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GW are looking at growing the player base, and that's exactly what Conquest and the various licensed games are about. They've embraced the new media with Warhammer TV (on youtube and twitch) and marketing and community relations are massively better.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Also concur with Doc re the X-Wing prices, it has a faint wiff of trying it on a bit with newer players as they may well assume thats just what they have always cost, or maybe the Mouse has upped his cut

To be fair, part of that price increase is just matching inflation. That $15 expansion when X-Wing was first released in 2012 should cost $16.70 based on inflation alone. It's only a 22% price increase over inflation, hardly something to inspire tinfoil hattery about FFG's plans to rip off the poor ignorant newbies.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Also concur with Doc re the X-Wing prices, it has a faint wiff of trying it on a bit with newer players as they may well assume thats just what they have always cost, or maybe the Mouse has upped his cut

To be fair, part of that price increase is just matching inflation. That $15 expansion when X-Wing was first released in 2012 should cost $16.70 based on inflation alone. It's only a 22% price increase over inflation, hardly something to inspire tinfoil hattery about FFG's plans to rip off the poor ignorant newbies.

Maybe, its just with the £ being so variable us Airstrip 1 dwellers usually have to concede a direct £1=$1 on top of inflation

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
No I didn’t?

Sorry Doc, my mistake, that wasn't you. There were a few later posters who gave that impression. Sorry.

GW are also reaching out with their schools program; their new adventure books for kids, computer games and such. GW is honestly very good at growing the market- certainly within the Wargaming fantasy/scifi world I'd say that they are probably the only one really pushing to grow the market.

Many others are either too small and thus rely more on the established market; or they are like Privateer Press; kind of big but not big enough; and with the recent scrapping of their print magazine, most of their own forums and also their Press Ganger system; its almost like they've pulled back from actually wanting to grow their customer base let alone the market base.

Then you have some like Reaper, who are big but are more interested in just serving the current market; and that's fine they fit within and do branch out cross platform to other miniature needs. But to my eye its GW who are really pushing to actually tap into new markets and new customers and draw people into the world of miniature wargaming.


GW appear very acutely aware that its their own death if they fail to bring in new customers. Lego has managed to hang on by attaching itself to films both in models and in computer games; meanwhile Meccano (once one of the biggest toys) is all but dead.
I think GW managed to maintain a bubble of protection for itself in retaining long term customers, but they've tasted the pill of losing them through the latter years of the Kirby era and I think its given them a strong resolve to not just support their customers, but also grow their customer base so that they are not wholly reliant on a continually aging customer base (who can easily leave to other hobbies or lifes distractions).

 Henry wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
No I didn’t?

Sorry Doc, my mistake, that wasn't you. There were a few later posters who gave that impression. Sorry.

No worries dude

Amazing what a bit of PR smoke and mirrors will do.

 Overread wrote:
GW are also reaching out with their schools program; their new adventure books for kids, computer games and such. GW is honestly very good at growing the market- certainly within the Wargaming fantasy/scifi world I'd say that they are probably the only one really pushing to grow the market.

Many others are either too small and thus rely more on the established market; or they are like Privateer Press; kind of big but not big enough; and with the recent scrapping of their print magazine, most of their own forums and also their Press Ganger system; its almost like they've pulled back from actually wanting to grow their customer base let alone the market base.

Then you have some like Reaper, who are big but are more interested in just serving the current market; and that's fine they fit within and do branch out cross platform to other miniature needs. But to my eye its GW who are really pushing to actually tap into new markets and new customers and draw people into the world of miniature wargaming.


GW appear very acutely aware that its their own death if they fail to bring in new customers. Lego has managed to hang on by attaching itself to films both in models and in computer games; meanwhile Meccano (once one of the biggest toys) is all but dead.
I think GW managed to maintain a bubble of protection for itself in retaining long term customers, but they've tasted the pill of losing them through the latter years of the Kirby era and I think its given them a strong resolve to not just support their customers, but also grow their customer base so that they are not wholly reliant on a continually aging customer base (who can easily leave to other hobbies or lifes distractions).

Yeah, GW tend to introduce young people to the hobby as a whole. But it seems to have broadened out even further.

Hell, last time I was in GW there were not just women hobbying and gaming, but a woman in her 60s chilling and assembling nids with no accompanying kids while a couple of young muslim people, one wearing the hijab, played AoS. Basically a scene that would give some people on Dakka nightmares.

