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Put your customers before your shareholders. Prices hikes are losing customers and making those who play the game question GW.

Make the hobby accessible to the working class and adults. You have a shop GW you have the luxury of opening it late for older gamers! Ask yourself Why not?

I myself have box's of models in my room... I hardly touch them and when I do i sigh... I remember when the old managers were at my store, we had so much fun having tournament nights and gaming days. I actually looked at my army and it felt so close to me, it didn't feel like I was supporting GW because I didn't need to... GW supported me, I had no worries of price hikes just an imaginary world I delved so deep into... I loved it... Then i met a nasty manager, held onto a non gw gaming store and then that closed. :( Oh and Grey Knights codex gripe...

This thread is honestly full of opinions that need to be shared with GW in some way. There are enough people with the same opinions, that even if communicating them to GW didn't institute an immediate policy change, would at least put the idea in somebody's mind. Say what you want about GW, but they're still a company, and their shareholders want sales. To get sales, they need to make customers happy. Complaining in a constructive way could actually go a long way, but not if it is limited to this forum and never makes it to GW.

I guess I should buy shares and go to the Shareholder's meeting.

And be ignored by Kirby , like every one else who wants a long term future for GW plc...

I'm lazy, but I saw this thread and felt i had to contribute:

a factory fire and an insurance claim. A mighty large insurance claim. That would probably save GW.

For me, the thing that annoys me the most is the fact I can no longer go into a store and do hobby stuff or play games unless its a booked lesson. My current store has gotten rid of most of their tables and just a huge empty space. They say to go to the nearest club, but I don't want to have to pay to play.

That annoys me more than the stock issues or the price rises, the shop feeling less like a community. Though of course the stock and money problems are frustrating too.

I'm going to weigh in on the MTG thing as well as it is very, very appropriate. I used to wonder why people would occasionally bring up MTG when talking about miniature gaming before I played it, but now that I do, I understand the points they were making. I'll do my best to present what I'm saying in a way that is relevant to improving a miniature wargaming experience.

daedalus wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Meanwhile MTG has none of these problems and is doing far better than GW could even dream of.

MTG? That game that has one unified set of rules the size of a Chick Tract written by a cadre of authors updating it at once where the solution to dealing with kludgy parts of the system from 10 years ago is just to declare them disallowed? Quite.

MTG has a basic rulebook and a comprehensive rules document. Many, many GW players would love a set of rules as well codified as the MTG Comprehensive Rules document. The comprehensive rules document is an absolute dream for looking up things you are confused about. It's 199 pages, cross referenced and searchable and available for free in a variety of formats. It gets updated multiple times per year with each and every product release.

Furthermore Wizards understands that it's what you play the game with that sell so they don't charge for the rules. They offer scans of every card they've ever produced on their website and allow fan sites to post images of their cards as well. They know that people want the high quality physical cards they sell and are not at all threatened by a site like magiccards.info has great scans of almost every card from the history of MTG. GW on the other hand is litigious and controlling of anything. They even sent cease & desist letters to people over the URLs of their website.

daedalus wrote:
Then I suppose I don't really "get" MTG:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/149
https://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=judge/resources/banned
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/232

Did you actually click into the links you provided? You'll find NO banned cards in Standard, There are about 30 for Modern, And your link to a 2009 "all banned cards ever" article is super small when you remember that 10,000+ cards have been printed for MTG. Before I played MTG, I thought Wizards was banning cards willy nilly and doing their best to invalidate old cards to push people into buying the new stuff, but I quickly found out they are actually doing the opposite.

Wizards provides formats of play to support long out of print cards. GW has no care for supporting their previous products. They yanked all the articles from their website and each codex released is about selling the new kits rather than making the army list the best possible fit into the game as a whole. Wizards, on the other hand, develops cards in each set to support all the different formats that people play and has regular events that support the use of out of print product in a way that makes for the best gaming experience possible.

daedalus wrote:
Whether or not you agree with GW, or the way they do things, it's illogical to compare 40k to MTG because they're not similar games. 40k isn't a competitive game, no matter how much you or I want it to be.

