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 Flinty wrote:
The costs for making plastic models are the time for scupting the master and the investment in hardware to cast the models. I can see that snap-fit models might reduce the sculpting time a bit by reducing the number of individual poses required, but the hardware investment is probably the bulk of the cost anyway and that will hardly change at all. Also if GW invested in a line of snap-fit models I'm sure there would be a vocal section of the commnity carping on about how rubbish and monopose they are and why don't the boxes just come with some accessories anyway, seeing that GW has already sculpted all them for other kits.

It's not about cost reduction, it's about ensuring that your discount-price starter sets are only appealing to new players who buy one and only one starter set. Snap-fit models are easy to build for newbies, and completely unappealing for most veteran players. If you sell a "kill team" starter set with a snap-fit tactical squad you don't have to worry too much about cheap tactical squads on ebay undercutting the "real" tactical squad kit.

In terms of cheap rulebooks, I thought that the Assault on Black REach and the new Dark Angel one came with mini-rulebooks anyway.

Core rules, but not the codex, so that adds another $50 to a new player's first purchase. And that's assuming that you play one of the two starter set armies, if you buy a battleforce or troops + HQ instead you don't get any rulebooks at all.

Commissar Benny wrote:
If you owned GW tomorrow, how would you go about running the company? For example:

1) Fire senior executives, freeing up millions & eliminating toxic attitude towards customer base.

2) Spend most of 2014 on nothing but fixing rules & balancing all armies.

3) Lower cost of all products to attract larger audience & decrease the outrageous entry cost into the hobby.

4) Consolidate rules into as few sources as possible. For example: IG codex should include all vehicles associated with IG (Forgeworld, Superheavy, Imperial Navy etc etc)

5) Remove many/most of the restrictions imposed onto private business owners & provide incentive to carry GW products.

6) Put a stop to/fix the crazy lore additions like "perpetuals" & other nonsense.

What would you do?

Annnnnnnd you just saw profits drop tremendously and probably went out of business....

Perfect Organism wrote:
Realistically, there isn't likely to be much you can do that's significantly different to the current management unless you have more resources than they do.

You can get rid of the 'incompetent' managers, but chances are that you will be no more competent and you won't be able to find anyone more competent to join the company.

You can't stop the publishing cycle. You need the regular income from new models and rulebook releases to stay in business.

You don't have the resources to update every single army quickly enough for s sudden reboot. So, every new release has to be backwards compatible. This means you can't really make significant changes to the rules.

You can't ditch unprofitable sections of your company, because that's already been done.

You could try reducing the prices to see if there really is a great untapped market of potential players who feel that the game is just a little bit too expensive for them. But if you're wrong, you go bust.

I think the best you could really hope for is to improve relations with the fanbase a little (although God knows how you are going to find money for a PR department) and start working on a long-term plan to improve quality control on new releases (so you don't end up releasing lemons like the tyranid codex or models which shouldn't have made it off the drawing board without major redesigns) and working towards new version of your rules and background by identifying problems, coming up with solutions and then bridging the gap between the two over the course of five years or so (so, 7th edition 40k needs to be written with 8th edition in mind, while staying compatible with 6th edition).

I agree with this about 100%


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

pgmason wrote:
What? Why? Surely 40k needs armies which are genuinely different and alien?

But not Tyranids. Their fluff is stupid, their models are ugly, and they're boring as hell from a narrative perspective (yay, a mindless and faceless swarm that just eats and eats until you kill it). The only thing Tyranids contribute to the game is taking up valuable shelf space.

Wow! I have never disagreed more. I love their fluff and the models! I find them to be iconic in the Science-Fantasy setting that is 40k. Are you sure you aren't just being sarcastic?

No matter how senior management protects themselves, you can always make them redundant as long as you don't hire anyone else in their place.

The reason senior bankers were protected is because they were in the position you're hypothetically putting the player of this game in.

If I owned the company? I'd probably spend most of my time in the games dev office and let the accountants keep running it, since I'm a selfish, self-absorbed bitch who thinks she knows how to write games and suddenly no longer has to worry about managing my own money (because I have enough of it to pay someone else to do so).

I'd aknowledge that I have no training or experience whasoever as a manager, so I'd get to myself as many boxes of minis to last the rest of my life and then I'd sell the company before doing any real harm.