If GW does make the crossing to completely mainstream it would be a massively expanded market and playerbase, and probably lead to even more product lines (I think the boxed games and continued cycling of supplementary starters like Tooth and Claw and Forgebane would happen more frequently to shift even more big boxes).

 ekwatts wrote:
Bad news for those who like to herald the imminent dissolution of GW.

Those are cultists of Nurgle encouraging entropy and decay.

 Arbitrator wrote:
Amazing what a bit of PR smoke and mirrors will do.

Can we get some clarification?

Gosh. It took til the second page for the smoke and mirrors thing to roll out.

Look. GW was a big bad guy for a while there. Nobody is denying that. They recorded some poor profits, too. Their financials fluctuated. Some were good, some were bad, some were really bad. Maybe in five to ten years, had they continued to record such poor/negative profits they'd have folded. I'm not saying they wouldn't have. But we're talking some seriously sustained, damaging financials here. And that never seemed to be the case, even in the darkest days of the Kirby reign.

Somebody mentioned Woolworths. GW outlasted nearly hundred year old department stores through the financial crash (yeah, yeah, apples to oranges, they're a niche store in a niche hobby) with very few stores closures. Correct me if I'm wrong but they actually expanded into previously untapped foreign markets during this period too, didn't they? GW have chopped and changed and closed a few stores here and there, but they never once appeared to be in the sort of retreat you're seeing with, for example, Homebase, or HMV.

Context is also important, of course; while the changes GW have made have been important, the boardgame and wargames markets of 2018 are quite different to 2015, or 2010, or 2005...

What I find most interesting is that GW effectively halted their customer engagement due to the toxicity of the... for want of a better word... fanbase. If anything, the GW fanbase set the template for the toxicity we see now with other fanbases, such as with Star Wars, Rick and Morty, and so on. And just when those other toxic cesspools appeared to be reaching critical mass, GW suddenly decided it was time to open themselves up a little bit again. That's pretty much what this thread represents to me, drowning out the negative with the positive. Those old voices that ripped into the GW financial threads with their stone tablets of impending (like, maybe tomorrow? Or, like, next year? But DEFINITELY IN THE FUTURE AT SOME POINT DEFINITELY) doom have simply been drowned out. Which is great!

If they want to hang on to the idea that maybe their portents might have come true in a hypothetical what-if scenario, or even the arrogant idea that some top spod at GW happened to come across a GW financials thread on Dakka (or Warseer, or Facebook, or Bolter and Chainsword...) and read some unsolicited advice that helped turn the company around...

That's fine!

You do you.

It's probably worth its own discussion, but I honestly think a lot o the more modern "toxicity" is actually not fanbases going toxic on their own. I think its online social media interactions as companies learn how to manage dealing with a social interaction system that can bite back hard.

They have to learn how to talk to and how not to talk to fans; how to respond to situations that can spiral out of all reason and logic within a day and also accept that such situations can fizzle out on their own a day later. The Internet is super fast and even a handful of fans with free time can barrage any social media platform and create an atmosphere of toxicity unless effective moderation is in place.


I think that's what many geek hobbies are learning to have to deal with. It's not actual toxic problems; its dealing with a very vocal and very influencial segment of the market in a way that deflates rather than defeats them.

Nah nah nah, that's far too sensible. Fans are just whiny entitled (man)babies, innit. The problem is entirely unique to online geek fandom and nowhere else ever has these exact same issues. They never have a point. They never have a legit grievance. The IP owner is always right, and if you don't like it then good, haha, suck it you loser for having any connection to something beyond affected apathy.

And because this is the internet - yes, sarcasm, I'm not actually deriding whole groups of people over the actions of a tiny minority in the desperate, vain hope that Corporate Senpai will notice me.

Yes, GW is doing well financially. Why that is, I'm still trying to understand. Or rather, why it is that the few changes they've made have been enough, why it is that what they offer is seen as desirable by so many.

Because all we wanted, ultimately, was to feel like we were being listened to, and it feels like they are doing that.

No more, no less.

Ben2 wrote:
If GW does make the crossing to completely mainstream it would be a massively expanded market and playerbase, and probably lead to even more product lines (I think the boxed games and continued cycling of supplementary starters like Tooth and Claw and Forgebane would happen more frequently to shift even more big boxes).

Let's see how well Space Marine Adventures sells in the mainstream stores this Christmas season. It strikes me as a good idea to increase exposure outside of the gamer niche market.

Carlovonsexron wrote:
Because all we wanted, ultimately, was to feel like we were being listened to, and it feels like they are doing that.

No more, no less.

