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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-derbyshire-46466868?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=5c0a632528c9340657429a01%26Nottingham%20games%20firm%20sees%20sales%20rise%262018-12-07T14%3A54%3A49.618Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:438257c4-0ff5-4ee0-b5af-ca4a8b48bd86&pinned_post_asset_id=5c0a632528c9340657429a01&pinned_post_type=share

Seems their statement ‘look, this ain’t gonna last forever in terms of growth’ isn’t kicking in just yet!

This is good news. I've been really liking the direction that GW have taken in the last few years. So if its making them money that probably means more of the stuff I like

Although I cant wait for all the Chicken Little's to pop back up once things do level out.

The number one cause of the doomsaying is no longer in charge.
Had Kirby remained at the helm? *Shrug* I think that GW would have still been around, but continuing its downward spiral.

Another way to put it - Kirby was an idiot, and surrounded himself with other idiots.

He's gone, so are his cronies, and while I do not always agree with the directions GW is going, it has demonstrably improved.

Rountree is not Kirby, is not an idiot, and has not surrounded himself with an echo chamber - and, as a result, has turned the company around far, far faster than I would have believed a best case scenario.

The turnaround is astonishing.

Sometimes it really is one man that is destroying the company, get rid of that one man... and sometimes that is all it takes.

The Auld Grump

I feel it’s more remark worth precisely because they’ve been absolutely clear that their level of growth can’t be sustained.

Yet result upon result, it continues.

And remember, not being sustained is not the same as things suddenly going downhill. Just ‘well, we did 50% growth this year, next may only be like, 10% growth’.

Numbers as ever out my bum for sake of simple example.

As opposed to shareholder reports of 'broadly within expectations' as the numbers dropped, year after year after year, often accompanied by a completely daft preamble.

Heck, even I keep circling Newcromunda, and I pretty much vowed never to buy GW ever again.

More accurately, it has been something like eight years now, and there hasn't been much GW stuff that has interested me*. I am a rank and file fantasy wargamer, and their releases have not scratched that particular itch.

AoS is much better than it was, but still does not interest me in the slightest.

I sold off my 40K armies when I got married.

She is also a gamer - but not a 40K gamer. Oldcromunda and GorkaMorka are the only 40K type games that she has played. (You know - I never realized that Mad Max: Thunder Road was a chick flick until my wife and three other women watched it, and decided that, yes, they would like to play GorkaMorka. )

Newcromunda... while the fluff is not 100% compatible with the old fluff, it is a lot more varied, and ties more deeply to the Houses.

I like the changes, and with the compendium coming out, my resistance is fading.

Hated the way it has been released, but the compendium fixes that, so... I expect my VanSaar to be slaughtered by Escher, some time in the future.

The Auld Grump

* Not the same as "Eww! This game sucks!" - though that is a very accurate description of my opinion of the original release of AoS.

I don't like the new style for the minis, but others do, I'll live.

On the Specialist Games front, again my same take on the releases.

Yes, it would be nice for it all to be in a single volume. But if this is the release schedule that ensures sufficient turnover to keep the game going into the future, it’s a spank I’m happy to take.

I’m not saying it is necessary, for sake of clarity, but if it is, I feel it’s worth it

Kirby built a culture at GW and certainly led the way; early on he seemed to do well, but I think he lacked the ability, skill, drive or possibly even the motivation to change the modus operandi of his approach. Hence the continual bleeding of fans.

Heck wasn't there also some guy in GW at the same time who would randomly fire people and when he came on site departments would strip their staff out for the day to keep them out of the random firing line.


GW has had a massive shake up from the top and its sent riples through the company. I think most of us would like to think that its released a yoke that has held many of them back . Plus I wager their more open community interaction is doing wonders for them both in their ability to market the game, but also in their upper level staff ability to talk about the game to fans (after the old Kirby era where community feedback was almost a frowned upon concept it would seem).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
On the Specialist Games front, again my same take on the releases.

