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There are a lot of threads on why Games Workshop is bad ; there are a lot of threads on why GW fails at certain things while in other areas they exceed extremely well.

I'll discuss both briefly but go further into some basic fundamentals of the world surrounding not only publishing but also in game design.


The first major point is revision ; Yes games workshop does produce a "faq" of sorts but to describe it as lackluster at best and pandering at worst.

The second major point is that they do not have a complete grasp on the testing of their product.


The first thing we are going to examine is from a publishing and editorial stand point. From a publishing standpoint most of the products they produce other than the unfortunate incident with the new Space Marine product are good products in the term that they are printed on quality materials.

Almost every major publisher has a editorial staff; now as games workshops publishing is a set of rule along with material you have not only the job of matching and keeping rules from contradicting each other but also from eliminating bad grammar spelling mistakes etc..

How do most publishers handle this ; well if you examine most publishing companies produce what is called a Advance copy which has not gone through a final editorial process but is produced soley for the purpose of review by informed public and critics. An advance copy serves several purposes first it allows the public a preview and it also allows the company to " beta" test their product on how it will be recieved.

It also allows the company to correct any last minute mistakes looked over by the editorial team before the final product goes to press. Believe it or not alot of books get edited between the Advance copy and the Editorial copy.


Gamesworkshop completely ignores this convention; in fact if they had released a " advance copy " of the Space Marine codex they may have been able to catch the fact that the book disintegrates upon multiple viewings.

This is a pretty time honoured well ingrained part of a editorial process.

Now let's look at a point that Gamesworkshop also ignores which is a revisional process. Gamesworkshop does not release revised copies of their books. Instead they wait until a new product line.

This is pretty ridiculous when you consider that not only does it create profit revenue but also creates the ability to change as well as correct glaring mistakes that have been missed by the editorial process.


That's point one ; there is no real legitimate reason to not produce a revision, simply because as print works and is on a digital medium now before yes revisions were somewhat difficult , but most printing presses are actually just very elaborate large digital printers.

Meaning that your turn around on the product is not a long in depth time frame. A editor can correct with size font with in the same "bounderies" of the published material. As well as correct spelling errors.


There are revisions of almost all novels; why? Because no publisher is perfect whether there is a mistake with the type set being off on page 23 of the latest Stephen King novel.

Having worked somewhat in publishing and digital medium many people can tell you that most novels and for that reason comic books especially are held in a digital formate that is in a protective state.



Game Design ;

Games Workshop produces a set of rules that in itself are carried across multiple mediums and different codexes. Most interactive gaming companies now have a product phase called and I know this is a wild one Beta Testing. Where they release a unfinished product to the public , in order to access more input on said product and correct mistakes.

Its a fundamental process of many products produced by the gaming industry.

Why? Because your public the people many of who are proffesionals in their own right in your area, like to test product and contribute.

It's also a good way to get input on the product you are producings.

You won't see a MMORPG or even a multiplayer released usually without first going through a open beta phase.


What are its advantages?

It helps you , nothing more , nothing less. Its absurd to say that 10 people at one center can test all abilities without fail and create a perfect product.

It's neccessary as you cannot expand and explore all possibilities in a game of almost infinite combinational armies you can only attest to what is printed.


Anyway those are my two points as to why they fail as a gaming publisher not as a game in general. I think their product is excellent. However their delivery of said product is less than to be desired.


The points can be summed up ; why in the age of computers instant gratificication and almost instantaneous communication does 1. Gamesworkshop not produce advance copies . 2. Allow their players to play test a product.

It's sheer arrogance. Nobody and I mean nobody tells them that they don't poop rainbows.

I'm a slobbering fanboi for GW's table scraps....fail or not.

The problem is that you incorrectly see GW as a publisher, whereas GW correctly sees themselves as a miniatures company.

The fundamental disconnect between the two is why you have the mistaken impression that GW is "failing" as a games company.

For example, GW does a *lot* of work on "advance" copy, but as GW isn't a publishing company, their advance copies are of upcoming miniatures, like the FW Brass Scorpion or IG Valkyrie. This is what actually drives GW's advance release schedule.

