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 jonolikespie wrote:
I think true 32mm works out about the same size as heroic 28, but with the correct proportions.

Even changing that much would be a big step towards being a real 'miniatures' company.

GW has been doing heroic since the time when all 28mm minis were heroic. If they changed now the shitstorm would be the biggest in GW history. In fact such a decision would probably prove the doomsayers right at last.

@Mymearan - they'd certainly lose me. I would stop buying GW miniatures if they were not heroic 28, as I like comic book superhero proportions and have no interest in anything 'real' (hence, total disinterest in historical models). Or, if they stopped producing OTT large models. These this are my biggest draws to the hobby and what gets me excited about modelling OR gaming.

Nomeny wrote:
Can we define "OK" as turning a profit?

We can. But that's a rather narrow view. It's kinda like saying a hanged man is OK the second before the executioner pulls the lever. Technically you're correct, but you're not accounting for events which are going to happen in the future.

 jah-joshua wrote:
@Crablezworth: why is pretentious to be a collector???

i love the worlds created by companies like GW, PP, CB, and others for settings like 40K, Warmahordes, Infinity, Helldorado, and so many more...
it is awesome that i can have 3-D representations of the inhabitants of these worlds, and build them and paint them to a standard that is worthy of being considered a work of art, and have them displayed as such...

i have never been a gamer, and have no interest in playing a game, because that takes away from my painting time...
i don't mind being considered a consumer, but i don't see why it is pretentious to be purely a collector of these beautiful little sculptures...

cheers
jah

I am also a collector. I love to model and convert minis, and I tend to care more about a unique design than fineness of detail or precision of sculpt. So, why do I spend so little on GW products?

1. The Prices. For the cost of a single Sigmarine hero mini, I could buy entire squads of plastic minis with tons of bits to fiddle with, or even a small armada of Revell Star Trek ship models. I need to feel value for my purchases, and GW just isn't delivering it like they used to.

2. They've stripped the intangible value from their minis. By hobbling Black Library, lobotomizing the codices, and killing the Old World, GW has removed all of the peripheral value that used to keep me in their hobby. Add to that the exciting new miniatures other companies keep dropping on is, and I have fewer and fewer reasons to buy any more space marines. If someone finally managed to make some hard plastic aliens to rival the Tyranids, I'd probably check out completely. Well, I say that, but then they'll release some kind of Tzeentch demon kit that will pull me back in until I see the price tag. Then I'll finally decide that the Screamers kit isn't such a bad deal after all... Damn it!

3. The company just doesn't like me (or any of us). I can tell. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but it does.

Trasvi wrote:
The 'models company, not a games company' shtick is baffling to me.

Sure, they might consider themselves to be primarily a models company.
But they still produce all the bits and pieces that a games company would. They do rulebooks and dice and tokens and templates and supplements. And when you're already doing all of that... why not spend the minuscule amount of effort required to make it better?

Indeed. Really, if they truly believe they only want to be a model company they should outsource the rules. Like to FFG. Let them make cool models and tell FFG "Make rules for this!" would be pretty easy.

 Mymearan wrote:

GW has been doing heroic since the time when all 28mm minis were heroic. If they changed now the shitstorm would be the biggest in GW history. In fact such a decision would probably prove the doomsayers right at last.

The doomsayers were never wrong, My. Just... a bit ahead of their time.

With or without a sudden shift in scale and proportion, I can't see many downsides of losing one of the last, biggest carriers of sontaran syndrome, anyway. On top of everything else.

***

Been keeping up with the comments on the original article, too. The poor guy probably had no idea of the kind of hornet's nest he put his foot through. All these people raging about playing games in his investors blog comments, talking about 'oldhammer' and '2250 armies' and 'horus heresies' like it makes all the sense in the world...

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
3. The company just doesn't like me (or any of us). I can tell. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but it does.

Yeah I get that distinct feeling. Something is fundamentally backwards. I ordered bases on their site, had them delivered to the local gw, got guff for not calling the manager and ordering through them so they could get the sales stats... this is a sick company. It's bad enough that stores went from being a place to play to somewhere you have to flip a coin on whether it will even be open when you show up.

