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 helium42 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:


1) It sacrifices their image as a company that makes high-quality products. If you deliberately introduce typos everywhere you de-value the product line as a whole, and no sane company is going to do that willingly.

They sacrificed their image as a company that makes high-quality products when they rolled out Finecast. They no longer have that imagine in most people's minds.

In most people who know what their talking about's minds*

They are (sadly) focusing on the little timmys and their parents market so if they slap a 'best models in the world' sticker on they will look like the best right up until the point where timmy sticks it under his mothers nose and says "That part is broken".

I've had small chances to sit down and have a talk with members of the studio before, and without exception the impression I have always taken from these conversations (where they've talked about the studio's politics, collaboration, workloads, etc to me) is that the studio is NOT the big monolithic entity that people often attribute to it where commands are issued down from the bean-counters on high and then all the codex writers and model makers scurry about to fulfill these demands.

The reality is more that the people working in the studio are people just like you and I trying to do the best damn job they can with their particular little corner of the company they've been given and its just they're in a position where any mistake they make is examined by thousands of people with microscopes anxious to scream about how badly they have screwed up.

Now, this isn't to excuse the mistakes that the company makes. Obviously as a whole the company could (and should IMHO) put their money into hiring enough people to make doubly-sure that these kinds of errors happen less, but when it comes to the individual people making the mistakes, it is a very tough job that is highly scrutinized, so errors can and will happen.

People want to believe that GW purposely buffs the rules on units that are receiving new plastic kits, but they willfully ignore all the new plastic kits that come out with crap rules and all the times where units that don't have any models at all for months on end are absolutely essential to building the army.

In many cases, the answers to these types of issues revolve around the fact that making plastic model kits on such a global scale is often rife with unexpected delays...when a codex author is working on a book he doesn't usually know precisely when certain units will be getting released. Something like a Tervigon for Tyranids may have been in production during writing but then ends up getting delayed due to some manufacturing issue, etc, and before you know it such a crucial part to the army, that would have sold like hot-cakes had it been released immediately, remains off the shelf for years.

Should the rules designers coordinated better with the marketing and model design team to emphasize how important this model was to the Tyranid army when the codex was released? Of course, but in fact that COULD have happened and other unforseen events could have ended up delaying things...making big plastic models is really a complicated process that is REALLY easy to end up with massive delays.

But the point is, the model designers come up with this awesome idea for a unit that poops termagants and the rules writer LOVES the idea and comes up with great rules for the model. Now at some point he realizes that the Tervigon model may not get released at the same time of the codex, but he still loves the rules he wrote for the unit and whether or not a model is ready for release isn't his department, so he still includes the rules as he's written them. Of course, the real issue there is not how good the Tervigon was, but really how lackluster the other comparable units in the codex were in comparison, despite many of these being plastic kits (like Tyranid Warriors). So that's the real failing (in this department), that the rest of the units weren't up to the level of the Tervigon. And yes, you can say that this is incompetence on the part of the rules writer, but this also comes from the other pressures put upon them. They are not just responsible for balancing the rules, they also have to be writing most of the actual words for the codex as well as simultaneously working on a bunch of other products at once. And of course you can't sidestep the fact that the company in general limits how freely they're able to have their rules playtested in advance. I'm sure the rules writers would LOVE to be able to get more feedback ahead of time if they could.

So all of this is not to apologize for the many ways that GW often fails to live up to its own high standards or to apologize for the mistakes they do make, but really to emphasize that the individual person in their own department is doing the best job that they can with the tools that they have access to, just like most of us do in our own jobs. So when a new shiny unit comes out with awesome rules its not because the bean-counters up on high told them to write boss rules for the model, but just because they saw the mock-up for the model ahead of time, were inspired by it and just got really pumped to make that particular model be really cool on the table as a reflection of how much they like it.

Now, I'm sure there are times where the company as a whole decides that something like a new line of flyer models is crucial to the future development of the game and everybody from the rules writers to the miniature designers knows what this means, but even then I'd wager that ultimately the strength of fliers in the game was more a factor of the rules writers being excited to have flyers zoom around the table and be fun to play with than some commandment handed down from the top brass.