On the contrary, it's very, very logical to compare MTG and 40k. It's relevant because Wizards is growing MTG through their smart behaviour and GW is stagnating in a growing industry through their practices. Also, for a lot of independent retailers here in North America, MTG is their main seller. It's what keeps the doors open for many game stores. The only reason 40k isn't a competitive game is design failure. GW simply has not figured out how to make their game balanced and competitive so they just admitted failure by giving up on even trying.

svendrex wrote:
I do not really know enough about the business end of things to know if this is really feasible, but it is just what I would like to see from them. The biggest issue is that this would require GW to rebuild the game from the ground up. New rulebooks and all new codexes, new products, ect.

This is what they need to do. They need to completely rethink the experience of their product from first contact to years in and have a roadmap for players moving from one stage to another. As it is, they try to get as much money as possible up front and expect the customer to quit shortly after.

WarGameStore wrote:GW are supportive of Independent retailers.

When GW finally opened up a local GW store here, the local stores started getting short shipped and getting new releases and pre-orders delivered late so the only place you could reliably get new stuff when it came out was the GW store. At the time there were five independent retailers in the city that sold GW. They are now down to one and the GW closed and was replaced with a one-man operation. Hope that doesn't happen to you.

The reports of GW's death are greatly exaggerated

You didn't read the first post in this thread did you? This thread is not about "saving" GW in terms of keeping the company profitable, but in terms of "saving" it in terms of customer experience with their product.

I do not use the exalt button lightly, but you sir have just received one!

The main thing that worries me about GW is the next generation of players.

I'm painting with a broad brush, but we've all heard that one of the "customer" groups GW coveted in the age when they had GW stores in the malls was to get some kid to buy a couple of kits and then have the kid lose interest (I'm not sure if this was ever their actual business plan).

If that was their plan, I'm not sure how their current prices are aligned with that idea.

Said, kid, could buy a video game for nearly the same cost as a box of space marines and likely get more utility out of the video game.

I think a copy of Call of Duty that said kid could buy in lieu of a tact squad is a better deal for the kid. Much less work to play with friends, lower barrier to entrance, hundreds of hours of fun, ...

Now as the prices go up and up, not only is the GW "hobby" more expensive to get into, it is more costly via opportunity wrt friends, time, availability, and skill.

When I was a kid in the '80's, it was difficult to find GW models and difficult to find players. The difference was models were much cheaper than computer games then.

What will "save" GW? Getting more of the next generation players interested in playing the games they make.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I'm going to weigh in on the MTG thing as well as it is very, very appropriate. I used to wonder why people would occasionally bring up MTG when talking about miniature gaming before I played it, but now that I do, I understand the points they were making. I'll do my best to present what I'm saying in a way that is relevant to improving a miniature wargaming experience.

Woah, this thread is still going? Is it the most current one of it's ilk? Fantastic to your point. I haven't played MTG since Ice Age or so. Comments to follow.

daedalus wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Meanwhile MTG has none of these problems and is doing far better than GW could even dream of.

MTG? That game that has one unified set of rules the size of a Chick Tract written by a cadre of authors updating it at once where the solution to dealing with kludgy parts of the system from 10 years ago is just to declare them disallowed? Quite.

MTG has a basic rulebook and a comprehensive rules document. Many, many GW players would love a set of rules as well codified as the MTG Comprehensive Rules document. The comprehensive rules document is an absolute dream for looking up things you are confused about. It's 199 pages, cross referenced and searchable and available for free in a variety of formats. It gets updated multiple times per year with each and every product release.

Furthermore Wizards understands that it's what you play the game with that sell so they don't charge for the rules. They offer scans of every card they've ever produced on their website and allow fan sites to post images of their cards as well. They know that people want the high quality physical cards they sell and are not at all threatened by a site like magiccards.info has great scans of almost every card from the history of MTG. GW on the other hand is litigious and controlling of anything. They even sent cease & desist letters to people over the URLs of their website.

