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OP- Copy right protection? Who knows...

 insaniak wrote:

 the_Armyman wrote:
Games Days cost money: hall rental, staff, security, transportation of product and tables, marketing and advertising, flying staff all around the world. Did ticket sales and people purchasing product at the event really amount to a lot of money after it was all said and done? If no, then cut.

Alternatively, offer product at a discount, or event-exclusive product, to encourage people to spend more at the event.

Or adjust your ticket pricing.

Or find a cheaper venue.

Or use more volunteers.

Or any of a myriad other ways to make the event more profitable.

Everything has a cost, and every penny of that cost must be recouped by a specific volume of sales. Unless GW can directly quantify sales to an expense, and unless the sales generated justify that expense, then that expense is bad for the bottom line. It's probably all down to a simple mathematical formula.

To a certain degree, yes. The problem is, it's hard to quantify 'How happy are our customers' into that formula.

It's not at all uncommon for companies to do things that cost them money in the short term, for the benefit of making their customers feel shiny, or promoting brand loyalty.

If those little things that cost you money are what is keeping your customers happy and loyal, what does mathematics tell us will happen when you stop doing those things?

The point of the event wasn't to make a profit.
Its like... trying to make a profit off the toilet paper in your staff toilet. I mean, you *could* do it, but its completely missing the point.
So many of the things that GW has cut are taking away from the thing they really had going for them: that was, you couldn't escape GW.
Go down to a shopping center? GW there in prime real estate. In a newsagent? White dwarf. In a book store? GW Novels.
At a games store? Most people playing GW. Tired of 28mm mass battle games? Here, build a space fleet for your same faction; build a 6mm EPIC army; play with only 10 models in Necromunda.

That was why people call it the 'GW Hobby' - it was all-pervasive and branched out in to all the secondary industries as well!

White Dwarf, Games Day, Specialist Games, the novels, the whole line of hobby supplies: its designed to get people living and breathing GW, not needing to venture out to find other companies or stores. Just the *idea* of there being a convention where you can go for 2 days to play games, to be part of a community, to see great dioramas, is about building up GW to be something bigger than just a product that you buy. The thought of one day being able to get up on stage and get your Slayer Sword - not just some bland acrylic trophy, a literal SWORD! - for your hobby efforts, that builds GW up to be something BIGGER. This isn't wargaming. This is WARHAMMER.

The idea that everything you spend money on needs to directly make profit is pretty old. The biggest companies know that cutting costs to the bone by cutting services makes you profitable for a short while, and then it makes you irrelevant as you lose everything that distinguishes you from a million competing products. And thats the way that GW are heading - seriously, what do they have to offer that makes them objectively different than Privateer Press or any number of other competitors? Their stores are the last remaining holdout, but they're getting pushed out from the prime locations where they could perhaps have a purpose, towards the outskirts where they become more inconvenient than ordering online.

The reason GW has become so closed off is adherence to the 'Not profitable? Cut it!' mentality. And their way back is to start doing less profitable things to build good will, to build a community, and make Warhammer more than just a store.

Trasvi wrote:

Go down to a shopping center? GW there in prime real estate. In a newsagent? White dwarf. In a book store? GW Novels.
At a games store? Most people playing GW. Tired of 28mm mass battle games? Here, build a space fleet for your same faction; build a 6mm EPIC army; play with only 10 models in Necromunda.

That was why people call it the 'GW Hobby' - it was all-pervasive and branched out in to all the secondary industries as well!

White Dwarf, Games Day, Specialist Games, the novels, the whole line of hobby supplies: its designed to get people living and breathing GW, not needing to venture out to find other companies or stores. Just the *idea* of there being a convention where you can go for 2 days to play games, to be part of a community, to see great dioramas, is about building up GW to be something bigger than just a product that you buy. The thought of one day being able to get up on stage and get your Slayer Sword - not just some bland acrylic trophy, a literal SWORD! - for your hobby efforts, that builds GW up to be something BIGGER. This isn't wargaming. This is WARHAMMER.

All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

 Talys wrote:
It's actually a part of the problem of being a public company. When you're a private company, you do things that are nice, because at the end of the day, the bottom line matters, but only to a certain extent.

In a public company, if you do things that give you goodwill, those intangible assets don't translate to the balance sheet, and in fact, you're penalized for them, at least in the short term. In the medium term, that advertising and goodwill better translate into someting tangible or you'll have pie on your face, goodwill or not. So you don't do those good deeds unless they're something you really love to do, OR, you're making so much money that the market will love you no matter what you do.