Yes, it would be nice for it all to be in a single volume. But if this is the release schedule that ensures sufficient turnover to keep the game going into the future, it’s a spank I’m happy to take.

I’m not saying it is necessary, for sake of clarity, but if it is, I feel it’s worth it

My take is that GW wants to long term support Specialist games, but the games had to EARN that right (ergo sell well). So I think the way they did Necromunda was deliberately designed so that they could stop at any point and leave it a complete product. Hence expanding the game and factions through individual books rather than one compendium and models later. I think it did them well and now that its done well they are collating that earlier release and might revise how other factions get rules in the future.

That way early on if Necromunda had just not done well they could have scrapped it or paused and given a chance to make more major changes; all without leaving the product in a bad state for people to play with. Heck even if they'd just done the one launch box it would have worked as a single complete functional game.

it's quite impressive, still not impressive to make me give them any real money barring the odd paint purchase

Fingers crossed they don't fall into the brain-melting stupid that's infected the Video games industry where anything less than all the money in the world (and then some) is an unacceptable failure but somehow the customers fault

The next 12-18 months will be interesting as the 40k Codex cycle is pretty much done I'm wondering if the other supplements will shift models in the same way Codex releases tend to do, plus other than ongoing support the specialist game barrel only has a layer of big spacesheeps remaining

Clearly 8th edition has been a success and they should move Horus Heresy to 8th edition rules too.

Also: Epic.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
it's quite impressive, still not impressive to make me give them any real money barring the odd paint purchase

Fingers crossed they don't fall into the brain-melting stupid that's infected the Video games industry where anything less than all the money in the world (and then some) is an unacceptable failure but somehow the customers fault

The next 12-18 months will be interesting as the 40k Codex cycle is pretty much done I'm wondering if the other supplements will shift models in the same way Codex releases tend to do, plus other than ongoing support the specialist game barrel only has a layer of big spacesheeps remaining

The advantage of getting all the main Codecies out the door is the freedom to look back and tweak, or move on to new stuff.

If the main Studio is all 40k’d out, then they’ve got resources spare for other game systems, and other ways to keep 40k interesting.

I for one am intrigued at what the future might bring. Maybe we’ll see random updates to dated kits dropped in here and there. Maybe we’ll see a surge in AoS armies, or Main Studio peeps seconded to Specialist Games.

It’s all pretty wide open, no?

Honestly AoS needs a year like 40K just had to clean up. What's holding AoS back is confusion over armies. There are LOADS on show on the website and yet only a handful have a clear rules system for them. Some have rules in outdated grand alliance books or in the generals handbook or don't really have any army level rules.

I think once GW gets the armies sorted out and makes it a lot clearer how to get into AoS for all armies then they'll be in a much stronger position

I bought three Xmas bundles (Deepkin, DoK, and Imperial Sector) which means I spent... more money than I had... on GW products in one month. If GW is seeing record profits, well, it was me guys. I did it.

Also, I'd love to see AoS get the kind of support 40k saw this last year. Fantasy's post-AoS models have been universally amazing and they deserve more than a token release every few months. Adeptus Titanicus saw more support than AoS did this last year.

Kind of good news. Hopefully that means more investment in quality, not handing out money to cronies on top like Kirby did. Though, yeah, they didn't hit the wall because certain UK event is yet to happen.

I wonder, where is FUD brigade now with their wild claims new SM kits don't sell because their lore ""sucks"" or whatever and GW should have made more ugly, small, malformed 3rd edition anatomy models?

 Fajita Fan wrote:
Clearly 8th edition has been a success and they should move Horus Heresy to 8th edition rules too.

That's a borderline Superman leap right there. Look, I get some folk want to go back to being able to play 40K with Heresy army lists, but from what I've seen there a lot less crossover between the "8th is great" and "I play 30K" groups than the 30K-in-40K fans keep pretending, and Heresy is for 30K players first & foremost.

As to the topic - I'm surprised we managed to get a whole page without someone smugly declaring this as evidence that all criticism of GW is and ever was unfounded whinging -EDIT: Spoke too soon - so an improvement on the last time this came up. Good for them, hopefully it means they keep investing in SGs and making models I want to buy.

