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 Murenius wrote:

Check the figures above. Compared to the last 9 years this is not really a strong fluctuation. Taking one year out of the context doesn't say anything about the trend.

I'm not going to re-hash with you the discussions that have been going on about this in the past months / years suffice it to say that you've just demonstrated that you don't know anything about the history of GW in the past 10 years and their progress after the burst of the hobbit bubble. Please go read and inform yourself about it.



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 Rayvon wrote:
GW are also having some redevelopment work done on warhammer world this year, it does not look cheap either.
Im not sure this has been mentioned.

I'm sure that come next financial statement it will be shown that those redevelopment works will have cost about as much as the new site...

 Squigsquasher wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Squigsquasher wrote:
There's nothing GW can do. The internet's GW hate cult is so massive that even if GW gave out their models for free, released the most solid set of rules ever, allowed any and all conversions and made a cure for AIDS, people would still be decrying them as the Wargaming Great Satan and whinging on about how much better Warmachine is.

Better late than never coming to defend fair lady GW...

*Gasp* How DARE I find the endless torrents of "GW SUXX I BET I COULD RUN A HUGE COMPANY MUCH BETTER THAN THEM BAAAAWWWWW!" tiresome! I must flagellate myself and bow before the shrine of Infinity and crappy kickstarter projects!

Are you familiar with the concept of the Unpleasable Fanbase? Because I'm pretty much convinced that's exactly what GW's fandom is. In fact I'd compare them to Transformers, Star Wars and Pokemon; it doesn't have any fans, just lots of people who allegedly liked it so they have an excuse to complain about how terrible it is now and how it's been ruined forever.

But I must be quiet and go along with the hate bandwagon like a good little dakkatard, lest I be noticed for not hating everything GW does and be banned again.

Or, you could accept the fact that much of the criticism is justified.

And, you could understand that most of the people who are complaining are people who have a long standing relationship and extensive investment of time and money with GW. These aren't people who are merely fans of another game that are trying to pull down another company. They are fans of what GW used to be and could still be in the future who are unhappy with what GW is today.


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 Murenius wrote:


"and the companies will shutdown, like its starting to happen to GW." Now you are the one claiming things without proof. GW's revenue is pretty constant since 2009, so on what do you base your assumption?

Their most recent annual report?


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 Murenius wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:
Wait so your argument is that GW's problems are due to being a big company, and not because they're run by fething morons?

GW is a small portion of the wargaming market; they might be the largest currently but they're also steadily declining when their competitors are slowly increasing.

No, they're not. These are their figures for the last 9 years.

Year, Rev, Prof, Rev(IA)
2014, 123.5, 12.3, 123.5
2013, 134.6, 21.3, 134.6
2012, 131.0, 19.1, 135.0
2011, 123.1, 15.3, 130.8
2010, 126.5, 16.0, 141.5
2009, 125.7, 9.0, 147.1
2008, 110.3, 2.5, 128.4
2007, 109.5, (1.8), 132.6
2006, 115.2, 4.2, 145.2

None of those figures have anything to do with what percentage of the overall market share GW possesses.

In the USA, at least, the wargaming market has been growing, year over year, at about a 15% for several years. GW's sales numbers during that time have been flat or declining. That indicates that GW's percentage of the market share is declining.


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 Murenius wrote:


Check the figures above. Compared to the last 9 years this is not really a strong fluctuation. Taking one year out of the context doesn't say anything about the trend.

You mean the trend in gross revenue that has been moving downward since 2009?

Profits are nice, but if revenue consistently drops, eventually it has to come home to roost. That's pretty basic business school stuff.

GW's most recent business year's gross revenue was almost 17% lower than 2009. The general trend over that period is downward. Their profitability remained high during that period primarily through dramatic cost-cutting measures combined with price increases. If one combines their price increases with the revenue decreases, it's easy to show that the company is selling somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% fewer units than they were in 2009.

Their last annual report, put into context with the last 9 year - as posted - is not really showing a company on the downgrade.

Btw, I'm not saying that the criticism is not justified, at least partly. The trush, as always, lies somewhere in the middle of the positions. They COULD do things better and more customer friendly. But many smaller companies revered as being better would become similar if they got more success and their game widespread.

@PhantomViper: As you please, it's not like I'll miss insults to disabled people in the discussion.


