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Something I've always wondered as someone who came in at 5th edition. I try to stay positive, but GW lately has been a mixed bagged. But, that's got me wondering, even with slowing sales how did a tiny British company come to be the biggest mini company ? As a lover of history i'm genuinely curious. Almost half of other miniature companies seem to produce around not GW.

I'm suspecting it was largely ineptitude of the competition. GW's product is not really that great. That's why over 20 years, I have one army pieced together over that time. There is no chance I'll do more than keep that one army up to date. If that, at this point.

In the beginning of third they were not only concerned with profit. They actively sought player opinion. They encouraged conversions and use of their product to be merged with whatever else to make your army your own. They held workshops on how to paint. They actively encouraged hobbiest and gamers to mingle.

Somewhere along the way they lost sight of what made them great and now can only follow the dollar.

They were kind of the first to push the game at the scale that they did, and back in the day before they went all snooker loopy they were actually pretty ok. I remember in third and fourth they'd actually provide FLGSs with some cool things to do, and the one I went to did a lot of the GW campaigns like the Eye of Terror and more.

It was shortly after that that GW tried to actively kill their independent distributors with their own chain of stores, and much later that they put weird bans on using shopping carts for online retailers in the USA and Canada.

As a whole, to this day, a lot of people just have nostalgia for GW as they remember the models from when they were young (Such as myself and the friend who got me back into the game when they did), and the community of wargaming is rather small so it's a lot easier to get into GW stuff than any other game. I remember when Warmachine came out and pretty much the entire FLGS converted to it, especially since it was around the time GW started to attempt to edge out small retailers, but ultimately the game never truly replaced 40k, as it was better, but not better enough. Much like how we see with MMOs today, there are plenty that are better than WoW, but nostalgia and investment in WoW keeps people from really transferring to them because they're not so much better that they make WoW unplayable. Then again, WoW has finally run into the only true WoW killer, which is WoW itself, much like GW has, and both companies have been bleeding out rather heavily recently.

Edit: It's really sad, because GW had all the ability to bolster their independent retailers for great profit, like WotC does, and instead they decided to basically shoot themselves in the foot.

They went public.That changed everything.

 Xyxox wrote:
They went public.That changed everything.

That shouldn't change anything. Hasbro is publicly trade and it owns WotC which is probably one of the best consumer and small retailer based companies when it comes to MtG.

Konami is publicly traded, and while Yu-gi-oh is rather bad for independent retailers, it's reasonably good for consumers.

EA owns Blizzard and they still put out reasonably good games, sure WoW has been a bombed feature, but Hearthstone is actually very rewarding for players, despite being free.

Riot Games is owned by a publicly traded company, and they haven't really had any issues.

Being publicly traded isn't bad, it's only bad when the people in charge don't understand their user base.

Once upon a time GW stores really were hobby centers you could spend the whole day in without feeling cramped or pressured to buy something.

Once upon a time the likes of PP, CB, Mantic, etc didn't exist.

Once upon a time GW was affordable.

Once upon a time GW produced tons of games, something for everyone, and promoted them and supported them too!

GW even once partnered with someone producing a magazine for the intently popular Lord of the Rings films and they advertised GWs models on TV.

The GW of today share no basically no similarities of the GW that achieved the growth that made them what they are.

Oh hey, does the Black Goblin web mag still exist? I remember getting one of my questions accepted in it D:

The perception of GW has always been the same in my experience. Since the first moment I discovered the game, people were complaining about the prices, the balance, etc.

So the history of GW, terribly summarised, goes something like this:
1 - Start off as a company making generic miniatures for generic games.
2 - Build a chain of stores making those miniatures
3 - Start making their OWN games for the miniatures
4 - Stop making minis for other games
5 - Start making minis in HARD PLASTIC
6 - Get the LOTR license and make lots of money
7 - LOTR stops and need to figure out how to make money again

GW had successfully made themselves a prominent brand that you could easily find in 'normal' shopping malls. They managed to hide their competitors - for a long time I was barely aware of the existence of other companies at all, because my exposure to the hobby was GW centric: GW paints, GW hobby tools, GW magazines, GW miniatures. This becomes a network effect that is still the main attraction of GW games: if people are playing wargames they are probably playing 40k, and if you go looking to buy then 40k is the easiest to find. This was especially true in the early days of the internet before online shopping became something everyone was comfortable with.