Unlike, say, WotC for which pretty much everything they produce is either rules or background, GW sees rules as incidental, and background as secondary to the *real* product: miniatures.

Secondly, GW, not being in the rules publishing business, properly sees "Beta testing" as unnecessary and a waste of time. Most likely, they've reached the conclusion that:
- external testers don't uncover much of anything that isn't found internally
- external testers leak copies like a sieve that potentially depress hardcopy sales

To put it bluntly, it's not in their business model. They're a model company, not a game company. They treat everything, from top to bottom, as such. GW does not see a direct link between perfect game balance and sales. They're interested in selling models, not making the best game possible. And even saying that is simplistic.

Here's my example: What does a good games designer need? Well, a good games designer has a background in testing games, knows enough math to do mathhammer, (which requires an understanding of college level math) as well as the writing ability to write complete, well-written rules. He'd probably have a college education and a lot of experience in game testing. How much do you think this guy should make? How many resources do you think GW allocates for this? You really think someone with such qualifications is making peanuts at a mini company?

When writing rules, when all is said and done, just like in a magazine, you need an editor. This editor on top of requiring the skills that a magazine editor has, would also need to have a strong math background and an understanding of the game system itself. How much do you think this guy should be paid? How much do you think GW is willing to pay?

How about releasing rules for free for playtest? I love the idea, I love having codecies first put in white dwarf then revised later. It makes for a better game. It doesn't increase sales. That's the bottom line, and that's what the higher ups care about. We jokingly used to say, "THis is a place of serious miniature business." It's more true than I really care to admit. Blood angels codex in white dwarf sold lots of white dwarves, but had no increase in marine revenue. <- You think free is going to make this better?

You want it to happen? You need to prove to GW (not to me or on a message board) that public testing is worth the effort because it makes money. Everything they've done publicly such as forums has failed badly.

JohnHwangDD hit the nail on the head.

GW is a minatures company first. Everything else (including rules) is secondary.

This is also why so much emphisis is placed on the "hobby" as a whole (the terrain, the painting, the conversions) rather than the game itself. They make more money from selling minatures than they do rules so thats where their focus is.

Don't forget that GW is publically held. This may not seem like it would affect rules, but it does, and here is how: public investors want to see profits, and they want to see them now.

Small, closely held businesses can dedicate themselves to creating the perfect gaming system. Many companies have tried that, some have come close, but nearly all are out of business. GW produces something that's "good enough" and makes a huge profit. I wish the rules were better, but as long as they keep selling, GW isn't going to work overtime to improve anything.

Add in their business model, which sees rules as a vehicle to propel sales of minis, and it's simply a case of GW doing as little as possible to create rules that will sell.

But wouldn't a well written rule set lead to increased overall customer satisfaction with the game itself, which would in turn lead to increased purchases of those models as more people came into the game?

JohnHwangDD wrote:Secondly, GW, not being in the rules publishing business, properly sees "Beta testing" as unnecessary and a waste of time. Most likely, they've reached the conclusion that:
- external testers don't uncover much of anything that isn't found internally
- external testers leak copies like a sieve that potentially depress hardcopy sales

I'm not convinced they do internal testing, for that matter.

Well you may say that, you paint and still play their miniatures, this thread just makes all look like suckers.

If there were no books published by gamesworkshop then there would be no miniatures purchased.


As a publisher they fail pretty spectacularly.

The only thing that prereleasing betas etc. do is increase fervor for your product not take away from the product as a whole as the finished final product will be different.

From a design standpoint ; they just do not care about the opinions of their own player base otherwise they would probably release some sort of test phase for products.

It's only arrogance and a ultimate failing on their part.


On the note of revision. That is just common sense. If you produce a product that has agrievous errors in not only design but in grammar, interpretation etc..


Then you as a publisher generally release a revised edition of said rules or errata.