----

But finally coming all the way back around to print codex errors...I think it is crazy to assume that GW would purposely do something like this because again 'GW' doesn't do anything. The individual employees who are doing their best to succeed do. So I do think it is ludicrous from what I know of people who have worked at GW that anyone would purposely sabotage their own creative work simply to appease what would at best be considered a crazy marketing ploy.

The truth is: people screw up, sometimes worse than other times. And this is just one of those worse times.

Typos and other errors occur because they're too cheap to employ proper proof reading. It's a corner a lot of people cut and the printer will print whatever you sign off as the final piece. Lots of publishers don't proof read to make corrections before signing off the proof copy. Not conspiracy, it's incompetence and cheapness on the part of GW.

 Pacific wrote:
What was that saying about not attributing to malice that which you can more easily attribute to incompetence?

I think it's far more likely the just couldn't, or were unable, to do their job properly. Of course as you say an unintended bonus of that could be that people buy the print version, then see the improvements of the digital download and buy that as well.

Quoted for truth, I think we can call it here honestly.

The only way I could see value in the iPad editions of the GW codex and even the BRB was if you paid once and got all future upgrades for free.

So I buy the 6th Edition BRB for my iPad for $60, two years later I boot my ebook reader and over night the 6th Edition BRB became the newly released 7th Edition BRB

 yakface wrote:

The reality is more that the people working in the studio are people just like you and I trying to do the best damn job they can with their particular little corner of the company they've been given and its just they're in a position where any mistake they make is examined by thousands of people with microscopes anxious to scream about how badly they have screwed up.

They are far from alone in that regard. I work in a relatively small software house and we have plenty of customers paying much more attention to detail. Mistakes do happen, but every effort should be made to minimise them. The difference is that whilst some companies invest a lot of effort into such things (better quality processes, more reviewing and proof-reading), GW seems to be cutting corners and releasing unfinished products.

The fact that typo's in rule books (it happens in most books) are shown up so quickly shows that proofreading isn't being done properly. Writers of things tend to become blind to typos, and so need to get someone else to read them (especially if they know something of the subject matter), which isn't very expensive and improves the quality drastically.

I certainly don't believe the print copies of the rules are bad on purpose, though some of the errors are so obvious they look like they were deliberately missed, just that they are trying to do things on the cheap and being caught out.

 Eggs wrote:
That's IF they used author - the t&c's of author are a little over the top in terms of the rights you give away, however there's nothing in author really that you can't accomplish reasonably easily using other methods. It really is quite simple to format something from the iBookstore (or amazon for that matter), but the companies which own the distribution networks get to dictate what percentage they take - so gw will make less profit on a digital version, despite the fact it involves the same or slightly more costs to produce the content.

The plus side of giving away a slice of that pie? The distribution network you are paying for makes it easy to fix mistakes after the sale.

It is GW - you have seen there previous programming attempts, right?

Also - considering that Apple is still the only distribution network that they have used, there isn't really much significant that GW would be giving away (as that is the primary issue with the terms for Author).

Herzlos wrote:

They are far from alone in that regard. I work in a relatively small software house and we have plenty of customers paying much more attention to detail. Mistakes do happen, but every effort should be made to minimise them. The difference is that whilst some companies invest a lot of effort into such things (better quality processes, more reviewing and proof-reading), GW seems to be cutting corners and releasing unfinished products.

The fact that typo's in rule books (it happens in most books) are shown up so quickly shows that proofreading isn't being done properly. Writers of things tend to become blind to typos, and so need to get someone else to read them (especially if they know something of the subject matter), which isn't very expensive and improves the quality drastically.

I certainly don't believe the print copies of the rules are bad on purpose, though some of the errors are so obvious they look like they were deliberately missed, just that they are trying to do things on the cheap and being caught out.

While I agree I also think that especially when you're dealing with a super-dense rules product that contains stats, special rules, cross-referenced page numbers etc, it becomes even more difficult. Especially as even a great proof-reader and editor isn't going to help catching errors or unclear wording when it comes to the rules without being an extremely familiar player of the game. Honestly the best way to protect against this kind of stuff is probably early pre-releases of the text to the public (or a large chunk of beta testers) to try to catch things.