Advertising is a really tough one. One could ask what other miniature companies do to advertise, and other than very low cost Internet stuff and supporting events without spending a lot of money, they don't do much either. It's not a very big market, so things like television, radio are out. I think advertising in other wargaming and miniature magazines is pointless, as anywhere those are carried, White Dwarf is carried as well, and that's a form of advertising (as are the Warhammer/GW stores).

Being an armchair CEO, as a company like GW, I would support co-op advertising with local hobby shops in local papers, so long as they reach certain volumes. For instance, if you're ordering at least an average of $x / month over 12 months, we'll pay for 50% of your local ad buys up to $200 per week, as long as you prominently display Games Workshop and Warhammer on your ad and feature at least GW product game day/event.

FB is free. That would be more than they have now.
A blog. Free.
Get other blogs to review your stuff. Free.

BTW, just so I'm clear, I'm sadded by GW's current approach to the hobby. Games Day in Baltimore was a lot of fun when it was a 2-day event with registered games, bitz by the gram, and previews of upcoming releases. I loved the Summer Battle Tours, the worldwide campaigns linked to White Dwarf, and the free terrain and conversion tuts available from Black Gobbo. These were the things that made me love the company and open my wallet time and time again.

The lack of all these great things are what makes me cynical and untrustworthy of the company as it exists today.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Talys wrote:
It's actually a part of the problem of being a public company. When you're a private company, you do things that are nice, because at the end of the day, the bottom line matters, but only to a certain extent.

In a public company, if you do things that give you goodwill, those intangible assets don't translate to the balance sheet, and in fact, you're penalized for them, at least in the short term. In the medium term, that advertising and goodwill better translate into someting tangible or you'll have pie on your face, goodwill or not. So you don't do those good deeds unless they're something you really love to do, OR, you're making so much money that the market will love you no matter what you do.

Advertising is a really tough one. One could ask what other miniature companies do to advertise, and other than very low cost Internet stuff and supporting events without spending a lot of money, they don't do much either. It's not a very big market, so things like television, radio are out. I think advertising in other wargaming and miniature magazines is pointless, as anywhere those are carried, White Dwarf is carried as well, and that's a form of advertising (as are the Warhammer/GW stores).

Being an armchair CEO, as a company like GW, I would support co-op advertising with local hobby shops in local papers, so long as they reach certain volumes. For instance, if you're ordering at least an average of $x / month over 12 months, we'll pay for 50% of your local ad buys up to $200 per week, as long as you prominently display Games Workshop and Warhammer on your ad and feature at least GW product game day/event.

FB is free. That would be more than they have now.
A blog. Free.
Get other blogs to review your stuff. Free.

They paid millions for a website how hard would it to add a forum to their webpage.

Not hard at all.

The server upgrades and staff to moderate it until the initial wave of bile subsides would be pricey though!

 Vermis wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

Go down to a shopping center? GW there in prime real estate. In a newsagent? White dwarf. In a book store? GW Novels.
At a games store? Most people playing GW. Tired of 28mm mass battle games? Here, build a space fleet for your same faction; build a 6mm EPIC army; play with only 10 models in Necromunda.

That was why people call it the 'GW Hobby' - it was all-pervasive and branched out in to all the secondary industries as well!

White Dwarf, Games Day, Specialist Games, the novels, the whole line of hobby supplies: its designed to get people living and breathing GW, not needing to venture out to find other companies or stores. Just the *idea* of there being a convention where you can go for 2 days to play games, to be part of a community, to see great dioramas, is about building up GW to be something bigger than just a product that you buy. The thought of one day being able to get up on stage and get your Slayer Sword - not just some bland acrylic trophy, a literal SWORD! - for your hobby efforts, that builds GW up to be something BIGGER. This isn't wargaming. This is WARHAMMER.

All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

And the GW of today is more like a fart in the wind.... Not pleasant, but it will pass.

The Auld Grump

GW listed about £1.4 million worth of goodwill on their balance sheet for 2013.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Games-Workshop-Group-13-combined-FINAL-without-title-page.pdf

It's closed off because they want you to have clubs and stuff. The whole Idea is that you must earn your place to be a part of the club. British stuff, you know Clubs and Chivarly

 Kilkrazy wrote:
GW listed about £1.4 million worth of goodwill on their balance sheet for 2013.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Games-Workshop-Group-13-combined-FINAL-without-title-page.pdf

Bullgak

What could they possibly have done? or do they mean donating to "good will"

 Chute82 wrote:

They paid millions for a website how hard would it to add a forum to their webpage.

