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https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-interview-with-james-hewitt-part-1-age-of-sigmar-and-40k/

Some interesting information on the early days of Age of Sigmar.

I literally just copied the entire interview to post here!

Yeah very interesting. Probably the most exhaustive insight on the buildup to WHFB End Times into AoS release that I’ve seen. Still reading it and digesting some of the facts presented.

Few of my highlights:

I think what’s interesting is that Age of Sigmar now is a very well respected game, and I actually think it’s a better game than 40k 8th Edition.

So General’s Handbook was written after a change of management. I always see it attributed to Tom Kirby leaving, but I always think it was more about the other people who left around the same time as Tom. Tom was so high up that he didn’t have much of an impact. He was a couple of levels above the Top Boss who said he didn’t want a banana, and he was sitting elsewhere doing other things.

The banana thing only makes sense if you read the stuff above it, btw.

For another example,one of the things we had as a big assumption about was how the transition between us killing Warhammer in May or June and Age of Sigmar being released in August – or whatever the dates were – would be handled.. And we kept saying, the rules team up to management, that a fair few people are going to be really pissed off about this, whatever we do. So have we thought about how we are going to communicate this message?

Lupe: They’re going to lose their minds

James: And the answer was – don’t worry, it’s all in hand, it’s going to be handled by marketing, White Dwarf, there’s going to be this whole campaign saying “but it’s not over! There’s something exciting coming!

And that never happened. Instead, the world ended and this was when GW wasn’t using social media.

Lupe: So community team didn’t exist, all that stuff?

James: Nope. There was just a big picture of Sigmar clinging to a comet flying through space, the Warhammer world exploded and there was no word about what came next. And this was bad.

[Both laugh]

Lupe: And then, people burnt their armies on YouTube.

Oh no, what's he said this time?

Shocking. The AOS four-page rules were initially just the quick-start rules.

And so, our hands were tied. By this very imposing upper team, who had the complete say on everything.

As a games dev myself, I certainly feel for the team. I've had similar projects though not to the extent of AOS.

Yikes. Very insightful to just how much of a clusterfeth GW was then. Personally I think they've only marginally improved...

Interesting that Kirby may not have been the Bogeyman.

Respect to him for not naming and shaming though.

It would have been nice to know though who is the root of the problem if it wasn't Kirby.

I met James last year at a convention. Lovely and genuine guy. Interesting read!

That was interesting, the part about making something cool and new. I think they managed to create at the time one of the more bland settings and it’s still trying to recover.

With the miniature design being so closed off, it makes so much sense. The clueless leading the blind. At the end there.
Harsh, hopefully GW has learn a lot from this.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Interesting that Kirby may not have been the Bogeyman.

Respect to him for not naming and shaming though.

He was the CEO at the time, as they're so keen to say when their absurd salaries are brought up, he was ultimately responsible for everything in the company.

Apple fox wrote:
That was interesting, the part about making something cool and new. I think they managed to create at the time one of the more bland settings and it’s still trying to recover.

With the miniature design being so closed off, it makes so much sense. The clueless leading the blind. At the end there.
Harsh, hopefully GW has learn a lot from this.

this is probably the most important issue. It's always felt like and been talked about like miniature design and rules design are completely separate and has little to no collaboration. What should happen is those teams should be in constant communication about what the miniature designers think would be cool to add and what the rules designers think a faction needs or how it could affect the game Instead it appears like the rules team gets thrown finished concepts/models/something and has to shoehorn it into the setting with hardly any input on the models visuals

Yeah GW's heavy compartmentalised departments has often worked against their own long term interests and strengths. Honestly I hope its something that gets broken down more and more - all it does is foster confusion and likely resentment between the different teams and departments since they aren't working toward the same gaols at the same time and one team is always going to end up coming out ahead in any interaction.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yeah GW's heavy compartmentalised departments has often worked against their own long term interests and strengths. Honestly I hope its something that gets broken down more and more - all it does is foster confusion and likely resentment between the different teams and departments since they aren't working toward the same gaols at the same time and one team is always going to end up coming out ahead in any interaction.

 nels1031 wrote:

I think what’s interesting is that Age of Sigmar now is a very well respected game, and I actually think it’s a better game than 40k 8th Edition.