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Saldiven wrote:

In the USA, at least, the wargaming market has been growing, year over year, at about a 15% for several years. GW's sales numbers during that time have been flat or declining. That indicates that GW's percentage of the market share is declining.

Do you happen to have those figures about the US market somewhere in context? I'd be very much interested in reading those.

The information is from ICV2, a trade group that reports on the sales results in the gaming industry in the USA. I'm pretty sure you can find their reports online, or someone who has the link handy can post it. They report on the various facets of the overall gaming industry by product type (RPGs, board games, TTGs, etc.). While it's not as detailed as something like the annual report filed by GW, it is a resource relied upon by people in the industry.

Then let me put this in plain and simple terms. I will no longer be a GW customer because they:

1) Charge outlandish prices for models made in a cheap material and on top of that encourage/require a lot of said figures to play the game. When a 750 point force for some armies start to run over $300, there is a problem. I would expect to pay $300 for an average-sized army, not the minimum possible to get games in. When I can buy a normal sized army from another game for half that amount (I'm using Bolt Action as an example here as it's very close to 40k rules-wise, just company level instead of army level), there's a major issue.

2) Either have zero idea of balance or just don't care, making entire army concepts that are viable in the lore be useless on the tabletop. Perfect example: An all-Terminator army. Cool, fluffy, and virtually impossible to win with because of how the rules of the game work. I wanted to spend $300 or so on a Terminator army, and when I found out that I'd likely lose every game due to what I wanted, shelved the idea. This along with things like pushing the size of the game larger and larger but doing nothing to streamline the rules leads to a complete clusterfeth of rules that are designed for a small scale game and being used to play a large scale game.

3) Ignore criticism, even legit criticism, and pretend it doesn't exist because they have no communication channels open. There is a lot of very valid criticism of GW out there (some of it is really just nonsense, but most is sound) and GW has their head in the sand pretending that because they ignore complaints, that there are no complaints

4) Use an outright silly business model based around "impulse buys" for purchases that aren't conducive to an impulse buy mentality, mostly due to the price but also due to the veil of secrecy. If they were forthcoming about releases, there would be interest generated. Instead they treat every release like a closely guarded trade secret that can't be revealed until exactly a week before it goes live.

GW can improve their public image by fixing the above. I want to play 40k again. I just refuse to be treated like a sucker and spend money on a game with rules so bad that nearly all of the concepts I have for armies that should be perfectly viable end up being nigh useless; this isn't some nonsense gimmick army like all Grots or all Scouts; an all-Terminator army is something that occurs in the fluff and is devastatingly effective when it does happen. There's zero reason it shouldn't be viable except for the fact GW can't balance worth a feth and doesn't care because I can only imagine they assume I would be happy having pretty Terminators and who cares if I lose every game I play.

Anyone else think it's really funny that you can just do this to that little chart:

 Murenius wrote:

Year, Rev, Prof, Rev(IA)
2014, 123.5, 12.3, 123.5
2013, 134.6, 21.3, 134.6
2012, 131.0, 19.1, 135.0
2011, 123.1, 15.3, 130.8
2010, 126.5, 16.0, 141.5
2009, 125.7, 9.0, 147.1

And all of a sudden it's back to being consistently downhill and awful from any business standpoint you care to take?

 Murenius wrote:


Also, again namecalling... my arguments make perfect sense *in my eyes*. They are a company and keeping customers happy may be a means to make profit - but you're mistaking a means for the goal. There are indeed companies that make profit by deciding that profit goes over happy customers. Just take hedgefonds as an example. The German TV market is another one. Cheap productions that many people despise are still the better economical choice since they are so cheap and it takes a lot less viewers to make them profitable... however many viewers (=customers) are not happy with this.

If you take a look at the largest, most successful and quickest growing companies, regardless of sector, the one thing they all have in common is Keeping the Customer Happy. It's been proven time and again that if your customer is happy, they are more likely to return and spend money *there* again, From my POV, GW's ignoring the fans and their happiness, yet still baring around to make some money is somewhat boggling (though I suppose that from a certain point of view, they are just so big that perhaps they already have failed, but don't realize it yet).

Games Workshop can do a lot to improve their image, but that's a pointless discussion. They'd first need self-realization to cater to the fanbase.