Yes, it is a basic rulebook and comprehensive rules document. It would be awesome if GW could do the same. Again, I don't think it's logistically possible without leaving things completely invalidated or stifling their ability to change things. Maybe that means they had poor game design from the get-go. Maybe they have poor design still. I've never denied either of those points. All I know is that when you have artifacts from over ten years ago still playable, "fixing" the rules now such that those would become invalidated would create more fallout than you see now. MTG has one rulebook to rule them all. Forty-kay has many. Note my inquiry below with the D&D material.

Also, I've not heard of C&Ds over URLs. It's news to me. Can you provide references? I would like to read further.

daedalus wrote:
Then I suppose I don't really "get" MTG:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/149
https://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=judge/resources/banned
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/232

Did you actually click into the links you provided?

 daedalus wrote:
All I know is that when you have artifacts from over ten years ago still playable, "fixing" the rules now such that those would become invalidated would create more fallout than you see now.

But MTG has cards from 1993 that are still playable, with rules that have been "fixed". There's no reason, other than laziness and/or incompetence, that GW couldn't do the same.

Does not even invalidating 30 cards in any particular setting not count?

Err, what? That's 30 cards spread across a huge range of sets, most of them done as a preemptive ban so the new format would play differently than other similar formats. Even if we assume that every one of those cards is game-breaking and overpowered (and will never be un-banned) that's still a much higher success rate than GW can manage.

Also, note that Modern (the tournament format we're talking about here) wasn't invented until years after many of the cards in it were printed. So WOTC assembled a tournament format from sets that had not been designed to be played together like that, and the inherent balance of the game was good enough that only a few cards had to be banned, most of them just to be safe rather than because they had broken the game.

Yes, but they don't have a rulebook for each color of mana that has to be adhered to. They have one unified ruleset, not, what, 14? Candyland has a pretty tight ruleset too. As does chess, and on and on. Not saying this is good or bad, but I'm appealing to the nature of what we're dealing with here, rather than some ideal.

But they do have huge numbers of cards, and an incredibly complex set of core rules. MTG's complexity may be organized differently than 40k's, but it's a far more complex game overall. The problem here isn't that 40k has more rules, it's that GW doesn't care enough to write good rules.

Is it fair to say they even TRIED to make the game balanced or competitive to begin with? Seems they've been declaring war on competitive gaming for a while now. Note the pictures in the rulebook of Ward, sipping his beer with a petulant smile toward the camera? I don't think they wanted a competitive game to being with. I think that's what everyone else wanted.

And only an incompetent idiot would deliberately write off competitive play when you can have a balanced competitive game that is also perfect for casual players. Unfortunately GW seems to be a company full of incompetent idiots.

Further, is it fair to say GW is stagnating?

Their annual growth in sales is less than their annual price increase + inflation. So every year they sell fewer and fewer models, in an industry that is expanding as a whole. So yeah, I'd say it's fair to say that GW is stagnating.

 Peregrine wrote:

Their annual growth in sales is less than their annual price increase + inflation. So every year they sell fewer and fewer models, in an industry that is expanding as a whole. So yeah, I'd say it's fair to say that GW is stagnating.

Oh, this again. I hope you never go into business if you think it's a good idea to sell as many things as possible regardless of profit margin.

 BryllCream wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Their annual growth in sales is less than their annual price increase + inflation. So every year they sell fewer and fewer models, in an industry that is expanding as a whole. So yeah, I'd say it's fair to say that GW is stagnating.

Oh, this again. I hope you never go into business if you think it's a good idea to sell as many things as possible regardless of profit margin.

And I hope you never go to business if you think selling less each year for 7 years in a row in a growing market is totally okay

It is if you're getting more money.

They're not getting more money. They're getting roughly the same amount.

But that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about what people would like to see changed in order for their experience of GW's offerings to be better. The OP specifically stated that this thread isn't about GW's financial health, but about how things could be better. The thread title is definitely misleading.