'Spose it's easy to keep doing well when you raise your prices world-wide in areas like FW overnight.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
'Spose it's easy to keep doing well when you raise your prices world-wide in areas like FW overnight.

Question. is FW actually legally tied to GW for the sake of financial reports?

could of sworn it was a separate entity.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
'Spose it's easy to keep doing well when you raise your prices world-wide in areas like FW overnight.

Meh, forgeworld sell like...4-5 models a month anyway. That's only like 1,000,000USD in a year for them. Barely a drop in the bucket.

ERJAK wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
'Spose it's easy to keep doing well when you raise your prices world-wide in areas like FW overnight.

Meh, forgeworld sell like...4-5 models a month anyway. That's only like 1,000,000USD in a year for them. Barely a drop in the bucket.

They sold alot more before, and before they squatted their best stuff. I was buying up those Mark II marines and RnH

Apparently I was the only one...

But that's okay. Anvil just released some robed cultists, so FW can go feth its self.

 Desubot wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
'Spose it's easy to keep doing well when you raise your prices world-wide in areas like FW overnight.

Question. is FW actually legally tied to GW for the sake of financial reports?

could of sworn it was a separate entity.

Forgeworld may be a separate legal entity, but assuming GW holds 50% or more ownership in FW (I'd assume they own all of it, but I couldn't find anything quickly) then they would be required to consolidate FW financials within the GW ones.

Here's the thing guys, each CEO in GW has taken the helm at a time when GW was on the verge of implosion. When Tom Kirby came in, GW was about to fall under the weight of all of the bloat that they'd pushed out. Kirby came in and cleaned up shop. He shut down stores, streamlined the company, and pushed them forward through several editions of 40k and Fantasy.

Kevin Roundtree did much the same. Tom Kirby was just a little out of touch, but a lot of GW's success right now was built when Tom Kirby was still CEO. A lot of the miniatures we're seeing now were being designed when Kirby was still at the helm.

Roundtree is pushing the company in a great direction, and he's responsible for the new Warhammer Community material that we have now, as well as GW's willingness to listen to the community and engage in events again.

That said, only over the next year will we really start seeing miniatures that Roundtree will have been in power when they were designed.

You know what that means? The whole Primaris line? 8th Edition? That wasn't Roundtree. That was Kirby. Let that sink in a minute.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:
Clearly 8th edition has been a success and they should move Horus Heresy to 8th edition rules too.

That's a borderline Superman leap right there. Look, I get some folk want to go back to being able to play 40K with Heresy army lists, but from what I've seen there a lot less crossover between the "8th is great" and "I play 30K" groups than the 30K-in-40K fans keep pretending, and Heresy is for 30K players first & foremost.

As to the topic - I'm surprised we managed to get a whole page without someone smugly declaring this as evidence that all criticism of GW is and ever was unfounded whinging -EDIT: Spoke too soon - so an improvement on the last time this came up. Good for them, hopefully it means they keep investing in SGs and making models I want to buy.

That said, the AP system from 40k would be amazing for 30k, as there's so many useless weapons because all the armies are Marines.

I'm glad GW is (finally) doing well, but the fact is I think I've hit my capacity on their goods. It's time to pass off the purchasing to the next generation and hope the company treats them better than they did me.

I've got a white dwarf issue from about fifteen years ago with a mega fantasy battle report in which all the wd guys are clearly having a blast. There's a picture of jervis explaining things to Kirby 'one of the high ups' which looks for all the world like an excited kid explaining things to their vaguely interested dad. I think that was the problem, a real disconnect. Now it feels like the fans are in charge and the releases and vibe of the company is great.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Fajita Fan wrote:
Clearly 8th edition has been a success and they should move Horus Heresy to 8th edition rules too.

