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Disdainful, same name here as on c&c, wrote up an article on capture and control explaining the 4 easy steps to fixing GW.

http://www.captureandcontrol.com/2013/02/how-to-fix-gw-in-four-easy-steps.html

It is a longer than normal article so I don't want to just cut and paste it in, plus there are quite a few pictures! For those who don't like clicking links that take you out of dakka here is a summary.

1. Fix the pricing. Dis argues that you don't need an across the board price drop, but there are some price fixes that are absolutely necessary.
2. Support organized play. Not just a rt and gt format from GW themselves but 4 times a year well supported campaigns. All similar to how PP runs things.
3. Create relevant and timely FAQ and errata. This is painfully needed.
4. Bring back GW run forums. In order to facilitate an actual relationship with the community that isn't hostile and also supports the creation of the FAQs and Errata a GW run forum really is necessary. It would also help aid in the campaigns and tournament formatting etc.

These are just basic points so I would suggest reading the whole article to get all of Dis' finer points. I wanted to post this here to get feedback from the dakka community specifically since not everyone here reads c&c regularly. This is not a ploy for page views. We make no money off of capture and control, it is purely a project of love for the hobby from those of us who post there. So what do you think?

I don't think they will ever bring back their forum. It would just be a horrific troll target and anything meaningful will be drowned out. Plus GW will not want the headache of moderating (meaning deleting 95% of the posts that are outright trolling or posting something GW doesn't like).

I imagine they have people who read the larger forums and sites in their spare time anyway.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I imagine they have people who read the larger forums and sites in their spare time anyway.

They do. At a recent studio Q&A session, they were asked about it (particularly balance discussions on message boards) and they even refereed to one Warseer user by his screen name. So they do read boards.

I mean, with over a year to write a codex, they've got to be doing something with the amount of spare time they'd have.

Really well written piece, I also enjoyed the linked article written by the OP.

There will come a tipping point with the current path they are on. How they handle it will be very interesting to follow.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I don't think they will ever bring back their forum. It would just be a horrific troll target and anything meaningful will be drowned out. Plus GW will not want the headache of moderating (meaning deleting 95% of the posts that are outright trolling or posting something GW doesn't like).

I imagine they have people who read the larger forums and sites in their spare time anyway.

I'm sure they do, but that's not nearly as good as actually *responding* to the community and the official forum can give a controlled outlet for responding to the community.

It'd be interesting to see how an official GW forum would go these days, I feel like there's a lot more GW hate now than there was back when they used to have their forums open, back then I was surprised they closed their forums because they didn't seem too bad to me.

They have an outlet in terms of their social media accounts as well as their blog/news posts on their site.

And given how full my feed is with GW/FW updates, they have no problem using them.

I have said this before but here goes:

GW will never have an Online forum/community manager because that would mean they were willing to listen to expressed concerns and act upon them in some meaningful away. The moment you publicize an open forum where this community representative will manage and promote discussion that NEW customers can be directed to, you are giving up some measure of the control on how the customer perceives the hobby.

That's not to say GW does not care, but its that they are not willing to give up any sort of brand image that gives anyone the impression it's not the land of rainbows and sunshine user level. I am still surprised they have Facebook pages (albeit heavily supervised for posted content).

GW didhave an Outreach Manager but she left in October.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
They have an outlet in terms of their social media accounts as well as their blog/news posts on their site.

And given how full my feed is with GW/FW updates, they have no problem using them.

Except they don't actually use those outlets to respond to the community and/or address problems the community might have, rather they just ignore problems.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
They have an outlet in terms of their social media accounts as well as their blog/news posts on their site.

And given how full my feed is with GW/FW updates, they have no problem using them.

Except they don't actually use those outlets to respond to the community and/or address problems the community might have, rather they just ignore problems.

Not everything the community raises as a "problem" is worth responding to, or it might have been responded to at some point before.

