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It crossed my mind. Jervis Johnson is oft seen as the face of the Games workshop hobbies.

He's an experienced war gamer and is undeniably devoted to the hobby he loves.

I think we'd see him drop prices, and work with the consumer more than how it works now, and giving a decent level of mediation between the two groups.

Of course, he'd have difficulty dropping prices or doin' to much movin' and shakin', but he's right now powerless.

However, I believe that Jervis is the epitome of what we want for our 'Wish-gamesworkshop' to coin a phrase.

Then again, I may be horribly wrong.

thoughts?

I think this has always been the case.

The fact of the matter is that GW is a HOBBY, and the CONTENT is made by hobbyists, who care about the HOBBY.

However, it is RUN and the MONEY is made by non-hobbyists, who care about the MONEY.

Those who run the company, and those who run 'the content' seem to be continually at odds from my perspective, and I doubt this is going to change any time soon...

Leigen_Zero wrote:I think this has always been the case.

The fact of the matter is that GW is a HOBBY, and the CONTENT is made by hobbyists, who care about the HOBBY.

However, it is RUN and the MONEY is made by non-hobbyists, who care about the MONEY.

Those who run the company, and those who run 'the content' seem to be continually at odds from my perspective, and I doubt this is going to change any time soon...

But they also stay in business.

-Many game stores are run by hobbyists with no business sense, and go away after a few years.

-Many game manufacturers get off the ground with a great product, and are then run into the ground because no one
is minding the business. Businesses make a profit, or they go away.

Some of my favorite games will never see the light of day again, the company is gone and bankrupt. I have dozens of friends that owned stores that I haven't seen at tradeshows in years, because they failed to keep their stores going.

So while there are a boatload of things I wished GW did differently, if I suddenly was magically in control of the company, I wouldn't change them all to what I wanted unless I could make sure first that they wouldn't trade long term stability for a little bit of short term good will.

On the subject of dropping prices. I remember only recently hearing that in Canada the train system was in trouble financially due to the high cost of tickets. A new owner came in and imediately dropped the ticket price and lo and behold people started using the trains again. AND; they are making a profit.

Slipstream wrote:On the subject of dropping prices. I remember only recently hearing that in Canada the train system was in trouble financially due to the high cost of tickets. A new owner came in and imediately dropped the ticket price and lo and behold people started using the trains again. AND; they are making a profit.

Cutting prices is not always the best idea. Especially in isolation of other measures that need to be taken.

As a rule of thumb:

If your profit margin is 30%
and you reduce your sell price by 10%
You must increase your sales volume by 50% just to make the same amount of profit as before.

Reduce by 30% and you need to increase your sales volume by 600%.

And that is just for gross volume.

Added value is the key.

Whoever is in charge needs to be able to work with shareholders and keep the majority of its customer base happy.

Mr. Burning wrote:

Slipstream wrote:On the subject of dropping prices. I remember only recently hearing that in Canada the train system was in trouble financially due to the high cost of tickets. A new owner came in and imediately dropped the ticket price and lo and behold people started using the trains again. AND; they are making a profit.

Cutting prices is not always the best idea. Especially in isolation of other measures that need to be taken.

As a rule of thumb:

If your profit margin is 30%
and you reduce your sell price by 10%
You must increase your sales volume by 50% just to make the same amount of profit as before.

Reduce by 30% and you need to increase your sales volume by 600%.

And that is just for gross volume.

Added value is the key.

Whoever is in charge needs to be able to work with shareholders and keep the majority of its customer base happy.

But at the moment, GW is losing sales, and making up for it by increasing prices and slashing other expenditures (1 man stores, for example). A price decrease certainly would do more good than harm at this point.

As for Jervis, I think the guy should wash his hands to get the stink of GW off of them, and move on to better things. It seems to me that a lot of ex-GW guys are now working on other, better products. Priestly helped produced Hail Caesar!, Cavatore is with Mantic now, and even Jervis helped to write the Black Poweder ruleset. GW seems to be bleeding talent.

infinite_array wrote:

Mr. Burning wrote:

Slipstream wrote:On the subject of dropping prices. I remember only recently hearing that in Canada the train system was in trouble financially due to the high cost of tickets. A new owner came in and imediately dropped the ticket price and lo and behold people started using the trains again. AND; they are making a profit.

Cutting prices is not always the best idea. Especially in isolation of other measures that need to be taken.

As a rule of thumb:

If your profit margin is 30%
and you reduce your sell price by 10%
You must increase your sales volume by 50% just to make the same amount of profit as before.

Reduce by 30% and you need to increase your sales volume by 600%.

And that is just for gross volume.

Added value is the key.

Whoever is in charge needs to be able to work with shareholders and keep the majority of its customer base happy.

But at the moment, GW is losing sales, and making up for it by increasing prices and slashing other expenditures (1 man stores, for example). A price decrease certainly would do more good than harm at this point.

