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 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Without more information it really isn't a useful statement. Outselling how? When 6th dropped - it was listed at $74.25 for the basic book and $132 for the collector's edition. The current basic book is $85 and the collectors edition is $340. It also has Visions, the psychic cards, the iBook, eBook...

If they are talking units sold - I find it hard to believe that they have been selling more actual rulebooks than 6th Edition. But, they can still sell to a lot less people and be "beating the sales numbers we did on the last edition". The price increase alone would make up for over a 10% drop in sales. If even a small fraction of people are picking up one of the electronic versions to go along with their physical book - that would help make up a lot of ground as well. Include the things like the cards and perhaps the Visions book...well, their customers could shrink by 50% and they can still beat the previous edition in sales (in dollars).

On the other hand, they could be selling more 7th rulebooks than 6th for a very simple reason: the 6th Edition starter set. How many people bought that instead of the big rulebook? With no 7th starter right now, people are forced to buy the rulebook instead, thus, more sales of the rulebook.

Of course, this theory is based on the assumption that the 6th Edition starter came out at the same time as the rulebook. I don't really remember if it did.

Or you know, they could just actually be looking at like for like periods and like for like products , so when 6th launched they sold how ever many thousand books in the first week and then they just compared that to how many of 7th they sold in the first week, maybe people should just accept that its perfectly possible that GW actually took on board feedback from 6th, and produced a good product that people have looked at and bought because they like the idea of unbound armies and the psychic phase and three separate books making it easier to game with etc. Is it so hard to think that GW might actually be doing better than it was? its almost as though people want to see them fail....

All of the numbers and anecdotes we've seen so far conflict with that statement though. I think a lot of us want to see them succeed but there doesn't appear to be any obvious way in which the statement is actually true. Reports from FLGS's so far appears to be that it's doing worse than 6th Ed, and the annual reports certainly hints at a reduced number of customers, as does the remaining stock volumes of the LE's (they've sold 1800 LE's in almost 2 weeks whereas they sold 5000 6th Ed LE's in a few hours)

 kitsandbits wrote:
Is it so hard to think that GW might actually be doing better than it was?

If you had asked before the FAQs hit your argument might have carried a bit more weight but between the Chaos stuff (Abby being able to turn into a spawn, hellturkey being hull mounted gun again), the BA stuff (no more fast but still priced like it is), the GK one (having stuff in there for space marine vehicles that they con't have access too) and the Nid one (not fixing anything) I don't think you can call those FAQs anything more than rushed/lazy.

Proper, frequent, FAQs are something people have been calling for for years now and what we got was... that.
And that would suggest that GW are not taking on feedback and using it to create a better product.

Isn't the end of their financial year the end of this month?

I don't know how people think they are going to die and shut up shop - I simply can't see that as a realistic thing. They do, however, look like they are primed to sell (7e release timing, price hikes, etc) they all give a short term boon that is only useful for sale.

It could, obviously, just be a series of terrible decisions though - but as little as some folks feel about the guys running GW, they are interested in their own pockets, and that requires a healthy and successful company.

That said, I think shutting down the FB groups is more in line with what Orlanth said (IP).

kb_lock wrote:
It could, obviously, just be a series of terrible decisions though - but as little as some folks feel about the guys running GW, they are interested in their own pockets, and that requires a healthy and successful company.

But it isn't a healthy company. It is a company that sells a social product that requires a community to thrive and they are doing everything they can to limit communications between them and their fans and seem to be actively chasing the idea of getting the same amount of money our of a smaller and smaller fanbase every year.

If Kirby and friends where running a successful company and filling their pockets with the profits then we would still be coming out ahead. What we are seeing now feels much more like an old, stagnant company suddenly being thrown into a market where they have to compete for people's money and having no idea how to do that anymore.

I never stated they are doing a good job, only that they would logically try to do what they think is best for the company simply because it is in their own interest. Now, their logic may be completely wrong, but without knowing their intentions, this is all speculation.

For example, killing off community projects is very secure for your IP, albeit horrible for your community, but many investors could care less about community compared to IP.

Do I think that the current strategy they have is a long term one? Absolutely not, I sincerely hope it is that they are going to sell the company, because they will need to at this rate.

This whole Edition change reminds me of charges laid by Mark Bunker (Wise Beard Man) against Scientology for constantly republishing the core books of the sect so that parishioners would have to rebuy copies.

GW gains revenue by forcing customers to rebuy core books. I am particularly suspicious of the rumours of a new Orc army book just after 9th comes out next year.
Orcs haven't had a 'codex' for that long, and it was one of the expensive hard backed ones costing £30, so it ought to have some more shelf life. I am very reluctant to fork out another £30 or whatever the price will be next year if this rumour is true.

I would also be miffed had I bought Dark Vengeance and needed to replace it, as I don't collect either of the armies included I didnt.

I wonder if this is a deliberate milking policy of shorter edition cycles.

Right now GW do not have a future, or much of one anyway.

Their IP may do, but their current management and, sadly, the staff they have employed do not.

Of course I may be mistaken, but the published accounts demonstrate that 40k and Fantasy peaked for volume sales in 2001/02 (yes, I am an accounting geek and have them downloaded on my PC dating back to when I first started noticing their was a rabbit away, back in 2001). The LotR bubble masked that effect for 4 years, and then disappeared.