Take a look at the BioWare forums for Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer to see how this works in regards to the reason why it is best for a company to ignore problems or address them privately when possible. As soon as a developer responds to a post about a specific problem, threads demanding the same attention for some perceived issue immediately crop up and posters get progressively more agitated as people feel that they are somehow being slighted because their problem is being "ignored".

 Kanluwen wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
They have an outlet in terms of their social media accounts as well as their blog/news posts on their site.

And given how full my feed is with GW/FW updates, they have no problem using them.

Except they don't actually use those outlets to respond to the community and/or address problems the community might have, rather they just ignore problems.

Not everything the community raises as a "problem" is worth responding to, or it might have been responded to at some point before.

Take a look at the BioWare forums for Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer to see how this works in regards to the reason why it is best for a company to ignore problems or address them privately when possible. As soon as a developer responds to a post about a specific problem, threads demanding the same attention for some perceived issue immediately crop up and posters get progressively more agitated as people feel that they are somehow being slighted because their problem is being "ignored".

You raise an important point there. Perhaps the best thing to do in either case is not release/do what most people regard as a 'stinker'? Regardless of whether you are talking about a product, a too high price for it, or an unhappy ending.

Compare the amount of complaint threads on something like the company-run forums of Infinity, Mantic or FoW - there are very few, but in each case when they have existed there has usually been a reason for it. It's all to easy to claim that you haven't got any problems, the people complaining would all be doing so regardless, putting fingers in their ears and yelling 'lalalala' while at the same time isolating yourself from any meaningful feedback, and continuing in a poor direction.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
Disdainful, same name here as on c&c, wrote up an article on capture and control explaining the 4 easy steps to fixing GW.

http://www.captureandcontrol.com/2013/02/how-to-fix-gw-in-four-easy-steps.html

It is a longer than normal article so I don't want to just cut and paste it in, plus there are quite a few pictures! For those who don't like clicking links that take you out of dakka here is a summary.

1. Fix the pricing. Dis argues that you don't need an across the board price drop, but there are some price fixes that are absolutely necessary.
2. Support organized play. Not just a rt and gt format from GW themselves but 4 times a year well supported campaigns. All similar to how PP runs things.
3. Create relevant and timely FAQ and errata. This is painfully needed.
4. Bring back GW run forums. In order to facilitate an actual relationship with the community that isn't hostile and also supports the creation of the FAQs and Errata a GW run forum really is necessary. It would also help aid in the campaigns and tournament formatting etc.

These are just basic points so I would suggest reading the whole article to get all of Dis' finer points. I wanted to post this here to get feedback from the dakka community specifically since not everyone here reads c&c regularly. This is not a ploy for page views. We make no money off of capture and control, it is purely a project of love for the hobby from those of us who post there. So what do you think?

Sadly this will never happen. 4 quick answers to why hehe..

1. Can't lower prices, when price increase is the only thing that still makes them profitable :(
2. Can't suport organized play when you have such an Unbalanced game. And when the company plan is to make it Unbalanced so they can sell more armies. We have to understand that its not hard to make a game somewhat balanced. But GW has for the last decade gone out of thier way, trying to boost new armies. In a FAIL atempt at trying to make people buy new armies. The Unbalance in GW games is intended, becuase that is what has sold new armies in the past. PP has gone the other way, they release things for all armies instead, so they dont have to creep to make people buy new stuff.
3. This is not in GWs best inerest to do this. Because then people might play with thier old armies and wont buy new once. And GWs main strategi is trying to force people to buy new armies to stay competetive....
4. When you have a bad attitude against your customers. And treat them like they have low IQ. And that they dont understand that GW is just in it for the CASH these days. Running thier own forum will, like it did last time turn into a disaster for them... so no it wont happen.. There will always be negative posts on a forum, But other minitature gaming companies, that actually try to suport OLDER players (and not little kidds with mommys Credjt Card), and make a balanced game do not have any problems running thier own forums..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarain wrote:
Really well written piece, I also enjoyed the linked article written by the OP.

There will come a tipping point with the current path they are on. How they handle it will be very interesting to follow.

