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@Bottle: love it!!!

@Az: i would have thought that the winky and smiley would have conveyed the tone a bit, but i guess not...
still, there is truth in all humor...
i am in this for the minis, after all...

again, that doesn't mean that i can't agree with you on the business perspective...
i do think Kirby is a madman, and that something needs to change in order for the company to have a long healthy future...
like i said, though, the Horus Heresy BaC box seems to be getting a good reception, as a game, and a set of models...

it's not all doom and gloom...

cheers
jah

Fantastic read, some powerful stuff in there.

The problem is that they had a stable of awesome creative people lead them to great succes in the 90's and early 2000's, and they have been coasting on that inertia for about 15 years.

The problem is that inertia like that eventually fades, and all those people are now gone, with noone present to actually do anything great like that to keep things going or inject new energy, just lots of re-treading.

Revitalizing things like the Specialist games could do that, but I would be worried that it would just be more digging into repeating what made them great, but without the type of energy that created such a thing in the first place.

The GW of today is eerily a parallel to their own invention, the techpriests of 40k, keeping things running through repitition but without grasping exactly how those things were invented in the first place by the "Ancients" in their "Golden Age".

 AegisGrimm wrote:
The GW of today is eerily a parallel to their own invention, the techpriests of 40k, keeping things running through repitition but without grasping exactly how those things were invented in the first place by the "Ancients" in their "Golden Age".

I like that, I think that's actually a pretty spot on analogy.

I love the idea of the company deciding where to put GW stores based upon the Football league table.

It is sad that Rick was basically bored into leaving GW, but luckily it has led to the creation of Beyond The Gates Of Antares. It is interesting that the LOTR game was basically a way to head off other potential miniature/game producers. Maybe it just delayed the inevitable in that there are seemingly now more miniature games companies and manufacturers than ever before.

 AegisGrimm wrote:


The GW of today is eerily a parallel to their own invention, the techpriests of 40k, keeping things running through repitition but without grasping exactly how those things were invented in the first place by the "Ancients" in their "Golden Age".

Brilliant! the irony still exists

It's very cynical to say Rick Priestley is "trash talking" GW because he's got his own game to promote.

Everything he says about GW is true and has been corroborated by other interviews from other ex-GW staff, by the historical record, and by user experience which DakkaDakka members have often commented on -- the GrimDarking(TM) of the Tau and Orks, for example. This is all relevant to customers' interests.

Time will tell if the new SG division produces anything better than a rehash of old products. To be fair, a lot of the old games would sell well again if GW can spruce them up to 21st century standards.

Basically it sounds like he's just confirming what everyone else was already saying, marketing & sales took over GW, model & scale bloat kicked in big time as a result, and the actual creative background part & rules functionality that drive everything is being slowly strangled...

AegisGrimm wrote:The problem is that they had a stable of awesome creative people lead them to great succes in the 90's and early 2000's, and they have been coasting on that inertia for about 15 years.

The problem is that inertia like that eventually fades, and all those people are now gone, with noone present to actually do anything great like that to keep things going or inject new energy, just lots of re-treading.

Revitalizing things like the Specialist games could do that, but I would be worried that it would just be more digging into repeating what made them great, but without the type of energy that created such a thing in the first place.

The GW of today is eerily a parallel to their own invention, the techpriests of 40k, keeping things running through repitition but without grasping exactly how those things were invented in the first place by the "Ancients" in their "Golden Age".

To be honest, change sometimes is not a bad thing. Those great names of the 80s and 90s were great. But often, as you get older. Creativity dries up too. Or you get bored, and frankly need to do something new. It's as true for them as you or I, Having them onboard now is not necessarily a recipe for success. and if we are being honest, if a lot of those 80s and 90s products came out now, they wouldn't last - we've moved on.