They tried that before and it didn't work out well.

It wasn't that bad.

It came to the point where the forum software was rather outdated and clunky and in need of a re-vamp. And I think they had the option of doing that or closing it down.

I don't think it was anything to do with negative comments being posted on there, I seem to remember conversation being pretty positive but stinted as most posts consisted of 11-year olds writing 'Yay! Space Marines!' And it was pretty heavily moderated, with a long list of forum rules (inc. "no mention of Squats" which was pretty amusing )

What people don't seem to realise is that the whole "no communications with customers" and "no pre-release info" are actually still pretty recent policies in terms of the overall history of the company. It would be interesting to see how much more positive things would be now if they actually did those things.

 Pacific wrote:
It would be interesting to see how much more positive things would be now if they actually did those things.

Hell would freeze over

I dont know if its too little too late if they changed that policy. but i would definitely welcome it

 Pacific wrote:
It came to the point where the forum software was rather outdated and clunky and in need of a re-vamp.

That point was about the time the forums launched.

The rumour getting around at the time was that the forum was coded by someone in-house on the side... it was certainly lacking a lot of the functionality of other forums at the time.

But yes, when it came time to update it, they faced the prospect of having to actually pay for forum software.

And it was pretty heavily moderated, with a long list of forum rules (inc. "no mention of Squats" which was pretty amusing )

The rule on not talking about Squats was just a side-effect of people not being able to behave themselves. Any thread that mentioned Squats inevitably turned into a flamewar, so they just banned them to save themselves the trouble.

 the_Armyman wrote:
I think it's not much more complex than money.

Games Days cost money: hall rental, staff, security, transportation of product and tables, marketing and advertising, flying staff all around the world. Did ticket sales and people purchasing product at the event really amount to a lot of money after it was all said and done? If no, then cut.

Bitz services cost money: warehouse space, staff, a couple bitzmobiles, mail order trolls, mistakes in packing, printing catalogs, maintaining a website with thousands of parts codes. Did bitz sales really account for a large sum of money relative to its cost and overhead? If no, then cut.

White Dwarf costs money: orginal art, monthly print runs of a large magazine, staff creating original rules and material, editors sifting through fan made content, photography, scratchbuilding scenery and tables. Did all of this production result in people buying subs and product? If no, then cut.

GTs and RTTs cost money: tourney packets, staffing events, transportation of staff and material, booking venues, "freeloading" Outriders, advertising, awards and trophies, t-shirts. Did any of these events generate a single sale for our retail outlets or webstore? If no, then cut.

Everything has a cost, and every penny of that cost must be recouped by a specific volume of sales. Unless GW can directly quantify sales to an expense, and unless the sales generated justify that expense, then that expense is bad for the bottom line. It's probably all down to a simple mathematical formula.

This line of thinking is exactly where I think GW and Kirby went off the rails. Again, when you are operating under the assumption that GW products are "collector's items" (which Kirby repeatedly and emphatically stated that he was) then all of the above look like a waste of money to you. Under that assumption, they're all nothing more than expensive trade shows and publications for which GW is shouldering all of the costs. No offense intended toward you at all, but reducing things to a simple mathematical cost / benefit analysis is incredibly myopic in the context of a product designed for social, in-person wargaming. It only makes sense when you have erroneously judged the GW value proposition and its core customer and their desires. It all goes back to that huge misjudgment on Kirby's part.

It is, unfortunately, nearly impossible to accurately quantify the direct effect of the items you mention on sales. In fact, there is likely little to no direct effect on sales. However, this is not a concept that is unfamiliar to many businesses. Do you think a full page L'Oreal ad in a women's magazine leads to direct sales for eye shadow? Some, maybe. Difficult to definitively quantify. But they do need to keep placing those ads.

With the full understanding that correlation is not causation, you might still have thought that GW would have looked into why sales continued to fall concurrent with all of these cost cutting measures. Not only did Kirby not look into it, he proudly proclaimed that GW did not ask the opinion of the peasants via market research. This all suggests to me that Kirby was drunk at the wheel and no one really cared. Can you imagine the head of any other company being so dismissive toward the very people to whom he owes his livelihood? Again, I have no axe to grind here at all. It's simply an observation you really can't avoid. His demonstrations of contempt for his customers were truly unique and, frankly, odd.