If they really believe they're a model company and not a game company, they should stop making rules altogether. Just pull all rulebooks from sale and stop producing new ones. If only 20% of their customers even play the games, why bother selling rules? They could use those resources to make more of the bestest jewel-like models ever!

...except they won't. Because this "We're not a game company" line is hogwash, and they know it.

To be fair, I used to buy all the rule books just to keep up on the fluff. Then WardKnights and Newcrons happened.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 jah-joshua wrote:
@Crablezworth: why is pretentious to be a collector???

i love the worlds created by companies like GW, PP, CB, and others for settings like 40K, Warmahordes, Infinity, Helldorado, and so many more...
it is awesome that i can have 3-D representations of the inhabitants of these worlds, and build them and paint them to a standard that is worthy of being considered a work of art, and have them displayed as such...

i have never been a gamer, and have no interest in playing a game, because that takes away from my painting time...
i don't mind being considered a consumer, but i don't see why it is pretentious to be purely a collector of these beautiful little sculptures...

cheers
jah

I am also a collector. I love to model and convert minis, and I tend to care more about a unique design than fineness of detail or precision of sculpt. So, why do I spend so little on GW products?

1. The Prices. For the cost of a single Sigmarine hero mini, I could buy entire squads of plastic minis with tons of bits to fiddle with, or even a small armada of Revell Star Trek ship models. I need to feel value for my purchases, and GW just isn't delivering it like they used to.

2. They've stripped the intangible value from their minis. By hobbling Black Library, lobotomizing the codices, and killing the Old World, GW has removed all of the peripheral value that used to keep me in their hobby. Add to that the exciting new miniatures other companies keep dropping on is, and I have fewer and fewer reasons to buy any more space marines. If someone finally managed to make some hard plastic aliens to rival the Tyranids, I'd probably check out completely. Well, I say that, but then they'll release some kind of Tzeentch demon kit that will pull me back in until I see the price tag. Then I'll finally decide that the Screamers kit isn't such a bad deal after all... Damn it!

3. The company just doesn't like me (or any of us). I can tell. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but it does.

that all makes sense...
at the end of the day, purchasing comes down to personal preference and value judgement...

personally, price is not a factor in my value judgement...
if i don't want the mini, it doesn't matter how cheap it is...
if i do want the mini, it doesn't matter how much it costs...

i don't share your view that GW have stripped the intangible value of their minis...
i still enjoy reading Black Library's novels, and the move to digital makes buying easier wherever i happen to be in the world...
i don't find the Codices to be lobotomized, and enjoy the move to full color and digital...
the killing of The Old World doesn't bother me, since i have 30 years worth of novels, Army Books, and source books to read...

i do agree that the sheer amount of exciting new minis from other companies does reduce the amount i spend on GW, and it has been that way for 15 years, when i started collecting Rackham...
i think that is the biggest factor hurting GW's bottom line these days...
there is simply a ton of other choices out there now...

you say the company doesn't like us, but that is an oversimplification...
i don't know Kirby, and maybe he does despise the GW customers, but i can't say that for sure...
i don't know what goes on in his crazy mind...
i feel a lot of the angst is from customers projecting, because they don't feel their specific wants are being catered to, or they feel that they have been priced out, but to me Kirby is not the company...
as far as i'm concerned, he may as well not exist...

for me, GW is the design studio...
i know the guys who put in the hard work to actually produce the product, and i have never felt that they dislike me...
from Jes Goodwin and John Blanche, right down through the sculptors, writers, illustrators, and painters, i have had 25 years of great experiences hanging out with many of them...
they are real, talented individuals who have shown appreciation for my hard work, and i am happy to do my bit to contribute to their salaries, and see them earn a living off of their talents...
as long as they continue to produce books and models that i want, i am happy to support them...

cheers
jah

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

3. The company just doesn't like me (or any of us). I can tell. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but it does.

See, I don't feel this at all.

