Zweischneid wrote:Perhaps. But it often seems that arguments twist a bit depending on the game.
That's because the reasons aren't the same. This is only a "problem" if you insist on reducing the situation to a single flaw, and that's something that doesn't make any sense. A reasonable analysis of the situation would look at
GW's games as individual product lines. Sure, they'll all have some similar effects from
GW's overall business decisions, but they also have their own strengths and weaknesses.
40k is in trouble because the model quality is inconsistent, the rules are shamefully bad and getting worse, and prices, especially startup prices for a new player, are very high.
The
LOTR games are in trouble because
GW has utterly failed to exploit the IP properly and try to bring in
LOTR book/movie fans instead of just treating it like an alternate game for their existing
40k/
WHFB customers (despite having a lot of success with that approach in the past). Another major factor is the disappointing results from the movies that were supposed to drive sales of the games.
WHFB is in trouble because it's a generic fantasy game in a market full of generic fantasy games, and doesn't really have any compelling reason to play it over its competition besides "it has the biggest market share".
All of
GW's games are in trouble because of
GW's utterly stupid business plans: nonexistent marketing, high prices, awful retail stores, obsessive focus on cost cutting over quality improvements, and a general short-sighted strategy that puts immediate shareholder results ahead of long-term stability and growth.
Just one other example (among many): the reasons given by Tom Kirby.. changes in store opening hours, etc.. have a very tight time correlation with the sales-dive and would explain the nosedive across all game-systems, which apparently are all suffering (?).
That only considers
GW's own stores. Obviously
GW's retail division is a spectacular trainwreck of bad decisions, but that doesn't explain why
GW's sales are dropping in independent stores that don't suffer from those problems. The correlation in time is probably better explained by the store cuts being a response to poor sales rather than the primary driving force behind the poor sales.
Occam's Razor would lead logical people to opt for the more parsimonious explanation, e.g. the latter, ... as long as clear evidence to the contrary is not available.
But we DO have clear evidence. The rules for
40k are awful, and
GW is showing no apparent interest in making them better (or even doing basic playtesting to catch and fix the worst problems). We have clear anecdotal evidence of people either quitting
GW games entirely in favor of
GW's competition, or becoming apathetic towards the new releases and just playing with their existing stuff. Are these problems the sole cause of
GW's decline? Obviously not, but they certainly aren't helping the situation.
Now, Occam's Razor doesn't mean that the more parsimonious explanation must be "right", far from it, but it would seem to be the unbiased, analytic starting point for going at this.
