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Blood, Dice and Darkness.

An interesting and relatively illuminating interview with the old hand, particularly enjoyed the detailing with the Lord of the Rings franchising.

“The model design for Warhammer had started to get overblown,” he said.

“The models started to get big and came with too many parts. The number of pieces and the size of design are key factors in the cost of production, and there was a lack of discipline that meant the models were becoming less profitable.

“When I did Lord of the Rings I redefined the miniatures to be 28mm again. I took them down in size and had single-piece models. That was part of the reason it was successful.”

---

“But the reason it became a problem for Games Workshop was that the sales divisions, which had been given a huge degree of autonomy and political power, suddenly found they had hugely overblown organisations. They had the staff, but none of them could actually sell anything – they were used to people just coming in and buying stuff. So the success of the Lord of the Rings ended up being a failure in the company’s eyes because they lost control of it, which always pissed me off.”

A very interesting interview.

He corrobarates a number of points that critics have made about GW.

I had that Charles Grant book too, but it has gone the way of all flesh, unfortunately.

“I was the head of the creative department, and they weren’t doing anything creative any more,” he said.

“The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with.”

It’s a game with a future, which I don’t think 40K is.

Wow.

Of course he's going to gak talk 40k. Has to make his game I literally heard about just now look good!

I think he does have a point in that I don't think 40K really has a "future" in the sense of a planned one. I think GW is now just throwing out every thing they can think of to keep the sales propped up, but not with any plan as to long-term survivability.

 Crazyterran wrote:
Of course he's going to gak talk 40k. Has to make his game I literally heard about just now look good!

That's really not the sort of thing he's done in the past. It's always been assumed/implied, but he's never actually come out and said "I left because the product's gak and they're all spankers" quote so explicitly before.

If it upsets your own personal view, do whatever it takes to reconcile this information with your own outlook, but this only really confirms the interpretation of events, finances etc that many have been arriving at for a few years now.

What does the future mean for 40K? They can add new units to the game, for instance Centurions and Knight Titan, they can upgrade old units like the Broadside and the Fire Warriors. They can introduce more colours of Space Marien.

They must be running out of potential areas for expansion. Forts, artillery, giant tanks, robots and aircraft are already included now. Maybe introduce boats?

The other thing of course is to keep fiddling with the rules to make people buy a new edition and codex every few years. This is not new in the sense of progress, of course.

The whole article seems to reinforce the concept that GW has no idea what the they are doing. Lots of interesting insights into the history and evolution of the company though, particularly for someone like myself who is newer to the hobby. Thanks for sharing!

Seven hells, that was intense. He really laid it all out. Kudos to the guy for being so forthright about everything.

It really strikes me, though, that luck was a major part in the company growing as successful as it has. To me, it looks like they had a few great, innovate ideas at the beginning that they've been coasting on ever since. For example, opening their own shops was brilliant... 30 years ago. Now, the world has moved on, but they refuse to.

It does seem to fit the conclusions that many have already arrived at through observation, other former employees and GW's own statements.

Brutal. And not at all surprising really.

How many years now since Rick left GW? In the years directly after he left he kept quite mum about things for a while after leaving, had to sign a waver or something was it?

He left in 2010.



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The thing is that all of GW's "name" designers have left in the past five or so years. Even our spiritual liege, Mat Ward.

“It was presented at the time as a merger,” said Priestley, “but really it was a takeover by Citadel.

“We even spoke at the time about changing the name of the company, but there were already about half a dozen Games Workshop stores, and we thought it would have been very expensive to have the signs repainted.

This is such a great metaphor for their current predicament: internally, they think of themselves as a modeling company, but they're so bound to the "Games Workshop" name that they can't shake the perception that they are a game company first.

(and also something about making small-minded accounting decisions at the expense of the health of their business. Like not wanting to spend the money on repainting signs, when the name on that sign totally misrepresents the company.)

The part that hit home for me:

“For the customers, these guys were the big brother they always wanted,”

The people who ran the stores, they loved what they did and they took the time to show you anything you wanted on the hobby.
They were social hubs.
How can GW differentiate themselves?
Just go back to their roots, it was rather innovative: an inclusive environment that gave attention to the kids.
Gaming coffee houses are getting popular around here.

So, they are a collectable trinket company... kinda sad.
I will always be grateful (to what seems to be more the old guard) for GW making modeling and hobby craft exciting and fun with an easy way to meet like-minded people.