I have also pointed out that the tipping point is coming. I feel that we are at the start of it now. Most of the people I play with, around 12-15 people have switch games. Most of the stores i buy stuff from say that they have seen a decline in GW products. Sadly I think GW will slowly sink like the Taitanic.. They think they have an unsinkable ship.. so they are slowly going down with it. lucky for me I got in a lifeboat in time...

1. The real rate of inflation is currently @ 10%, and has been for a number of years. If you want GW to cut prices start by voting for politicans that don't lie to you and fuel the buy it now, go bankrupt later economy.

2. I don't necessarily disagree with the organised play idea - not tournaments - where my disagreement comes is that GW encourage players to do it themselves, yet for whatever reason players take the path of least resistance. To mis-quote John Locke, GW want the players to take liberty, but they prefer licence.

3. Meh, I'm not that bothered, heck sometimes these things actually lead to conversation.

4. GW wisely got out of forums.

 marielle wrote:
1. The real rate of inflation is currently @ 10%, and has been for a number of years. If you want GW to cut prices start by voting for politicans that don't lie to you and fuel the buy it now, go bankrupt later economy.

2. I don't necessarily disagree with the organised play idea - not tournaments - where my disagreement comes is that GW encourage players to do it themselves, yet for whatever reason players take the path of least resistance. To mis-quote John Locke, GW want the players to take liberty, but they prefer licence.

3. Meh, I'm not that bothered, heck sometimes these things actually lead to conversation.

4. GW wisely got out of forums.

This translates to: "GW can do no wrong so its all basically the fault of their customers and the economy"!

That kool-aid sure must be tasty!

1. Plausible on certain items, but some are sitting just right at the moment

2. A good possibility, except they want players to just do that themselves...and the game is not really balanced enough to make a massive campaign fair.

.3 Their FAQ/Errata are now very timely, but they do miss some important questions...so really this just needs tuning up.

4. Forums for GW are a terrible idea....(anyone who watched the last season of the Guild will know why). It would consist of nothing but people flaming/trolling GW and otherwise criticizing everything they do, without being constructive.

On the whole though...well reasoned and well put article.

1. Stop selling miniatures.

2. Start selling booze.

3. Move HQ from Nottingham to Vegas.

4. Replace the gaming tables with pole dancers.

These simple steps would reinvigorate the hobby and bring new life to their waning products.

PhantomViper wrote:

 marielle wrote:
1. The real rate of inflation is currently @ 10%, and has been for a number of years. If you want GW to cut prices start by voting for politicans that don't lie to you and fuel the buy it now, go bankrupt later economy.

2. I don't necessarily disagree with the organised play idea - not tournaments - where my disagreement comes is that GW encourage players to do it themselves, yet for whatever reason players take the path of least resistance. To mis-quote John Locke, GW want the players to take liberty, but they prefer licence.

3. Meh, I'm not that bothered, heck sometimes these things actually lead to conversation.

4. GW wisely got out of forums.

This translates to: "GW can do no wrong so its all basically the fault of their customers and the economy"!

That kool-aid sure must be tasty!

Nope, It's about not believing in interwebz groupthink and think for yourself.

But thank you for confirming my point 4.

 marielle wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

 marielle wrote:
1. The real rate of inflation is currently @ 10%, and has been for a number of years. If you want GW to cut prices start by voting for politicans that don't lie to you and fuel the buy it now, go bankrupt later economy.

2. I don't necessarily disagree with the organised play idea - not tournaments - where my disagreement comes is that GW encourage players to do it themselves, yet for whatever reason players take the path of least resistance. To mis-quote John Locke, GW want the players to take liberty, but they prefer licence.

3. Meh, I'm not that bothered, heck sometimes these things actually lead to conversation.

4. GW wisely got out of forums.

This translates to: "GW can do no wrong so its all basically the fault of their customers and the economy"!

That kool-aid sure must be tasty!

Nope, It's about not believing in interwebz groupthink and think for yourself.