As for my thinking about how could GW get better, they could go back to doing what they did in the 1990s. Lower model count games, more variety in games sold, more support for distribution so stores could get their products without jumping through all the hoops and regulations of their direct sales contracts, WD with real content, but also stick with a more modern aesthetic as while I love some of the 90s stuff, there's some that hasn't aged well at all.

 BryllCream wrote:
It is if you're getting more money.

They aren't getting more money though, they are getting about the same, and even if they were making more money they are losing players. There will come a point where no one plays, at which point they will sell NO models and make NO money.

 BryllCream wrote:
It is if you're getting more money.

No it isn't, since:

1) You're not going to continue to grow. Raising prices on a declining customer base might give you acceptable numbers for your next financial report, but it isn't a long-term strategy.

2) You're probably not making as much money as you could be making. If you're getting 5% annual "growth" while losing market share instead of 10% growth while putting your competition out of business I don't really see any reason to be happy with those numbers.

Do we actually know how much market share other games are actually taking? Because they're all privately owned, has anyone ever come across how much in sales/profit companies like Privateer or Battlefront are actually doing?

I mean, we can provide anecdotal evidence on "which games are growing" until we're blue in the face, but without any actual numbers from some of these smaller companies, isn't it effectively meaningless?

 cincydooley wrote:
Do we actually know how much market share other games are actually taking? Because they're all privately owned, has anyone ever come across how much in sales/profit companies like Privateer or Battlefront are actually doing?

I mean, we can provide anecdotal evidence on "which games are growing" until we're blue in the face, but without any actual numbers from some of these smaller companies, isn't it effectively meaningless?

Well, we have information that the market in general is up by 15%, and we know GWs revenue is largely flat, despite price rises, so that would suggest volume was down.

So, no, we cannot definitively say who is taking what market share, but its probably not unreasonable to speculate that non GW wargames now control somewhere around 15 to 20 percent more of the market than they have previously, and in a market this small, that's a hefty lump.

Where us the "up 15 %" from? Market publication I presume?

 cincydooley wrote:
Where us the "up 15 %" from? Market publication I presume?

I've seen it quoted, yes some official market index, I'm afraid I don't recall the name, no doubt someone else will remember.

I've heard from distributors that the market is growing quite rapidly. Wizards has been boasting about Magic The Gathering growing. Privateer is still expanding rapidly. And a huge variety of smaller companies are doing bigger and bigger things.

I think I'd go so far as to say that GW no longer has a majority of the hobby gaming market (they probably never did if you count Magic and other CCGs). And they might not have since the LOTR bubble. Since then their units sold have fallen at least in half and it doesn't appear that the customer they lost have necessarily all left the hobby.

Getting exact numbers is very, very difficult, but I don't see a decline in gamers-- in fact, gaming has become more popular, but I do see a decline in GW's units sold when you consider revenue stays about the same and prices go up.

For me, what really needs to change for me to like GW's stuff again is to unshackle the creative departments and stop having them be, as GW's founder described them, the marketing department for a toy company.

I've been hip deep in a few of these 'financial' threads and I've yet to see a link to where this metric is posted. Same with comparative market share. Any and all efforts to make a counterpoint regarding GW growth in their own industry/market in a general "stock market segment" sense have been derided as irrelevant nonsense. Draw your own conclusions.

 cincydooley wrote:
Where us the "up 15 %" from? Market publication I presume?

Jack_Death wrote:
I've been hip deep in a few of these 'financial' threads and I've yet to see a link to where this metric is posted. Same with comparative market share. Any and all efforts to make a counterpoint regarding GW growth in their own industry/market in a general "stock market segment" sense have been derided as irrelevant nonsense. Draw your own conclusions.