All GW's tinkering with prices, new rules, bigger battles, 1-man stores, revamping WD etc., etc. has had zero impact. Turnover increased in cash value some years, but discounting for average inflation (and that is conservative - we all know GW's prices rise ahead of average inflation) GW's Turnover has declined in "real" value every year since 2004 and, for the first time for the 1st half of this financial year, it actually declined in cash terms.

Nothing they have done so far has halted the decline. Of course I cannot predict the future, but why should it be any different? For instance none of the new editions of 40k since 3rd editio has improved salves volumes. Why should this one? Their last rewrite of WFB, was so bad it virtually killed the game stone dead, at least by its former standards.

The remaining core customer support for GW's products is getting dangerously low. At some point, it will come off the rails and be too small to susteain the cost base (just as specialist games were deemed to be - ignoring their knock-on customer-retention effect), unless they do something drastic, and nothing I have seen them do of a constructive nature has been drastic enough, which makes me believe their existing management are unable to conceive of a functional rescue strategy.

We can cast around for appropriate augeries. For me it will be when they are starting to close 1-man stores. Once they have given up on their retail arm, which has been gutted to the point it is barely functional in some cases - then they will have to implode back to the centre, and it is touch and go whether the existing management team could survive that. By then even their current dozy shareholders would have noticed the problem.

Incidentally, one of my favourite commentators on matters GW has just posted a good post on Warseer which covers this very topic:

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?394884-Games-Workshop-Stock-Prices-The-Future-and-Cats-Without-Sufficient-Coffee

Reinholt wrote:
Games Workshop, Stock Prices, The Future, and Cats Without Sufficient Coffee

I made a terrible mistake this morning, and I read this article on BoLS.

After shaking my head sadly, turning my attention back to work for a while, downing an entire large coffee, and diving deep into the morass of negotiating legal terms around trades, I came back to it. I shook my head again.

So, I wanted to post this on Warseer (my favorite grounds for this kind of thing, truth be told), and see if I can start a discussion that would actually clear up some of the misconceptions around GW and what is actually going on with them as a business, from a financial perspective.

As a little background, I work on Wall Street. Not literally; the only actual bank left on the physical street is DB and virtually none of the buy side firms are there. Most of the banks are now scattered throughout midtown ranging down into flatiron, and a few are downtown. The asset managers are shotgunned across NYC, Jersey, and the rest of the northeast (and are spreading into the west), and hedge funds... well, look, three dudes, one computer, and a broom closet can qualify as a hedge fund, so what the hell can I really say? Point is, I have an MBA from a top-tier school, I run a trading desk, and I've been doing this for a while. I would caveat that all of this is my personal opinion, I am in no way representing any firm, and that none of this is intended as investment advice (I own no GW stock). In fact, you probably shouldn't read it. Your eyes will likely start bleeding, you will wail and gnash your teeth, and then you will smash your forehead through your monitor / ipad / tinfoil hat. Consider yourselves warned. After that, I will take questions.

Why shareholders are not the problem, or at least not in the way people think they are

Public companies are beholden, first and foremost (though not always only) to their shareholders. Those are the people who, you know, literally own the thing. GW has them. There are those who claim that GW is run by some shadow conspiracy, or in the palm of Tom Kirby as a maniacal dictator, or that a small group of nefarious insiders are deliberately destroying the company. All of these things are untrue. Several of them are also illegal.

If you want to know who owns GW, all you need to do is have a Bloomberg terminal, grab the GAW ticker, and run the OWN and HDS reports, which helpfully gives you the owners of the firm. Roughly speaking, GW has a pretty atomized ownership structure. ~14.5% percent appears to be owned by insiders (Kirby, other directors, former c-level executives, etc.), ~81% of the owners are from the UK, ~80% are owned through investment advisors (retirement funds, asset managers, and the like), and the largest individual holding is around 7% (Kirby).

In a technical sense, to have a controlling interest in a public firm, you need > 50% of the voting shares of a company. Nobody is close to that with GW. What you should realize, however, is that 80% ownership of investment advisors in a very small company means that it is unlikely anyone is paying much attention to GW at all, as they care about the returns of their portfolios, and GW is a tiny piece of your portfolio. GW is a tiny, tiny fish in the global stock market. To put this in concrete terms: Apple is worth 2,758.92 times as much as GW at the time of this writing. Worrying about GW for most portfolio managers would be like worrying exactly how much change is in your couch while your ferrari is on fire in the driveway. It's literally not worth their time.

In a literal sense, firms like this often tend to be inefficient. This is why activist shareholders and hedge fund managers can make money (think of them as adults who show up and rudely force the children to behave), why managers can do things that are destructive to the long-term interets of the shareholders for long periods of time before anyone notices, and why companies often take forever to die even if they are terrible (because nobody is paying enough attention to take their ball away). If GW's behavior looks mildly insane, as though no adult supervision is going on, or as though nobody who really knows how to run a business is paying attention, that's probably because all of those things are likely to be true.

With that said, there are generally two things that can make you a successful public company in the long run:

1 - You consistently grow your customer base while preserving your margins (eventually). Growth is the key driver of most (though not all) stock prices. Grow, grow, grow, grow, and figure the rest out later is a recipe several firms have used successfully. These firms tend not to pay dividends (they are re-investing the money to grow the firm), have increasing sales and customer bases, and are largely valued on the basis of future earnings.