GW's hard plastic ranked miniatures and vehicles are STILL something that their competition in the wargames market is struggling to catch up on. There are a handful of places making plastic historicals, and a few more making 2-3 sprues of plastic sci-fi, but GW has nearly their entire range in plastic now. Very few other companies are competing with that and so GW manages to dominate that space. Some might say that its an unusual/bad space to dominate, but no-one else is currently making 28mm 'mass-battle' sci-fi or fantasy games. The other thing is that GW makes entire, complete ranges that fit aesthetically with other models in that faction and models in other factions. Some companies make 3-4 units designed to replace part of one of GW's factions, but you still need to source the other 15 units from somewhere else, and then they don't end up matching, and you may as well buy all GW...

The other companies around, with 2-3 exceptions, also cannot match GW's production. GW got big because they were the only company around that COULD get big, because they had their own in-house plastic sprue production. Regardless of how amazing models for Infinity are, they are not going to come close to GW's size because they simply can't produce models fast or cheap enough.

GW has a LOT of things going for them that their competitors don't have, and those things have inertia - large customer base, large network effects, large established background, unparalleled production capabilities. This kind of stuff doesn't go away. They have a lot of things working against them as well, but most of those are relatively easy fixes: they can re-write rules and fluff at a whim, they can change prices with a keystroke, they can employ some customer relations staff. SO while it seems like GW is 'struggling' vs a lot of the new, cool companies around, its far from impossible that GW can turn that around and show you exactly WHY they got so big again.

Space Marines

jonolikespie wrote:Once upon a time GW stores really were hobby centers you could spend the whole day in without feeling cramped or pressured to buy something.

Once upon a time the likes of PP, CB, Mantic, etc didn't exist.

Once upon a time GW was affordable.

Once upon a time GW produced tons of games, something for everyone, and promoted them and supported them too!

GW even once partnered with someone producing a magazine for the intently popular Lord of the Rings films and they advertised GWs models on TV.

The GW of today share no basically no similarities of the GW that achieved the growth that made them what they are.

Pretty much agreed on all of this.

coldgaming wrote:The perception of GW has always been the same in my experience. Since the first moment I discovered the game, people were complaining about the prices, the balance, etc.

It's definitely gotten louder and more persistent over the years. I think the difference now is that in the late 90's when I started people were complaining about the GW prices while handing over their money to buy a GW model at a GW store. Now people are complaining about the GW prices while handing money over to buy a game/models from a different company in a store that is not a GW store.

They were basically the only game in town. Unless you wanted historical. Plus, they already had stores in place selling other company product, like a non-GW store and were already making models.

The importance of their early deal with Milton Bradley on Games Workshop's growth and success can't be overstated (although, weirdly, it's often overlooked, these days.)
They were far from 'the only game in town,' but they were the only folks to get their games and models sold in all of the toy chains, department stores, and book stores at a crucial time in the late 80s-early 90s which allowed them to develop their brand in a way their contemporaries and competitors simply couldn't and that laid the groundwork for the expansion of the storefront into a chain and everything that came after that.

By accounts, Bryan Ansell was a pretty shrewd/ruthless (delete as appropriate) wheeler-dealer long before Kirby took the reins.

http://life-in-miniature.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/laserburn.html
http://life-in-miniature.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-severed-alliance.html

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Pretty much agreed on all of this.

Ditto.

It's definitely gotten louder and more persistent over the years. I think the difference now is that in the late 90's when I started people were complaining about the GW prices while handing over their money to buy a GW model at a GW store. Now people are complaining about the GW prices while handing money over to buy a game/models from a different company in a store that is not a GW store.

Yarp.

They were the best at what they did for a long while, its a myth that there were no competitors.

 Rayvon wrote:
They were the best at what they did for a long while, its a myth that there were no competitors.

There were challengers certainly. The only real competitor in the earlier days was Warzone, and even that seemed to be a very regional thing... it rivalled 2nd ed 40K in popularity in some areas, while being practically unknown in others.

There were other games around, and some even did ok for a while... but nothing that came close to the popularity of Warzone, 40K and WHFB.


For all their flaws, the earlier incarnations of 40K and WHFB were, for their times, really good. They were fun games that didn't take themselves too seriously, that allowed players to do some prety crazy stuff, and nothing else really managed to find the same blend of awesome (again, for their time) models, absorbing background and fun rules.

Where it went wrong, IMO, was that they kept pushing forwards in model design and in making the rules look prettier without bothering to improve how the rules were actually written. After 7 incarnations, the 40K rules should be nigh on impregnable. Instead, they're just as full of holes as they were 20 years ago, because GW choose to focus on changing the rules each edition instead of refining them.

Good games, shops (aka gaming hubs), word of mouth. Before the focus was to get the most money out of gamers.

Games Workshop was, essentially, the Microsoft of games companies:

Take a bunch of good ideas and make them your own.

Games Workshop took Dune and made the Imperium of man. Microsoft took Winamp and made Windows Media Player. Etc etc.