That also would spare me the hate of thousand and thousands of basement nerds.

 cvtuttle wrote:
Wow! I have never disagreed more. I love their fluff and the models! I find them to be iconic in the Science-Fantasy setting that is 40k. Are you sure you aren't just being sarcastic?

No, I'm entirely serious. Tyranids are by far the worst element of 40k's fluff.

Try to sell the company to another game company, and retire with the profit of that sale?

No need to want to captain a sinking ship.

Really though I think I could try to do some rules stuff, I know little enough about running a company to want to try my hand at it.

Keep it the way it is, company already makes very good money. If it's not broken from a business perspective why fix it?

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
Keep it the way it is, company already makes very good money.

But making less of it. And steadily at that.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
If it's not broken from a business perspective why fix it?

Because it is broken. Profits are down, stock price just crashed 25% in one day, and there's no reason to believe that GW is going to fix the fundamental problems that caused that decline.

 Peregrine wrote:

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
If it's not broken from a business perspective why fix it?

Because it is broken. Profits are down, stock price just crashed 25% in one day, and there's no reason to believe that GW is going to fix the fundamental problems that caused that decline.

The stock drops around this time anually with GW. It's just how their release schedule goes. The company is in no way in trouble, and the CEO is very wealthy. If that were me, I would stick to the game plan and laugh all the way to the bank.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
The company is in no way in trouble

Have you seen the reports for the past year and more recently? They are not a picture of health and not the kind of stuff you'd look for in a company.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
The stock drops around this time anually with GW. It's just how their release schedule goes.

Do you have some evidence for GW losing 25% of their stock value every year at this time? Because that's a pretty ambitious claim.

Also, the stock price has nothing to do with the release schedule. Investors aren't selling off shares because the new space marine codex won't be out for a few more months, they're selling based on significantly lower profit numbers and a general trend of declining sales volume. In fact, this part of GW's schedule should be the most profitable since the latest financial report that triggered the crash includes the Christmas shopping season along with major new releases. If GW can't make good money selling toys around Christmas then I don't know why any sane person would expect better results during the other half of the year.

The company is in no way in trouble, and the CEO is very wealthy.

I don't think you understand how this works. A CEO can make a lot of money by trashing a company. In fact that's what we're seeing here, GW's management are sacrificing the long-term future of the company in exchange for making sure that their next paychecks arrive without incident.

 Peregrine wrote:

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
The stock drops around this time anually with GW. It's just how their release schedule goes.

Do you have some evidence for GW losing 25% of their stock value every year at this time? Because that's a pretty ambitious claim.

Also, the stock price has nothing to do with the release schedule. Investors aren't selling off shares because the new space marine codex won't be out for a few more months, they're selling based on significantly lower profit numbers and a general trend of declining sales volume. In fact, this part of GW's schedule should be the most profitable since the latest financial report that triggered the crash includes the Christmas shopping season along with major new releases. If GW can't make good money selling toys around Christmas then I don't know why any sane person would expect better results during the other half of the year.

The company is in no way in trouble, and the CEO is very wealthy.

I don't think you understand how this works. A CEO can make a lot of money by trashing a company. In fact that's what we're seeing here, GW's management are sacrificing the long-term future of the company in exchange for making sure that their next paychecks arrive without incident.

GW is doing fine man. Every year someone has a discussion about them tanking. This is a niche hobby and is the leader of the companies in this niche hobby. All the other wargaming companies would tank before GW did.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:

GW is doing fine man.

You keep saying this, yet have absolutely nothing to back it up.

Dalymiddleboro wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
The stock drops around this time anually with GW. It's just how their release schedule goes.

Do you have some evidence for GW losing 25% of their stock value every year at this time? Because that's a pretty ambitious claim.

Also, the stock price has nothing to do with the release schedule. Investors aren't selling off shares because the new space marine codex won't be out for a few more months, they're selling based on significantly lower profit numbers and a general trend of declining sales volume. In fact, this part of GW's schedule should be the most profitable since the latest financial report that triggered the crash includes the Christmas shopping season along with major new releases. If GW can't make good money selling toys around Christmas then I don't know why any sane person would expect better results during the other half of the year.

The company is in no way in trouble, and the CEO is very wealthy.

I don't think you understand how this works. A CEO can make a lot of money by trashing a company. In fact that's what we're seeing here, GW's management are sacrificing the long-term future of the company in exchange for making sure that their next paychecks arrive without incident.