But thank you for confirming my point 4.

Good show old chap!

PhantomViper wrote:

This translates to: "GW can do no wrong so its all basically the fault of their customers and the economy"!

That kool-aid sure must be tasty!

We can do without comments like this.

Thanks

(price decreases are) Plausible on certain items, but some are sitting just right at the moment

Like what?
I can't think of a single item in the GW catalog that is in keeping with industry norm on pricing.

Anyway, interesting article.

GW will never bring back a forum as they simply cannot stand any form of criticism. Remember this is the same company that had a senior staffer insult a customer who was being critical of GW's prices at a Q&A telling him that he was "in the wrong hobby".
I'm old enough to remember the old forums. They were a useless place mostly inhabited by drooling fanboys and young kids. It was good for an occasional laugh at best. This was in no small part due to the fact they agressively removed any post that was even remotely critical. ( I was banned within just a few days of registration, and I was making a serious effort to "play nice") The end result was that the vast majority of the content resembled the old "letters page" that White Dwarf once featured with all the contrived drivel gushing with praise. More importantly the 4channer kiddies of today, make up a sizable percentage of the GW game playing community and without agressive moderation any official forum would quickly turn into a cess pool. So I seriously doubt GW would want the hassle of maintaining a forum in today's enviorment.

TR

 marielle wrote:
1. The real rate of inflation is currently @ 10%, and has been for a number of years. If you want GW to cut prices start by voting for politicans that don't lie to you and fuel the buy it now, go bankrupt later economy.

I'm not sure where you gathered this information, but annual inflation is at 3%, and has been so for just about ever. It hovered at 5% during the height of the great recession for about 3 months, but then came back down to 3, where it's all but stayed.

2. I don't necessarily disagree with the organized play idea - not tournaments - where my disagreement comes is that GW encourage players to do it themselves, yet for whatever reason players take the path of least resistance. To mis-quote John Locke, GW want the players to take liberty, but they prefer license.

False Dichotomy. What's to stop GW from having organized tournaments, and players also having player organized tournaments? GW also has the capital needed to make these events happen, but they don't see their value, which is very odd.

3. Meh, I'm not that bothered, heck sometimes these things actually lead to conversation.

Conversation? really? You just said that? I want to conversate on the great game we just had, not rule monger, and be mad for over a year because my army I've had for 20 years is getting beat off the table by an obvious broken rule!

4. GW wisely got out of forums.

Because they unwisely ran them. To be a leader in past time like this and not have a forum with your customers is obtuse to say the least. Every other game system has a forum, allowing it's players a window into the company, and a conversation about it's direction.

Nucflash wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
Really well written piece, I also enjoyed the linked article written by the OP.

There will come a tipping point with the current path they are on. How they handle it will be very interesting to follow.

I have also pointed out that the tipping point is coming. I feel that we are at the start of it now. Most of the people I play with, around 12-15 people have switch games. Most of the stores i buy stuff from say that they have seen a decline in GW products. Sadly I think GW will slowly sink like the Taitanic.. They think they have an unsinkable ship.. so they are slowly going down with it. lucky for me I got in a lifeboat in time...

My buddy and I just went over the tipping point. A trip to the LGS (about an hour away) did it for us. We went to look at 40k stuff. Then we saw Warmachine, and the prices of both. Then we saw the game tables, only things being played (besides cards) was Warmachine & Hordes. Looking at the rules and forums online and seeing the balance of the game...we were sold. Both of us are PP converts. We both like the GW minis and fluff, but the junk rules and crazy prices are just too much. My wife is going to start WM with us as well. Thats 3 more customers gone from GW.

 MisterMoon wrote:

 marielle wrote:
1. The real rate of inflation is currently @ 10%, and has been for a number of years. If you want GW to cut prices start by voting for politicans that don't lie to you and fuel the buy it now, go bankrupt later economy.

I'm not sure where you gathered this information, but annual inflation is at 3%, and has been so for just about ever. It hovered at 5% during the height of the great recession for about 3 months, but then came back down to 3, where it's all but stayed.

