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In it, they tout the 400th issue (even though they've stopped using issue numbers with the new redesign) as the opportunity to interview past White Dwarf editors as a special bonus feature.

But wait? What's this? As I flip through the article and read the feature I see one White Dwarf editor they're missing - Paul Sawyer!

Hm... what's going on here? Did they fail to ask him, or did he decline to be interviewed?

His tenure there was lengthy indeed.

Thoughts?

Anyone here have the inside track on this snub?

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

 insaniak wrote:
The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

But they're not asking him about that. Just asking him to say a few words about White Dwarf. And it mentioned the other guy works in the video game industry...

On a few of them, it doesn't even say what they do now, only that they were editor from when to when.

Should I e-mail the WD team and see what's up?

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

I noticed the same thing.

I'd be curious to see why Fat Bloke got the snub.

Did you stop to consider that maybe they did ask and he turned them down?

 insaniak wrote:
The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

Rick Priestly mentioned in a podcast interview the second you go to work for a company that is a direct competitor with GW, they never talk to you again. Of course he was also at Warlord Games when he made that statement, but before Gates of Antares had been announced. At the time Warlord only did historical. Pretty sure Rick and Paul don't get the phone calls returned these days from GW.

Conspiracy theories are not "news".

Not news or rumor, moving to discussions -

I flicker though it and its interesting seeing exactly what WD has become. There's a lot more white space and larger text. And since when did it become normal to put an enormous picture of the author of a piece at the start of every article. Sometimes you'd get a small thumbnail image but not something taking a sizeable amount of the page. Not just that, but the inside cover already introduced the editorial team which pictures so they're just repeatedly filling the magazine with photos if themselves. It's a bit weird.

Paul Sawyer is conspicuous by his absence as one of the longest serving editors of the magazine. Despite the cover, it wasn't much of a celebration issue, the anniversary stuff was a slim amongst in the back while the bulk of the issue was just about Tau. I can't believe anyone pays £5+ for this. It's very slick and all, but dear god the content was poor.

 insaniak wrote:
The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

A rival that has the feel of old school GW to boot.

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

A rival that has the feel of old school GW to boot.

Which company is it? I don't really know whos about these days as we have no FLGS where I live anymore.

Quick bit of google-fu & hey preseto: -

http://www.warlordgames.com/33753/paul-sawyer-confirmed-for-wgd-2013/

They are hardly direct competitors (dealing with historical gaming) !

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I flicker though it and its interesting seeing exactly what WD has become. There's a lot more white space and larger text. And since when did it become normal to put an enormous picture of the author of a piece at the start of every article. Sometimes you'd get a small thumbnail image but not something taking a sizeable amount of the page. Not just that, but the inside cover already introduced the editorial team which pictures so they're just repeatedly filling the magazine with photos if themselves. It's a bit weird.

It's a classic example of style over content - reduce the printed area and fill that area with as much puff and prattle as possible, thereby reducing the actual content as much as possible, clearly showing how much GW care about their cata......sorry, publication.

 FordPrefect wrote:
Quick bit of google-fu & hey preseto: -

http://www.warlordgames.com/33753/paul-sawyer-confirmed-for-wgd-2013/

They are hardly direct competitors (dealing with historical gaming) !

Thats right, armies of massed ranks and skirmishers going at it on the tabletop in different settings aren't similar at all.

 Ghaz wrote:
Did you stop to consider that maybe they did ask and he turned them down?

I mentioned it in the OP, yes.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I flicker though it and its interesting seeing exactly what WD has become. There's a lot more white space and larger text. And since when did it become normal to put an enormous picture of the author of a piece at the start of every article. Sometimes you'd get a small thumbnail image but not something taking a sizeable amount of the page. Not just that, but the inside cover already introduced the editorial team which pictures so they're just repeatedly filling the magazine with photos if themselves. It's a bit weird.

Paul Sawyer is conspicuous by his absence as one of the longest serving editors of the magazine. Despite the cover, it wasn't much of a celebration issue, the anniversary stuff was a slim amongst in the back while the bulk of the issue was just about Tau. I can't believe anyone pays £5+ for this. It's very slick and all, but dear god the content was poor.

This. I notice the 200, and 300 celebration issues were much better. This just had a few extra pages of reader-submitted models. A very poor showing.

silent25 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

Rick Priestly mentioned in a podcast interview the second you go to work for a company that is a direct competitor with GW, they never talk to you again. Of course he was also at Warlord Games when he made that statement, but before Gates of Antares had been announced. At the time Warlord only did historical. Pretty sure Rick and Paul don't get the phone calls returned these days from GW.

Interesting. Which podcast interview was this?

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 FordPrefect wrote:
Quick bit of google-fu & hey preseto: -

http://www.warlordgames.com/33753/paul-sawyer-confirmed-for-wgd-2013/

They are hardly direct competitors (dealing with historical gaming) !

Thats right, armies of massed ranks and skirmishers going at it on the tabletop in different settings aren't similar at all.

We could split hairs on what is or is not a competitor to GW all day. Are other hobby games competitors? D&D? M:tG? What about miniatures not used for games, like Reaper? It seems that Reaper, GW and D&D/WotC are the big competitors for your gaming dollar.

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

To be fair, I don't think they'd have been able to interview EVERY editor anyway, there's probably been too many.

But I noticed an even more interesting thing. Did you see that picture of WD 1? Did you see how much it was? 50p. That's right, 50p. That's an 1000% Price Increase it's had since then...

 chris_valera wrote:

Interesting. Which podcast interview was this?