That's a borderline Superman leap right there. Look, I get some folk want to go back to being able to play 40K with Heresy army lists, but from what I've seen there a lot less crossover between the "8th is great" and "I play 30K" groups than the 30K-in-40K fans keep pretending, and Heresy is for 30K players first & foremost.

As to the topic - I'm surprised we managed to get a whole page without someone smugly declaring this as evidence that all criticism of GW is and ever was unfounded whinging -EDIT: Spoke too soon - so an improvement on the last time this came up. Good for them, hopefully it means they keep investing in SGs and making models I want to buy.

That said, the AP system from 40k would be amazing for 30k, as there's so many useless weapons because all the armies are Marines.

Bah you don#t need ap3 in hh. In 8th meanwhile pa sucks. Kind of silly to make game set in marine vs marine and have marines suck like they do in 8th only to get more illogical, less fun and worse balanced rules to 30k as well

Dendarien wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
'Spose it's easy to keep doing well when you raise your prices world-wide in areas like FW overnight.

Question. is FW actually legally tied to GW for the sake of financial reports?

could of sworn it was a separate entity.

Forgeworld may be a separate legal entity, but assuming GW holds 50% or more ownership in FW (I'd assume they own all of it, but I couldn't find anything quickly) then they would be required to consolidate FW financials within the GW ones.

Far as I recall FW profits get rolled into the annual GW financial reports. So the profit of the company includes FW, however FW's profits and costs are listed on their own. Which makes sense, as an entity is has to prove that it can support itself. Granted its support is tied to the main studio and you can see that in how FW steadily had more and more 40K releases and hardly anything for Fantasy over the years as Fantasy dwindled in popularity.

drbored wrote:Here's the thing guys, each CEO in GW has taken the helm at a time when GW was on the verge of implosion. When Tom Kirby came in, GW was about to fall under the weight of all of the bloat that they'd pushed out. Kirby came in and cleaned up shop. He shut down stores, streamlined the company, and pushed them forward through several editions of 40k and Fantasy.


You know what that means? The whole Primaris line? 8th Edition? That wasn't Roundtree. That was Kirby. Let that sink in a minute.

Agreed, at the start Kirby did well; far as I could tell the issue was the longer he remained in charge the more it became apparent that whilst he could solve the initial problem, he couldn't further the company. I think he did have a closed mind approach, the lack of community interaction and feedback filtering into the upper management etc.... I think really harmed things. AoS was a big showcase of how that thinking was just flat out wrong.

And yes a lot of what Rountree has to work with now is the fallout from Kirby's end of tenure. I'm pretty sure if Roundtree had taken over sooner we would not have seen Age of Sigmar released at all. They'd have kept the old world and done what they've done with 40K. A massive relaunch with a wave of indexes and such. Of course they might have got rid of rank and file; or split the game into two modes (small skirmish up to 2K points then rank and file for greater etc...).

As for design I think one difference is that, esp under Kirby, the design team has often worked on their own ideas; they got direction, but otherwise went their own way abit. I think Roundtree has put more order into the chaos and the formation of more dedicated teams to specific projects should start to show greater overall support in the long run. Of course part of that is also a change in attitude; I think Kirby was almost running armies and speicalist games a bit like movies and computer games. Big launch period and reap the profits then; once done forget about the product and even dump the product and move onto the next big release. A pattern that works for music, books, computer games (at least singleplayer ones) and movies; but it doesn't work for models. At least not in the long run.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
it's quite impressive, still not impressive to make me give them any real money barring the odd paint purchase

Fingers crossed they don't fall into the brain-melting stupid that's infected the Video games industry where anything less than all the money in the world (and then some) is an unacceptable failure but somehow the customers fault

The next 12-18 months will be interesting as the 40k Codex cycle is pretty much done I'm wondering if the other supplements will shift models in the same way Codex releases tend to do, plus other than ongoing support the specialist game barrel only has a layer of big spacesheeps remaining

The advantage of getting all the main Codecies out the door is the freedom to look back and tweak, or move on to new stuff.

If the main Studio is all 40k’d out, then they’ve got resources spare for other game systems, and other ways to keep 40k interesting.