2. I don't necessarily disagree with the organized play idea - not tournaments - where my disagreement comes is that GW encourage players to do it themselves, yet for whatever reason players take the path of least resistance. To mis-quote John Locke, GW want the players to take liberty, but they prefer license.

False Dichotomy. What's to stop GW from having organized tournaments, and players also having player organized tournaments? GW also has the capital needed to make these events happen, but they don't see their value, which is very odd.

3. Meh, I'm not that bothered, heck sometimes these things actually lead to conversation.

Conversation? really? You just said that? I want to conversate on the great game we just had, not rule monger, and be mad for over a year because my army I've had for 20 years is getting beat off the table by an obvious broken rule!

4. GW wisely got out of forums.

Because they unwisely ran them. To be a leader in past time like this and not have a forum with your customers is obtuse to say the least. Every other game system has a forum, allowing it's players a window into the company, and a conversation about it's direction.

1. Indeed, but the official inflation rate is fudged.

2. I'm not sure where you get the idea that GW does not organise tournaments,

3. Perhaps you should re-evaluate your hobby.

4. GW has plenty of avenues to communicate with it's customers, all of them my useful than the possible feedback they would receive through an 'official forum'. And why would they bother with the hassle, and potential loss of sales, when they can get all the information they need by reading the numerous forums that already exist?

They still are the biggest company in the world, and still probably the biggest by far. I'd like to see statistics for non-western countries with emerging markets like China, Singapore, India, Russia etc. Even other European countries such as Italy or Greece or Poland - what games are played there? I think that because GW have so many armies and factions there will be something for everyone (I'm not saying the miniatures are better, just that there's a lot of them - you've got guys in power armour, Elves fighting alongside trees, Orcs fighting Renaissance Germans or Gestapo-like future warriors, the average human in stereotypical power armour etc). And I doubt very much that many of you started wargaming because you thought the rules were solid - you probably started due to the models! When I first saw WM being sold in a shop, I thought to myself "Now, does anyone actually play this?"

But there certainly is a few things that GW could definitely do, and I agree with the guys points. Just a quick question: what's wrong with Throne of Skulls?

1. Alter pricing

We're not going to see big falls, GW sells themselves as a premium product (we can disagree on this), but there may be room to change some (and perhaps not increase the costs of older stuff above the actual increase in production/distribution costs.

If finecast is being phased out as some rumours suggest this may help (I suspect the improvements in what we see in store means they're rejecting more of the casts increasing costs to them.... It's also percieved (by some) as an inferior material and getting rid of it will help

2. Possible,

however GW has said their game is NOT intended for tournament play.

A better idea might be for them to run 'turn up and have fun' events, no prizes for winning, no official winner, but prizes for painting/converting/most popular opponant, somewhere for fans to gather and apreciate the game GW says it produces, not somewhere for competative trounament players

3. They actually seem to be doing pretty well for FAQ speed, and not bad for content.

Yes they may be able to improve in places (a bit kore updating of old codexes would help), but at least some calls for FAQs are from bloody minded gamers desperatly wanting the rules not to say what they clearly do

4. Bring back GW forums,

I'd say unlikely, and probably pointless, there are plently of unofficial, but very active forums for those that want them, and GW can "listen in" to those (and apparently do). All their own forums would do is provide space for fan boys to fight with haters (and precious little for everything else)

1. Indeed, but the official inflation rate is fudged.

The rate of inflation being at 3% is independently researched and peer-reviewed, and is relied on by all industries (including GW). So contrary to what you hear on AM radio, it's academically proven to be at 3%. No one but gold peddling far right loonies are saying that the inflation rate is at 10%.

2. I'm not sure where you get the idea that GW does not organize tournaments.

Their support for tournaments is a shadow of it's former self. I'm not sure if you're paying attention.