Once inertia of players leaving picks up, that will leave them in a precarious position of being unable to recover.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Murenius wrote:


Also, again namecalling... my arguments make perfect sense *in my eyes*. They are a company and keeping customers happy may be a means to make profit - but you're mistaking a means for the goal. There are indeed companies that make profit by deciding that profit goes over happy customers. Just take hedgefonds as an example. The German TV market is another one. Cheap productions that many people despise are still the better economical choice since they are so cheap and it takes a lot less viewers to make them profitable... however many viewers (=customers) are not happy with this.

If you take a look at the largest, most successful and quickest growing companies, regardless of sector, the one thing they all have in common is Keeping the Customer Happy. It's been proven time and again that if your customer is happy, they are more likely to return and spend money *there* again, From my POV, GW's ignoring the fans and their happiness, yet still baring around to make some money is somewhat boggling (though I suppose that from a certain point of view, they are just so big that perhaps they already have failed, but don't realize it yet).

The problem is identifying WHO the customer is, and who the customer is not. Hasbro has this issue where 'adult collectors' while are a customer, are not the 'primary' customer. And sometimes Hasbro does things which make a portion of the fanbase unhappy.

This is where veteran gamers sometimes overestimate their value and how much they need to be catered to, if at all. Ignoring demographics which are small minorities of your customer base is sometimes not only warranted but required to survive. The question is if we are thier actual customer base or not, and if they catered to us if that would actually solve anything. I know internet communities like to think the world revolves around them and their purchasing power but the truth is most communities are not not worth as much as they think they are. Hasbro shows us every year how insignificant we are as adult collectors.

Sometimes a customer just needs to realize, his money isn't wanted nor does it carry a stronger voice than another person simply because they are 'a dedicated fan'.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Then let me put this in plain and simple terms. I will no longer be a GW customer because they:

1) Charge outlandish prices for models made in a cheap material and on top of that encourage/require a lot of said figures to play the game. When a 750 point force for some armies start to run over $300, there is a problem. I would expect to pay $300 for an average-sized army, not the minimum possible to get games in. When I can buy a normal sized army from another game for half that amount (I'm using Bolt Action as an example here as it's very close to 40k rules-wise, just company level instead of army level), there's a major issue.

2) Either have zero idea of balance or just don't care, making entire army concepts that are viable in the lore be useless on the tabletop. Perfect example: An all-Terminator army. Cool, fluffy, and virtually impossible to win with because of how the rules of the game work. I wanted to spend $300 or so on a Terminator army, and when I found out that I'd likely lose every game due to what I wanted, shelved the idea. This along with things like pushing the size of the game larger and larger but doing nothing to streamline the rules leads to a complete clusterfeth of rules that are designed for a small scale game and being used to play a large scale game.

3) Ignore criticism, even legit criticism, and pretend it doesn't exist because they have no communication channels open. There is a lot of very valid criticism of GW out there (some of it is really just nonsense, but most is sound) and GW has their head in the sand pretending that because they ignore complaints, that there are no complaints

4) Use an outright silly business model based around "impulse buys" for purchases that aren't conducive to an impulse buy mentality, mostly due to the price but also due to the veil of secrecy. If they were forthcoming about releases, there would be interest generated. Instead they treat every release like a closely guarded trade secret that can't be revealed until exactly a week before it goes live.

GW can improve their public image by fixing the above. I want to play 40k again. I just refuse to be treated like a sucker and spend money on a game with rules so bad that nearly all of the concepts I have for armies that should be perfectly viable end up being nigh useless; this isn't some nonsense gimmick army like all Grots or all Scouts; an all-Terminator army is something that occurs in the fluff and is devastatingly effective when it does happen. There's zero reason it shouldn't be viable except for the fact GW can't balance worth a feth and doesn't care because I can only imagine they assume I would be happy having pretty Terminators and who cares if I lose every game I play.

No, you are not a sucker. I use to feel that way. I think instead of sucker, I say sheep now. I say we are not sheep anymore because we choose to where we want to graze not where the Shepard tells us to go.

nkelsch wrote:
The problem is identifying WHO the customer is, and who the customer is not. Hasbro has this issue where 'adult collectors' while are a customer, are not the 'primary' customer. And sometimes Hasbro does things which make a portion of the fanbase unhappy.