I also think that it's a bit short sighted to say 'they were great, the current crop of writers aren't anywhere near as good'. It's edging on the 'things were better in my day' nostalgia fallacy. The current writers are good, but you have to remember that they are constrained within a corporate structure that has developed and solidified over the last fifteen years against the interests and freedom of the design studio. The design studio doesn't call the shots. The view from the top is they're a promotions division for a toy company. The writers don't necessarily have the time or the 'space' to 'be creative'. Give them that space, and they'll do a good job, the problem is kirby isn't interested in that kind of 'risk' - hence 'mKe me more space marines'! The problems with the corporate culture here is that rather than blue sky thinking that can lead to innovative games and ideas, Often it's deadlines, design briefs and limited resources coupled to existing 'proven' games along with individuals tied to 18month or two-year contracts meaning very little job security unless you're above the glass ceiling in the company. In other words, don't rock the boat, or you're out on your arse. And this is a small industry - you get black listed by gw (and I remember rumours of them having a 'black book') and your ability to work in a tiny industry will be severely curtailed. So it's a lot more complicated than 'designers of days gone by were better'.

Kilkrazy wrote:
Everything he says about GW is true and has been corroborated by other interviews from other ex-GW staff, by the historical record, and by user experience which DakkaDakka members have often commented on -- the GrimDarking(TM) of the Tau and Orks, for example. This is all relevant to customers' interests.

There is nothing wrong with grimdarking the tau. The problem was getting didn't grimdark them, they grimdorked them with silly mind worms, space bugs and ridiculous new suit models. A clever grim dark approach would be to have the tau truly witness the horror of the 40k-iverse and struggle to reconcile the practicalities of that horror wit their idealism of their ideology. Ie to they hold their torch up as a beacon of light and hope and a better future for all, or do they use it to burn everything else to the ground? That struggle would be interesting.

As for orks, I think the fifth edition codex got them perfectly, just the right mix of utter savagery, barbarism and black orky comedy (I still chuckle with the idea of orks coming down with a bad case of exploding 'ead). IMO second ed comedy orks were frankly too silly to be anything other than a bad joke,

While your arguments have some value, the fact is that GW management didn't let the creatives do their jobs, and didn't Grimdarken the Tau in n interesting way.

As a consumer I am mainly interested in the results rather than the process.

It is an interview that is not exclusively with Rick Priestly, but also has John Stallard in it.

It illustrates a few points, who were the key decision makers, unsurprisingly not Kirby and not his accounting department, I am shocked Rick had to fight the bureaucracy and make a diplomatic suggestion to get the LOTR licence in the company, not surprised the accounting department got all the glory for this happening.

Overall it is in line with what everybody else who have left GW has said and in line with the view the more balanced commentators of GW have.

No surprise were there is smoke there is fire.

I think his most commented line here 40k having no future stands, admittedly it has enough future (and GW has enough fat) for this is to not be the case, but, given the current direction the prediction is quite believable.

Yes, he does make a "competing game" but I don't think he badmouths his previous company.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only marketing.

At some point in the early 2000s, Games Workshop managed to forget or suppress the significance of the words 'Games' and 'Workshop' in their company name.

I believe GW are trying to get their mojo back. This shows in the recent flurry of new releases -- Assassination, AoS and Battle of Cattle. This means they have published more new games in the past six months than in the prior 15 years.

If they can marry creativity and design to modern production techniques and reconnect with customers, this will be a new golden age.

I do not think that is difficult, from the many interviews I have read, GWs issue is neither resources or manpower, its political in nature and centers around the power the accounting has over everything and probably they have enough political power within the company to throw the blame to everybody else but them for their bad decisions.

A more interesting thing I have seen is the following, the Dicetower a well known boardgame review site had an AOS presentation, which would raise an eyebrow from me and boardgame brawl another boardgames review site had a review of the assassins boardgame, the interesting thing in both is the following, both hinted GW send them the review copies, which would be a massive shift of how they do things.

Wow, he sounds so bitter !

 Kilkrazy wrote:
While your arguments have some value, the fact is that GW management didn't let the creatives do their jobs, and didn't Grimdarken the Tau in n interesting way.

As a consumer I am mainly interested in the results rather than the process.

That's kind of what I was saying kilkrazy...

But I do find the process as interesting as the results.

Just wait, Rayvon.

You'll understand it one day.

And this is a small industry - you get black listed by gw (and I remember rumours of them having a 'black book') and your ability to work in a tiny industry will be severely curtailed.

I would have thought being blacklisted by GW would be a boon in some parts of this tiny industry.

Kilkrazy wrote:
I believe GW are trying to get their mojo back. This shows in the recent flurry of new releases -- Assassination, AoS and Battle of Cattle. This means they have published more new games in the past six months than in the prior 15 years.