Hmmm.... Really? Years of poor balance, high prices, generally dumb decisions-including destroying the Old World after mismanaging the game- and all it takes is PR? When I read their posts/articles or watch a video they come off as incredibly dishonest and inauthentic to me. I don't believe they're listening, or are trying their best to make great games with great models; their actions say otherwise. Were they listening when they said KtT would have deep squad customization, and then didn't deliver? Or when they brought Necromunda back, but broke up its rules so you would pay multiple times for the same product? What about deep, balanced rules- at least to the point where how you use your minis is most important? Or being able to buy kits at a fair price? Those awful paint pots? i'm not being sarcastic here, I'm just puzzled that the larger issues have remained unresolved and yet their profits have surged.

Carlovonsexron wrote:
Because all we wanted, ultimately, was to feel like we were being listened to, and it feels like they are doing that.
.

Meh. I just wanted them to do a good job on rules, I didn't care if they listened to the thousand different opinions of people online.
I don't really feel like they've done that, and while there have been several big releases, the overall quantity seems... less. Or at least less things I wanted.
Or things I wanted that they completely screwed up, like Necromunda or AT.

I've gotten excited about a few things when the marketing first hit, but by the time they've come out I haven't cared enough to buy them, which doesn't sound like a good job.

 ekwatts wrote:
GW did what any business needs to do when they start registering a fall in profits: Change direction.

Yeah... that's what I said, but it's not what you said.

What you said was "Ha! The doomsayers were wrong!", which is a meaningless statement. It'd be like saying "Ha! And they thought eating 10 Big Macs a day and drinking nothing but Coke was going to kill you!" to a 400 pound man turned elite body builder. He'd reply "Yes, it would have, eventually, but I changed.".

Because GW changed.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ekwatts wrote:
GW did what any business needs to do when they start registering a fall in profits: Change direction.

Yeah... that's what I said, but it's not what you said.

What you said was "Ha! The doomsayers were wrong!", which is a meaningless statement. It'd be like saying "Ha! And they thought eating 10 Big Macs a day and drinking nothing but Coke was going to kill you!" to a 400 pound man turned elite body builder. He'd reply "Yes, it would have, eventually, but I changed.".

Because GW changed.

Have they, though? I see the same old problems persist. Sure, they talk to us now, but it isn't dialogue, it's marketing-speak. It remains to be seen how this new attempt at organized play goes. The games aren't any better, they're just different than they were, really. They're only cheaper if you can use all the contents of SC and other boxes, and even then the price is still well above the value of the contents. They still fix problems with bandaids rather than addressing the deeper issues with the ruleset. Model-wise there have been technical improvements, but the overall aesthetic quality of the sculpts has declined. Kits have fewer modeling options available, as things have begun to shift towards monopose kits (presumably to accommodate the busier sculpts). Remember having 2-3 sculpts to choose from for HQ guys? They don't do that so much anymore. The names of things have become downright stupid. Space Marines became de-valued, at least in the lore, with the arrival of Primaris. Their behavior isn't that different, now they just do it with a smile on their face instead of silence occasionally broken by an incoherent rant from kirby.

 Overread wrote:


Many others are either too small and thus rely more on the established market; or they are like Privateer Press; kind of big but not big enough; and with the recent scrapping of their print magazine, most of their own forums and also their Press Ganger system; its almost like they've pulled back from actually wanting to grow their customer base let alone the market base.

The Press Ganger program was shut down due to that MTG judge lawsuit. It was nothing to do with whatever PP's current situation is.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Overread wrote:


Many others are either too small and thus rely more on the established market; or they are like Privateer Press; kind of big but not big enough; and with the recent scrapping of their print magazine, most of their own forums and also their Press Ganger system; its almost like they've pulled back from actually wanting to grow their customer base let alone the market base.

The Press Ganger program was shut down due to that MTG judge lawsuit. It was nothing to do with whatever PP's current situation is.

As I understand it it was shut down due to the lawsuit happening, but no legal action had been brought against PP itself. I am aware that there were some issues with the PG system, but at its core it was a solid concept and I was surprised that they removed it and didn't replace it with some kind of similar structure or system to help local areas promote the game.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Dunno. If they’d been growing at 5% a year only, sure. But they’ve made frankly impressive growth well into double figures for at least a couple of years now. That’s pretty hatstand in the world of business. 53% in one six month period, with profits rising from £13,800,000 to £38,000,000. Again, all with no debt to be serviced. That money is theirs!