2 - You have a stable customer base, a strong edge/moat, and return tons of capital to your shareholders while earning an above-market return on your capital. This is less common, because most companies are unable to accept they are out of growth. Even more so, most companies are bad at returning capital for all kinds of issues I won't get into here. However, when you find the companies that do this, they are often undervalued and hugely valuable.

I would suggest that GW is neither of those, which leads me to a core point: GW's problem is not being a public company. There are plenty of successful public companies. The shareholders are not demanding that GW sacrifice their future and destroy all of the capital they have been given to get some pissant 2% dividend today. The shareholders are not demanding that GW shrink their customer base, release books ridden with typos and unclear language, and open and close their stores at erratic hours with unsuitably low staffing levels. The shareholders want a stable, average to above-average long-term return on their capital.

The problem with GW is their management, and the fact that nobody is paying attention from an ownership perspective (and probably won't be until GW is in much worse shape than they are now).

Stock prices are an excellent indicator of how bad humans are at stock pricing

You shouldn't read too much into GW's short term price movements. My favorite example of this sort of issue was Lehman Brothers. In early 2008, it was trading for roughly $20 per share (adjusted for splits, etc, as best I can from the historical data I have handy). At the end of 2008, it was trading for $0 because it was dead. What will GW's stock price be a year from now? Will it even have a stock price a year from now?

Note: I am not predicting anything here. I am merely pointing out that we love to imply meaning into things that may not have any discernable meaning when it comes to patterns, and stock prices bring out the worst in the human mind about this.

In aggregate, in the long run, I do believe stock prices tend to be correct-ish. However, correct on average does not mean correct at any given moment, and especially does not mean correct about what the future price will be. Just remember: all firms will eventually go bankrupt, shut down, or be acquired. Nothing lives forever.

Whenever anyone writes an article primarily focused on the changes in stock price without a clear explanation of why that price is changing (as the price, over the long run, should reflect the actual fundamental performance of the firm), you should ignore it, because they aren't communicating any information and probably have no clue what they are talking about (or have a clue but can't communicate it, which isn't any more helpful to you as a reader). If they can communicate it, you should still think long and hard about if you believe they are correct. There is far more bull---- about finance out there, due to a combination of lack of knowledge and people trying to take your money, than there is useful information. You should be reading even what I am writing here with a skeptical eye (though at least I'm not trying to sell you anything). I can assure you I am not always right.

WTF is actually going on with GW then, you stupid looking orange cat?

If I were to boil GW's problems down to a few key points, it would be the following:

1 - Uneven product quality
2 - Mismatch between production & design, pricing model, and customer/segment expectations
3 - Lack of business capability at all levels of the firm

These problems, to be clear, are not unusual. I've seen them in many, many situations over time. Most small to medium size firms are terribly managed, and GW is remarkably average in that regard. To that end, all of their problems can be traced back to poor management (and I'd be glad to expound of any of these points as I have in the past, if anyone is even more of a masochist than most people who have read this far).

This is the key: poor management is leading to products that don't match what the customers want, to pricing that is actively adversarial to the goal of selling to customers and retaining them, to confrontational/absent relationships with a customer base that wants to be engaged or independent sellers, and to opening up market spaces for competitors to consistently chew away at GW.

In terms of observables, there has been a single trend that has concerned me about GW for 5+ years now: losing customers. Even if you raise prices enough to cover the lost revenue, this cannot continue forever. Eventually your customers will go to zero (more realistically, the price increases stop working at some point, which is about where GW put themselves today, and now they aren't smart enough to figure out how to get back out of it).

Mr. Orange Cat, GW is profitable now and you are just some idiot blowhard on the internet. How dare you question them?

Hyperboli aside, this is another line of thought I often see (GW is still in business, so they are fine), to which I offer the long-running counter-example of companies like GM, Lehman, or any of the thousands of small and meidum sized companies that have gone bankrupt. Perhaps Sears is a good example of a downtrend right now. Companies are fine until they are not. Problems are usually observable before profits go completely to hell. This is why some companies in the red are not considered problems (they are in the red because they are either growing rapidly and funding that expansion, or because of temporary/fixable issues), and some companies in the black are considered problems.

Or, to put another way, would you argue that the train is still on the rails, so it's not a problem, even if it was about to ram straight into another train in 10 seconds?

Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. All firms that went bankrupt were operational at some point prior to that. I am not predicting the imminent demise of GW, either. I am predicting that they will either be gone (through bankruptcy or being eaten by someone bigger), or much smaller in the next decade-ish if they don't change their ways.

So what could change things and what is a "turn around"?

This one is simple: GW will have turned around when they being growing at the same rate as the segment again, retaining their current customers, and adding new customers.

Until this happens, the rest is all just hot air. If you want to argue things at GW have changed, you need to argue they are adding people instead of losing them. That is the bottom line. Anything else is just noise.

Okay, that's the majority of what I have to say for now, but if anyone was foolish enough to read all of that, I'm glad to discuss/debate/expound of any of it. Enjoy.