Unfortunately, GW's mandate on secrecy denies this from even being a possibility, leaving the playtesting to some small group of players.

So yes, GW's policies are certainly to blame for these issues, but I think its definitely a combination of factors...not putting as much money into proof-readers and editors as we (the fans) would obviously like, but also probably the workload of the authors and the company limitation on allowing very many eyes on pre-release text, rather than any sort of co-ordinated secret effort to push their digital offerings.

An increase in perceived technical difficulty should be met with an increased effort in improving quality.

Whilst you're saying they can't proofread things without being a keen gamer, they must have dozens or even hundreds of folk on staff who are "keen gamers". What's stopping them taking a pre-production copy over to Warhammer World (same building), giving it to a random staffer and asking them to spend half an hour reading through it.

There's also benefit in getting non-experts to read it through, some things may be obvious to someone who understands 40K thoroughly (rules as intended Vs rules as written), that may be difficult for someone less familiar with the rules.

Even then we're talking about meaning issues, there should be no misspelt words, bad grammar or sentences that don't make any sense.

They are a huge (for the industry) company, with plenty of resources, a staff of writers and access to enough people to proof read things, so it's disappointing that they can release publications of such poor editorial quality.

Herzlos wrote:

 yakface wrote:

The reality is more that the people working in the studio are people just like you and I trying to do the best damn job they can with their particular little corner of the company they've been given and its just they're in a position where any mistake they make is examined by thousands of people with microscopes anxious to scream about how badly they have screwed up.

They are far from alone in that regard. I work in a relatively small software house and we have plenty of customers paying much more attention to detail. Mistakes do happen, but every effort should be made to minimise them. The difference is that whilst some companies invest a lot of effort into such things (better quality processes, more reviewing and proof-reading), GW seems to be cutting corners and releasing unfinished products.

The fact that typo's in rule books (it happens in most books) are shown up so quickly shows that proofreading isn't being done properly. Writers of things tend to become blind to typos, and so need to get someone else to read them (especially if they know something of the subject matter), which isn't very expensive and improves the quality drastically.

I certainly don't believe the print copies of the rules are bad on purpose, though some of the errors are so obvious they look like they were deliberately missed, just that they are trying to do things on the cheap and being caught out.

I think your drasticly over estimating the ability of any publishing house to pick up everything. There will be whole teams of copy editors, proof readers and the like after the author is done, but unfortunatly errors do creap through, and readers are very quick to pick up on them... Take a look at this blog from OUP about the OED and errors:

http://blog.oup.com/2008/03/ammon_shea

I think there's rather an underestimation of the work involved in proof reading. You don't just give it to any staff member you can find to have a flick through. It's costs money and that's why some companies skimp on it. My wife saw plenty of this when working for a printer, proofs were signed off with obvious errors, such as on the front cover. At which point you're relying on someone on the print shop floor spotting it and bringing it to someone's attention before the print run is well underway.

Yeah this is a ridiculous idea.. Like they sit around going "Ok put a typo on there!"

Basically GW are a little incompetent, that's why they need erratas. They don't play test enough and they feth things up sometimes..

As Sherlock said, if there are multiple answers, the most simple one is usually true!

And which is simpler?

1. GW feth up sometimes.

2. The writers and testers are corrupt, and purposely plan to feth things up, and their managers are as well, or else they would get disciplined for their mistakes. And then they all swear each other to secrecy about it, and they don't even tell their friends and families, because surely someone would blab about it. And all this in order that they make slightly more money, despite the fact they buy the hardback books in enormous bulk, and even though they personally don't make any extra cash because they have a salary not a income bonus per ebook sold.

Just throw in some Freemason affiliated Muslim ninjas entering the GW HQ with remote detonated explosives under the cover of darkness and this is up there with the 9/11 conspiracy!

Herzlos wrote:An increase in perceived technical difficulty should be met with an increased effort in improving quality.

Whilst you're saying they can't proofread things without being a keen gamer, they must have dozens or even hundreds of folk on staff who are "keen gamers". What's stopping them taking a pre-production copy over to Warhammer World (same building), giving it to a random staffer and asking them to spend half an hour reading through it.