Here’s another slightly more recent article, in which it’s reported GW’s value (in shares, I presume? I’m not very business literate) topped £1,000,0000,000.

But it's not that outstanding when compared to the log term performance of GW overall. It looks good on paper at the moment because it is effectively comparing the very low point of GW and it's current position. For example if we look at the pre-tax profits of GW since 2006

2006 - 3.7m
2007 - (2.9m) loss
2008 - 1.1m
2009 - 7.5m
2010 - 16.1m
2011 - 15.4m
2012 - 19.5m
2013 - 21.4m
2014 - 12.4m
2015 - 16.6m
2016 - 16.9m
2017 - 31.3m
2018 - 74.5m

So if you compare growth between 2006 and 2012 profit levels increased by over a factor of 5. A comparable growth over the following six years would have been close to £100m. As such from this perspective it isn't that impressive that their current profit is (only) 74.5m. It is still short of what you would have expected from a steady growth compared to the proceeding years. The figures also show just how volatile the market can be where you can go from a 2.9m loss to a 16.1m profit in just three years. That was still a much larger growth than we have seen now.

What I would suggest is that this short term growth that is being referenced is rather short sighted because they are still not back to the position they should have been had the company not been severely mismanaged in the mid teens. Of course this perhaps should not be surprising that short termism of the current capitalist mechanisms in place would highlight the success in this way. However this growth should not really be confused with successfully expanding. It should be more considered as successfully recovering from a bad position. Nevertheless the volatily shown in the figures show that success now can be short lived and that these significant profits could quickly shrink again.

 Yodhrin wrote:
And because this is the internet - yes, sarcasm, I'm not actually deriding whole groups of people over the actions of a tiny minority in the desperate, vain hope that Corporate Senpai will notice me.

I think the difficulty is in deciding who are the genuine fans with valid criticisms, who should be listened to, and who are the ideological fringe nuts and St Petersburg Troll Factory goons, who absolutely should not. Especially when the line between those two groups can be genuinely fuzzy.

 Duskweaver wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
And because this is the internet - yes, sarcasm, I'm not actually deriding whole groups of people over the actions of a tiny minority in the desperate, vain hope that Corporate Senpai will notice me.

I think the difficulty is in deciding who are the genuine fans with valid criticisms, who should be listened to, and who are the ideological fringe nuts and St Petersburg Troll Factory goons, who absolutely should not. Especially when the line between those two groups can be genuinely fuzzy.

And even more fuzzy when the latter group can entice the former into making similar remarks/style of posting. This is without considering duel accounts when people attempt to push an agenda by repeat posting the same sort of comment/theme under multiple names - granted that is rarer, but it does still happen.

It creates a very muddy water when you've got people who are not your target market or customers complaining heavily about products. Take the recent announcement that GW was making a few kids books and the outrage by some online in reaction to that news. Most of those reacting were not even the target market nor related to the target market (parents) and I seem to recall there were some "threats" thrown around too.

That latter part can be really shocking to people who just work on writing books or making models or doing artwork. Ergo they are not flogging baby seals; just doing stuff for a game, and they are getting very hostile and threatening behaviour from random internet people.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Also concur with Doc re the X-Wing prices, it has a faint wiff of trying it on a bit with newer players as they may well assume thats just what they have always cost, or maybe the Mouse has upped his cut

To be fair, part of that price increase is just matching inflation. That $15 expansion when X-Wing was first released in 2012 should cost $16.70 based on inflation alone. It's only a 22% price increase over inflation, hardly something to inspire tinfoil hattery about FFG's plans to rip off the poor ignorant newbies.

True. I was just using X-Wing as a comparison because I'm familiar with the game and the contents. As it happens, Underworlds compares favourably in terms of 'bang for your buck' against X-Wing, but that doesn't mean X-Wing is a gouge. You're still getting (for the most part) a really nice model of a usually iconic ship.

Plus, inflation aside, there's also the USD/GBP issue, which regularly hits Your Benevolent Colonial Overlords right in the pocket. Nothing to be done about it like, and it's not FFG or GW's fault either.

Unless you're Australian, in which case GW's conversion is hatstand. And possibly Radio Rental.

 Overread wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
And because this is the internet - yes, sarcasm, I'm not actually deriding whole groups of people over the actions of a tiny minority in the desperate, vain hope that Corporate Senpai will notice me.

I think the difficulty is in deciding who are the genuine fans with valid criticisms, who should be listened to, and who are the ideological fringe nuts and St Petersburg Troll Factory goons, who absolutely should not. Especially when the line between those two groups can be genuinely fuzzy.