Orlanth: I bought that hardback Orc book, and it totally put me off buying any more hardback books from GW. The content was nearly identical to the previous codex, with maybe 2 or 3 pages of new background, the rest was word for word the same. The new special characters were lacklustre in concept and background, and didn't have models OR artwork to represent them in the book (lame!) and tactically the army remained pretty much the same, just with a giant spider model that is thematically out of place in an Orc and Goblin army. I looked at the price I paid for what I got, and I haven't bought a book for Warriors of Chaos or Dwarves, which are the other two armies I run which have come out. At least Vampire Counts was mechanically a little different, that Orc book was an embarrassment. Apparently now 7th edition is a similarly content light update. Charging premium prices for premium product is okay. Charging premium prices for reprints of old material with 1-3 pages of new stuff is a pisstake.

I am curious to see how things go. I've obviously seen people on here that like the new direction, and anecdotally I know people who love it to bits, but it's certainly not for me. I might keep buying their miniatures though, sans rules, for use in other systems (or older editions). They are often very good.

 Osbad wrote:
Incidentally, one of my favourite commentators on matters GW has just posted a good post on Warseer which covers this very topic:

Spoiler:

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?394884-Games-Workshop-Stock-Prices-The-Future-and-Cats-Without-Sufficient-Coffee

Reinholt wrote:
Games Workshop, Stock Prices, The Future, and Cats Without Sufficient Coffee

I made a terrible mistake this morning, and I read this article on BoLS.

Spoiler:

After shaking my head sadly, turning my attention back to work for a while, downing an entire large coffee, and diving deep into the morass of negotiating legal terms around trades, I came back to it. I shook my head again.

So, I wanted to post this on Warseer (my favorite grounds for this kind of thing, truth be told), and see if I can start a discussion that would actually clear up some of the misconceptions around GW and what is actually going on with them as a business, from a financial perspective.

As a little background, I work on Wall Street. Not literally; the only actual bank left on the physical street is DB and virtually none of the buy side firms are there. Most of the banks are now scattered throughout midtown ranging down into flatiron, and a few are downtown. The asset managers are shotgunned across NYC, Jersey, and the rest of the northeast (and are spreading into the west), and hedge funds... well, look, three dudes, one computer, and a broom closet can qualify as a hedge fund, so what the hell can I really say? Point is, I have an MBA from a top-tier school, I run a trading desk, and I've been doing this for a while. I would caveat that all of this is my personal opinion, I am in no way representing any firm, and that none of this is intended as investment advice (I own no GW stock). In fact, you probably shouldn't read it. Your eyes will likely start bleeding, you will wail and gnash your teeth, and then you will smash your forehead through your monitor / ipad / tinfoil hat. Consider yourselves warned. After that, I will take questions.

Why shareholders are not the problem, or at least not in the way people think they are

Public companies are beholden, first and foremost (though not always only) to their shareholders. Those are the people who, you know, literally own the thing. GW has them. There are those who claim that GW is run by some shadow conspiracy, or in the palm of Tom Kirby as a maniacal dictator, or that a small group of nefarious insiders are deliberately destroying the company. All of these things are untrue. Several of them are also illegal.

If you want to know who owns GW, all you need to do is have a Bloomberg terminal, grab the GAW ticker, and run the OWN and HDS reports, which helpfully gives you the owners of the firm. Roughly speaking, GW has a pretty atomized ownership structure. ~14.5% percent appears to be owned by insiders (Kirby, other directors, former c-level executives, etc.), ~81% of the owners are from the UK, ~80% are owned through investment advisors (retirement funds, asset managers, and the like), and the largest individual holding is around 7% (Kirby).

In a technical sense, to have a controlling interest in a public firm, you need > 50% of the voting shares of a company. Nobody is close to that with GW. What you should realize, however, is that 80% ownership of investment advisors in a very small company means that it is unlikely anyone is paying much attention to GW at all, as they care about the returns of their portfolios, and GW is a tiny piece of your portfolio. GW is a tiny, tiny fish in the global stock market. To put this in concrete terms: Apple is worth 2,758.92 times as much as GW at the time of this writing. Worrying about GW for most portfolio managers would be like worrying exactly how much change is in your couch while your ferrari is on fire in the driveway. It's literally not worth their time.

In a literal sense, firms like this often tend to be inefficient. This is why activist shareholders and hedge fund managers can make money (think of them as adults who show up and rudely force the children to behave), why managers can do things that are destructive to the long-term interets of the shareholders for long periods of time before anyone notices, and why companies often take forever to die even if they are terrible (because nobody is paying enough attention to take their ball away). If GW's behavior looks mildly insane, as though no adult supervision is going on, or as though nobody who really knows how to run a business is paying attention, that's probably because all of those things are likely to be true.

With that said, there are generally two things that can make you a successful public company in the long run:

1 - You consistently grow your customer base while preserving your margins (eventually). Growth is the key driver of most (though not all) stock prices. Grow, grow, grow, grow, and figure the rest out later is a recipe several firms have used successfully. These firms tend not to pay dividends (they are re-investing the money to grow the firm), have increasing sales and customer bases, and are largely valued on the basis of future earnings.

2 - You have a stable customer base, a strong edge/moat, and return tons of capital to your shareholders while earning an above-market return on your capital. This is less common, because most companies are unable to accept they are out of growth. Even more so, most companies are bad at returning capital for all kinds of issues I won't get into here. However, when you find the companies that do this, they are often undervalued and hugely valuable.