There's also benefit in getting non-experts to read it through, some things may be obvious to someone who understands 40K thoroughly (rules as intended Vs rules as written), that may be difficult for someone less familiar with the rules.

Even then we're talking about meaning issues, there should be no misspelt words, bad grammar or sentences that don't make any sense.

They are a huge (for the industry) company, with plenty of resources, a staff of writers and access to enough people to proof read things, so it's disappointing that they can release publications of such poor editorial quality.

Passing around a codex to players at Warhammer World would accomplish precisely nothing. Not only would they have no idea the competence of any particular gamer they're handing it to, but that gamer would need to be an expert on that particular army AND spend hours (even days) with to really help catch nuanced issues. And most importantly this policy would breaches their chosen path of development secrecy, as players would naturally snap pics of the rules with their phones, etc.

Again, I am saying that GW *should* release Beta rules to the public to help identify issues ahead of time, but that doesn't fit into the way they like to release things (which is not the fault of the actual authors themselves).

When it comes to easily identifying unclear sentences, etc, when you really get down to it and examine unclear rules, a LOT of the time the sentences are completely functional at face value, its only when you're trying to compare how rule X interacts with rule Y (often in totally different books by totally different authors) that you realize the rule is actually unclear.

I can say from experience working on the INAT, I would spend dozens upon dozens of hours reading and re-reading a new draft, then pass it off to a half dozen other people for a quick look-through and then finally to one person dedicated to really editing and proof-reading it and still within minutes of releasing the document it was not horribly uncommon for someone to point out that one or two rulings seemed to completely contradict a printed rule. This is all despite the fact that myself and all the other people looking it over are deeply entrenched long-time 40K players with a giant knowledge of game situations across all of the armies.

But the denser the document is with rules, stats, page numbers, etc, the easier it is for these to literally become a blur. And although none of us are paid writers or proofers, we also aren't working on several projects at once and being responsible for also writing and checking thousands of words worth of fluff text for each project either.


Again, I do want to reiterate that for the price GW charges they *should* be putting the time and effort into catching these issues, but the whole point of saying all of this is that: it is *incredibly* easy for these types of mistakes to happen, even when you have talented dedicated people who are knowledgeable about your game working on staff.

 yakface wrote:

But the denser the document is with rules, stats, page numbers, etc, the easier it is for these to literally become a blur. And although none of us are paid writers or proofers, we also aren't working on several projects at once and being responsible for also writing and checking thousands of words worth of fluff text for each project either.

I am actually, and it astounds me that in a book with less than 200 pages, most of which are covered in images, (I don't have the book yet, just basing it on previous experience) there are so many blatant errors. There must be a workflow problem in the GW review department. I don't claim to have any knowledge of their inner workings, but a simple compare between the entries in the army list and the unit description would've gone a long way in this book from what I've read.
IMO nothing makes a company look worse than typos in their printed material. That is the first line of defense for your image as a company. Unfortunately most people that pick up the book wont figure that out until they have already spent money on it.

I am also a paid writer, and occasionally a paid proofreader, and it really isn't difficult to catch the huge majority of mistakes. 2-3 proofreaders, each tackling a manuscript should catch 99% of mistakes.

 yakface wrote:
Passing around a codex to players at Warhammer World would accomplish precisely nothing.

That's not true at all. It might not catch the most subtle errors, but even a token effort at looking for typos would catch things like the fact that the new DA flyer has the missile lock rule (which only does anything with blast weapons) but no blast weapons or option to take blast weapons. Or that the FW Manta, now in at least its second printing since 4th edition, still has a special rule based on the 4th edition ordnance rules that now literally does nothing, an error that every person who buys IA:Aeronautica immediately notices.

Of course what GW really need to do is find some of the most hardcore competitive TFG rules lawyers and let them play with each new product for a while. Then once the TFGs have broken everything and found every possible mistake they hand it back to GW to fix it.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I think there's rather an underestimation of the work involved in proof reading. You don't just give it to any staff member you can find to have a flick through. It's costs money and that's why some companies skimp on it. My wife saw plenty of this when working for a printer, proofs were signed off with obvious errors, such as on the front cover. At which point you're relying on someone on the print shop floor spotting it and bringing it to someone's attention before the print run is well underway.