It is sad that Kirby's group cannot see what made it great: being inclusive to it's customers.

There is great for customers on one hand and great for shareholders on the other.

The trick is how these two things interact.

It's so surreal to have lived through the last 20 years of that article, knowing it's all true and I felt those things as a lowly consumer. Feels good after all the white knighters telling me how wrong myself and others were, to have such a big name in the company echo many things from that time.

The most telling part?

"Unplugged Games approached Games Workshop regarding this article. The company declined to comment."

I don't know how they could comment, other than to grudgingly agree.

“To me the background to 40k was always intended to be ironic”

That's something I've really missed about 40k and the reincarnation of WHFB.

Everything now is always super serious business, it's like the new designers completely missed out on the original jokes. Looking at the lore for AOS vs. the original WHFB, it's background written for (and by?) 13-year-olds going up against something that knows what it is and embraces it.

 Talizvar wrote:
The part that hit home for me:

“For the customers, these guys were the big brother they always wanted,”

The people who ran the stores, they loved what they did and they took the time to show you anything you wanted on the hobby.
They were social hubs.
How can GW differentiate themselves?
Just go back to their roots, it was rather innovative: an inclusive environment that gave attention to the kids.
Gaming coffee houses are getting popular around here.

So, they are a collectable trinket company... kinda sad.
I will always be grateful (to what seems to be more the old guard) for GW making modeling and hobby craft exciting and fun with an easy way to meet like-minded people.

It is sad that Kirby's group cannot see what made it great: being inclusive to it's customers.

Nailed it. They've coasted on the momentum of the social element of their early success. Unfortunately they are starting to really feel their move away from engaging and supporting a community around their games.

Really interesting article (although sure I have read bits of it before?)

I'd actually heard the same thing about Rick in the final few years, he was essentially promoted and sat in a room not really able to do anything creative. Ultimately I guess he got bored and left! Even though I have heard it was very strange for the other staff there, simply because he had always been there.

Accolade wrote:

“To me the background to 40k was always intended to be ironic”

That's something I've really missed about 40k and the reincarnation of WHFB.

Everything now is always super serious business, it's like the new designers completely missed out on the original jokes. Looking at the lore for AOS vs. the original WHFB, it's background written for (and by?) 13-year-olds going up against something that knows what it is and embraces it.

Definitely agree, it gradually lost the tongue-in-cheek side and became far too po-faced and serious.

Crazyterran wrote:Of course he's going to gak talk 40k. Has to make his game I literally heard about just now look good!

Well.. if some kid has gone off the rails a bit, the one person that you could never criticise for having an opinion about that is his father.

The other thing of course is to keep fiddling with the rules to make people buy a new edition and codex every few years. This is not new in the sense of progress, of course.

I was going to say, that's been the way of things for at least 15 years now, probably a bit more.

You wouldn't mind if it was genuinely in the interest of producing a better or more balanced game, but I think that has long since gone out of the window.

 Azreal13 wrote:

“I was the head of the creative department, and they weren’t doing anything creative any more,” he said.

“The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with.”

It’s a game with a future, which I don’t think 40K is.

Wow.

I second that WOW! In the past he has skirted around out right slamming them, but left it a bit implied. This time, he just laid it out.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
It's so surreal to have lived through the last 20 years of that article, knowing it's all true and I felt those things as a lowly consumer. Feels good after all the white knighters telling me how wrong myself and others were, to have such a big name in the company echo many things from that time.

That's sort of "normal" though. When you speak out against something like GW people will generally assume you are saying those things as a sort of petty revenge and they can't be true.

After all, how can a company exist if it isn't being run well? That's a simplification, but IMHO that's the thought-line people use.

I've heard many times people criticizing online companies like GW (and others) that I've worked for and so far what I've heard has been pretty much spot on, as negative as they were.

But, hearing it from a "personality" in the industry can lend weight to criticism (or to propaganda) depending on the circumstance.

 Accolade wrote:
Everything now is always super serious business, it's like the new designers completely missed out on the original jokes. Looking at the lore for AOS vs. the original WHFB, it's background written for (and by?) 13-year-olds going up against something that knows what it is and embraces it.

Maybe that's due to the trend of realism we've been experiencing in movies and TV for the last few decades. Everything has to be realistic and believable these days, there's little "wiggle room" for fiction.