As for Jervis, I think the guy should wash his hands to get the stink of GW off of them, and move on to better things. It seems to me that a lot of ex-GW guys are now working on other, better products. Priestly helped produced Hail Caesar!, Cavatore is with Mantic now, and even Jervis helped to write the Black Poweder ruleset. GW seems to be bleeding talent.

Trust me, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes these days. If the staff follow the new way properly, there won't be a problem much longer, believe me.

I doubt we'll hear about it but I'd like to see what Jervis makes of all those letters(mine included) complaining about GW's decisions, I doubt he's happy about any of them. The problem is that if anyone takes over GW they will have a hell of a mess to sort out and could they salvage it?

Or not being in a position to do anything about them, just ignores them?

I think they are the same person. I've personally never seen them in the same room together and if anyone were to post a picture of them in a room together, I would claim that it was a photoshop.

That is all...

mikhaila wrote:

Leigen_Zero wrote:I think this has always been the case.

The fact of the matter is that GW is a HOBBY, and the CONTENT is made by hobbyists, who care about the HOBBY.

However, it is RUN and the MONEY is made by non-hobbyists, who care about the MONEY.

Those who run the company, and those who run 'the content' seem to be continually at odds from my perspective, and I doubt this is going to change any time soon...

But they also stay in business.

-Many game stores are run by hobbyists with no business sense, and go away after a few years.

-Many game manufacturers get off the ground with a great product, and are then run into the ground because no one
is minding the business. Businesses make a profit, or they go away.

Some of my favorite games will never see the light of day again, the company is gone and bankrupt. I have dozens of friends that owned stores that I haven't seen at tradeshows in years, because they failed to keep their stores going.

So while there are a boatload of things I wished GW did differently, if I suddenly was magically in control of the company, I wouldn't change them all to what I wanted unless I could make sure first that they wouldn't trade long term stability for a little bit of short term good will.

I have to agree here. GW needs suits. As much as we like to blame them, lets face it creative run shops fail too often. But I think the balance is off right now, way to much business without the insight of the actual gaming community.

kronk wrote:I think they are the same person. I've personally never seen them in the same room together and if anyone were to post a picture of them in a room together, I would claim that it was a photoshop.

That is all...

It isn't possible to take pictures of vampires.

Andrew1975 wrote:I have to agree here. GW needs suits. As much as we like to blame them, lets face it creative run shops fail too often. But I think the balance is off right now, way to much business without the insight of the actual gaming community.

I honestly don't think the design team make a new edition of a game they decide "hey I know! lets make it require more models!", I would think that is pressure from the suits, I mean if these guys can go off and produce much better gaming systems it must something within the GW that is at fault rather than the designer, it may also be why you see silly mistakes because they are rushed out the door before the writer is happy with the product.

That's logic there.

It makes me wonder how much worse GW's results would have looked if they hadn't rewritten WHFB 8th and WH40K 5th to require more models in the army.

Andrew1975 wrote:

mikhaila wrote:

Leigen_Zero wrote:I think this has always been the case.

The fact of the matter is that GW is a HOBBY, and the CONTENT is made by hobbyists, who care about the HOBBY.

However, it is RUN and the MONEY is made by non-hobbyists, who care about the MONEY.

Those who run the company, and those who run 'the content' seem to be continually at odds from my perspective, and I doubt this is going to change any time soon...

But they also stay in business.

-Many game stores are run by hobbyists with no business sense, and go away after a few years.

-Many game manufacturers get off the ground with a great product, and are then run into the ground because no one
is minding the business. Businesses make a profit, or they go away.

Some of my favorite games will never see the light of day again, the company is gone and bankrupt. I have dozens of friends that owned stores that I haven't seen at tradeshows in years, because they failed to keep their stores going.

So while there are a boatload of things I wished GW did differently, if I suddenly was magically in control of the company, I wouldn't change them all to what I wanted unless I could make sure first that they wouldn't trade long term stability for a little bit of short term good will.

I have to agree here. GW needs suits. As much as we like to blame them, lets face it creative run shops fail too often. But I think the balance is off right now, way to much business without the insight of the actual gaming community.

Yes you need suits, however you need suits that need to know how to adapt to the current marketing and purchasing trends in their own economic niche.

Mark Wells does not call the shots. Kirby does. He is STILL chairman of the board. Wells answers to him. This is why there has been no positive change going on in Games workshop. It is business as usual, raising prices, alienating customers, and so on.

If for some strange reason Wells suddenly got replaced by Jervis, there will be no change. Kirby will still be calling the shots and Johnson will be the Talking head for the company.

That's what I'm saying it's out of balance. You can't have creative or the suits being too dominant. Right now the suits are really causing problems. But you still need good suits, whether GW has the right suits is another question.