It totally is better. I keep defaulting to AoS because even while 8th ed 40k is great, 40k just has inherent "most OP to win" syndrome still.

Keep in mind AoS was the best example we have of an Agile fail-fast. 1 year into the game GW had defaulted to points, allegiances, spells, relics, missions, etc. They brought it all back with Sylvaneth and it pretty much was most the blue print to what we have now (endless spells and "glades" came). No one really played Fantasy like it was until 3rd ed and it was 2nd ed 40k that improved.

Shows you the difference between a social media world and one that isn't. Also AoS suffered a bit like Metallica's Load. If any other band put it out it would be super popular and not slandered. If any other company did an AoS ruleset and model range during 8th ed FAntasy it would have been another nail in the coffin in that game which we have to finally admit was part of GWs downward spiral.

I disagree; I see other fantasy wargames all universally place emphasis on balance. If that was not important to customers, they wouldn't. I think once a game gets big enough popularity can drive sales to such a degree that the game can do well despite poor mechanics. That GW managed to make a game so unappealing as to fail even given the company's size shows just how poorly received AoS version 0.5 was.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I disagree; I see other fantasy wargames all universally place emphasis on balance. If that was not important to customers, they wouldn't.

I think the key point there is 'important to their customers'.

Those companies (at least from where I sit) focus on a specific market segment, and that is not the same much larger group who GW markets to.

They don't start with any customers, they have to pull them from somewhere. And even more importantly, GW is obviously the biggest name on the market. If that was by appealing to customers who don't care about balance it follows that the overwhelming majority of customers fall into that category. Why would companies deliberately waste resources on catering to what, in that case, is a tiny minority?

Coming from the other direction, why do GW games suffer when the balance meta is at its poorest? Why did AoS spike in popularity when balance mechanisms were introduced? Why did the philosophy of the game being a side-hobby to model collectors not fly?

The entire way miniature games are marketed only makes sense if the health of the game is an important factor.

AoS was an extreme but very powerful display of how no balance does not help wargames in the least. Furthermore its roaring success after they introduced proper rules and better balance and the huge leap of 40K sales when GW balanced all the codex at once again showed that balance was important.

It's not the only aspect, but it is a key aspect. Catering to it was one aspect that helped push GW up a good few notches into being a major player on the UK stockmarket.

GW has clearly had the message that better rules and balance and army support DOES result in increased sales nad that chances are they've actually lost sales and customers over the years due to those areas being poorly developed. Of course its a big ship and doesn't always make huge changes all at once; furthermore many of the rules writers are still the same staff, we still have some aspects as a result of attitudes and staff who have long held their positions (importantly also held them as GW has risen so they are not total fools).

Do we actually think that AOS has balance? It is the anti-balance of the market, yet also shows without a shadow of a doubt its player base does not care about balance, or even really puts rules high up on its things of what matters to participate in this game list.

AOS on release was missing a key ingredient that we mistake as "balance" but was really "structure". Its players demand structure, not balance.

GW catered to structure when they brought back their version of points, but their version of points did not bring balance to the game. The game is as balanced today as it was in the beginning days when you could just bring whatever you wanted. Games are just as one-sided today as they were in 2015 and can end in turn 1 or 2 just as often as they did in 2015 due to one side having the mathematically grossly superior in terms of probability AND numbers than the other side (bad balance).

My last game of AOS last fall before i stepped out was a narrative "for fun" game against the triple keeper of secrets where my opponent summoned in 1800 points of stuff on top of his 2000. There was no balance in the game or in anything AOS does, but thats fine because thats not what its playerbase are after.

Balance is not anything really demanded, and neither are good rules. Good-enough rules are what is after, and the bare minimum there is some kind of structure to play under (the piece that was missing from AOS when it dropped), pretty miniatures are what is after, fast games, lots of dice, and a guaranteed investment that says no matter where you go you know you'll have someone to play with. Those are the reasons why AOS is very successful.

The more people play something, the more attractive it becomes. Follow any of the Old World project and you'll see a lot of people hoping its just another AOS reskin and a lot of those guys will out front say "i don't care about rules or balance".

the sort of games I think of when I see the statement you made are games which are marketed at those after balanced wargames (I may have misinterpreted you); which is to say those who no longer see it simply as either a mini collection, painting or just toys. Those games are specifically targeting those after such a well balanced game, they can't afford to get that bit wrong. At least in the UK you'd only likely know of them at all if you were already into those games.

