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Serious question here, not GW bashing.

The job market is now global. The internet allows for the sharing and modification, in nigh real-time, of large documents. It seems silly for GW to continue making rules for their game when it's obvious they don't want to, and they're not really that good at it. Licensing their rules-making to a company who is interested in making "Great rules first, models second, or not at all" would allow GW to really focus on their "We're a model company first, rules are second" mentality.

GW doesn't risk model leaks as the models stay in house. They could write the contract to retain as much control over the IP and final product as required. They remain in control of what gets released, and when. By outsourcing this part of the business they could afford to play test more rigorously as well. Giving GW the benefit of the doubt by agreeing that they don't instigate power creep just to sell models, I can't see the downsides to this.

What am I missing?

Well... where to start without coming across as snarky or GW hating....

1. I would say that GW has no interest in outsourcing the rules making, as it would involve collaboration and information sharing, opening way to many avenues for leaks ect.

2.It is most likely a heck of a lot cheaper to have a few people in house to write the BRB/ Codices than to share a percentage of revenue with another company.

3. GW likes to pretend that they are a model company first, game company last, but we all know the fallacy of that. Seriously though, what percentage of people are actually buying an army to have it sit on a display board? One off models or a unit to make a cool diarama heck yes, but for the volume they do the vast majority is to gamers.


IMHO they think the games rules don't have to be amazing, just good enough that people keep buying the plastic-crack.

Now lets say GW actually did decide to do something like that..... My hope would be Fantasy Flight would give it a swing.

I think you might be on to something. Unfortunately, I think they will be too afraid of leaks to give it a try. They may also be wary of outsourcing too much. They already give fantasy flight a fair amount of licensing.

Outsourcing any kind of creative work is generally a bad idea

Lessen the control on their IP, Never!

The only reason GW is so afraid of leaks is supposedly because of pressure from New Line Cinema, concerning LotR products.

Basically any leak from GW on Smaug for example, would bleed out to the internet and EVERYONE would see it early. New Line doesn't want that, so they told GW no early leaks.

Then things like Necrons happen where the entire release was leaked months in advance, and New Line sees it as a weakness on GW's part. New Line strong arms GW, GW tightens their lips about releases.

That is the excuse I've gotten from local GW managers.

I don't see how those same policies couldn't apply to a rules design house. Furthermore, if you had a rules licensing, said designer wouldn't ever need to see the models, and models are the only leaks GW cares to keep secret.

What SHOULD happen:

GW releases an army with X models, and X rules. 6 months down the road, GW decides to release a new model, and as such(since it was not included in the codex) the rules for it are included in the box as a supplement.

At the end of the year, a compilation of all supplemental rules is released a la Warhammer Annual(how I miss thee) for a small price($20-25) with some other content like the Annual had.

This would free GW from the crazy fluctuations in sales, and would keep players of X army buying more regularly, rather than in single large spurts.


GW is so set in their ways on how they go about releasing rules and models that I don't imagine they will change anything under the current management.

Now how great would it be if one of us won the Mega Millions lottery, bought out GW, and then hired Privateer Press or some other company to come in and fix everything?

GW, interestingly enough, seems to have little interest in expanding their business. They don't advertise and so closely guard their IP (needlessly so) that they've rendered any kind of expansion impossible.

 BryllCream wrote:
Outsourcing any kind of creative work is generally a bad idea

Unless it was a project that Matt Ward was doing, then outsourcing it is the better option. *cough*BanneroftheWorldDragon*cough*

 Aerethan wrote:
Furthermore, if you had a rules licensing, said designer wouldn't ever need to see the models, and models are the only leaks GW cares to keep secret.

One note on this: leaks of "just rules" would still have a negative effect (in GW's eyes) as even knowing that there's a new type of model, or knowing that the rules for an existing model are going to change can affect the sales before the new rules come out. This, I think, is one of GW's major reasons for clamping down on early advertising for new releases. For instance:

Right now, only those that care enough to pay attention will know of the impending release of the Eldar next month. Those that don't know about it (the vast majority of GW's target audience) will still possibly be buying models right up to the point that they are announced, not knowing any better. Hell, there was someone at my local shop that was considering picking up some Eldar Jetbikes right up until I let him know "um, you probably want to wait on that..." since the Jetbikes are probably 99% likely to be receiving new models that aren't dated to before man learned to fly.

