participate in piling on about GW, but seriously - that pretty clearly shows they don't know what the heck they're doing regarding this publication.
It's smart to put it back at the original size, so at least they're fixing the mistake.
But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
It's not something to have learned, even assuming none of the staff had even had a media course or a half day "how to make a magazine" seminar down the local job centre, they'd know that you at least look at it before hitting print to make sure it's not total crap, especially when you're new to it.
I'm (maybe incorrectly) also assuming someone at GWHQ flicked through this before it went live and they still decided not to pull it.
It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.
That's nothing to do with A5 format, that's just a complete lack of any effort or consideration at all. If they can mess that page up so badly at A5, they'll mess it up just as badly in A4. That's a criminal level of white space as well considering the text. It's a pretty standard single page editorial amount, but that's assuming it'll have half a page of text around it.
My only conclusion is that GW just don't care, it's a magazine, some people will buy it and they are keeping the old subscribers because whilst it's terrible, it's not so terrible they are willing to cancel a £3 direct debit.
The main focus of the page (the miniature) is lost in the page fold. That's like taking a photo and cutting off an inch strip from the centre line.
The main image doesn't fill the page, there's a huge amount of wasted space. There's a term used "negative space" which is empty space in an image to allow the editor to add text in without affecting the image, so in that one the photo is taken with the aim of fitting a good hundred or so word description around.
What they should have done is moved the image to one side to avoid the fold and cropped as tightly as they can to show more miniature, or taken a few other shots from different angles and super-imposed them on the blank spaces.
I'm assuming they've been given a format to work with that just doesn't fit what they are trying to do, and no-one bothered to question it.
But I'll be square with you, having checked the cover, it's issue #3 from April 2014, so they may have learned from it by now.
I don't usually hang on to year-old recycling, I am trying to remember why I kept this particular copy.
It's also home to this fantastic example of why they shouldn't be allowed near A5 format.
Wow... I try not to participate in piling on about GW, but seriously - that pretty clearly shows they don't know what the heck they're doing regarding this publication.
It's smart to put it back at the original size, so at least they're fixing the mistake.
Can someone explain to me why the picture is bad?
I know its bad but why is it bad?
In the world of fashion/women's magazines etc, you would be shot dead if you presented a photograph like that in a magazine. GW's approach is an embarrassment.
We live in an age of quality cameras at decent prices, quality web cams at decent prices, open source software for desktop publishing, crowdfunding etc etc
It would take some work, but it wouldn't be that hard to get the equipment together to produce magazine quality battle reports.
I suspect more people don't do that because alot of folks aren't willing to pay directly for that from indy sources. There are wargaming magazines out there but they've increasingly become single company rags with the indies largely going either to modelling more than gaming (those customers do seem a bit more willing to pay for painting equivalent of porn) or going free online downloads. In the modern era of blogs, forums, and youtube channels, the battle reports you get from those free sources are "good enough" for most folks.
You hit the nail on the head. We live in an age where people get free music from youtube, free films from dubious sources, and an age where some people resent paying for books.
It's hard to see anybody but the most loyal followers paying for a wargames magazine, when there are tons of sites like Dakka floating around.
To be fair books are expensive these days. I still buy them because I don't like reading off a screen but I do kinda resent buying them. Personally I always pay for music, the only time I've downloaded music is when ive bought a vinyl and wanted it on my iPod as well, and quite often I impulse buy magazines, so if they made a decent magazine I'd probably buy it. I'm not sure if I'm an anomaly or if you're underestimating the amount of people who would buy them (probably the first one) but either way even I'm not going to pay £7.50 for Visions. I could almost get a book for that.
hing to have learned, even assuming none of the staff had even had a media course or a half day "how to make a magazine" seminar down the local job centre, they'd know that you at least look at it before hitting print to make sure it's not total crap, especially when you're new to it.
The technical term for the dead space is "gutter". The technical term for the way the magazine is constructed is "perfect bound", as opposed to the stapled "saddle stitch" of the weekly version.
When you design a magazine you construct templates, which would have both copy and picture boxes further away from the gutter for a perfect bound magazine, which can't open fully in the way a saddle-stitched mag can. And of course you'd know not to run a photo across a spread where the action takes place in the gutter. It's a basic principle of magazine design.