GW does none of these and does actually miss out on the income a revised edition of codexes would produce.

don_mondo wrote:But wouldn't a well written rule set lead to increased overall customer satisfaction with the game itself, which would in turn lead to increased purchases of those models as more people came into the game?

EXACTLY!

As an example, let's say they write a wonderfully balanced top tier codex for IG, making Commisars, Ratlings and Ogryns viable options due to points cost, special rules and how these units play out in the game. It's safe to say there would be an increase of sales for these items.

don_mondo wrote:But wouldn't a well written rule set lead to increased overall customer satisfaction with the game itself, which would in turn lead to increased purchases of those models as more people came into the game?

It might. That's a cost/benefit analysis question. All of our hunches over the last decade has been that GW sells far more models to non-gamers than we realize. If GW thinks that any increase in sales will be minimal, than there is no reason to invest in more playtesting. I was thinking about this. Let's assume GW wants to keep playtesting in house, but wants to run each new codex against every other codex 10 times. That's 160 games (assuming the codex has to play itself), or 320 games for two codices a year. Assuming two players can run two games per day (allowing time for administrative tasks) that's 320 man/days per year, or 64 man weeks, or 1.28 salaried years (assuming a 50 week work year for vacations and the like). Assuming $35k per year in salary that employee has an overhead of roughly $70k per year. So, to pay for one year of playtesting, it would cost (very roughly) $90,000. Assuming GW takes home 10% of a models price in net profit (a very generous estimate), that playtesting would need to sell $900,000 worth of product a year. They could save some money with open playtesting, but there are still costs in terms of running and administering such a program, not to mention the likelihood of security leaks.

I'd be hard pressed to claim that GW could sell that much more product with tighter rules. Better rules, maybe, but that's a different kettle of fish.

JohnHwangDD wrote:The problem is that you incorrectly see GW as a publisher, whereas GW correctly sees themselves as a miniatures company.

The fundamental disconnect between the two is why you have the mistaken impression that GW is "failing" as a games company.

I thought this was exactly the op's point? That they put their rules behind their other stuff?

Hollismason wrote: If there were no books published by gamesworkshop then there would be no miniatures purchased.

There's room to doubt this is true. Reaper producing a rules set is relatively new, I've yet to see Hasslefree produce rules, there are plenty of historical model companies that don't produce their own rules, etc. If GW didn't produce rules, people would still buy their models, either as models for other games(like D&D, Hordes of Things,etc.) or just as models(plenty of modelers do this with their vehicles, anyway).

Allow me to correct your Hollismason's statement.

Hollismason wrote: If there were no books published by gamesworkshop then there wouldn'y be anywhere near as many miniatures purchased.

whatwhat wrote:Allow me to correct your Hollismason's statement.

Hollismason wrote: If there were no books published by gamesworkshop then there wouldn'y be anywhere near as many miniatures purchased.

That is indeed true.

Platuan4th wrote:

whatwhat wrote:Allow me to correct your Hollismason's statement.

Hollismason wrote: If there were no books published by gamesworkshop then there wouldn'y be anywhere near as many miniatures purchased.

That is indeed true.

I personally will attest to this fact. My first experience with GW were their models, my first purchase being Lilith Hesperax...an excellent model btw. If I had not found out that there was a game for these figures I know I would never have purchased many more of GW figures. At the time, I was collecting Battletech figures as I like both the miniatures and the game. I'm sure I would have continued pursuing that game instead.

While saying that GW is primarily a miniature company is true, it's really distrespectful of GW to produce a convoluted set of rules in order to only stimulate miniature sales. It would be far better for them to liscense out their IP to a real game company so that a concise, cohesive set of rules could be made. At this point both their gaming rules and their miniatures go hand in hand and continuing to produce a disjointed rules system will only hurt them in the end. However, I've been part of this for 10 years or so now and I haven't seen GW change their ways and I doubt they ever will. One thing I can guarantee is how I will not be buying into a 6th ed. of this game unless GW pulls their heads out of their posteriers.