Rules leaks, in this sense, can have the same negative effect as pictures: if we knew that (as an example) Eldar Farseers were getting a huge nerf in the next codex and that the Wave Serpent was going to be getting a completely new batch of weapons (implying that a new sprue was being added to the box), those models would see a big dip in sales in the leadup to the new release.

Really, though, I agree with the general consensus: GW values control over every other possible value that they might possibly hold. At most, they would consider just hiring a dedicated rules team for each game instead of having people splitting time between writing rules for various games and fiction in their spare time. Even that is highly unlikely, though, as it would require them to expend resources towards something that they have clearly shown to not be one of their priorities.

Even some manner of oversight would be nice at this point. It appears that writers currently get to do wtf ever they want, and no one tells them otherwise.

WFB players wanted to give Matt Ward a second chance not to screw up, and yet he couldn't help himself but put in an item that is a hard counter to an ENTIRE army.

I see no reason NOT to run 60 swordmasters with all of my characters, the Stubborn crown, and BSB with World Dragon against any Daemon player.

I gave fantasy a chance and it let me down, I wanted to like it but...I mean I couldn't... 6th was trash when I first began hearing about it and I sold off my armies for it right away
I regret nothing.
I do wish GW would just let someone else make their rules, because their rules are just awful, and getting worse and worse.
I have no intensive to buy anything-why should I if I feel the games suck a bag of cow dung?!
To me its just like buying model airplanes and cars, except so much more expensive. They sit on a shelf like a model car does... why not just buy a model car, I'll probably enjoy it more anyways...

 Aerethan wrote:
Now how great would it be if one of us won the Mega Millions lottery, bought out GW, and then hired Privateer Press or some other company to come in and fix everything?

and then hired Privateer Press or some other company to come in and fix everything?[

Privateer Press

NO.

NO.

Not a bad idea in my book. I don't think I really care who makes the rules, and clearly other companies can do a better job of it.

 darefsky wrote:

IMHO they think the games rules don't have to be amazing, just good enough that people keep buying the plastic-crack.

Personally I prefer my Finecast Ganja

 Squigsquasher wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
Now how great would it be if one of us won the Mega Millions lottery, bought out GW, and then hired Privateer Press or some other company to come in and fix everything?

and then hired Privateer Press or some other company to come in and fix everything?[

Privateer Press

NO.

NO.

Okay I'll bite. Humour me as to why PP are so bad at writing rules?

Dis gon be gud.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Squigsquasher wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
Now how great would it be if one of us won the Mega Millions lottery, bought out GW, and then hired Privateer Press or some other company to come in and fix everything?

and then hired Privateer Press or some other company to come in and fix everything?[

Privateer Press

NO.

NO.

Okay I'll bite. Humour me as to why PP are so bad at writing rules?

Dis gon be gud.

It's got nothing to do with their abilities to write rules.

It's the idea of farming out the rules to a 3rd-party company like Privateer Press, which basically lives off people saying "OMG GW GAEMS SUCK PLAY WARMAHORDES INSTEAD LOL!" to survive.

Myself, I think GW rules are fine the way they are. I'm pretty glad they've focused on adding narrative supplements intended to make the game "fun" rather than pandering to uber-competitive TFGs.

tl:dr - GW is all about the money not about the fun and fair gaming.

 darefsky wrote:
3. GW likes to pretend that they are a model company first, game company last, but we all know the fallacy of that. Seriously though, what percentage of people are actually buying an army to have it sit on a display board? One off models or a unit to make a cool diorama heck yes, but for the volume they do the vast majority is to gamers.

You are completely wrong here. GW is all about selling miniatures and nothing more. The game is a device that facilitates the sales of tiny plastic toys. This becomes clearer when you look at various editions and how they changed play style, causing people to need new/more models to update their armies for the new edition. Now contrast this with games like Gorkamorka and Necromunda. Both were reasonably good games that weren't designed to expand existing model collections or drive people to buy new ones. Both were left to languish and ultimately broomed.

 darefsky wrote:
1. I would say that GW has no interest in outsourcing the rules making, as it would involve collaboration and information sharing, opening way to many avenues for leaks etc.

 spyguyyoda wrote:
I think you might be on to something. Unfortunately, I think they will be too afraid of leaks to give it a try. They may also be wary of outsourcing too much. They already give fantasy flight a fair amount of licensing.

GW is all about control. Control of revenue. Control of IP. Control of the "hobby" as GW sees it. Sharing, by definition mitigates control and GW will not abide that. The only thing they license out is stuff that GW has zero interest in producing in-house i.e., RPG books, computer games, etc.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Lessen the control on their IP, Never!