Sadly it's not the only incompetent aspect of the magazines. Their staff are ignorant of basic grammar and don't, for instance, employ anyone who knows the difference between principle and principal. We buy lots of expensive magazines in our family, but Visions isn't to be compared and, as pointed out before, there's a disconnect between the small format, and the luxurious image they aspire to. Small magazines were designed for women's handbags and have never worked for men's magazines (Jack, the only one to have launched in that format, from the fella who launched Loaded, was a notorious failure).
You hit the nail on the head. We live in an age where people get free music from youtube, free films from dubious sources, and an age where some people resent paying for books.
It's hard to see anybody but the most loyal followers paying for a wargames magazine, when there are tons of sites like Dakka floating around.
The thing is though that some people still value edited works and commentary. The internet content is essentially unfiltered and likely 80% crap. It's fine with pictures because it's easy to tell, but for actual editorial stuff there's still a lot of benefit in getting a professional to compile and edit stuff for you into something coherent, high quality and interesting.
The other wargaming magazines manage this, with a good mix of accurate news, event coverage, themed issues and the propogation of ideas, all in a well written and consistent way.
WH:V does not one of that though, so it's hardly surprising it's struggling, especially since I forgot it costs £7. I can get a paperback novel for that.
Maybe I'm an old grognard, but when starting a new project (gaming era, work technology, whatever), I usually go and get a book for the serious research, and then try to supplement it from the internet when I've got a better gauge of what's useful and what isn't.
To put simply:
This is a miniature painting spotlight. There is a figure to the left of the guy in blue. Can you see him? Well enough to appreciate how he is painted?
The entire book is full of these layouts, including several pages that you have to turn sideways to see the chopped image. I'm not out to purely trash the book, I buy the book. But it hurts from many perspectives to see my WD subscription reduced to this.
WD used to be something cool. I ended up buying several back issues for Judge Dredd RPG scenarios I wanted, and couldn't resist reading the rest. Humour, charm and I could gush for several minutes about there being a soul to the publication. Absolutely unrecognisable in comparison to the magasine I started buying in 2007. Could that format survive now? Maybe not, but there's certainly room in the world for it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Christ on a bike. £7.50? Even by my shoddy math, I'm paying under half, and have been since launch.
Sites like this, a hundred others like dakka, video blogs like BOW and of course the internet = the golden days becoming a distant memory. I miss the old WD as well, but the world's moved on since then.
I don't doubt their success, but they are pretty niche. Print magazine sales have been falling year on year since the 1990s. Given GW's financial woes, I doubt if they'd want to sink that much money into supporting their magazines.
Exclusive gaming content and quality articles instead of photographs, would sell the magazine. It would certainly sell more of it than just pretty photos. And I imagine production and distribution of a single magazine is cheaper than two they currently put out with little content in either.
Clang wrote: The other obvious improvement would be to describe the contents on the cover (presuming they keep the mag in its porno-style plastic bag) - currently potential customers can't see what's in it, which hardly helps casual sales...
This keeps people from just walking into the store, reading it/flipping through it, and putting it back on the shelf....which people did all the time with the white dwarf, before they started sealing it individually..
The best visions I've seen are the ones where they throw in modeling and conversion stuff, or different painting techniques or tutorials that you won't see anywhere else.
Here's 4 pages in the middle where we show how we made this really cool looking demon prince from various bits and a model! Here's a bunch of a painting things on how to paint nids (probably from the white dwarf team, or 'eavy metal, on their color schemes. or here's some variations on the "offical color schemes" that also look cool.)
Give us more of that. Give us illustrations..wouldn't that be great? I don't think we see much of those in the new format codexes now, unless you get a limited ed.
Clang wrote: The other obvious improvement would be to describe the contents on the cover (presuming they keep the mag in its porno-style plastic bag) - currently potential customers can't see what's in it, which hardly helps casual sales...
This keeps people from just walking into the store, reading it/flipping through it, and putting it back on the shelf....which people did all the time with the white dwarf, before they started sealing it individually..
Well yeah, I often walk into WHS or where, flick through a mag to see if theres anything of interest this month and then decide whether to buy or not based on the 2 min "preview" or a look at the contents page. Sealing the copy just means I'll bypass altogether.