Now, I don't feel that GW loves me any more than any other company loves its customers, but neither does it any less, IMO. I feel that as a guy who likes to build, collect, and play 40k armies, they produce exactly what I want: lots of cool plastic minis at a rate faster than I can model, and a bunch of books with fluff, nice artwork, great photos, and reasonable game rules. Sure, it nobody thinks the minis are cheap (and perhaps relative levels of expensive), but I don't equate cheap or expensive products with a company liking or disliking me. I mean, I'd think Apple hated me, by that metric.

What makes me feel GW likes me, or values me as a customer? They have great customer service (they'll FedEx replacements anything broken, pick up the phone right away, etc), they make tons of stuff I like, and over the years, they've made more stuff that I like and less stuff that I dislike. I like their rate of product releases, I like that they have lots of resources and for modelling/heraldry/etc., and I like their army system. From a gaming perspective, I love the formation and Decurion-style system, and almost every codex release since 2015 has been exactly what I wanted (harlequins was a thin, but still good, and the 2 mechanicus books were great, but could have been 1 big book).

Plus, if you email them about modelling stuff, they'll email you right back and even be pretty chatty about it. Anything from sharing a model to asking how to best use a particular oddball paint. Yeah, I get that it would be nice if they did this for gamers, but you were talking specifically about "us" being collectors. In that regard, really, the only thing I could ask from GW is cheaper prices -- but I could ask this of any company. As a gamer, sure, we could use some 40k FAQs.

Does Kirby or the board love me? Who cares. I'm never going to talk to him anyway. He's free to look at me as nothing more than potential moneybags, if he chooses; I'm sure there are plenty of CEOs from chocolate to furniture to video game companies that do the same thing. It's the people and the company I interact with that matters, not what the CEO or CFO thinks, because their job is to bring shareholders returns.

Now, I get that their art direction is not to everyone's liking. On one end of the spectrum, there's the historic, dirty, grimy regulars; on the other end, there's Wrath of Kings anime. From a size perspective, there are games that are all infantry, some that have a few larger models, and then 40k, which has the possibility of either or a mix. I happen to like where GW dropped its marker, which is somewhere near the superhero or World of Warcraft/Diablo end, but not TOO cartoonish, a la WoK; and from a model size perspective, some (IMO) very cool vehicles and walkers. I like the loadouts of the kits, and how every iteration, they add more equipment options. At the end of the day, they can't make everyone happy, because not everyone wants the same thing.

I'd start buying GW miniatures and models if they'd start making miniatures with realistic proportions.

I used to dream about collecting Citadel miniatures for a long time but when I was finally able to afford them, buying the first box was a horrible disappointment because of the crudeness and bad proportion.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

IIRC millimetre scales (20mm, 28mm, 54mm, etc) are measured as average height to the model's eyes.

It varies. Some companies measure to the eye, some measure to the top of the head.

Most of them don't bother to tell you which version they use, though, which makes it all sorts of fun to mix ranges from different companies sometimes...

I was told something similar by a red shirt, but I think the REAL reason is because LotR is based on real actors, so if they'd made them the typical WHFB hero scale they would have looked extremely derpy. I think it had less to do with cross contamination and more to do with New Line, PJ or whoever organised the license wanting a more realistic scale.

Nope, it was very specifically to do with not diluting the IP. The same reason that for a time there was a specific rule in GW's WHFB and 40K tournament packs specifically forbidding any LotR models or parts from being used (a rule which was later relaxed to 'OK, you can use them, but we won't publish photos of your army if you do...')




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Nomeny wrote:
Can we define "OK" as turning a profit?

No, we really can't.

GW have been cutting costs left, right and centre in an effort to become more profitable, and even with an accelerated release schedule and increased prices have managed to drop their overall sales volume over the last few years. The fact that they're still turning a profit isn't a sign of health, any more than the fact that my car is still running is a sign that my fuel tank is full... The fuel is running out, and sooner or later the car will stop if something isn't done about it.

GW is like a hot air balloon whose burners have failed but they are still rising because they have been chucking stuff out of the basket.

They obviously can't chuck things out forever, so they need to fix the problem with the burners.