GW, as far as I see cast a wider net. Not least (in the UK at least) by starting with young kids. Those kids and their parents are not for the most part interested in games where the emphasis is on balance. They are after cool toys that they get to make and paint and then play a game, and get excited talking about the background they've just heard about etc (which at that age doesn't have to be as fully explored as adults may expect). From the game point of view, as Auticus notes, it is structure and rules that are critical and not some competitive balance. The vast majority are simply after an 'exciting' hobby that they can take part in with mates or family, and weekend afternoons in the GW store playing a game with their friends and talking about what model they are going to get next and how they might paint it.

As they get older many will drop out, and they would no matter how balanced the game. Some will stay in, but not for competitive games but simply cos their hobby is now collecting and painting. Some will carry on gaming and either ignore balance as they are fairly casual and it is more just the social gathering excuse, or lightheartedly laugh about it in their own group which probably polices itself to some extent. Some will become more serious about balance and tournaments etc. Some may wish to find a more balanced game, but because of critical mass effect and finances will often be wary of moving away.

So I'm not saying that balance won't improve sales, there is some part of the crowd that want that, but for GW their much larger market and general strategy does not need to 'emphasise' it to the same degree as those other companies you talk about.

As to did AOS suffer when balance was at its poorest, or did that just happen to follow the destruction of the old setting which then took a while to recover from? Balance or not, that was always going to be a risky move (indeed wasn't that part of the original interview point).

puree wrote:
As to did AOS suffer when balance was at its poorest, or did that just happen to follow the destruction of the old setting which then took a while to recover from? Balance or not, that was always going to be a risky move (indeed wasn't that part of the original interview point).

The popularity spike directly coincided with the release of the first General's Handbook providing points. At any rate, I think this is just a disagreement over how much balance matters to GW customers, which is obviously a very subjective measurement to make. I certainly do see your point about balance being less important to GW customers vs others, but I feel that there is a significant amount of the player base staying around because appeal and popularity outweigh the downside of poor balance. There are a lot of wargames I would really like to get into, but will not because there is simply no guarantee I will be able to actually play due to a lack of opponents.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Do we actually think that AOS has balance?

Poor balance is still balance, and balance as a whole is non-binary. The only way to actually not have balance is for there to be no mechanism for it at all, like the initial launch of AoS.

I dunno - to me the quality of games are the same at launch when it was a free for all, as it is today with "points". Its still basically up to you and your opponent to not build a wombo combo that one-two punches your opponent in the crotch turn 1 or 2 to end the game.

GW-points or no points, the feeling of the game is still the same: poorly balanced. The only way I could ever return to GW games is to find a way to no longer care about the game's outcome and not treat it like a game, but as a social experience or hobby experience, and divorce myself from any desire to play it like a game.

Otherwise its like a game of monopoly only my opponent gets to start with $20,000 and half of the territories owned because he decided to be the shoe and was smart enough to know that the shoe gets these things so you should be the shoe.

I suppose that COULD be a game, just not a very fun one from a game standpoint.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
They don't start with any customers, they have to pull them from somewhere. And even more importantly, GW is obviously the biggest name on the market. If that was by appealing to customers who don't care about balance it follows that the overwhelming majority of customers fall into that category. Why would companies deliberately waste resources on catering to what, in that case, is a tiny minority?

Have you ever considered that MAYBE the companies who are marketing to an audience that wants balance actually have it wrong, and that the "balanced gamers" crowd is in fact a tiny minority? This isn't exactly an industry flush with cash, and serious market research is almost entirely non-existent (and the only company that is really big enough to have any such research on a meaningful level *IS* in fact GW - the company that doesn't seem to give a gak about balance). We are assuming that the majority want balance, in large part because thats what a very vocal and seemingly sizable segment of the community wants, to the point that it seems like a "duh isn't it obvious?" conclusion - but theres really no statistically sound data to support that assumption.

Coming from the other direction, why do GW games suffer when the balance meta is at its poorest?