3. Perhaps you should re-evaluate your hobby.

Because I want timely updates, and not have to wait forever? How about I evaluate that company's competition, which I did, and non-GW companies are getting more of my gaming dollar than ever before.

4. GW has plenty of avenues to communicate with it's customers, all of them my useful than the possible feedback they would receive through an 'official forum'. And why would they bother with the hassle, and potential loss of sales, when they can get all the information they need by reading the numerous forums that already exist?

What about the avenue for me to communicate with them in a matter of my choosing since I am the customer? My thoughts are echoed through out the gaming community. Instead of allowing proper two way communication, they'd rather just snoop in on other forums and read it? That's poor communication imo. PP, and others have realized that we are, indeed, in the 21st century, and have used internet forums as a means to provide modern communication. If done right a forum would only perfect the product, as other gaming companies (all of them in fact) have found out. The link provided by the OP, if you even read it, provides good explanation on it's benefit.

Didn't we just have a thread where uninformed wishlisting on how to fix GW was done?

So we have:
1. Lose money through price cuts.
2. Waste money running organized play which is already being done 'for free' by indy TOs.
3. Waste More Money as FAQ updates are 'fine' and the issue is people want free rules.
4. Waste time and money, The target audience speaks with their wallet. The angry non-customers want an avenue they don't deserve.

5. ????

6. Profit?

Yeah, this is a good thread.

looking at No1. Fixing pricing.

Without drastically changing and challenging their current model. GW would not lower prices or change their pricing schedule.

There will be a time, it's already happening, where high pricing cannot contribute enough against falling levels of sales to maintain current expectation amongst shareholders.

There is also no guarantee that lowering prices will bring in enough new sales to even maintain existing levels of profit.

One of the only ways we could see a lowering of prices is if GW dump their own B&M stores. But i would only see this happening if customers really fall off and Gw in its current form woul use this as an excuse to boost short term profits.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
I don't think they will ever bring back their forum. It would just be a horrific troll target and anything meaningful will be drowned out. Plus GW will not want the headache of moderating (meaning deleting 95% of the posts that are outright trolling or posting something GW doesn't like).

I imagine they have people who read the larger forums and sites in their spare time anyway.

Easy as pie to fix; hand out 20 cards that grant 20% off in stores, holders of those cards have to moderate the forums. Nerds will be stabbing each other in the neck to delete trollposts

 Kanluwen wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
They have an outlet in terms of their social media accounts as well as their blog/news posts on their site.

And given how full my feed is with GW/FW updates, they have no problem using them.

Except they don't actually use those outlets to respond to the community and/or address problems the community might have, rather they just ignore problems.

Not everything the community raises as a "problem" is worth responding to, or it might have been responded to at some point before.

Take a look at the BioWare forums for Mass Effect 3's Multiplayer to see how this works in regards to the reason why it is best for a company to ignore problems or address them privately when possible. As soon as a developer responds to a post about a specific problem, threads demanding the same attention for some perceived issue immediately crop up and posters get progressively more agitated as people feel that they are somehow being slighted because their problem is being "ignored".

Communication is definitely an art. Since you used the example of a video game and I have no idea about ME3 coz I've never played it, I'll say that CDProjekt did a very good job of responding to community problems both privately and publicly through their blog. Relic with Space Marine started off well with addressing problems, but I think once they realised that the problems were actually bad and they couldn't fix them easily, they just started ignoring the community and that made things worse (I think Relic had the problem of being under the failing THQ).

I don't think GW should start a forum in order to start trying to deal with posts about pricing and stuff like that. But IMO they could benefit from some actual community feedback on choices they make and unofficial clarification of rules and things.

Personally, I know when the official GW forum closed I spent far less time thinking about GW products and spent far less time on their website, which in turn probably resulted in me buying less products.

1. Stop letting desire for short term profits lead game and miniature design

2. Freeze prices for at least two years.

3. Release new supported specialist games - just imagine the box sets they could do for teams/gangs/warbands these days and tell me they wouldn't fly off the shelves

4. Take a good hard look at the art direction for current miniature designs