I would suggest that GW is neither of those, which leads me to a core point: GW's problem is not being a public company. There are plenty of successful public companies. The shareholders are not demanding that GW sacrifice their future and destroy all of the capital they have been given to get some pissant 2% dividend today. The shareholders are not demanding that GW shrink their customer base, release books ridden with typos and unclear language, and open and close their stores at erratic hours with unsuitably low staffing levels. The shareholders want a stable, average to above-average long-term return on their capital.

The problem with GW is their management, and the fact that nobody is paying attention from an ownership perspective (and probably won't be until GW is in much worse shape than they are now).

Stock prices are an excellent indicator of how bad humans are at stock pricing

You shouldn't read too much into GW's short term price movements. My favorite example of this sort of issue was Lehman Brothers. In early 2008, it was trading for roughly $20 per share (adjusted for splits, etc, as best I can from the historical data I have handy). At the end of 2008, it was trading for $0 because it was dead. What will GW's stock price be a year from now? Will it even have a stock price a year from now?

Note: I am not predicting anything here. I am merely pointing out that we love to imply meaning into things that may not have any discernable meaning when it comes to patterns, and stock prices bring out the worst in the human mind about this.

In aggregate, in the long run, I do believe stock prices tend to be correct-ish. However, correct on average does not mean correct at any given moment, and especially does not mean correct about what the future price will be. Just remember: all firms will eventually go bankrupt, shut down, or be acquired. Nothing lives forever.

Whenever anyone writes an article primarily focused on the changes in stock price without a clear explanation of why that price is changing (as the price, over the long run, should reflect the actual fundamental performance of the firm), you should ignore it, because they aren't communicating any information and probably have no clue what they are talking about (or have a clue but can't communicate it, which isn't any more helpful to you as a reader). If they can communicate it, you should still think long and hard about if you believe they are correct. There is far more bull---- about finance out there, due to a combination of lack of knowledge and people trying to take your money, than there is useful information. You should be reading even what I am writing here with a skeptical eye (though at least I'm not trying to sell you anything). I can assure you I am not always right.

WTF is actually going on with GW then, you stupid looking orange cat?

If I were to boil GW's problems down to a few key points, it would be the following:

1 - Uneven product quality
2 - Mismatch between production & design, pricing model, and customer/segment expectations
3 - Lack of business capability at all levels of the firm

These problems, to be clear, are not unusual. I've seen them in many, many situations over time. Most small to medium size firms are terribly managed, and GW is remarkably average in that regard. To that end, all of their problems can be traced back to poor management (and I'd be glad to expound of any of these points as I have in the past, if anyone is even more of a masochist than most people who have read this far).

This is the key: poor management is leading to products that don't match what the customers want, to pricing that is actively adversarial to the goal of selling to customers and retaining them, to confrontational/absent relationships with a customer base that wants to be engaged or independent sellers, and to opening up market spaces for competitors to consistently chew away at GW.

In terms of observables, there has been a single trend that has concerned me about GW for 5+ years now: losing customers. Even if you raise prices enough to cover the lost revenue, this cannot continue forever. Eventually your customers will go to zero (more realistically, the price increases stop working at some point, which is about where GW put themselves today, and now they aren't smart enough to figure out how to get back out of it).

Mr. Orange Cat, GW is profitable now and you are just some idiot blowhard on the internet. How dare you question them?

Hyperboli aside, this is another line of thought I often see (GW is still in business, so they are fine), to which I offer the long-running counter-example of companies like GM, Lehman, or any of the thousands of small and meidum sized companies that have gone bankrupt. Perhaps Sears is a good example of a downtrend right now. Companies are fine until they are not. Problems are usually observable before profits go completely to hell. This is why some companies in the red are not considered problems (they are in the red because they are either growing rapidly and funding that expansion, or because of temporary/fixable issues), and some companies in the black are considered problems.

Or, to put another way, would you argue that the train is still on the rails, so it's not a problem, even if it was about to ram straight into another train in 10 seconds?

Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. All firms that went bankrupt were operational at some point prior to that. I am not predicting the imminent demise of GW, either. I am predicting that they will either be gone (through bankruptcy or being eaten by someone bigger), or much smaller in the next decade-ish if they don't change their ways.

So what could change things and what is a "turn around"?

This one is simple: GW will have turned around when they being growing at the same rate as the segment again, retaining their current customers, and adding new customers.

Until this happens, the rest is all just hot air. If you want to argue things at GW have changed, you need to argue they are adding people instead of losing them. That is the bottom line. Anything else is just noise.

Okay, that's the majority of what I have to say for now, but if anyone was foolish enough to read all of that, I'm glad to discuss/debate/expound of any of it. Enjoy. [spoiler]

Rick_1138 wrote:
TBH I can see why GW just don't bother with open discussion now. However if they could have a decent monitored forum it would be very welcome, however they know it will just turn into the crap-storm that was the Star Trek Online beta release forum and the ban hammer will loom large, then close down, then re-open with more shouting, close again and eventually a year or so later, re-open and the haters had left. GW I feel doesn't have the inclination to put that mch effort in, and I don't blame them.

While I agree with the theory on this, this is the nature of the internets. However this does not seem to stop other game companies from running thriving forums and investing in their communities. I'll admit, as a long time MtG and Pathfinder player, seeing how GW treats the community was quite a culture shock when I started playing this game; and I still think they have it completely backwards. I just don't understand how any gaming company does not understand the power of the internet and would not find a way to use it rather than treating it like a bad infection

Ok, a couple of things previously mentioned in a few posts:

The end of the year for GW is the end of this month.