Men just standing there reading the full mag (and it is normally men) in the shop are bloody irritating though!
This keeps people from just walking into the store, reading it/flipping through it, and putting it back on the shelf....which people did all the time with the white dwarf, before they started sealing it individually..
The best visions I've seen are the ones where they throw in modeling and conversion stuff, or different painting techniques or tutorials that you won't see anywhere else.
But if you can't flick through it (or even see the cover properly because of the slip claiming to be from White Dwarf), how do you know if that issue contains something you'd want to pay for? For a £3 magazine it's maybe worth a gamble anyway, but when it's nearly twice the price of every magazine next to it, it's a much braver gamble.
Do the free readers make up a significant majority anyway? If it's a GW store, then you've got someone in for a while (I'd be inclined to keep an open store copy for people to read in the store, it might encourage ancillery sales like paints or mini's from people who would otherwise not come in or buy the magazine. My FLGS has WD:W in it's library and I usually flick through it over coffee/lunch), if it's a newsagent, would they have bought it anyway?
Herzlos wrote: But if you can't flick through it (or even see the cover properly because of the slip claiming to be from White Dwarf), how do you know if that issue contains something you'd want to pay for? For a £3 magazine it's maybe worth a gamble anyway, but when it's nearly twice the price of every magazine next to it, it's a much braver gamble.
Do the free readers make up a significant majority anyway? If it's a GW store, then you've got someone in for a while (I'd be inclined to keep an open store copy for people to read in the store, it might encourage ancillery sales like paints or mini's from people who would otherwise not come in or buy the magazine. My FLGS has WD:W in it's library and I usually flick through it over coffee/lunch), if it's a newsagent, would they have bought it anyway?
I have no idea. Presumably, in a GW store anyway, that's why the GW manager, is supposed to have one, read it themselves, and tell you all about why you should buy one. As for your FLGS, I doubt GW even thinks about how the sales should go out there, or they just leave it up to however the independent stores should do things.
I spend most of my time in a GW store, (the other store that I would wargame at is on the other side of town) and I don't know if they even bother carrying visions, or very many copies of the white dwarf anymore.
I have a subscription as of the beginning of this year, and I've wondered sometimes if it's even worth picking up the visions. Do I want to see the golden demon winners? Yes. Am I annoyed that they're showing me the same armyscape models they showed me in the white dwarf? Yes. Why do I buy visions? Painting is the biggest part of the hobby for me...I will spend more time on painting than anything else.
Visions never sells out at the GW store, and unless something drastically changes, I doubt it ever will.
I can see GW having lots of problems making a profitable hobby magazine without external money coming in by selling advertisment space. So they went for the weekly advertisment mag and the monthly advertisment mag advertising their own products. I had a subscription of the UK issue from 1992-1997 and the mag had bad issues even then - based on the same problem. I hated all the codex extracts and low effort articles they put into WD.
Currently I only buy Warhammer Visions - second-hand with 50-80% off - and for me it is a collection of Golden Demon/Blanchitsu/Kitbash-articles which I - at that price - consider worth it.
Visions is like a comeback of the Fantasy Minatures books from 1988-1990 which contained only photos of Golden Daemon and 'eavy Metal painted miniatures (heavily converted and well painted) and even after all those years they are indeed worth browsing through and getting inspiration.
I think the Weekly White Dwarf is not the direction the mag should have taken. But the problem started in 1987 - when they went GW products only. So going back to the good days of 99-2004? Yes please. But how is that going to be profitable with such a strong competitor, the internet? Within the strict mindset of Games Workshop's way of doing business - not at all
They say bad news comes in threes. Well, so does good news!
The new-look Warhammer Visions 16 is out tomorrow in Games Workshop stores, independent stockists and right here on the Games Workshop webstore. And so is White Dwarf issue 66, which features an Imperial Knight Warden on the front cover, a new breed of Knight for the war-torn battlefields of the 41st Millennium. The issue also includes a stage-by-stage painting guide for House Raven, full rules for using a Knight Warden in your games, a new mission for fighting Knight battles, a showcase of Imperial Knights we’ve been painting, an in-depth look at heraldry and insignia and a FREE POSTER featuring a complete guide to the Citadel Painting System, explaining what colours work best together and which act as the natural Layers, Shades and Drybrushes for each other. Whether you’re new to painting or a brush veteran, you’ll doubtless find some useful tips on this poster.