Perhaps the other part of the equation is that GW assumes that most of its customers will be in and out of the hobby before any game system problems become an issue. That's not to say that the designers don't care about the quality of their rules...I actually believe they do. But I'm not sure upper management wants them spending much time on things like FAQs or fine-tuning game balance. As long as a given rules set will keep a 13-year-old boy hooked for a year, I think management is fine with it, and tells the designers to move onto the next project.

Maybe the GW studio works completely differently than my workplace. But here, creatives like me don't have an open-ended amount of time or resources to work with. Sometimes we nail it within the given time frame. Sometimes we don't and aren't completely happy with the end result. But management usually ascribes to the "good plan today is better than a great plan tomorrow" philosophy, and isn't inclined to give us more time or resources to work out the kinks.

It's not hard to imagine that management doesn't want the designers spending time managing and compiling large amounts of playtest data, for instance. Especially if the target market is a teenager and resources are limited -- and they're in an environment in which customers are demanding a faster release rate.

People miss my point. It's not economically practical to do as you suggest. It'll never happen. Not because they don't want a better game, but because it doesn't improve the books (books I mean money). I used to think your way until I worked for them. They do "good enough" because it's not practical to do better. It's hardly arrogance. GW pays all their employees peanuts. They just don't have the resources to do as you suggest. Remember what I said about designer and editor? That's because it's true. You think even with extra playtesting things would be any better? I gurantee the game designers fail at mathhammer...

Hollismason wrote: How do most publishers handle this ; well if you examine most publishing companies produce what is called a Advance copy which has not gone through a final editorial process but is produced soley for the purpose of review by informed public and critics. An advance copy serves several purposes first it allows the public a preview and it also allows the company to " beta" test their product on how it will be recieved.

It also allows the company to correct any last minute mistakes looked over by the editorial team before the final product goes to press. Believe it or not alot of books get edited between the Advance copy and the Editorial copy.

Gamesworkshop completely ignores this convention; in fact if they had released a " advance copy " of the Space Marine codex they may have been able to catch the fact that the book disintegrates upon multiple viewings.

This is a pretty time honoured well ingrained part of a editorial process.

I'd be interested to know what size most ARC print runs are, and what size final first edition print run that normally corresponds to. I suspect, but have been unable to find any evidence, that the final print run of each individual codex might not warrant extensive use of ARCs.

Can you back up the statement that GW does not produce ARCs? I can't find any evidence that they do but you seem very sure. Is that true of all GW books, even the best sellers like the W40K and WFB main rulebooks?

Now let's look at a point that Gamesworkshop also ignores which is a revisional process. Gamesworkshop does not release revised copies of their books. Instead they wait until a new product line.

This is pretty ridiculous when you consider that not only does it create profit revenue but also creates the ability to change as well as correct glaring mistakes that have been missed by the editorial process.

This statement is factually incorrect as there are plenty of things in the 5th Ed Ork Codex errata that are printed correctly in my copy of the book. There are still one or two errors remaining, but there has been a clear effort to remove them based on a comparison with the errata. How extensive and effective their revision and reprint policy is can debated, but not its existance.

Unless, of course, GW deliberately put mistakes into their errata that do no really exist so that they look good!

That's point one ; there is no real legitimate reason to not produce a revision, simply because as print works and is on a digital medium now before yes revisions were somewhat difficult , but most printing presses are actually just very elaborate large digital printers.

Meaning that your turn around on the product is not a long in depth time frame. A editor can correct with size font with in the same "bounderies" of the published material. As well as correct spelling errors.

There are revisions of almost all novels; why? Because no publisher is perfect whether there is a mistake with the type set being off on page 23 of the latest Stephen King novel.

Having worked somewhat in publishing and digital medium many people can tell you that most novels and for that reason comic books especially are held in a digital formate that is in a protective state.

Books in general are far more likely to go through a larger number of reprints and to have a longer life cycle than codices. Comics are written with the intent of publishing in a monthly format then collecting into Graphic Novel format, so a review is a far more natural part of the process between stages.