There were a few months gap between the release of the 6th edition rulebook and the box set. As of right now, they are just putting stickers on the dark vengeance box set which states that this box set does not have the current rule book in it. There are still plenty of people out there, though that are like "I'll just wait for the boxset.". Unless you play in a store that enforces the newest edition of the rules (like GW stores) and/or do tourneys, you don't have to buy a new rulebook right away. You could just sit around and play any old edition you wanted.

If we get a new 40k box set, we probably won't see it until aug/sept.

New Ork models just came out for pre-order today, and the games workshop logo is suitably orky. I have no idea what tomorrow's White dwarf says about new box sets or anything like that, but I would expec a new 40k Ork release next month.

As previously mentioned, IP on facebook is huge. Facebook does this weird blanket statement when it comes to pictures and stuff that you post up there, they own.

 Battlesong wrote:

Rick_1138 wrote:
TBH I can see why GW just don't bother with open discussion now. However if they could have a decent monitored forum it would be very welcome, however they know it will just turn into the crap-storm that was the Star Trek Online beta release forum and the ban hammer will loom large, then close down, then re-open with more shouting, close again and eventually a year or so later, re-open and the haters had left. GW I feel doesn't have the inclination to put that mch effort in, and I don't blame them.

While I agree with the theory on this, this is the nature of the internets. However this does not seem to stop other game companies from running thriving forums and investing in their communities. I'll admit, as a long time MtG and Pathfinder player, seeing how GW treats the community was quite a culture shock when I started playing this game; and I still think they have it completely backwards. I just don't understand how any gaming company does not understand the power of the internet and would not find a way to use it rather than treating it like a bad infection

The reason why GW dislike the internet is that GW has a strong yes-man culture and runs by group-think. They do not hire for competence, they hire for toeing the company line. They are run by a very small management team who are nearly all old colleagues.

The internet constantly threatens GW's group-think with dissenting views, so they try to shut it out -- a characteristic behaviour of group-think.

Group-think has long been recognised as a dangerous state for a group to get into. There is a long held principle of management that if two people running a business always agree with each other, one of them doesn't need to be there. Healthy management needs to be challenged with different viewpoints presented and explored. GW shuts that out.

 kitsandbits wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

Without more information it really isn't a useful statement. Outselling how? When 6th dropped - it was listed at $74.25 for the basic book and $132 for the collector's edition. The current basic book is $85 and the collectors edition is $340. It also has Visions, the psychic cards, the iBook, eBook...

If they are talking units sold - I find it hard to believe that they have been selling more actual rulebooks than 6th Edition. But, they can still sell to a lot less people and be "beating the sales numbers we did on the last edition". The price increase alone would make up for over a 10% drop in sales. If even a small fraction of people are picking up one of the electronic versions to go along with their physical book - that would help make up a lot of ground as well. Include the things like the cards and perhaps the Visions book...well, their customers could shrink by 50% and they can still beat the previous edition in sales (in dollars).

On the other hand, they could be selling more 7th rulebooks than 6th for a very simple reason: the 6th Edition starter set. How many people bought that instead of the big rulebook? With no 7th starter right now, people are forced to buy the rulebook instead, thus, more sales of the rulebook.

Of course, this theory is based on the assumption that the 6th Edition starter came out at the same time as the rulebook. I don't really remember if it did.

Or you know, they could just actually be looking at like for like periods and like for like products , so when 6th launched they sold how ever many thousand books in the first week and then they just compared that to how many of 7th they sold in the first week, maybe people should just accept that its perfectly possible that GW actually took on board feedback from 6th, and produced a good product that people have looked at and bought because they like the idea of unbound armies and the psychic phase and three separate books making it easier to game with etc. Is it so hard to think that GW might actually be doing better than it was? its almost as though people want to see them fail....

Highly doubtful. 7th Edition Fantasy was well known to be majorly broken with the Magic Phase. It had a dramatic impact on customers abandoning WHFB. They fixed many of those issues with 8th edition Fantasy, but it was rather too late as the permanent damage was done.

So... we come to 7th edition 40k and what do they do? Mimic the magic phase of 7th edition Warhammer, rather than use the learning from it in 8th edition. I have a feeling it will have a similar impact on 7th edition 40k like 7th edition Fantasy had on WHFB.

GW is too focused on "sell more models". To a point where they are making some extremely poor decisions in game design that will/are having the opposite effect of what they believe it will have.

While this is just a small microcosm, it serves as an example. Talking with my FLGS owner the other day he told me he sold 32 copies of 6th edition 40k on launch day. For 7th edition, he hasn't sold even one and hasn't had a single person ask to order it either. So, while that is only 32 copies lost, you have to wonder just how many other shops have had a very similar experience with 7th edition.

A two year edition cycle seems like milking it to me, they re-release the game and it's guaranteed cash as their player base buy up the new ones, despite the fact that the only places that would enforce new edition usage are GW stores that mostly don't offer gaming tables any more. It's a good way to put a number on your loyal customer base. This will only be a problem if people widely reject it. A two year release cycle is a bit of a joke all the same. It's proof they don't playtest and put serious thought into their rules, when your 6th edition of a product needs rapid replacement it's plainly obvious you're more interested in churning product over rather than aspiring for a quality ruleset.