GW is doing fine man. Every year someone has a discussion about them tanking. This is a niche hobby and is the leader of the companies in this niche hobby. All the other wargaming companies would tank before GW did.

No, they are not. They're not in imminent danger, but if you think double digit drops in profit, share price, and (crucially) revenue year on year is on anyone's laundry list of what constitutes fine, you're overdue back at the hospital to take your meds.

I would simply address some basic problems.

1. Costs. I would cut everything and go back to 40k and WF. Focus on the main element that made the company and streamline the business. Use this to make a general pricing cut to the core materials.

2. Public Image. Time has proven that brand names can command their prices, so I would on improving that. Provide a feedback mechanism, incorporate the player base in design decisions, use visible members of the community for alpha/beta testing of rule ideas, maintain a FAQ webpage that is updated regularly.

3. Promote tournaments. Things like the Las Vegas Open would be great places for GW to provide prize support. Send Reps there to build community support. Have those same Reps travel to local stores to help promote the game.

Release an FAQ that makes FW legal to play as standard stuff.

Grab whatever I need to complete my DKoK army and then let someone who knows what he/she is doing do the job.

Free beer.

 ductvader wrote:
Free beer.

And Pretzels. Can't forget those.

The stock price still seems to be higher than between 2006 and mid 2012. They seemed to have an even more catastriphic crash in 2011 but that might be a dodgy data point on the graph. LSE advice seems to be to buy shares in them now before they go up again. Seems in pretty good shape to me.

 Flinty wrote:
The stock price still seems to be higher than between 2006 and mid 2012. They seemed to have an even more catastriphic crash in 2011 but that might be a dodgy data point on the graph. LSE advice seems to be to buy shares in them now before they go up again. Seems in pretty good shape to me.

No.


...Free beer.

That Space Marine statue on the front yard absolutely has to go.

It's sooooo second edition!

 Peregrine wrote:

pgmason wrote:
What? Why? Surely 40k needs armies which are genuinely different and alien?

But not Tyranids. Their fluff is stupid, their models are ugly, and they're boring as hell from a narrative perspective (yay, a mindless and faceless swarm that just eats and eats until you kill it). The only thing Tyranids contribute to the game is taking up valuable shelf space.

Getting rid of a popular line that sells well because you happen not to like them? That's not a business move, that's the kind of thing the owners son suggests right before the company is handed over to someone else. But then, so is "I'm firing everyone when I start", so hey.

Day one I'd split the rules into two variants for both 40k and Fantasy, the as is rule set managed by GW, and get FW to produce a more complex rule set that has variable distances for movement, based off a D10 or D100 system, etc. Longer term I'd expect the next version of GW rules for both 40k and Fantasy to be streamlined to reduce complexity and remove the dead time within a game, note streamlined does not mean dumbed down. The GW ruleset should principally be aimed at 1000-2000 points, FW 1500-3000, with an apocalypse ruleset for expansion above those points levels. Kill team rules should also be expanded to cover sub 1000 point games and included in the main rule book.

While they are looking like they are following the MtG model of releasing uber units then releasing a counter uber unit in subsequent releases this needs to be tightened up. Also all options in a codex/army book need to be viable.

Bring back Space Hulk, its a great entry point to 40k, and should be priced accordingly. The starter set should work with Space Hulk as an expansion. Repeat for Fantasy.

Sort out the BL publishing schedule, its ok to have hardbacks coming out first but the wait for paperbacks is too long. There should be a tie in to a model or other release for all the major books including HH.

Implement a monthly subscription service that covers you for all magazines, rulebooks, supplements and dataslates, cancel the subscription and lose access to them. Physical versions and pay per download are to be available for all of these as well. Physical versions in two versions, limited edition hardback and ongoing smaller softback.

Formalise the release cycle and publish the list of who, what, when in advance.

Give back to the FLGS with support, discount and prizes (look to MtG for how to do this) and look for them to replace the existing GW stores where possible. When not possible then close the GW store if it is making significant loses otherwise expand the store.

I'd get rid of the retail chain and invest in proper advertising/support instead, bound to be cheaper considering the amount of retail space they have lease!

There's a fair amount of wishlisting in this thread. I'm no business expert, but I think my ideas would work pretty well. These ideas are in order of priority too, starting from highest to lowest.