40K Radio interview from a while back. Romeo does not do his homework, so it is a painful interview to listen to.

 The Shadow wrote:
To be fair, I don't think they'd have been able to interview EVERY editor anyway, there's probably been too many.

But I noticed an even more interesting thing. Did you see that picture of WD 1? Did you see how much it was? 50p. That's right, 50p. That's an 1000% Price Increase it's had since then...

To be fair, that was the 70s and the magazine was likely much thinner then. But WD is much more expensive than other model kit magazines or Dragon, but it also doesn't have advertisements. Dragon seemed to have ads for other d20 games, and a fantasy/sci-fi book of the month club before they went under.

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

This issue was the first in months I thought was ALMOST worth buying.

It took me a good 45 minutes to get through it all in WH Smith.

 insaniak wrote:
The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

While there might be that attitude amongst the 'suits' and lower-down jobsworths, I don't think it's an attitude that pervades the design/development side of things. The Perrys still do work for GW as well as their own miniatures for example, I've heard Ronnie Renton (Mantic boss) being described as 'the most liked man at GW', some time after he left GW and set up for himself. I think there is a pretty small pool of development guys based around Nottingham, and I can't imagine what are probably pretty good friends (after spending so much time with each other) suddenly giving a 'talk to the hand' signal to those same compatriots after they have left the company, just because they don't get to wear a yellow G and W any more.

If you listen to that interview even Rick's criticisms of GW were aimed entirely at the company's business philosophy and the way that had changed over the years. There wasn't a bad word about any of the design guys, and in fact he defended them by saying they were not given anything like the freedoms they had enjoyed in the past (with every new miniature and rules re-write going via the sales department).

Still puzzling though why 'fat bloke' Sawyer is missing - not just a long tenure, but to many fans of the magazine (myself included) a very successful one. Take a look back at one of the issues when he was at the helm, there was more journalistic content in one magazine than there has been in the combined efforts of WD since it 're-launched'.

Was Jake Thornton in it? I ask again as he's now working for himself, but is probably best known for his game development for Mantic.

silent25 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

Rick Priestly mentioned in a podcast interview the second you go to work for a company that is a direct competitor with GW, they never talk to you again.

...so that would explain why Andy Chambers is now writing fiction for GW? Rick Priestly is generally a pretty miserable guy. He's the wargaming equivalent of Alan Moore, anything done with his creation by another person is wrong in his mind by default.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I flicker though it and its interesting seeing exactly what WD has become. There's a lot more white space and larger text. And since when did it become normal to put an enormous picture of the author of a piece at the start of every article. Sometimes you'd get a small thumbnail image but not something taking a sizeable amount of the page. Not just that, but the inside cover already introduced the editorial team which pictures so they're just repeatedly filling the magazine with photos if themselves. It's a bit weird.

Reusing photos of authors is cheaper and easier than writing real articles or other meaningful content. Try as they may but they can't fill every page with catalog pictures of new releases.

 BolingbrokeIV wrote:

silent25 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
The fact that he's currently running a rival miniatures company would seem likely to have something to do with it...

Rick Priestly mentioned in a podcast interview the second you go to work for a company that is a direct competitor with GW, they never talk to you again.

...so that would explain why Andy Chambers is now writing fiction for GW? Rick Priestly is generally a pretty miserable guy. He's the wargaming equivalent of Alan Moore, anything done with his creation by another person is wrong in his mind by default.

I suspect working on Star Craft 2 makes up for working on Star Ship Troopers.

 BolingbrokeIV wrote:
...so that would explain why Andy Chambers is now writing fiction for GW?

Having seen Mongoose's attempts to make a successful miniatures game, I doubt that GW ever considered them a serious competitor...

 insaniak wrote:

 BolingbrokeIV wrote:
...so that would explain why Andy Chambers is now writing fiction for GW?

Having seen Mongoose's attempts to make a successful miniatures game, I doubt that GW ever considered them a serious competitor...

More's the pity. SST had some good mechanics, but fell flat.

Oh well.

Andy Hoare has done work for a bunch of others and still writes for GW.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Andy Hoare has done work for a bunch of others and still writes for GW.

Just thought he did stuff for FFG. Though he might not be getting any call backs with the new Warzone game...

silent25 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Andy Hoare has done work for a bunch of others and still writes for GW.

Just thought he did stuff for FFG. Though he might not be getting any call backs with the new Warzone game...

Yep Andy wrote the dust warfare rule book. Nit sure if he is just doing ad hoc work or if he has a contract with them.

 insaniak wrote:

 BolingbrokeIV wrote:
...so that would explain why Andy Chambers is now writing fiction for GW?

Having seen Mongoose's attempts to make a successful miniatures game, I doubt that GW ever considered them a serious competitor...

Besides the fact there probably isn't one company GW considers a serious competitr, I was refering more to dust warfare, which was Andy Chambers not Andy Hoare as just mentioned. The point is Rick Priestley talks crap.

In most careers it's usually the company you are with at the time who don't like you fraternising with rivals. Paul Sawyer probably refused in respect to that.

silent25 wrote:
Just thought he did stuff for FFG. Though he might not be getting any call backs with the new Warzone game...

He still writes for BL. He does 40K RPG stuff (every book I've worked on I've worked on with AH). He's doing Warzone (which doesn't stop him from doing FFG stuff) and he's even doing some work with Victoria Miniatures (all those wonderful not-Guard multi-piece metals).