Game Design ;

Games Workshop produces a set of rules that in itself are carried across multiple mediums and different codexes. Most interactive gaming companies now have a product phase called and I know this is a wild one Beta Testing. Where they release a unfinished product to the public , in order to access more input on said product and correct mistakes.

Its a fundamental process of many products produced by the gaming industry.

Why? Because your public the people many of who are proffesionals in their own right in your area, like to test product and contribute.

It's also a good way to get input on the product you are producings.

You won't see a MMORPG or even a multiplayer released usually without first going through a open beta phase.

An MMORPG can be withdrawn at the end of testing and people asked to pay. That is not an option with printed media. The long term ongoing release of material from GW also means that they do no have a finished product t any point to test. There are several strands of development going on at once, and even if you test product with everything that has currently been released, you will be unable to test it with other product lines that are also still in development. Games Workshop can and does test, but not to the extent you would like.

What are its advantages?

It helps you , nothing more , nothing less. Its absurd to say that 10 people at one center can test all abilities without fail and create a perfect product.

It's neccessary as you cannot expand and explore all possibilities in a game of almost infinite combinational armies you can only attest to what is printed.

A million people given a year would not be able to create a perfect product. Games Workshop themselves do not state their aim to be creating the perfect game, but to create a fun hobby. They have succeeded, in my opinion. Failure to be perfect does not preclude enjoyment.

Anyway those are my two points as to why they fail as a gaming publisher not as a game in general. I think their product is excellent. However their delivery of said product is less than to be desired.

I think you want too much from them. I doubt their mission statement requires them to fulfil the criteria you are judging them on. The enthusiasm with which their product is received attests to their success. Spending more on internal testing, delaying release time (and therefore profit) with beta testing and/or a more extensive copy-editing process will all result in more expensive products, as there are shareholders to satisfy. Your policies would achieve neither increased overall customer satisfaction (for you maybe, overall, no) nor bigger profits.

A larger issue exists in that GW is being asked to satisfy a vocal tournament audience when their main target audience is people who play at home.

The points can be summed up ; why in the age of computers instant gratificication and almost instantaneous communication does 1. Gamesworkshop not produce advance copies . 2. Allow their players to play test a product.

Answered, with barely any reference to the old chestnut that ARCs would devalue the final release product, as I am not convinced it is even true.

don_mondo wrote:But wouldn't a well written rule set lead to increased overall customer satisfaction with the game itself, which would in turn lead to increased purchases of those models as more people came into the game?

Only to the extent that rules are depressing sales.

The 40k5 rulebook is *very* well-written. GW added what amounts to a full 8+ or 16+ pages of nothing but rules clarifications based on the 40k4 FAQ, so the 40k5 ruleset is *extremely* tight. If you compare the rulebooks, it's amazing to see what GW learned during 4E.

With Apoc being the loosest ruleset that GW has released in recent memory, while driving massive revenue and profits, I think "well-written" is in the eye of the beholder. Apoc caters to a very different crowd than the traditional "rules" guys, and for them, Apoc saying "meh, screw the restrictions, go have fun!" is the best thing evah. For these players, Apoc *is* very well-written.

Given that 40k5 Apoc is driving revenue and actual overall profit, one concludes that GW's rules are more than adequate for the task at hand.


Now, you may argue that GW rules could / should be better. But that's almost certainly more of an issue with Codices, primarily older Codices. I won't disagree that GW could spend more time on rules. But if it doesn't drive revenue and profit, it's a hard argument to make when you're the one paying for the editing and playtesting and responsible for releasing product that makes money.

____

Hollismason wrote: If there were no books published by gamesworkshop then there would be no miniatures purchased.

The only thing that prereleasing betas etc. do is increase fervor for your product

If you produce a product that has agrievous errors in not only design but in grammar, interpretation etc..

GW does none of these and does actually miss out on the income a revised edition of codexes would produce.

Actually, there is a fair chunk of people who buy GW models strictly for painting purposes. Hence "the Hobby" and Golden Daemon painting competition.