1) Get some advertising (external) in WD. I can justify to myself some of GWs actions, but no this one - or rather the lack of this one. Getting some advertisements from video game companies and the like - stuff gamers are likely to be interested in but don't directly compete with GW - would have a massive positive impact. WD would bring in more money. As a result, I can put down the cost of WD, making it sell better and hence getting more money from advertisers. I'm yet to make up my mind on whether monthly and/or weekly would be best though, I guess I'll pick up the weekly WD on 1st Feb and see how it is.

2) Get some sort of advertisement out. Probably not TV ads or anything like that, but I'd try and promote the brand a bit more. I'd start at something like an animated 40k series on Youtube, Wouldn't cost that much to make, would probably attract a fair amount of players and, if successful, would earn by itself. Again, I'd have to crunch some numbers too, to see if it'd work. I'd try and reduce the stigma around the game a bit more too, to make the hobby more mainstream. Stuff like this would help, especially if I managed to get an actual TV series or movie. Unlikely, but it'd massively help.

3) A reward card. Similar to what HMV has - or had, not sure what the current situation is, really. For every say, pound, you spend, you get a point. These points are spent on limited edition stuff. Signed artwork, old gamesday minatures etc. Nothing that'd really cost much, I'm not giving people free boxes of models, but the hobby community would lap this sort of stuff up and extra incentives like double points on pre-orders and or box sets, would help further. This would also encourage people to buy direct from GW.

4) Do some deals on battleforces and the like, and create a good entry-level ruleset for WHFB. So I'm on about here saying that, if you bought a Battleforce/Battalion + Codex/Army Book + HQ/Lord or Hero + Hobby Starter set, you'd get an extra discount. All this would encourage more new players to get into the game.

5) A little bit more feedback with the community. Perhaps a Youtube channel where we post videos discussing certain armies, or polls posted on the website, to see what the community, as a whole, wants. I'd advertise this in-store and online, to make sure people know about it. That way, if people say they really want an expansion surrounding a certain something, we can, in time, provide that. Even if we can't do that much, it'll be nice to have that connection with the community, something I think a lot of veterans would appreciate.

6) Create an official tournament comp for 40k. This would be our advised tournament version of 40k (though obviously TOs are free to alter it further) and would restrict some of the things that make 40k un-enjoyable to play. It's also fine for pick-up games, should people want to use it. When 7th edition is re-done, I'd roll this into the rulebook.

Just a few ideas, I'll post back should I find more inspiration.

Ok, I know I'm going to get flamed for this one BUT...why not sell pre-painted and assembled miniatures in addition to the current product line? Before you start typing in all caps at me, just read on.

GW wants a younger player base? It's ridiculous to expect a 10 year old to buy a $100 rulebook, read it cover to cover AND paint and assemble his miniatures. It's inevitable that said 10 year old will just be disappointed with the look of his mini's. INSTEAD, offer pre-painted, pre-assembled, ready to play miniatures for those who just want to play the game. Heroclix and X-wing are the examples I have in mind. Offering something like this will really let new players ease into the game for a lower price point, they'll get to play right away and WHEN they become hooked on the game, they'll eventually pay more for the standard GW miniatures.

EDIT: I'd actually like to double down on this assertion. Consider that there are essentially 3 types of GW customers (for miniatures). Collectors, painters and gamers. Gamers want to play the game, many can't even be bothered to spray paint their mini's and play with a horde of bare plastic. Pre-painted, pre-assembled miniatures would really appeal to the gamer crowd - especially if the price was comparable ( < or = ) to the un-assembled kits. Collectors and painters still get the high quality model kits.

Bring in a cheaper more affordable line/starter sets with everything you need. Maybe not as fancy or so many bits but sell it cheaper as a gateway project.

Paints, brush's, basic set up enough for a starting army with books etc required.

And then sell bits in larger stores, upgrade sprues, little extras to make it easy to get spares minus whole new kits. Small but regular sales.

Try to make it easier to get going and keep the low end starting costs down and try and snare more players at start. Even if only some carry on that's more than before

1) Troop modles need to be cheaper. That way it's easyer to start a 40k army.
2) Devlope a entry level game for 40k and fantsey.
3) Actully playtest the damn books, and stop holding tournment players in contempt.

I think that would go a long way in healing the ill will GW has gathered in the last few years.

Really, GW just needs a half-decent PR team. That would fix a ton of problems. FAQs need to be resumed, and they need to playtest their codices more. Their prices are a pain, but understandable. Selling broken products in inexcusable.