Also this 'unbound' is cynical gimmick to encourage miniature sales that is described as being revolutionary by one of their sales directors. Really? How much thought and imagination had to be put in to telling people they can abandon all the Force Organisation Charts and just play with whatever models they like? I was doing that decades ago. That's the abandonment of rules, it's a goofy White Dwarf article at most, does it really need a 'revolutionary' new edition?

 Wayshuba wrote:
Highly doubtful. 7th Edition Fantasy was well known to be majorly broken with the Magic Phase. It had a dramatic impact on customers abandoning WHFB. They fixed many of those issues with 8th edition Fantasy, but it was rather too late as the permanent damage was done.

So... we come to 7th edition 40k and what do they do? Mimic the magic phase of 7th edition Warhammer, rather than use the learning from it in 8th edition. I have a feeling it will have a similar impact on 7th edition 40k like 7th edition Fantasy had on WHFB.

The fact that it's happened that way is an interesting "tell", if you will, for the people making this game. We've spent countless hours over countless posts over countless years wondering things like "How do the miss these things?" "How didn't they see that?" and "What were they thinking?", and for the longest time we never considered that the answer was that they miss these things and fail to see these things specifically because they're not thinking. It becomes clearer and clearer with each new release and bit of rules that the fine folks writing 40K don't have a real understanding of what the game is or even what they want the game to be. It's frightening to see them make these changes, seemingly at random, and then put in a "Forging a Narrative" side-bar on a page as if to excuse rules deficiencies that they don't even acknowledge as actual problems.

Now I know what some of you may be thinking - "There goes that HMBC again, having another free kick at the 'Forging a Narrative' stuff. Broken record amirite?". If only it were that simple (and it's HBMC - the B comes before the M!). The constant reminders to "Forge a Narrative" are to me what the old Chapter Approved sections in White Dwarf eventually became: a safety net through which responsibility for rules could be abdicated. If you put getting it right the first time into the 'too hard' basket and assume that you can always fix it in post, so to speak, then why try to get it right the first time? That's what Chapter Approved eventually became, and now they appear to have circumvented it completely by just saying "The rules aren't quite right? Well, it's meant to be a narrative game anyway, so don't worry about it too much.".

I write RPG rules. I wonder if my project lead would let me get away with writing shoddy rules if I gave him the excuse "Nah brah! It's cool! It's a narrative game, just 420 forge it!". I doubt he'd go for that, and he'd be right to tell me to stop being an idiot and fix the fething rules.

I had a look through the 7th Ed book today for the firs time. The picture book is just that - a hardback copy of Warhammer Visions that seems to shy away from showing old models (Dante doesn't even show up in the Blood Angel section - Astorath is new poster boy for the BA's, along with lots of Death Company Marines with Bolters for some reason!). The fluff book is nothin' we ain't seen before, and then there's the rules.

First page says this:

Forging a Narrative
Throughout this book, you will see boxed out text entitled ‘Forging a Narrative’. These boxes contain advice on how to make your gaming experience even more enjoyable, and revolve around evoking the imagery and feel of the 41st Millennium. At its heart, a game of Warhammer 40,000 is a shared experience between fellow hobbyists – and it should be as enjoyable and fulfilling for all players as possible. If you stick to the advice offered in these boxes, you can’t really go far wrong!

That's on the first page. Right up front we know that Forging a Narrative is now the done thing for 40K. It's lazy, and it shows not only contempt for the people playing the game (the customers - the people they need) but also when combined with these mystifying decisions (just look at the recent FAQ's, and how quickly they had to be 'fixed') shows how un-engaged the people making the rules are. Forging a Narrative? It should be retitled to "Near Enough is Good Enough".

When I was a young boy all my wargames were narratively based because I played with my toy soldiers and vehicles without the use of any rules.

The reason I bought rules and became a real wargamer was because I wanted a properly thought out structure to govern the action instead of just making things up as I went along.

I just saw this pop up in my facebook feed and found it relevant to this discussion even if it is somewhat anecdotal.

The Combat Company wrote:We are getting lots of questions about the Dystopian Wars v2 releases. These have been hugely popular. The book has out sold 40k v7 6:1. Stock is arriving and we are shipping first order in first order out. Please be patient and rest assured your orders will be sent ASAP.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=795146337162999&set=a.690715594272741.1073741841.164523590225280&type=1&relevant_count=1

So that doesn't bode well for GW in the Australian market, but on the other hand it explains why my book and starter set haven't been dispatched yet

 Kilkrazy wrote:
When I was a young boy all my wargames were narratively based because I played with my toy soldiers and vehicles without the use of any rules.

The reason I bought rules and became a real wargamer was because I wanted a properly thought out structure to govern the action instead of just making things up as I went along.

This in a nutshell. A lot of the "rules" that GW puts out aren't even needed, as people could do it before. Unbound, for example, or allying with CtA armies. You already could do that with your own groups, and since 40k assumes that everyone playing is part of some gaming club, these rules are superfluous. And yet they willfully ignore actual rules that would help everybody.

So to put it another way:

GW is doing things we don't need them to, but isn't doing things we need them to do.

 jonolikespie wrote:
I just saw this pop up in my facebook feed and found it relevant to this discussion even if it is somewhat anecdotal.