 Knockagh wrote:
Yes, most certainly in preference to more rules better or worse.

As someone who owns and runs several businesses I can assure you despite any school diagrams GW are doing ok.

OK=Losing market share.

Good to know....

How about 'GW could be doing worse' - a more demonstrably true statement.

Or, 'Things aren't good, but they could turn around....' - again a more demonstrably true statement.

Losing market share does not equal 'OK'.

The Auld Grump

 Mymearan wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
I think true 32mm works out about the same size as heroic 28, but with the correct proportions.

Even changing that much would be a big step towards being a real 'miniatures' company.

GW has been doing heroic since the time when all 28mm minis were heroic. If they changed now the shitstorm would be the biggest in GW history. In fact such a decision would probably prove the doomsayers right at last.

GW have always been doing "heroic" models, but IMO they used to be much better proportioned. The more recent GW models (past 10 years or so) have, to me, gone full slow with OTT scaling. 5th edition Bretonnians were heroic scale, but were far less bobble headed than the current ones. Likewise if you look at the old IG regiments from back when they were mostly metal they were far more reasonably scaled than the giant derpy Cadians and Catachans we currently have.


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 Talys wrote:
@Mymearan - they'd certainly lose me. I would stop buying GW miniatures if they were not heroic 28, as I like comic book superhero proportions and have no interest in anything 'real' (hence, total disinterest in historical models). Or, if they stopped producing OTT large models. These this are my biggest draws to the hobby and what gets me excited about modelling OR gaming.

While you can certainly like anything you want, I think a lot of (most?) people prefer Forge World's more realistically proportioned take on Imperial Guard to GW's bobble head take on humans in general.

And GW are hardly consistent with their scales. The old Bretonnians were more realistically (but still heroic) scale than the current ones. But the old Skeletons (which I believe go back to a similar era) were more bobble headed than the current ones.

Even things that aren't humans. I'd say, subjectively, a large part of the reason Night Goblins look better than Common Goblins is that Night Goblins have a smaller head/hands/legs relative to their torso. Or Wood Elves that should look svelte but don't because of the cartoonish proportions actually making them look closer to regular human proportions than the elvish proportions they should have.

The Over-the-Top everything that seems common to the current run of GW these days is one of the things that made me pick up the Mantic undead. (Which led to my picking up Kings of War.)

Gods, I hate the plastic Emperor riding on a thunder-chicken.... (Karl-Franz, that is... not the one on the Golden Throne....)

The Auld Grump

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

GW have always been doing "heroic" models, but IMO they used to be much better proportioned. The more recent GW models (past 10 years or so) have, to me, gone full slow with OTT scaling. 5th edition Bretonnians were heroic scale, but were far less bobble headed than the current ones. Likewise if you look at the old IG regiments from back when they were mostly metal they were far more reasonably scaled than the giant derpy Cadians and Catachans we currently have.

I recently repainted some Undead for the early 90's. Their hands were bigger than their heads and an apparently one handed axe was about 2-3 times the size of a 'truescale' great axe. Similarly the metal Catachans, while reasonably proportioned, still suffer from huge hand syndrome.

GW hasn't really even attempted to make realistic models since the 80's with the odd exception like the first multipart Empire infantry box..

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Talys wrote:
@Mymearan - they'd certainly lose me. I would stop buying GW miniatures if they were not heroic 28, as I like comic book superhero proportions and have no interest in anything 'real' (hence, total disinterest in historical models). Or, if they stopped producing OTT large models. These this are my biggest draws to the hobby and what gets me excited about modelling OR gaming.

While you can certainly like anything you want, I think a lot of (most?) people prefer Forge World's more realistically proportioned take on Imperial Guard to GW's bobble head take on humans in general.

And GW are hardly consistent with their scales. The old Bretonnians were more realistically (but still heroic) scale than the current ones. But the old Skeletons (which I believe go back to a similar era) were more bobble headed than the current ones.

Even things that aren't humans. I'd say, subjectively, a large part of the reason Night Goblins look better than Common Goblins is that Night Goblins have a smaller head/hands/legs relative to their torso. Or Wood Elves that should look svelte but don't because of the cartoonish proportions actually making them look closer to regular human proportions than the elvish proportions they should have.