And the third bit of good news? From tomorrow, you’ll be able to subscribe to White Dwarf!
No matter where you are in the world, you can have White Dwarf delivered direct to your doorstep in the week it comes out. You won’t even have to leave the house to get hold of your favourite hobby magazine every week.*
The full details for setting up a White Dwarf subscription will be available on the Games Workshop webstore tomorrow morning alongside all the latest new releases. You can even set up a subscription for both White Dwarf and Warhammer Visions, ensuring you never miss an issue of either.
Schlyne wrote: Yes. Am I annoyed that they're showing me the same armyscape models they showed me in the white dwarf? Yes. Why do I buy visions? Painting is the biggest part of the hobby for me...I will spend more time on painting than anything else.
Visions never sells out at the GW store, and unless something drastically changes, I doubt it ever will.
I got my first copy last week.. I was staggered how much was repeated from elsewhere. Was looking for Ork inspiration, it simply repeated paint guides from the weekly, likewise most of the GW models - the pages pimping product used most of the same photos as the weekly.
There were some inventive Nid conversions, which still had mould and glue lines visible, and around six nicely painted Nobz. If I'd paid retail, would have been £1 for each interesting page.
I could not quite understand why Visions held no interest for me when I had bought WD for years in the past.
I think it is because I can google anything of interest and see MORE inspiring things made from my fellow hobbyists.
In comparison, what I see in Visions is almost depressing: it just seems as blatant marketing not all that well done that they have the audacity to charge money for.
Typically I can separate the artist behavior from the art they produce but GW the company seems to have soured the product for me to some degree with their tactics or methods.
It is sad really because I still keep an eye on them because so much of the product in the past was awesome and I keep hoping they revisit those past methods.
It is an improvement over the small format and is something that I will continue to received for two reasons:
1. Sometimes I just want to look at something that isn't on a screen (Yes I do recognise that you can trawl through the web for better)
2. I still get it for £3.00 an issue. Would I pay the full cover price? Probably not.
Example pages below:
Obviously with the larger format, it may stand out more on the shelf. I only tended to notice it on WH Smiths' shelves as I went for Wargames Illustrated and found it hidden behind other mags.
Golden Demon still remains in the magazine and they do now have a Reader's Army on parade section. The larger format should eliminate the problem illustrated by the example of the Empire weapon earlier in the thread as the photos can be landscaped on the one page.
The gatefold section still remains. I've included the base for my half-built Dunecrawler for scale.
To sum up, it still won't be for everyone. The new version is better but worth the cover price?
Sooooo they continued by not including the painting tutorials that were present on first editions of visions?
I used to buy visions ( got 10 of them) because when Im painting or on the sofa sometimes I dont want to look at another screen and just chill with a magazine. I stopped because the content even on Visions became less diversified and they stopped including the painting tutorials. I know how to paint but Im clueless about the new paint names of the new GW paints, so those guides helped me identify the colours I wanted.
There is a painting guide section in issue #16, Navarro. In this video review you can see the entire magazine - from W6-Tabletop.at (in german with a lovely austrian accent )
NAVARRO wrote: This visions is a big improvement from previous
No pun intended?
I don't know if I'd call it a "big" improvement, but the larger format definitely makes more sense considering this was intended to be a miniatures showcase and not much else...bigger pages to show off pretty pictures. I'm surprised it took them this long to realize that, actually. After a while I assumed they were just going to stubbornly stick with the tiny mag because they were deathly afraid to admit they had made a mistake.
NAVARRO wrote: Another thing I noticed is that it had nothing for fantasy or Lotr ?
Well I imagine you won't be seeing LotR/Hobbit again.
This visions is a big improvement from previous, the bigger size makes all the difference. I like this one. Paint splatter is back again too, nice.
Another thing I noticed is that it had nothing for fantasy or Lotr ?