The Combat Company wrote:We are getting lots of questions about the Dystopian Wars v2 releases. These have been hugely popular. The book has out sold 40k v7 6:1. Stock is arriving and we are shipping first order in first order out. Please be patient and rest assured your orders will be sent ASAP.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=795146337162999&set=a.690715594272741.1073741841.164523590225280&type=1&relevant_count=1

So that doesn't bode well for GW in the Australian market, but on the other hand it explains why my book and starter set haven't been dispatched yet

In my neck of the woods in the Upper Mid-West US, everything is outselling 7th edition 40k. Not a single copy has been ordered by our FLGS because not a single person wants it. Amazing what the last two years have done to the 40k player base here.

 jonolikespie wrote:
I just saw this pop up in my facebook feed and found it relevant to this discussion even if it is somewhat anecdotal.

The Combat Company wrote:We are getting lots of questions about the Dystopian Wars v2 releases. These have been hugely popular. The book has out sold 40k v7 6:1. Stock is arriving and we are shipping first order in first order out. Please be patient and rest assured your orders will be sent ASAP.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=795146337162999&set=a.690715594272741.1073741841.164523590225280&type=1&relevant_count=1

So that doesn't bode well for GW in the Australian market, but on the other hand it explains why my book and starter set haven't been dispatched yet

Hmm, could be significant, as the Combat Company is one of the larger/better known online retailers in Australia. Could be due to a few other factors, of course, but yeah, I'd say that doesn't bode well for 40k at the moment.


The thing about 40k at the moment is that it still works fine and is a lot of fun if you have a small group that self regulates (and the group of 40k players at my club are a great bunch who do). The only issue is that *any* game can do well in that sort of environment, one of the big draws of 40k has always been that you could find games anywhere, and people would see it being played at events, in stores and so on. If the game retreats back to being an at home game among friends (and the rules do seem to be pushing this way), or in little clubs around the place, is it going to get the exposure needed to hook in new players, especially when other games are now ramping up their event exposure?

Good to hear about Combat Company shifting bugger all in Aus. Would love a 20% loss for GW in Aus to shock them to their senses. I hope everyone starts using "digital" versions of GW rules, especially in Aus.

I have to say that the bundles GW have been doing lately have actually been decent value from a discounter when you exclude regional pricing with something like a 30% discount on the contents of the bundles. I've preordered three SM Ultra boxes from the US (I'll just sell on spare termies and dreads for a profit, but I need the LRs, SRs and Cappies). They'll give the two DV DA sets and 3 SM Strike Forces that are my current SM army some much needed armour and air.

 Maddermax wrote:
The thing about 40k at the moment is that it still works fine and is a lot of fun if you have a small group that self regulates (and the group of 40k players at my club are a great bunch who do). The only issue is that *any* game can do well in that sort of environment, one of the big draws of 40k has always been that you could find games anywhere, and people would see it being played at events, in stores and so on. If the game retreats back to being an at home game among friends (and the rules do seem to be pushing this way), or in little clubs around the place, is it going to get the exposure needed to hook in new players, especially when other games are now ramping up their event exposure?

That is a massive concern imo, and one GW seem to be oblivious to, which does not stack well with the fact that the buy in is so high. Even if there is exposure from those small groups how do people at home sell the game to their friends?

I was expecting another 'average' report in a month or so (or whenever it is due to come out), followed by some back and forth about how with 7th being pumped out and profits being flat GW must be in trouble, and that no everything is fine, nothing is broken because they are still profitable, etc, etc.
But after this I can't imagine it looking any better than the mid year report.

 Flashman wrote:
I'll say this (again)... 7th Edition is the very first edition of 40K I have no intention of buying. I've bought every single one before this including Rogue Trader.

It just doesn't generate excitement for me in the same way any more. As I've mentioned before, this could be because I'm approaching 40, but my every increasing X Wing Miniatures Game collection suggests I'm still not adverse to the idea of buying new toys.

EDIT - And if they pull this unbound crap in a new Fantasy Edition, I'm definitely through with GW games.

I would be prepared to be "done" with GW games then.

I have a feeling we're going to see something very much like Battle-Forged and Unbound. Looking back over the rumors surrounding WHFB, there's lots of indicators this is going to happen.

-- Haight

After reading the article, the fact that the old guard left as they did, as well as the group think mentality discussed earlier is exactly why this company is going toss, and that the 7th will more then likely be GW's death knell.

Shame, as well.

What am I going to do with all of this stuff?

Use it to play warpath

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So to put it another way:

GW is doing things we don't need them to, but isn't doing things we need them to do.

Yes if you want to put it that way.

To be clear I have nothing against Unbound in itself. It obviously can be a riot of fun to lob everything on the table and play a big battle. I just don't need to pay GW £60 for permission to do that.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To be clear I have nothing against Unbound in itself. It obviously can be a riot of fun to lob everything on the table and play a big battle. I just don't need to pay GW £60 for permission to do that.

Yep, did that pre-7th. CSM + Renegade Guard (IG) + Daemons, all treated as battle brothers. My group loved the list - but I wouldn't have taken it to a shop where the reasonable "baseline" didn't allow it. Unbound just creates too potential problems for random and tournament games. Home games weren't helped by this, random and tournament games were hurt. It's a similar problem imo to Map Packs in multiplayer FPS games - it fractures the community reducing the players available to any group which results in it dying off much quicker. 40k *really* doesn't need more difficulty getting games given the already declining playerbase.