I never said to scrimp on proofreading, and I know it's difficult (I've written and proofread technical manuals). I was pointing out that in addition to their inadequate proofreading, they have access to plenty of other experienced pairs of eyes to have a scan through for howlers, which some of the mistakes are and should be obvious to almost anyone reading.

 yakface wrote:

Herzlos wrote:An increase in perceived technical difficulty should be met with an increased effort in improving quality.

Whilst you're saying they can't proofread things without being a keen gamer, they must have dozens or even hundreds of folk on staff who are "keen gamers". What's stopping them taking a pre-production copy over to Warhammer World (same building), giving it to a random staffer and asking them to spend half an hour reading through it.

There's also benefit in getting non-experts to read it through, some things may be obvious to someone who understands 40K thoroughly (rules as intended Vs rules as written), that may be difficult for someone less familiar with the rules.

Even then we're talking about meaning issues, there should be no misspelt words, bad grammar or sentences that don't make any sense.

They are a huge (for the industry) company, with plenty of resources, a staff of writers and access to enough people to proof read things, so it's disappointing that they can release publications of such poor editorial quality.

Passing around a codex to players at Warhammer World would accomplish precisely nothing. Not only would they have no idea the competence of any particular gamer they're handing it to, but that gamer would need to be an expert on that particular army AND spend hours (even days) with to really help catch nuanced issues. And most importantly this policy would breaches their chosen path of development secrecy, as players would naturally snap pics of the rules with their phones, etc.

I said nothing about giving it to gamers at Warhammer World, I suggested they could give it to a random member of the dozen staff working there, or some of the studio team or WD staff, who you'd expect to be familiar enough with the system to give a document a scan through. There's also benefit in having inexperienced people reading it, as they'll make assumptions. This can be done in house without any worries about leaking.

When it comes to easily identifying unclear sentences, etc, when you really get down to it and examine unclear rules, a LOT of the time the sentences are completely functional at face value, its only when you're trying to compare how rule X interacts with rule Y (often in totally different books by totally different authors) that you realize the rule is actually unclear.

There are plenty of rules that are just badly written or unclear too. I'm sure there's a special rule in the 40K book that is just plain wrong. Interactions with rules and balance issues may be harder to identify, but they should have access to sufficient people with sufficient understanding of the games systems to identify the worst of these. If not they need to find better people to be proofreading them.

I can say from experience working on the INAT, I would spend dozens upon dozens of hours reading and re-reading a new draft, then pass it off to a half dozen other people for a quick look-through and then finally to one person dedicated to really editing and proof-reading it and still within minutes of releasing the document it was not horribly uncommon for someone to point out that one or two rulings seemed to completely contradict a printed rule. This is all despite the fact that myself and all the other people looking it over are deeply entrenched long-time 40K players with a giant knowledge of game situations across all of the armies.

It does happen, I've done it as well, but most of the really bad mistakes will have been caught by your reviewing stage.

GW books have always had copious amounts of errors in them and although some of the DA ones were particularly glaring (Relic Banners ), they were far from unusual.

 Eggs wrote:
I am also a paid writer, and occasionally a paid proofreader, and it really isn't difficult to catch the huge majority of mistakes. 2-3 proofreaders, each tackling a manuscript should catch 99% of mistakes.

Well yes, but I'm not sure GW has paid proofreaders.

 Melissia wrote:

 Eggs wrote:
I am also a paid writer, and occasionally a paid proofreader, and it really isn't difficult to catch the huge majority of mistakes. 2-3 proofreaders, each tackling a manuscript should catch 99% of mistakes.

Well yes, but I'm not sure GW has paid proofreaders.

With the amount they charge for the books they should.

With the amount they charge for BL books they should hire good writers, but with a few exceptions they don't do that either.

 Melissia wrote:
With the amount they charge for BL books they should hire good writers, but with a few exceptions they don't do that either.

Agreed.

Interesting note re good writers. The amount that the writer gets paid in standard publishing is an absolute pittance. A top tier author would be lucky to see a pound from a £7-8 pound paperback. A new or debut author maybe £0.30.