Generally visions shows off whatever was released in the previous month in the first few pages and then whatever else is included... It's pretty rare that we get LOTR/hobbit models..usually they only show up if somebody did a golden demon presentation. There's a few fantasy models in there. Last month was a solid 40k release though, IIRC, so no big splash of models in the first few pages.
The bigger size really shows that they should have been going with this from the beginning.
Yup, the new A4(-ish) size is a big improvement - I only counted one 'picture cut off in the middle by the magazine spine' ugly. No idea why they ever did the old A5 format, or took 16 issues to work out that it wasn't working.
The new format also condescends to tell you what's inside - gasp! As they've kept the plastic bag wrap to stop you seeing inside, this matters a lot. Personally I'd change the back cover to also show small sample pics of the content, but you can't have everything
I bought the latest visions today and I like it! I would never buy it on the regular, I got this one because I am specifically building a Skitarii army.
The pictures are so big you can see the brushstrokes on the studio models, making it an invaluable painting guide imo
i've only ever got Visions in the iPad version, which has been laid-out beautifully since the first issue...
i was shocked to come back to the US, and see it was so dinky in print...
for a mag that is all about showcasing beautiful pics of painted models, the small format doesn't make any sense...
good to see they have gone bigger...
i'll be sticking with the iPad edition, though...
as a traveler, i love not having a stack of books and mags that is always growing bigger and heavier...
i still love print, but now that i can have all my content on a small device i have more room in my pack for paints and models...
You're all missing the point with photo that's been featured a few times in this topic. It's obviously a subtle hint at things to come. It's the last fragment of the Warhammer World, see? All the rest has winked out of existence, hence the huge white void. Now the helblaster and it's crew are being sucked into a Chaos rift...
Herzlos wrote:
The thing is though that some people still value edited works and commentary. The internet content is essentially unfiltered and likely 80% crap. It's fine with pictures because it's easy to tell, but for actual editorial stuff there's still a lot of benefit in getting a professional to compile and edit stuff for you into something coherent, high quality and interesting.
The other wargaming magazines manage this, with a good mix of accurate news, event coverage, themed issues and the propogation of ideas, all in a well written and consistent way.
Amen. I'm always checking Eason's in Belfast for the next issue of W:SS, and go straight to the columns by Rick Priestly (who he?) and Richard Clarke. Not to mention the other columns and editorials, potted histories, scenarios, showcases of suitable manufacturers' minis for said histories and scenarios, interviews, reviews, etc. Painting is usually limited to 'here's how the cover diorama was made', usually in a Dallimore/Dean-ish style which makes me yawn, but GW's painting articles bored me too since 'Eavy Metal gave way to Paint Splatter and the base-layer-wash, lather-rinse-repeat thing. To me it's a small sacrifice (as Herzlos says, the internet is fine with pictures, especially pictures intended to make me go 'wow, what a huge overpriced lump of plastic! I must buy a dozen!') compared to some of the insights and possibilities in gaming I get.
I've now had my first encounter with this magazine and with GW's iPad products, bought issue 16 for iPad, downloaded it, and it will only show me the table of contents/splash page with none of the links or sidebar bookmarks being functional.
ph34r wrote: I've now had my first encounter with this magazine and with GW's iPad products, bought issue 16 for iPad, downloaded it, and it will only show me the table of contents/splash page with none of the links or sidebar bookmarks being functional.
Yay. Is this normal?
not in my experience...
i've never had a problem with any of their iPad edition products, whether a mag, novel, or Codex...
strange...
try deleting it, and reloading...
maybe it had a glitch in the download process...
ph34r wrote: I've now had my first encounter with this magazine and with GW's iPad products, bought issue 16 for iPad, downloaded it, and it will only show me the table of contents/splash page with none of the links or sidebar bookmarks being functional.
Yay. Is this normal?
not in my experience...
i've never had a problem with any of their iPad edition products, whether a mag, novel, or Codex...
strange...
try deleting it, and reloading...
maybe it had a glitch in the download process...
cheers
jah
Tried re-downloading a bunch, did nothing, finally unlocked my iPad and put it into portrait mode, and it worked. Apparently if you are in landscape mode the file just isn't useable at all.
if your screen is not locked in landscape, the page pops up to show you how to orient the iPad...
i never lock my screen, so i didn't even think of that being the issue...
regarding this publication.