The balance and meta for both games have always been poor, even today, so I'm not sure that this is a meaningful statement. GWs lowpoint though was less the result of poor balance, but more the result of poor PR. 6th/7th 40k and 7th/8th WHFB were clunky, complex, cumbersome rulesets that people increasingly did not enjoy playing and fan feedback was not being met receptively. Official communications and messaging were actively scornful of the playerbase and community, often to the point of feeling pretentious and belittling about grown men who take their toy soldiers too seriously, and it was basically stated outright that the company had zero interest in the game itself - its really not hard to see why the community became toxic and drove people away from playing. This was less about balance, and more about the game being unfun (if not unplayable) and the company being unapologetic in its treatment of customers.

Why did AoS spike in popularity when balance mechanisms were introduced?

Likewise, this was driven less by "balance" and more by "playability". The game, prior to the introduction of what you're calling "balance mechanisms", was barely a game. It was 4 pages of rules that said "grab some models and do whatever you want with them". The introduction of matched play rules was less about the game becoming "balanced" and more about the game becoming playable - aside from the points and the army building rules, it gave scenarios and structure to the gameplay that was otherwise absent previously.

Why did the philosophy of the game being a side-hobby to model collectors not fly?

Because it was always a silly idea, born out of some really gakky conclusions derived from poor market research and improper data correlation. GW hired a consulting firm and did some surveys which asked how much money people were spending and how often they were playing the game. They saw people were spending the money, but a lot of people were barely playing the game/hadn't played in over a year etc. They took this to mean that a large segment of their customers were simply model collectors that didn't care to play the game, etc. not realizing that the reason nobody was playing the game was because their rules were atrocious and nobody wanted to actually play them/were waiting for better rules to release that would interest them enough to play.

Do we actually think that AOS has balance? It is the anti-balance of the market, yet also shows without a shadow of a doubt its player base does not care about balance, or even really puts rules high up on its things of what matters to participate in this game list.

AOS on release was missing a key ingredient that we mistake as "balance" but was really "structure". Its players demand structure, not balance.

100% this.

Balance is not anything really demanded, and neither are good rules. Good-enough rules are what is after

This is where i start to disagree. Balance and good rules *are* demanded, BUT the people demanding those things don't really know what balance or good rules look like or how to achieve them - its what they customer and playerbase *think* they want, but as you alluded to what they actually want are "good enough" rules and balance - where "good enough" basically correlates to the entertainment value that those rules provide to the player. Otherwise, balance and good rules are 100% subjective and open to interpretation (and often false perception/understanding of how balancing mechanisms actually work - points systems being the #1 thing that people seem to get wrong and have zero comprehension of how they actually function).

Poor balance is still balance, and balance as a whole is non-binary.

I disagree. The game is either balanced or it isn't, if the balance is poor then it is unbalanced by default. You don't take a set of scales and place a lightweight object and a heavyweight object on it and then say they are poorly balanced but still weight the same.

I base my conclusion after having dozens upon dozens of responses saying "i don't really care about game rules or balance, I'm here for the social aspect or hobbying, the game balance is good enough".

To me - demanding good balance is simply I'm not showing up to a game with 2000 point list, and being nuked off the table in turn 1 or 2 because my opponent's list is exponentially mathematically superior.

Like the last game I ever played in AOS. There is no excuse for a triple keeper of secrets list freely summoning in an additional 1800 points to its already 2000 points. There is no balance there. Nothing makes that balanced.

The only counter play to that is either also summoning 1800 points, in which case we have a pay-to-win model where you need to buy and paint and own 4000 points of an army so you can summon double your force, or the ability to hard counter that with scenario objectives that say if you are outnumbered 2:1 in points like that you just need to do this thing to win.

Or a mechanism that lets you just do hundreds of points of damage in a go.

There are too many trap builds in AOS for me to consider that it is balanced. You have to go out of your way with your opponent to create a good experience if balance is what you care about.

WHich is why I strongly feel most GW fans (AOS or 40k) don't really care about balance. They care about the experience, the socializing, the massive cottage industry where they can twitch stream their painting and gaming and make thousands of dollars off of the community because its so huge.

Balance - not as much.

I don't see it demanded by many people to be honest. Well... balance tha tmakes sense to me anyway. People for whatever reason love them their turn 1 or turn 2 tablings. I will never get it.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Poor balance is still balance, and balance as a whole is non-binary.