Preleaseing Betas in the MMO world only generates cost to support a bunch of leeches who don't pay to play. As you can see from the huge batch of IG rumor releases and previews building steam, GW is pretty good at timing the sneak peeks of new models, and "rumors" releases. They don't need to "Beta" anything at all.

I love that you have a typo in your pro-editing sentence.

GW tried monetizing FAQs via Chapter Approved / Warhammer Chronicle annuals. GW stopped after about a year. One concludes that the number of people wanting FAQs are loud, but do not drive revenue.
____

namegoeshere wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:The problem is that you incorrectly see GW as a publisher, whereas GW correctly sees themselves as a miniatures company.

The fundamental disconnect between the two is why you have the mistaken impression that GW is "failing" as a games company.

I thought this was exactly the op's point? That they put their rules behind their other stuff?

I took the OP's point as that GW was failing because their rules weren't perfect, whereas I believe that GW is succeeding precisely because they don't waste any resources "perfecting" rules that don't need to be perfect.
____

Rymafyr wrote:My first experience with GW were their models, my first purchase being Lilith Hesperax...an excellent model btw.

It would be far better for them to liscense out their IP to a real game company so that a concise, cohesive set of rules could be made.

I will not be buying into a 6th ed. of this game unless GW pulls their heads out of their posteriers.

Lilith? Not bad as a giant-size Eldar - she scales to like 7 feet tall... Also, her default weapons didn't quite work for me.

GW maintains tight control over their core IP, so that won't happen. Also, it's just not in their interest to make the "perfect" game, as assuming such a game existed, there would be no future sales of revisions. GW is crazy like a fox.

OK, we'll see what happens come 6th Ed. You're going to sell your stuff at that point?

As much as I like to rag on GW for the quality of their rules, and such...there business model works. Which means that they can keep creating new models and developing the game.

How many gaming companies have been in business as long, without having to seek outside funding (i.e. acquisition by a larger company)?

Heck, there's some stuff that GW does that's distinctly British (and I have to say, that's not necessarilly a good thing).

John hit it on the head...GW is a miniature company that produces rules to drive sales. A perfect ruleset might conceivably increase sales slightly, but the effort required to produce that ruleset would likely be prohibitive in terms of cost/benefit.

Centurian99 wrote:John hit it on the head...GW is a miniature company that produces rules to drive sales.

Don't say that too loudly, otherwise Shummy might come in here and tell us we're all conspiracy nuts for thinking GW writes new rules to sell new models.

BYE

OK, here's question that we might want to ask ourselves:

How much have you spent on GW rules compared to GW miniatures?

If you spent more on rules, then it's possible that you could see GW as a rules company.

However, I'd guess that the average gamer spends easily 3 times as much on miniatures.

JohnHwangDD wrote:OK, here's question that we might want to ask ourselves:

How much have you spent on GW rules compared to GW miniatures?

Why? That's a dumb question.

BYE

Hi all.
I suppose I can see both sides of the argument.
My own take is that the rules are 'good enough/adequate.'

And most problems arise with interpritations of rules in Codexes/ Army books.
BUT asking for more time and resources to be spent on a 'secondary unquantifiable resource' is a bit optimistic.

However , I feel agrived that I pay premium price for a GW book with inconsistancies ambiguities and typos.( Perhaps this is the real issue with the OP?)

IF the main rules from the Codexes-Army books were available to down load online.And the devs could update them as and when required.

By all means relese a 'background book' with the new minatures , (with modeling and painting guides aplenty.)

But seperating the functional elements that NEED constant revision every few months , from background-modeling and painting that CAN wait 5 to 10 years for updates, just makes sense to me.

If you work out the % value spent on a 'codex rules' per 40k army (Assuming 20 pages actual rules 80 pages fluff-modeling painting )
Thats about £3 out of every £300 + on models and hobby suplies.

Could GW afford to lose 1% of 'Average Gamer Spend''if they retained gamers for longer , because the games become better through quick and easy revisions?

I think so.