 Tinkrr wrote:
That shouldn't change anything. Hasbro is publicly trade and it owns WotC which is probably one of the best consumer and small retailer based companies when it comes to MtG.

You mean Money the Gathering? :p

 Tinkrr wrote:
EA owns Blizzard and they still put out reasonably good games, sure WoW has been a bombed feature, but Hearthstone is actually very rewarding for players, despite being free.

There's no world in which the old Blizzard would've released Hearthstone or Heroes of the Storm. Hearthstone is an RNG cash shop mess and Heroes is a just a cash shop mess. Hearthstone doesn't have the CCG cash shop mess usualness. The sheer amount of RNG within the game itself means you never know if you'll win or not and I think it's awful. It's almost as bad as GW's "roll dice to see how many dice you roll".

 Tinkrr wrote:
Riot Games is owned by a publicly traded company, and they haven't really had any issues.

Riot have had a lot of issues, at least compared to Dota.

joseph_curwen wrote:The importance of their early deal with Milton Bradley on Games Workshop's growth and success can't be overstated (although, weirdly, it's often overlooked, these days.)
They were far from 'the only game in town,' but they were the only folks to get their games and models sold in all of the toy chains, department stores, and book stores at a crucial time in the late 80s-early 90s which allowed them to develop their brand in a way their contemporaries and competitors simply couldn't and that laid the groundwork for the expansion of the storefront into a chain and everything that came after that.

Have to agree on this. Heroquest and Space crusade were my introduction to the ttmg hobby, and i found them in a big-w (department store). Word of mouth, specialized hobby shops and a monthly magazine in certain newsagents weren't enough in my case to even know they existed. It all followed the department store boardgame (which was reasonably priced too, i might add).

insaniak wrote:For all their flaws, the earlier incarnations of 40K and WHFB were, for their times, really good. They were fun games that didn't take themselves too seriously, that allowed players to do some prety crazy stuff, and nothing else really managed to find the same blend of awesome (again, for their time) models, absorbing background and fun rules.

Where it went wrong, IMO, was that they kept pushing forwards in model design and in making the rules look prettier without bothering to improve how the rules were actually written. After 7 incarnations, the 40K rules should be nigh on impregnable. Instead, they're just as full of holes as they were 20 years ago, because GW choose to focus on changing the rules each edition instead of refining them.

Agree with this. I remember trying to sell the idea of 40k to a friend around 4th edition, even got him to try a game, and his response was along the lines of: "they've had 4 editions and they haven't fixed the rules yet?". I think it helped that they were "by gamers for gamers", and not "we sell jewel-like objects of wonder" in terms of direction.

For accuracy GW started as a company who made wooden boards for games then got bought and made an importer for D&D, then acquired Citadels to make miniatures for the RPG they imported and then they were bought from Citadels manager and the GW most know starts, GW we have now is when the new manager of Citadel Kirbi bought GW again and put her into the stockmarket.

GWs early success is in their variety, but after that small period when they started doing their own thing their success was because they did something unique in affordable prices and in good quality Brian Ansell's decisions to diversify which lead to MB games space crusade and heroquest gave them worldwide exposure in an era were this was impossible. ultimately GW was the only company doing fantasy and sci fi (or appeared to be) and this attracted people who wanted to wargame but not historicals.

This brings us in the era of second edition 40k the era were GW generated most of their goodwill and is mostly fondly remembered because they produced games they interacted with fans, answered however wrongly questions send and patched up rules, there is no exaggeration that 2nd edition 40k at its end was a different game system (and much better) than when it started, this is were a plethora of games popped up Spacehulk, Bloodbowl, Necromunda, maybe mordheim? and RPGs like warhammer fantasy roleplay

This is also the era were GW had most of their competition, IKOR, FASA, Target/ Heartbreaker games, whoever made VOR the maelstrom, Aberrant, maybe Rackham and a few others, from them most died from incompetence or really bad decisions and overcommitment big R survived and Target while really successful and true rival to GW died from been part of a bigger company who went under.

This left GW practically alone when the Kirby takeover happened, most companies had faded and R hadn't translated their products limiting their exposure to France and miniature painters.

This left GW practically unchallenged for almost a decade, no company in our niche ever had or will have this luxury again, this made GW arrogant and as Kirby said himself lazy, they cut everything back optimized to only what sells and act as if only they exist, this is not true now and shows a great inability to either accept or adapt to a new era where competent challengers appear, they still are the biggest fish by far and have a lot of fat to burn before they really have to worry about anything and their raw power is massive, they simply do not seem to be able to grasp the reality of things or be able to use the raw power they have.