I disagree. The game is either balanced or it isn't, if the balance is poor then it is unbalanced by default. You don't take a set of scales and place a lightweight object and a heavyweight object on it and then say they are poorly balanced but still weight the same.

Games with this level of complexity can never achieve true balance because it doesn't exist. NinthMusketeer is 100% correct in his statement. Viewing the game's balance as a light switch that is on or off will always result in the switch being off. Perfect balance (or equality in general) does not exist, nor will it ever.

I don't think anyone has ever requested or expected perfect balance. Even chess is not perfectly balanced. Thats an unreasonable request for someone to expect perfect balance.

 auticus wrote:
I don't think anyone has ever requested or expected perfect balance. Even chess is not perfectly balanced. Thats an unreasonable request for someone to expect perfect balance.

Seriously? They are continually getting better with every GHB/FAQ. Yet you continue to trash talk AoS, while you proudly proclaim you stopped playing the game. I know there are many facets to hobby that is GW games, but I don't think they intended for anyone to get enjoyment out of complaining ad naseum.

Thats a great comeback to what I just said.

When you can point out how things like the triple keeper of secrets build and summoning +1800 points to your list or things of that nature are good for the game, let me know. I'd love to hear how those things are good for the game. The latest GHB and FAQs are great, except they also just continually move around the goalposts of what is not just broken, but super-broken.

How you would say that something like that (complaining about super-broken) is in the same ballpark as complaining for "perfect balance" is quite confusing.

 auticus wrote:
Thats a great comeback to what I just said.

When you can point out how things like the triple keeper of secrets build and summoning +1800 points to your list or things of that nature are good for the game, let me know.

How you would say that something like that is in the same ballpark as complaining for "perfect balance" is quite confusing.

I'll absolutely give you that the summoning is stupid. I hate it, but it is not the end of the world that people seem to think. Go ahead and review the stats that people compile from events all over the world:
https://thehonestwargamer.com/stats-20th-march-2020/

Given these are competitive events and people play to win, if the Slaanesh were so powerful, we'd see them both win more and be played more.

Look man... competitive balance is great.... if we are all touting around competitive min max lists and the discussion was "how balanced is the game if we all min/max powerlist?". That means constantly having to rebuy new armies, re paint new models, etc on a regular basis.

That means nothing to the rest of us that aren't wanting to have to go around and buy new min/max lists every year.

Thats not good either.

So slaanesh not dominating the min/max arena doesn't mean much to me because I'm not complaining that at tournaments I get beaten and its not fair.

I'm complaining that things like the triple keeper of secrets can seriously exist as a 2000 point list in the same pool as other 2000 point lists because the power disparity in a triple keeper of secrets list is HUGELY disproportionate to the rest of the game BECAUSE of the excessive summoning it does. That the GULF between for-fun lists and power min/max lists is oceans wide. That the gw point system means basically nothing for balance when you can put up not just triple keeper of secrets, but the long list of whatever busted stuff was present before the next faq changed it and put it next to 95% of the rest of the game and just auto-win if your opponent isn't doing the same thing.

Because I don't want to buy a new army every year. ANd I don't understand how that is fun for anyone to show up to games with those lists and turn 1 / 2 annihilate someone based on the list, or how people can find that acceptable and even cheer for it.

So when someone says "yeah man AOS has great balance!" I usually for whatever reason feel compelled to respond, because there isn't much else in the world that I strongly disagree with as much as that statement.

I play a lot of other games and I realize balance is an issue with 100% of every game when you break it down to the core, but NONE of those other games have the balance issues that 40k and AOS have. There's playing with a for fun force knowing the game is going to be hard, and then there's playing with a for fun force knowing there's no point in playing and that you are only doing so to socialize or just chuck dice for laughs.

Have you kept up with Slaanesh nerfs? It now takes 3 Keepers dying to summon a single one, their ability to force enemies to fight last has been nerfed, ect ect. Shove a horde of 1 wound models against Keepers and watch them cry as they generate no extra depravity.

Stop comparing top tier minmaxing (3 Keepers optimized to the teeth for the sole purpose of kicking puppies) armies against friendly casual army lists.