And even more fuzzy when the latter group can entice the former into making similar remarks/style of posting. This is without considering duel accounts when people attempt to push an agenda by repeat posting the same sort of comment/theme under multiple names - granted that is rarer, but it does still happen.

It creates a very muddy water when you've got people who are not your target market or customers complaining heavily about products. Take the recent announcement that GW was making a few kids books and the outrage by some online in reaction to that news. Most of those reacting were not even the target market nor related to the target market (parents) and I seem to recall there were some "threats" thrown around too.

That latter part can be really shocking to people who just work on writing books or making models or doing artwork. Ergo they are not flogging baby seals; just doing stuff for a game, and they are getting very hostile and threatening behaviour from random internet people.

The authors got death threats and threats against their families, and when they said that was not ok people piled in to say that having people threaten your kids was part of writing a book for children and what did they expect.

There are some people who are very heavily invested in toy soldiers not being welcoming to women, children and people who aren't white and want to create and maintain that as the community outlook. I'm not saying that's wrong, as that would be a political statement and isn't allowed on Dakka.

It's a bit like South Africa. The party that introduced apartheid won without the majority of votes but due to districting, but they were then able to get people who didn't support apartheid and would stand up to it to leave until they were the majority and could oppress and kill black people to their hearts content.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Also concur with Doc re the X-Wing prices, it has a faint wiff of trying it on a bit with newer players as they may well assume thats just what they have always cost, or maybe the Mouse has upped his cut

To be fair, part of that price increase is just matching inflation. That $15 expansion when X-Wing was first released in 2012 should cost $16.70 based on inflation alone. It's only a 22% price increase over inflation, hardly something to inspire tinfoil hattery about FFG's plans to rip off the poor ignorant newbies.

True. I was just using X-Wing as a comparison because I'm familiar with the game and the contents. As it happens, Underworlds compares favourably in terms of 'bang for your buck' against X-Wing, but that doesn't mean X-Wing is a gouge. You're still getting (for the most part) a really nice model of a usually iconic ship.

Plus, inflation aside, there's also the USD/GBP issue, which regularly hits Your Benevolent Colonial Overlords right in the pocket. Nothing to be done about it like, and it's not FFG or GW's fault either.

Unless you're Australian, in which case GW's conversion is hatstand. And possibly Radio Rental.

Yeah, GW lost £4 million in a year due to the pound dropping like a stone. Any business would have to put in place a plan to counter act that.

Australia is a special case as they have to get the stock to Australia, past the pirates and the warboys, and then Master Blaster takes a cut when they do sell it, all of which drives the prices up.

Blastaar wrote:
Have they, though? I see the same old problems persist. Sure, they talk to us now, but it isn't dialogue, it's marketing-speak. It remains to be seen how this new attempt at organized play goes. The games aren't any better, they're just different than they were, really. They're only cheaper if you can use all the contents of SC and other boxes, and even then the price is still well above the value of the contents. They still fix problems with bandaids rather than addressing the deeper issues with the ruleset. Model-wise there have been technical improvements, but the overall aesthetic quality of the sculpts has declined. Kits have fewer modeling options available, as things have begun to shift towards monopose kits (presumably to accommodate the busier sculpts). Remember having 2-3 sculpts to choose from for HQ guys? They don't do that so much anymore. The names of things have become downright stupid. Space Marines became de-valued, at least in the lore, with the arrival of Primaris. Their behavior isn't that different, now they just do it with a smile on their face instead of silence occasionally broken by an incoherent rant from kirby.

Oh don't get me wrong, they haven't changed nearly as much as people seem to think they have - the latest scumsucking move with FW is a great example of that kind of corporate double-speak and obfuscation they have always been excellent at - but they did change how they operate, completely changed one of their product lines and brought back tons of older games (and made lots of new ones) to generate more sales.

From a rules diversity and miniature perspective they have made great strides to improve themselves, and they have finally embraced the Internet as something more than a necessary evil or a fad. And this is reflected in their improved success.

Unfortunately people tend to see the shiny surface and don't realise that it's still much the same in GW land.

Sometimes its not so much that people can't see the problems but that they choose to focus on the positive aspects rather than the negative. It's possible to sometimes focus so much on the negative that it dampens enthusiasm and interest which can lead to a very sour community and person.

So some of the joy is just that; its enjoying the good bits. Not ignoring the bad, just not focusing on it all the time

It's hard not to focus on the negatives when the prices go up 30%-70% overnight.