For the volume that bl shift (not big in the scheme of things), and I'm guessing their writers are on the bottom tier of authors, their writers probably only see a couple of grand a book. Writing a decent sized book is a fair bit of work.

Not really making any point other than I suppose you get what you pay for. I've toyed with the idea of writing an ms for bl just for kicks, but I figure for what they'd be paying, my time would be better spent working extra shifts in my main jobs. (Hell, I'd probably make more working in a bar...)

 Dok wrote:

 yakface wrote:

But the denser the document is with rules, stats, page numbers, etc, the easier it is for these to literally become a blur. And although none of us are paid writers or proofers, we also aren't working on several projects at once and being responsible for also writing and checking thousands of words worth of fluff text for each project either.

I am actually, and it astounds me that in a book with less than 200 pages, most of which are covered in images, (I don't have the book yet, just basing it on previous experience) there are so many blatant errors. There must be a workflow problem in the GW review department. I don't claim to have any knowledge of their inner workings, but a simple compare between the entries in the army list and the unit description would've gone a long way in this book from what I've read.
IMO nothing makes a company look worse than typos in their printed material. That is the first line of defense for your image as a company. Unfortunately most people that pick up the book wont figure that out until they have already spent money on it.

I buy a broadsheet newspaper every day and the amount of typographical errors in them is astounding.

Just saying.

The difference is a broadsheet costs you a pound, is made in 24hrs, and probably has more text than a codex!

I can forgive typos in newspapers, even though they should still catch most of em if the journo's and editors are doing their jobs properly.

A £30 book, I just cannot forgive stupid mistakes.

It's not as if codices are cheap. For a newspaper, you're looking at work done very quickly. If GW made an army book for Wood Elves, I'd expect it to be nearly perfect because they must have been working on it for ages!

At least with newspapers they have to be done very quickly-- often every day or even twice a day, depending on which paper you speak of.

A codex is released once maybe every several years (oftentimes once a decade) unless it's C:SM.

 Eggs wrote:
The difference is a broadsheet costs you a pound, is made in 24hrs, and probably has more text than a codex!

I can forgive typos in newspapers, even though they should still catch most of em if the journo's and editors are doing their jobs properly.

A £30 book, I just cannot forgive stupid mistakes.

Well if I buy a newspaper for 30 days, just including the headlines, there will probably be more mistakes than there are in a codex.

And that's without accounting for the unfathomable amount of special rules that over-lap and interact with each other.

I'm not defending GW in the slightest, but the idea that they're simply incompetant and shoving things out without bothering to check them is at odds with the huge amount of errors I see in newspapers and books every day, as well as with what yakface put above.

 BryllCream wrote:

 Eggs wrote:
The difference is a broadsheet costs you a pound, is made in 24hrs, and probably has more text than a codex!

I can forgive typos in newspapers, even though they should still catch most of em if the journo's and editors are doing their jobs properly.

A £30 book, I just cannot forgive stupid mistakes.

Well if I buy a newspaper for 30 days, just including the headlines, there will probably be more mistakes than there are in a codex.

You'd probably have a higher word count in headlines depending on the paper:p And you'd still have spent less. I can't remember seeing many typos on paper though, but I don't read that many. I'll grab one during the week and see what I can find.

It's a matter of perspective/image though; typos on daily papers is poor, but acceptable, especially for tabloids. typos in premium rule books from a premium company with a premium price is less acceptable. Blatantly nonsense content (like the missile lock on a flyer with no blast weapons) is even less so.

It just goes to show you that GW puts a 100% increase on its items. I have a book with roughly the same pages and its $24, and its printed in canada. If you flipp over your Dark angel dex you will see printed in china.

So its cheaply produced, and is full of errors with a $60 price tag. Yup, not impressed. Oh wait, there is a digital version free of errors? $60 huh... but it doesnt go through the process of being manufactured... or shipped... or take up warehouse space....

you GW.

 Ravenous D wrote:
Oh wait, there is a digital version free of errors? $60 huh... but it doesnt go through the process of being manufactured... or shipped... or take up warehouse space....

you GW.

Yes - but it comes with a nice hardcover to justify the price...oh, wait, no it doesn't...