Never assume that just because someone carries a title like "CEO" that he knows what he is doing. You would be truly shocked by the incompetence at nearly all levels of corporate leadership. Or not, as the case may be.

 Netsurfer733 wrote:
Old news, and probably very much discussed by now. But I can't find anything about this online, and I'm getting back into the hobby so I really want to know. Bear in mind that I haven't been into the hobby since 3rd or 4th edition, so I haven't had any reason to understand these things until now (didn't know anyone else that was interested in playing until recently).

So why has Games Workshop become so closed off? No Games Days, no social media, downgraded White Dwarf, etc. etc. What is THEIR reason, in their eyes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

Does this sound familiar to you? The Letters are G and W.

They are closed off because opening a window ruins the acoustics in their echo chamber....

The Auld Grump

jamesk1973 wrote:
Netsurfer. Get the feth out while you can.

Whatever you loved about the game back then is gone. It is dead. Crushed under the weight of a thousand stock dividends.

GTFO while you still have your soul.

GW is dying.

LotR died a few years ago and is stinking up the place.

Warhammer experienced the apocalypse and chaos won.

40K is on the verge of entering the event horizon of the black hole at the center of the universe.

Leave now before it is too late.

No....NO!!!!

GW cannot die! Must...keep...GW...alive!!

Long live GW!

I'll be honest, I don't blame the GW for closing off. All they get is constant, vague comments about them "not caring" about their customers or their products.

Everything they release is criticised; people are demanding apologies from the GW for Finecast among other things.

And yet I'm willing to bet many of these same people forgive Apple for selling way overpriced products which, relatively speaking, take yesteryear's ideas or very niche ideas and present them as today's advancement that everyone must have.

People constantly amaze me.

 NoPoet wrote:
I'll be honest, I don't blame the GW for closing off. All they get is constant, vague comments about them "not caring" about their customers or their products.

Everything they release is criticised; people are demanding apologies from the GW for Finecast among other things.

And yet I'm willing to bet many of these same people forgive Apple for selling way overpriced products which, relatively speaking, take yesteryear's ideas or very niche ideas and present them as today's advancement that everyone must have.

People constantly amaze me.

Finecast needed an apology. The price of models increased despite using a cheaper material and, to make it even worse, the quality of the models took a sharp nosedive.

 NoPoet wrote:


And yet I'm willing to bet many of these same people forgive Apple for selling way overpriced products which, relatively speaking, take yesteryear's ideas or very niche ideas and present them as today's advancement that everyone must have

Yeah, repackaging other people's ideas and recycling your old product with a few, incremental, changes and a fat price rise really sucks.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 NoPoet wrote:


And yet I'm willing to bet many of these same people forgive Apple for selling way overpriced products which, relatively speaking, take yesteryear's ideas or very niche ideas and present them as today's advancement that everyone must have

Yeah, repackaging other people's ideas and recycling your old product with a few, incremental, changes and a fat price rise really sucks.

Yeah, that would suck.

I actually think that box is pretty hot. Even though I don't play Fantasy or collect it except for the occasional model, if Age of Sigmar is in the ballpark of $100-$125 USD, I will happily buy a box. The amount of detail on those Sigmarites looks pretty insane -- I'll reserve judgment until I see the physical models, but they look about as detailed (more?) than anything I've seen in plastic. Who knows, I might even like the game.

I wonder if it comes with the pictured scenery bits; those are pretty cool too.

The Chaos guys look much more like, "more of the same", but heck, what do I know, I've never liked Chaos. Obviously, some people won't like the aesthetic of either. But let's look at it another way. If Mantic came out with exactly what was pictured (obviously with a different product name ), a lot of people who are poo-pooing Sigmar would be excited.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
They are closed off because opening a window ruins the acoustics in their echo chamber....

The Auld Grump

/thread.

No more posts are needed. Give that man the $250!

 Talys wrote:
I actually think that box is pretty hot. Even though I don't play Fantasy or collect it except for the occasional model, if Age of Sigmar is in the ballpark of $100-$125 USD, I will happily buy a box. The amount of detail on those Sigmarites looks pretty insane -- I'll reserve judgment until I see the physical models, but they look about as detailed (more?) than anything I've seen in plastic. Who knows, I might even like the game.

I wonder if it comes with the pictured scenery bits; those are pretty cool too.