You haven't seen an official number because no official number exists, GW's competition doesn't release the financial reports that GW is obligated to show as a publicly owned company. However, we do know three things:

1) GW's sales volume is stagnant or declining. They're required to publish their revenue numbers, and after a few years of decline GW's total revenue has been increasing a bit over the inflation rate. However, this is happening at the same time as price increases, and the increase in revenue isn't (or at least isn't significantly) more than the increase in prices. Therefore the total volume of sales (and, presumably, the number of customers) is dropping.

2) There is anecdotal evidence from distributors/store owners/etc that the miniature wargaming market as a whole is growing. These are people who have a direct interest in GW continuing to be a profitable business for as long as possible, so it's not very plausible that they'd just make stuff up to criticize GW. And "the industry is doing well" is a common enough statement that it's unlikely to be a case of the occasional town breaking the general rule, there probably is legitimate growth.

3) There have been successful kickstarter projects for new miniatures games/accessories/etc adding up to millions of dollars in sales, across a wide range of products. Yes, in theory these sales could all be coming from the same bitter vets in a dying community, but the more likely explanation is that there is strong demand for miniatures games and plenty of room to get new customers or launch new ideas.

So add those that all together and GW has declining market share and a business plan that is directly causing that decline, while GW's competition is thriving. And even the best-case scenario for GW is that they're declining, but everyone else is declining too.

The thing that would go at least somewhere towards redeeming GW would be to cut new players some slack. Have each battleforce box come with the mini rulebook included. Along with that, as special only available in Hobby Centres or via the online website would be a voucher for 5 free citadel paints of your choosing. On top of that, put a HQ choice in the battleforce sets already, geeze.

If they did something along those lines, the entry would still be around $200 but you wouldn't feel so nickel and dimed as a new entrant to the hobby. Yes, other hobbies are expensive, many much more so when you compare value time versus price but the problem with GW products is you have to do work before you can start getting some value out of your products. (<--- If you DON'T like to put together models/paint that much, but want to do it to play the game and look decent on the table.) Sure, maybe those aren't the types of customers GW really wants, but I think they'd get way more than enough of an increase in "starter" revenues to justify the opportunity costs, not to mention subsequent sales from those new customers.

Anything from distributors is going to be worthless. GW is the largest distributor of GW product. Alliance, etc aren't going to have any significant information to pass on regarding GW.

How many people buying into these KSers are doing so to use for 40k and like games? Anecdotally, it seems like a fair amount.

GWs competition is "thriving" seems like a massive overstatement. The only other game I'd, of course anecdotally, say is "thriving" is Warmahordes. Infinity is still tiny. I've never actually seen anyone play a game of Warpath or Kings of War. Flames of War seems pretty healthy, but I don't know that it's really competing for the same demographic that either GW game is. What other games are "thriving" our there?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Coldhatred wrote:
The thing that would go at least somewhere towards redeeming GW would be to cut new players some slack. Have each battleforce box come with the mini rulebook included. Along with that, as special only available in Hobby Centres or via the online website would be a voucher for 5 free citadel paints of your choosing. On top of that, put a HQ choice in the battleforce sets already, geeze.

Why should they give gak away?

If they did something along those lines, the entry would still be around $200 but you wouldn't feel so nickel and dimed as a new entrant to the hobby. Yes, other hobbies are expensive, many much more so when you compare value time versus price but the problem with GW products is you have to do work before you can start getting some value out of your products. (<--- If you DON'T like to put together models/paint that much, but want to do it to play the game and look decent on the table.) Sure, maybe those aren't the types of customers GW really wants, but I think they'd get way more than enough of an increase in "starter" revenues to justify the opportunity costs, not to mention subsequent sales from those new customers.

If you're getting into this hobby not realizing you're going to need paints, glues, and brushes, it's your own fault. Charging for those isn't nickel and diming. And GW doesn't force you to paint or glue with their products. Want to assemble your models? You'll need clue and clippers. Want to cook a meal? Chances are you'll need knives and a pot or two.

 cincydooley wrote:
Why should they give gak away?