DING! DING! DING! We have a winnah!!

 Aerethan wrote:
The only reason GW is so afraid of leaks is supposedly because of pressure from New Line Cinema, concerning LotR products.

New Line or Warner Brothers?

 Magc8Ball wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
Furthermore, if you had a rules licensing, said designer wouldn't ever need to see the models, and models are the only leaks GW cares to keep secret.

One note on this: leaks of "just rules" would still have a negative effect (in GW's eyes) as even knowing that there's a new type of model, or knowing that the rules for an existing model are going to change can affect the sales before the new rules come out. This, I think, is one of GW's major reasons for clamping down on early advertising for new releases.

This goes to my point that the game is designed specifically to drive sales of models. If new unit were to make Rhinos worthless then people would stop buying Rhinos in anticipation of the upcoming release. That's bad for GW.

 mattyrm wrote:
Not a bad idea in my book. I don't think I really care who makes the rules, and clearly other companies can do a better job of it.

This goes back to the top of my post about what the goal of the rules are. If "a fun and balanced game" are what you care about then you are correct that GW suffers in doing this. If you accept that GW adjusts the rules each edition to sell new models and/or more models and work as a game second, then nobody does it as well as GW.

 Breotan wrote:
tl:dr - GW is all about the money not about the fun and fair gaming.

 darefsky wrote:
3. GW likes to pretend that they are a model company first, game company last, but we all know the fallacy of that. Seriously though, what percentage of people are actually buying an army to have it sit on a display board? One off models or a unit to make a cool diorama heck yes, but for the volume they do the vast majority is to gamers.

You are completely wrong here. GW is all about selling miniatures and nothing more. The game is a device that facilitates the sales of tiny plastic toys. This becomes clearer when you look at various editions and how they changed play style, causing people to need new/more models to update their armies for the new edition. Now contrast this with games like Gorkamorka and Necromunda. Both were reasonably good games that weren't designed to expand existing model collections or drive people to buy new ones. Both were left to languish and ultimately broomed.

 darefsky wrote:
1. I would say that GW has no interest in outsourcing the rules making, as it would involve collaboration and information sharing, opening way to many avenues for leaks etc.

 spyguyyoda wrote:
I think you might be on to something. Unfortunately, I think they will be too afraid of leaks to give it a try. They may also be wary of outsourcing too much. They already give fantasy flight a fair amount of licensing.

GW is all about control. Control of revenue. Control of IP. Control of the "hobby" as GW sees it. Sharing, by definition mitigates control and GW will not abide that. The only thing they license out is stuff that GW has zero interest in producing in-house i.e., RPG books, computer games, etc.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
Lessen the control on their IP, Never!

DING! DING! DING! We have a winnah!!

 Aerethan wrote:
The only reason GW is so afraid of leaks is supposedly because of pressure from New Line Cinema, concerning LotR products.

New Line or Warner Brothers?

 Magc8Ball wrote:

 Aerethan wrote:
Furthermore, if you had a rules licensing, said designer wouldn't ever need to see the models, and models are the only leaks GW cares to keep secret.

One note on this: leaks of "just rules" would still have a negative effect (in GW's eyes) as even knowing that there's a new type of model, or knowing that the rules for an existing model are going to change can affect the sales before the new rules come out. This, I think, is one of GW's major reasons for clamping down on early advertising for new releases.

This goes to my point that the game is designed specifically to drive sales of models. If new unit were to make Rhinos worthless then people would stop buying Rhinos in anticipation of the upcoming release. That's bad for GW.

 mattyrm wrote:
Not a bad idea in my book. I don't think I really care who makes the rules, and clearly other companies can do a better job of it.

This goes back to the top of my post about what the goal of the rules are. If "a fun and balanced game" are what you care about then you are correct that GW suffers in doing this. If you accept that GW adjusts the rules each edition to sell new models and/or more models and work as a game second, then nobody does it as well as GW.

I think we are saying the same thing at the very top of this quote. Rules for the game drive sales of the miniatures. GW says they are a miniatures company but the biggest (by far) reason to purchase said mini's it to play the game.

As to PP I would image they have no interest in writing rules for GW. Why strengthen the only people on the business that can utterly destroy your company if they had a competent set of rules?

If GW decided that the games should be competitive and the rules balanced the best thing they could do would be to hire a team dedicated to rules interactions and a TECHNICAL WRITER or two, so that the RAI and RAW would be the same. They would need a good amount of "out of house" play testing (heck make people sign NDA's) PP does this and it works well.