This is where veteran gamers sometimes overestimate their value and how much they need to be catered to, if at all. Ignoring demographics which are small minorities of your customer base is sometimes not only warranted but required to survive. The question is if we are thier actual customer base or not, and if they catered to us if that would actually solve anything. I know internet communities like to think the world revolves around them and their purchasing power but the truth is most communities are not not worth as much as they think they are. Hasbro shows us every year how insignificant we are as adult collectors.

Sometimes a customer just needs to realize, his money isn't wanted nor does it carry a stronger voice than another person simply because they are 'a dedicated fan'.

GW themselves believe veteran gamers to be one of their two biggest (and only) marketing methods.

After moving to one man stores veterans can only have gotten more important.

^^^. This. The veterans can talk up your company if they have a good experience, or steer others away if they have had a bad experience.

The choice is yours GW.

One veteran can influence easily three people over the course of their gaming "career", do you want the veteran + 3 more gamer/customers or do you want - veteran - 3 more gamer/customers?

The veteran thing does work; most of the games I've gotten into have been based on veterans of outriders telling and showing me how awesome their game of choice is. None of them have been GW though, 40K is still played but the reputation seems a bit tainted.

nkelsch wrote:
Sometimes a customer just needs to realize, his money isn't wanted nor does it carry a stronger voice than another person simply because they are 'a dedicated fan'.

No doubt. But sometimes companies need to realize that one dedicated fan (ie. opinion leader) is worth two in the bush... so to speak, it's a basic marketing concept. More so in some industries than others - in tabletop gaming it seems to be *very* important thanks to the social nature of it. It's not just the loss of that one fans sales, it's the loss of that fan, their gaming group and whoever else they discourage from purchasing the product. This is clearly evident in what has happened with GW lately. Even on this very page, it was mentioned how "veterans of 40k push other games here" to reword it slightly ; p

 jonolikespie wrote:
And all of a sudden it's back to being consistently downhill and awful from any business standpoint you care to take?

Yep in real terms their performance has been bad for a while. Anyone that knows anything about money realizes this at a glance.

nkelsch wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Murenius wrote:


Also, again namecalling... my arguments make perfect sense *in my eyes*. They are a company and keeping customers happy may be a means to make profit - but you're mistaking a means for the goal. There are indeed companies that make profit by deciding that profit goes over happy customers. Just take hedgefonds as an example. The German TV market is another one. Cheap productions that many people despise are still the better economical choice since they are so cheap and it takes a lot less viewers to make them profitable... however many viewers (=customers) are not happy with this.

If you take a look at the largest, most successful and quickest growing companies, regardless of sector, the one thing they all have in common is Keeping the Customer Happy. It's been proven time and again that if your customer is happy, they are more likely to return and spend money *there* again, From my POV, GW's ignoring the fans and their happiness, yet still baring around to make some money is somewhat boggling (though I suppose that from a certain point of view, they are just so big that perhaps they already have failed, but don't realize it yet).

The problem is identifying WHO the customer is, and who the customer is not. Hasbro has this issue where 'adult collectors' while are a customer, are not the 'primary' customer. And sometimes Hasbro does things which make a portion of the fanbase unhappy.

This is where veteran gamers sometimes overestimate their value and how much they need to be catered to, if at all. Ignoring demographics which are small minorities of your customer base is sometimes not only warranted but required to survive. The question is if we are thier actual customer base or not, and if they catered to us if that would actually solve anything. I know internet communities like to think the world revolves around them and their purchasing power but the truth is most communities are not not worth as much as they think they are. Hasbro shows us every year how insignificant we are as adult collectors.

Sometimes a customer just needs to realize, his money isn't wanted nor does it carry a stronger voice than another person simply because they are 'a dedicated fan'.

Hasbro and GW are totally different beasts. I can walk in to any store with a toy section and pick up a Hasbro product. I can also turn on my TV and watch a Hasbro only station, it is a 24 hour ad for their stuff. It has nothing to do with ignoring a demographic, but everything to do with product placement. How do you sell a product, you let people know your stuff exist. You don't make it a chore just to learn about you product and then make it even harder to get you product (cough_online only, limited_cough).

Just throwing it out there if we are comparing GW and Hasbro's interactions with their fans, Hasbro have done an amazing job of welcoming the sudden and entirely unexpected teenage and adult fanbase for My Little Pony.

They understand that these people are not the 'primary customer' but they still cater to them without compromising any of the core demographic sales and everyone is better off for it.

Just cos you can't please everyone doesn't mean you shouldn't try to please as many of your customers as you can.