When you create anything in sci-fi and fantasy these days, they have to be grounded in reality as if it could really work. Everything has to be explained. Things also seem to be more homogenized now as well.

I kinda miss the good 'ol days of sci-fi/fantasy.

great read!!!

how ironic that the birth of Warhammer and 40K were as sales vehicles for the miniatures...
kinda makes those of us who go on and on about the minis not look so crazy...

in that vein, it is interesting to note that Bryan got it right, by making it feel like the customers were in on the fun, and Kirby has done a complete 180, and made many of the customers feel like they are despised walking wallets...
it's a shame really, because he did a good job through the 90's...
i wonder if the bankruptcy scares in that decade snapped him, and made him crazy...
he's definitely gone full Scrooge McDuck in the last decade...

thanks for the link, Eirikr...

cheers
jah

 jah-joshua wrote:

how ironic that the birth of Warhammer and 40K were as sales vehicles for the miniatures...
kinda makes those of us who go on and on about the minis not look so crazy...

Though it certainly is interesting that 'enticing people to buy more than one model at a time' was the original impetus to develop what was one of the first fantasy/fiction mass battle games in the market, Priestley wasn't exactly stellar about how that particular business angle ended up entrenching itself in the corporate culture:

Rick Priestley wrote:“The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with.”

 Xca|iber wrote:

 jah-joshua wrote:

how ironic that the birth of Warhammer and 40K were as sales vehicles for the miniatures...
kinda makes those of us who go on and on about the minis not look so crazy...

Though it certainly is interesting that 'enticing people to buy more than one model at a time' was the original impetus to develop what was one of the first fantasy/fiction mass battle games in the market, Priestley wasn't exactly stellar about how that particular business angle ended up entrenching itself in the corporate culture:

Rick Priestley wrote:“The role I had in the studio was with staff working on game development and design, and they’d pretty much decided that game development and design wasn’t of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they’re not a games company, it’s that they’re a model company selling collectibles. That’s something I find wholly self-deceiving and couldn’t possibly agree with.”

i don't disagree with him, either...
alienating many previously loyal customers, by making them feel that the rules don't really matter, is not a good move...

cheers
jah

-

 jah-joshua wrote:
great read!!!

how ironic that the birth of Warhammer and 40K were as sales vehicles for the miniatures...
kinda makes those of us who go on and on about the minis not look so crazy...

Not quite sure you've quite got the concept there.

They developed the games to motivate people to buy more minis, because people buying them just to paint or for RPGs only bought them in singles or small numbers.

WHFB and 40K were very effective at this.

They've started trying to make themselves more about "collectibles" and less about games, more and more people have decided against playing their games/as much, and their sales have started to drop off.

Ergo the established best method for GW to sell the most minis, historically (and, logically, still being the case,) is to concentrate on the games side and let them generate sales of the models needed.

It was established 30 years ago that trying to sell models in small numbers to people wasn't viable as a means of sustaining GW, which makes their attempts to pursue that business model now even more lunatic.

@Az: it's called 'tongue in cheek:, my good man...
i got the concept, and agree with you, as shown by my response above to Xcaliber...

i have never once said that i agree with GW's business moves over the last decade or so, and especially over the last five years...
just because i like most the work that the studio produces, and buy the products i like, doesn't mean i think that the business model is great...

so, to make it very clear, i have no problem admitting that GW, as a business, have gone off the rails...
looking at the new Horus Heresy box sat in front of me, though, i find it hard to support anyone's assertion that they don't still produce some quality products...

cheers
jah

-

 jah-joshua wrote:
@Az: it's called 'tongue in cheek:, my good man...
i got the concept, and agree with you, as shown by my response above to Xcaliber...

i have never once said that i agree with GW's business moves over the last decade or so, and especially over the last five years...
just because i like most the work that the studio produces, and buy the products i like, doesn't mean i think that the business model is great...

so, to make it very clear, i have no problem admitting that GW, as a business, have gone off the rails...
looking at the new Horus Heresy box sat in front of me, though, i find it hard to support anyone's assertion that they don't still produce some quality products...

cheers
jah

Tongue in cheek is very difficult to detect when it more or less conforms to your usual stated POV, just sayin.


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And it looks fairly convincing right now that quality models without quality games only gets them so far, and that may not be far enough.