Because it would serve them well to do so for Battleforces. I can't explain it any better than by using the words promotion and incentives.

 cincydooley wrote:
If you're getting into this hobby not realizing you're going to need paints, glues, and brushes, it's your own fault. Charging for those isn't nickel and diming. And GW doesn't force you to paint or glue with their products. Want to assemble your models? You'll need clue and clippers. Want to cook a meal? Chances are you'll need knives and a pot or two.

You are misunderstanding what I'm saying (partly my fault). Potential customers most likely know you need that kind of stuff, but honestly consumers can be turned off once they take a look at how much just a few paints are going to cost after they are already getting the battleforce, codex, and rulebook, if we are assuming it is the current situation. No, no one is forcing anyone to use their paint and their glue, but the new consumer isn't going to know good alternatives, or even that he can get quality brushes for 25% of what GW wants to charge for them. By nickel and diming I meant not so much charging for everything, but charging crazy prices for every little thing. So I used that expression incorrectly, so I understand where you're coming from.

Make the hobby supplies inexpensive in relation to what they are now. The models need to be where the action is in terms of cost, as they are often what draws new players in, everything else is ancillary, but subordinate to the models in the eyes of potential customers. There is no reason that a set of rules should cost as much as the 40k rules do. The hardback codices I actually like, the quality is high, but I can see why others don't like them and it certainly would be off compared to the rest of my scheme.

Despite all these kickstarters and alternative companies, I rarely encounter people not using GW models in games. The local tournaments do not require GW models but probably 99% of the models are GW.

One of the bigger FLGS even stocks some Kings of War stuff but you never see it in a tournament around here.

 Peregrine wrote:

You haven't seen an official number because no official number exists, GW's competition doesn't release the financial reports that GW is obligated to show as a publicly owned company. However, we do know three things:

1) GW's sales volume is stagnant or declining. They're required to publish their revenue numbers, and after a few years of decline GW's total revenue has been increasing a bit over the inflation rate. However, this is happening at the same time as price increases, and the increase in revenue isn't (or at least isn't significantly) more than the increase in prices. Therefore the total volume of sales (and, presumably, the number of customers) is dropping.

2) There is anecdotal evidence from distributors/store owners/etc that the miniature wargaming market as a whole is growing. These are people who have a direct interest in GW continuing to be a profitable business for as long as possible, so it's not very plausible that they'd just make stuff up to criticize GW. And "the industry is doing well" is a common enough statement that it's unlikely to be a case of the occasional town breaking the general rule, there probably is legitimate growth.

3) There have been successful kickstarter projects for new miniatures games/accessories/etc adding up to millions of dollars in sales, across a wide range of products. Yes, in theory these sales could all be coming from the same bitter vets in a dying community, but the more likely explanation is that there is strong demand for miniatures games and plenty of room to get new customers or launch new ideas.

So add those that all together and GW has declining market share and a business plan that is directly causing that decline, while GW's competition is thriving. And even the best-case scenario for GW is that they're declining, but everyone else is declining too.

All very excellent points, thank you. That said, making a series of perfectly reasonable assumptions, as you have done, is a very different ballgame than saying something like "the industry is growing at 15% and GW is not, therefore their market share is collapsing". We have seen variations on that argument in every thread. My point is that a. the 15% number is a fabrication, we have no verifiable data and b. a company with over a hundred million in revenues selling toy soldiers is not "collapsing".

I should probably point out that I AGREE that they could be better managed, should advertise, should be working towards operations that can be sustained at a lower gross margin, etc. I AGREE, I am not a GW apologist in any sense of the word. It does prompt me to reply, however, when the lack of engagement in these areas of potential improvement is projected forward into scenarios that include the imminent collapse of the company or various cloak and dagger scenarios about senior executives.

Just like to say that "people using GW models" aren't necessarily "people who bought from GW recently", ebay, 2nd hand shops, etc.. Or just hand-me-downs from quitting friends. Saying "I see plenty of people playing with GW models on GW games. " doesn't mean that GW is selling anything. But of course, this thread isn't about GW's financial situation...