Their recent moves may indicate some slow moves towards adaption but are not bold and from my perspective really limited.

They are really stuck tot he past unable to realize why things do not work as they used to and apply the same solutions that worked in the past for problems that come from a new era.

No matter how much coal you shove in the furnace the maglev will catch you up even if you have a lot of a head start.

A few corrections;

GW started as a distributor of the new new concept D&D RPGs and other US titles.

They followed this up with some of their own games and then a newsletter/magazine. This eventually grew into WD.

GW also incorporated Bryan Ansell's Citadel miniatures which were hugely popular with the US Rpgers and TSR distributed these.

This was all pre computing as we know it when new games would be reviewed in the few mags available (pamphlets really) and possible small ads at the back of said mags. So in those early days GW had managed to cover the big markets so were able to leverage this when they eventually release Their own titles. Obviously this really took off in 1987 with the release of WH40k: Rogue Trader.

This was at the time like no other product outside of top end RPG books. Hard cover, colour photos and diagrams, tons of images of well painted citadel miniatures and more content than you could wage a gakky stick at. This really catapulted GW up in scale, they were already preeminent in the uk then.


So that's the basis, good product.

Where GW has grown even more so is their retail chain. Over two decades GW have built shops as quickly as they can and their turnover grows with it. They have also grown the wargaming niche with it as their shops generate new players as well.

Now some will say "yeah but that's only the UK" and that true to an extent, but the UK (or perhaps the microcosm of wargaming based around Nottingham) is the epicentre of much that happens in Wargaming. And this naturally spreads to other territories which has given GW huge ubiquity across the wargaming globe.

GW got most of their fame and positive word of mouth firstly through Fantasy Battles (you know, the brand they just killed?) for the first half of their life and then switched to 40k when they (understandably) saw the money coming from there.

However, the fact that they had little to no opposition in their field for the better part of their company life made them.... complacent, so to say, and they are unable to cope with the changes in the field.

There has always been plenty of other games for GW ones to compete with. So there was TSRs Chainmail before WHFB and FASAs Battletech before WH40k.

GW introduces much more enjoyable titles in very attractive boxes/books. They were then able to compete at a scale that no other could match.

When everyone else was selling to distributors for 35-40% of RRP they were getting full RRP through their own shops and self publishing/distributing when allot of sales were done via mail order.

Tom Kirby was involved with this, many forget or don't know he was general manager long before GW went public.

General manager of Citadel not GW.

I would argue that the importance of Nottingham and UK is an illusion UKers seem to have, I firmly believe outside of UK if Ansell hadn't made the games with MB GW would be mostly unknown.

Edit

I should add that their big LOTR boom was mostly because of a similar arrangement with De Agostini.

 notprop wrote:
There has always been plenty of other games for GW ones to compete with.

Name one massed fantasy battles game in the line of FB's that actually had a chance to compete with during its first few editions.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 notprop wrote:
There has always been plenty of other games for GW ones to compete with.

Name one massed fantasy battles game in the line of FB's that actually had a chance to compete with during its first few editions.

Chronopia

And it died an early death despite its success because of reasons mentioned above.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 notprop wrote:
There has always been plenty of other games for GW ones to compete with.

Name one massed fantasy battles game in the line of FB's that actually had a chance to compete with during its first few editions.

Chronopia

And it died an early death despite its success because of reasons mentioned above.

Wasn't Chronopia around late 90's?

Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 notprop wrote:
There has always been plenty of other games for GW ones to compete with.

Name one massed fantasy battles game in the line of FB's that actually had a chance to compete with during its first few editions.

Chainmail by Gary Gargax/TSR. Released before WHFB, it had a Fantasy supplement to run hand in hand with D&D. Should have had a reasonable chance me thinks. But didn't have the minis tied in with it like GW/Citadel managed.

PsychoticStorm wrote:General manager of Citadel not GW.

I would argue that the importance of Nottingham and UK is an illusion UKers seem to have, I firmly believe outside of UK if Ansell hadn't made the games with MB GW would be mostly unknown.

Ton Kirby joined GW as a general manager it April 1986.
http://investor.games-workshop.com/the-board-of-directors/

As for the rest, well you entitled to you opinion I guess but MB games wasn't the making of GW. The proof of that pudding I would suggest is that it didn't continue.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 notprop wrote:
There has always been plenty of other games for GW ones to compete with.

Name one massed fantasy battles game in the line of FB's that actually had a chance to compete with during its first few editions.

Chronopia

And it died an early death despite its success because of reasons mentioned above.

Wasn't Chronopia around late 90's?

Yeah, unless there was an edition before the one I know of, that was well after WHFB had established itself. It came out around 5th edition WHFB and 3rd edition 40k.