The Chaos guys look much more like, "more of the same", but heck, what do I know, I've never liked Chaos. Obviously, some people won't like the aesthetic of either. But let's look at it another way. If Mantic came out with exactly what was pictured (obviously with a different product name ), a lot of people who are poo-pooing Sigmar would be excited.

No, I'd say the same thing, they look like copies of 40k stuff complete with Sanguiary Guard and helbrutes.

 MWHistorian wrote:
No, I'd say the same thing, they look like copies of 40k stuff complete with Sanguiary Guard and helbrutes.

Yeah, I've seen other people say that; I just don't agree. The wings are totally different, armor, heads, shields, weapons, etc. You wouldn't get away with using those models as proxies for Sanguinary guard or for hellbrutes You also see a lot of people saying, "they're a rip off of [insert game/art]".

But anyhow, that's just me. I generally like GW models, and I like the whole "Heroic World of Warcraft" aesthetic of huge shoulders, no neck, exaggerated lines, and superdefined muscles, so what can I say.

Oh well, party on. 30% sale at IKEA, so I'm gonna head down and pick up some more shelves for the gaming basement and maybe a half dozen more display cases Maybe one will end up holding some Fantasy stuff, who knows!

 NoPoet wrote:
I'll be honest, I don't blame the GW for closing off. All they get is constant, vague comments about them "not caring" about their customers or their products.

Everything they release is criticised; people are demanding apologies from the GW for Finecast among other things.

And yet I'm willing to bet many of these same people forgive Apple for selling way overpriced products which, relatively speaking, take yesteryear's ideas or very niche ideas and present them as today's advancement that everyone must have.

People constantly amaze me.

If you're getting that kind of criticism, though, you'd be amazed at how much of that can be alleviated or even completely reversed by communicating with your players. Tell people why a change is being made, make some vague explanation about why prices go up, admit that your mistakes were mistakes and will be corrected.

GW still make some of the very best looking plastic models, their paint is still good enough that even many many non-GW hobbyists still use it over Vallejo/P3/etc... This company has a lot going for them, and most of their fans don't generally seem bothered that the game itself is not very well designed. They love the universe and the characters and they are willing to forgive a lot of what GW does wrong. All GW has to do is step out from behind the damn curtain and ASK FOR THAT FORGIVENESS.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 NoPoet wrote:


And yet I'm willing to bet many of these same people forgive Apple for selling way overpriced products which, relatively speaking, take yesteryear's ideas or very niche ideas and present them as today's advancement that everyone must have

Yeah, repackaging other people's ideas and recycling your old product with a few, incremental, changes and a fat price rise really sucks.

Yeah, that would suck.

Oh my goodness. This really sucks.

Let's be honest. If GW opened up a Facebook page (which, didn't they a few years back?) or any form of social media, the FIRST thing that's going to happen is that every GW hater that exists online (and we've seen how many of them there are on DakkaDakka already) will either criticize, bash, or otherwise troll their existence. Any tangible, useful feedback they can get from the community would be drowned out in a sea of negativity.

The only way I can see this working out is if they publicly make a statement saying "Hey, look, we know we've been pretty gak communicating with you guys, and we want to make our business better, let's start with a clean slate and see if we can make this relationship work?" This is a double-edged sword, because on one hand it could work - on the other hand others (particularly investors) may see this as an admission by GW that they're suffering financially, and that this is a last-ditch attempt to save the company. The latter risks a self-fulfilling prophecy as hobbyists stop buying models for fear of the game dying, and investors dump stock early hoping to cash out before a bankruptcy announcement.

 Desubot wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
GW listed about £1.4 million worth of goodwill on their balance sheet for 2013.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Games-Workshop-Group-13-combined-FINAL-without-title-page.pdf

Bullgak

What could they possibly have done? or do they mean donating to "good will"

"Goodwill", in general accounting principles, is most commonly seen as an intangible asset that typically arises during an acquisition, where the acquirer pays more than the actual market value of what was bought over. For example, Google might buy a small app development company for $100 million, but the actual market value of the assets are $20 million. When the acquired company's balance sheet is brought into the acquirer's, the resultant difference of $80 million is listed under assets as "Goodwill".

However, given that I don't think GW has acquired any other company anytime recently, I suspect a slightly different definition than the common one: that is, intangible assets representing a value of the business that is unattributable to any other asset, typically one that would be income-producing. This can include a valuation of a customer base (i.e. all the users of WhatsApp when it was acquired) or brand capital (i.e. the name recognition of Instagram). What this actually is to GW, unless it's stated somewhere, we won't know.