Heck if they did that and put together a great game that was fun to play and winnable because I was a better player vs your cheese of the month, I would probably come back to the GW. Till then i'll have fun playing WM/H.

 Breotan wrote:
Now contrast this with games like Gorkamorka and Necromunda. Both were reasonably good games that weren't designed to expand existing model collections or drive people to buy new ones.

Erm. At least Necromunda required your gangs to be WYSIWYG and since a lot of the stuff you'd find was random... that was a hell of a lot of converting/purchasing to do. Which is an absolute driver for people to buy models.

My bit about PP writing GW rules was under the hypothetical that someone bought out GW and decided to then merge it with PP.

Another poster whining about gw making units powerful to sell models. Remember how dominant foot guard were in fifth? And how weak paladins were?

 Aerethan wrote:
My bit about PP writing GW rules was under the hypothetical that someone bought out GW and decided to then merge it with PP.

God I hope PP would never even entertain that idea. , I honestly think they would choke on the massive bloated corporate structure that is GW. I could see Hasbro buying them out, They have the manpower and funding available to make an acquisition of that size.

What would be absolutely hysterical to me would be if Disney decided to do it. Talk about a theme park........

Just security walking around all dressed like inquisitors.....muhahahah....

BryllCream wrote:Outsourcing any kind of creative work is generally a bad idea

Why? A lot of miniatures companies do it. You think every model companies like Privateer puts out are sculpted in house?

Squigsquasher wrote:It's the idea of farming out the rules to a 3rd-party company like Privateer Press, which basically lives off people saying "OMG GW GAEMS SUCK PLAY WARMAHORDES INSTEAD LOL!" to survive.

Myself, I think GW rules are fine the way they are. I'm pretty glad they've focused on adding narrative supplements intended to make the game "fun" rather than pandering to uber-competitive TFGs.

Quite a bit of pent up rage there, huh? Are you really saying that the only appeal PP has is that it's not GW?

And pandering to uber-competitive TFGs? You mean having a ruleset that doesn't need players to come up with their own FAQ's and an actual tournament ruleset is pandering?

Not to mention that most competitive players actually want a well written, balanced ruleset.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

Quite a bit of pent up rage there, huh? Are you really saying that the only appeal PP has is that it's not GW?

Well, that was the original shtick for them, wasn't it? I recall that Mk1 rulebook almost explicitly boasted about how they were not GW?

Which I suppose is ironic as PP seems to gradually become more GW-like.

Backfire wrote:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

Quite a bit of pent up rage there, huh? Are you really saying that the only appeal PP has is that it's not GW?

Which I suppose is ironic as PP seems to gradually become more GW-like.

How?

rigeld2 wrote:

 Breotan wrote:
Now contrast this with games like Gorkamorka and Necromunda. Both were reasonably good games that weren't designed to expand existing model collections or drive people to buy new ones.

Erm. At least Necromunda required your gangs to be WYSIWYG and since a lot of the stuff you'd find was random... that was a hell of a lot of converting/purchasing to do. Which is an absolute driver for people to buy models.

This was true initially when Necromunda came out because they had a Bits catalogue and even sold bits sprues. Those days are long gone and because of that (and the fact that so many people have too many bits around) the old warhorse Necromunda was finally sold to the glue factory.

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

Backfire wrote:
Which I suppose is ironic as PP seems to gradually become more GW-like.

How?

Hmm, their new gimmick is big, overpriced monster models, sound familiar...? Also, their recent models have been increasingly cartoonish, they are gradually giving up metal (which was once a point of pride for them), also, didn't they recently have a PR debacle with a fan site? I guess what's coming next is secretive publication policy and sloppily written rulebooks...

 Fafnir wrote:
Not to mention that most competitive players actually want a well written, balanced ruleset.

Competative players have never been GW's target market. I may as well complain that my mug is gak at hammering nails into the wall.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gentleman_Jellyfish wrote:

BryllCream wrote:Outsourcing any kind of creative work is generally a bad idea

Why? A lot of miniatures companies do it. You think every model companies like Privateer puts out are sculpted in house?

Wait, you mean outsourcing to companies or to the developing world? Judging by this reply I assume you mean other companies, in which case forget my previous remark.

The reason they won't is because rules writing and model design are intrinsically linked and the design process is a circular thing, with one inspiring the other.

By the time they get ideas etc all together and share WIP concepts/ sculpt images etc it's just a lot cheaper, more efficient and more effective I imagine to have people sitting around the same table.