I for one am intrigued at what the future might bring. Maybe we’ll see random updates to dated kits dropped in here and there. Maybe we’ll see a surge in AoS armies, or Main Studio peeps seconded to Specialist Games.

It’s all pretty wide open, no?

There's a lot of very tempting stuff, Killteam was close but already playing Guildball with covers the skirmish itch, the recent Titan box nearly became a chrimbo treat but decided to hold out to see if any Xenos stuff goes Epic, likewise Shadespire nearly hooked me but the card bannings and a soft 'rotation' whilst good for the game had a whiff of MTG so steered clearly, if/when Battlefleet arrives it'll get a browse as missing a spacegame as locally X-Wing is deader than dead,

Forge World is just a division/brand, it isn’t a separate company.

 Overread wrote:
I think Kirby was almost running armies and speicalist games a bit like movies and computer games. Big launch period and reap the profits then; once done forget about the product and even dump the product and move onto the next big release. A pattern that works for music, books, computer games (at least singleplayer ones) and movies; but it doesn't work for models. At least not in the long run.

This is definitely a part of what fascinates me about 40k after being embedded in the movies/games/digital media industry for a while. Tabletop customers have a very different relationship with the brand due to how immensely time-intensive it is to actually consume their "product". Product, being the whole tabletop hobby and wargaming experience. For many in my community, even just playing a basic, 2000 point game is somewhat of a big deal event in how much time and effort it takes to coordinate everything. I can't imagine how fans must have felt when WFB just... ended.

 slave.entity wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I think Kirby was almost running armies and speicalist games a bit like movies and computer games. Big launch period and reap the profits then; once done forget about the product and even dump the product and move onto the next big release. A pattern that works for music, books, computer games (at least singleplayer ones) and movies; but it doesn't work for models. At least not in the long run.

This is definitely a part of what fascinates me about 40k after being embedded in the movies/games/digital media industry for a while. Tabletop customers have a very different relationship with the brand due to how immensely time-intensive it is to actually consume their "product". Product, being the whole tabletop hobby and wargaming experience. For many in my community, even just playing a basic, 2000 point game is somewhat of a big deal event in how much time and effort it takes to coordinate everything. I can't imagine how fans must have felt when WFB just... ended.

Yep wargames are a market that is not fire and forget and bucks the trend that has crept into a LOT of other markets where manufacturers expect you to upgrade or buy fresh products and where the profit period of an item is measured in weeks to months. In fact the sense that a wargame product will be short term and a once off can both work in and against its favour.
It can work in its favour in that it will generate a lot of interest, esp in high quality sculpts for painters and modellers. But at the same time it can harm a company if many of their products are short term in nature. Because it might take that customer weeks to months to build and paint and be ready for the table. Not only can this drag out their purchase pattern, but it can also fast lose them if you dump the product 6 months later or just never give any more updates for a year or more.

The sense of bieng abandoned is not good. Heck Spartan Games learned that the hard way as they kept jumping from game to game and big launches whilst ignoring existing products. Even their powerful Dystopian Wars lost favour as SG ignored it for far too long; whilst confusion over their update plans and policies stalled growth in sales of games like Uncharted Seas. Granted part of that as also that SG would announce something and then miss its own deadlines and almost pretend like it was never said.

Kirby used to say and do some strange things. His investor reports were bizarre and rambling, deluded things like ‘who even remembers pokemon cards?’, and he showed contempt for his customer base, sneering they would keep paying for anything. Yet clearly GW wasn’t taking money as it once was. And there’s the occasional red mist that would come down when they would send out a rash of legal notices to intimidate the rest of the community so that Kirby could boast about their ‘fortress walls’ as though. siege mentality is supposed to be a good thing.

Making a variety of games again with interesting miniatures and making White Dwarf useful for more than toilet paper show that people are thinking again, or being allowed to think, how to actually be a games company again.

Kirby seemed to be treading water and taking out dividends for his retirement rather than pushing the company anywhere.