Indeed, but look how well the Bretonnians sold.

I think that for Guard (or a "regular human"), this is a perfect example of a scale and style that's appealing to me:



Incidentally, I'm not sure how the scale is wildly different from some of the FW models:



For non-humans, well, nothing is really "over the top", because I mean, what's normal for something that doesn't exist? But either way, a scale like this appeals to me greatly:



In terms of stuff I can't stand, Eldar Guardian non-helmet heads top that list, I think But basically, all the stuff in the current generation (2009+) I *generally* like a lot more than the stuff preceding it.

Getting a bit OT here... please keep discussion in line with the article linked to in the original post. Thanks!

Indeed, but look how well the Bretonnians sold.

When first released or in the subsequent 20 years or so after it was obvious they needed to be updated?

On topic... how well are GW's stocks doing right now?

The Auld Grump

About the same since the crash back along.

In checking, I realised that this year is GW's 40th Anniversary too.

The article in the OP has a tracker for it, I believe, and I think it's doing well still. The article says he's holding his stock but might not have jumped in at this point if he didn't already have the stock.

I am interested to see what happens with the employee pay freezes if sales volumes don't increase this calendar year (since the CEO linked them to that).

 RiTides wrote:
The article in the OP has a tracker for it, I believe, but I'm terrible about stocks. I am interested to see what happens with the employee pay freezes if sales volumes don't increase this calendar year (since the CEO linked them to that).

I thought they were paying a whole bunch of them minimum wage? Can't really pay less than that :X

I think that the cost of labor is actually a pretty significant issue in operating small retail stores, and GW is right in saying that recruiting is tough. Maybe a franchise model would have been better for GW -- even if it's like an owner-operator of a gas station -- though I suspect they'd never allow for the loss of control.

I wonder how much someone at a *successful* GW retail store makes.

Beat my edit!

I'm not sure of the wages, but I don't think decreasing was on the table - just no increases until the freeze is lifted.

Incidentally, I never quite understood this in the original article:

The move to one-man stores has reduced the number of customers, sometimes by 30%, but the stores are profitable now.

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 RiTides wrote:
I'm not sure of the wages, but I don't think decreasing was on the table - just no increases until the freeze is lifted.

And yeah, you're right. That's what it said in the last GW report, IIRC. I think some kind of profit share (or commission) would go a long ways, and if they could order FW to the store... well, that would be a huge boost to store sales. If FW could be ordered to the store with no shipping costs, I'd be going to the GW store a TON more.

 Talys wrote:
Incidentally, I never quite understood this in the original article:

The move to one-man stores has reduced the number of customers, sometimes by 30%, but the stores are profitable now.

What are you not understanding?

One man stores are cheaper to run, not least because they have also mostly been moved to lower rent locations... And supposedly, this cost reduction has more than offset the drop in sales as a result of fewer people walking in the door due to the poorer location and dodgier store.

Mind you, it is a great indicator of just how much of a millstone the brick and mortar stores are for GW....

The Auld Grump

 insaniak wrote:
What are you not understanding?

One man stores are cheaper to run, not least because they have also mostly been moved to lower rent locations... And supposedly, this cost reduction has more than offset the drop in sales as a result of fewer people walking in the door due to the poorer location and dodgier store.

Oh, I didn't realize they actually moved to poorer locations (this did not happen in my area). What didn't make sense was: either there aren't enough customers to support more staff, or there are. A 30% drop in sales is because of less staff is huge, and doesn't make sense to me (just hire another person...). But relocating to cheaper rent is totally different.


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 TheAuldGrump wrote:
Mind you, it is a great indicator of just how much of a millstone the brick and mortar stores are for GW....

An interesting hypothetical has always been, if GW shuts down a store that's only marginally profitable (or isn't profitable at all), how much of that business would shuffle over to another GW store, or to GW goods in a non-GW store -- versus how much would be lost either in less hobby spending or non-GW hobby spending.