TTFN
Lanrak.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Don't say that too loudly, otherwise Shummy might come in here and tell us we're all conspiracy nuts for thinking GW writes new rules to sell new models.

But that is what they do, isn't it. They profit off of basic human nature to want better.
They make a base ruleset imperfectly. Their customer base demands better or corrected rules.
So they make codices that are almost balanced except for base rule issues. Their customer base demands better base rulesets.
Then they write new base rules. The customers base demands up-dated codices to match the rules.

Note that every time I say demand what I'm really saying is, "sell us more".

Ever notice that you get a codex that your pretty happy with and can deal with even when new codices come out later. That's because they are only"maybe" minutely better and you can adjust with tactics or by buying models that you hadn't already.
Ever notice how you gripe about paying 20-25 dollars for the codex. Then GW releases a new base rule set fixing a lot(not all) of the problems from the last ruleset and creates a few new problems. These new problems have us clamouring for an update, yes actually begging GW to make us spend more money.
They do it time and time again because it is a very effective business model. There is no better testament to such than how well the company is doing in comparison to other businesses in this economic down turn. This is why I believe if they ever perfect the game, the company will die.


Edited for spelling and sentence structure.

I think focusedfire hit it on the head.

But I'll start from a different perspective. If GW is doing so many things wrong, how come they are leading this market? Mainly because they do a lot more things right than wrong, yet rarely anybody mentions them. But also, because several points are misunderstood:

Their lack of revisioning is not only great, because it sells newer books, as focusedfire pointed out. It is also great, because what needs to be revised changes with nearly every new book. And that is good. Bear with me for another paragraph, though...

For the same reason, I do not believe they do not test their new rules. The changes in the core rule book, for example, are brilliant. They did not break the average armies, yet they changed a lot about what is currently top notch.

This leads to a permanently changing gaming environment, vulgo: the "metagame". Why is that good? If you're about the game itself, do not tell me you change your army every time a new threat shows up.
Don't tell me you're secretly scrapping your lascannons for meltas because with 5th ed., LR became attractive again.

Guess what? With the new IG codex, there will probably a renaissance for weapons to kill light armour. If not with IG, then with DE. If you started scrapping anti-infantry-weapons, because ork players changed from boyz horde style to biker nobz, next stop will be another horde army. One that shoots, though currently there is an opinion that shooting sucks in 5th. We will be pretty surprised, I figure.

The new IG codex will be moaned as imbalanced and badly designed in some issues. But the result? New IG armies are sold. And parts of other armies are also sold, because you need to deal with the new threat.

Why are there still 3rd edition codices around? Because even if they are not updated, they have an influence on the game. deadshane1 has a threat going why so many people take up greyknights nowadays - I think because even though they were not updated, the 5th edition changed the system enough to make them attractive again. Every existing codex that is even remotely compatible (sorry, no chance for 2nd edition squats there) makes the game environment less stable. Which is good, because that sells models every time the scales tip again.

So: Their testing and their revisioning process are top notch. For GW's purposes. It is nothing you can compare to testing MMORPGs, because of the different handling of immaterial and material goods around which the companies are built: You have might build a new character and just hate the devs, but we get to change our army composition and say "thanks, I have to expand now!".

And that was only the take on the aspect of "serious gaming ". There are other points to be made about their handling of the fluff, black library, the handling of casual gamers, different age groups, the smart distinction between FW and GW and the relation of all these aspects (even how fluff influences soft scores that influence serious gamers).

But I think the OP's point dealt mostly with the first aspect.

Like people have previously said in this thread it seems obvious that with regards to profit GW makes their money from minis not rulebooks. The fact that many gamers may not like the rules or how they are presented or the lack of updates doesn't stop those player's from continuing to play the game.

It seems like everyone here still plays the game and that's essentially the key. Player's wanting better rules aren't going to stop buying minis or even rulebooks, but everyone else who is casually attached to the product is potentially more fluid in their purchases.

So out of all of GW's customer's it is us (people who post on forums like this) that are the least likely to ever leave them. That's why even though I might not like it I can at least understand why GW acts the way it does.