If they can marry creativity and design to modern production techniques and reconnect with customers, this will be a new golden age.

If they're putting out a flurry of bad products that sell poorly (I just saw an email trying to convince me that some kinds of Assassination bundles were the perfect Christmas gift) then I'd say it sounds a bit more like TSR's last days.

The interview, yeah. As ever, Rick offers up some insightful things, but manages to sound like an auld grump in the process.

(That's little a, little g. No reference to our Auld Grump!)

 jah-joshua wrote:
@Bottle: love it!!!

the Horus Heresy BaC box seems to be getting a good reception, as a game, and a set of models...
it's not all doom and gloom...

True but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, BaC seems to be more of a fluke as GW managed to follow that up with chaos horseys at £15 each and an overlord thingy that costs as much as BaC

To be honest, change sometimes is not a bad thing. Those great names of the 80s and 90s were great. But often, as you get older. Creativity dries up too. Or you get bored, and frankly need to do something new. It's as true for them as you or I, Having them onboard now is not necessarily a recipe for success. and if we are being honest, if a lot of those 80s and 90s products came out now, they wouldn't last - we've moved on.

I also think that it's a bit short sighted to say 'they were great, the current crop of writers aren't anywhere near as good'. It's edging on the 'things were better in my day' nostalgia fallacy. The current writers are good, but you have to remember that they are constrained within a corporate structure that has developed and solidified over the last fifteen years against the interests and freedom of the design studio. The design studio doesn't call the shots. The view from the top is they're a promotions division for a toy company. The writers don't necessarily have the time or the 'space' to 'be creative'. Give them that space, and they'll do a good job, the problem is kirby isn't interested in that kind of 'risk' - hence 'mKe me more space marines'! The problems with the corporate culture here is that rather than blue sky thinking that can lead to innovative games and ideas, Often it's deadlines, design briefs and limited resources coupled to existing 'proven' games along with individuals tied to 18month or two-year contracts meaning very little job security unless you're above the glass ceiling in the company. In other words, don't rock the boat, or you're out on your arse. And this is a small industry - you get black listed by gw (and I remember rumours of them having a 'black book') and your ability to work in a tiny industry will be severely curtailed. So it's a lot more complicated than 'designers of days gone by were better'.

Well, that's not exactly what I meant. While GW's does not necessarily "need" Paul Sawyer (aka Fat Bloke from old White Dwarf), Rick Priestly, etc, but they need people who can do the same for them nowadays for them to stay big as a company.

They need some visionaries that can think farther outside of the box that "we can increase profits on Dire Avengers by 100% if we drop the model count in a box by half but keep the price the same-brilliant!"

 Rayvon wrote:
Wow, he sounds so bitter !

No he doesn't. He sounds like every other ex or even current employee that has spoken out. All of their stories paint a similar picture of GW behind the scenes. And it aint pretty.

Rick wrote:“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Amen to that. Our group has said that for years. It's a shame it was true.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:

Rick wrote:“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Amen to that. Our group has said that for years. It's a shame it was true.

I think what is most interesting is the part of the interview just before that quote.

Both games [Necromunda and Gorkamorka] met with a positive reaction from players, but according to Priestley they led to a crisis within the company – now headed by Tom Kirby, Games Workshop’s former general manager, who led a management buyout that saw Bryan Ansell depart in 1991.

“Tom had to borrow a lot of money to buy the business,” Priestley said. “That meant we had to grow the company very quickly.

“I thought that one way to do that would be to expand the product line, so you’d have Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, then this series of games that would let you explore the universe at a much closer, more detailed level.

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The financial scare spooked management, Priestley said, leading to a change in Games Workshop’s culture.

“The appetite for new games just disappeared,” he said.

“But I have to say that this was not due to the concept being wrong, I think it was due to them not having the sophistication to manage the stock or manage the new sales divisions that had been created.

So, we lost the Specialist Games because...GW didn't do the market research to determine how many they needed to produce in other markets so they lost money on over producing? Today, instead they underproduce and lose out on money they could have made had they done the market research.

Yeah, imagine how many people are buying fantasy warband skirmish games like Frostgrave and Song of Blades/Heroes because they feel that particular game strikes even the slightest bit of their nostalgia for Mordheim. Now imagine if they could just buy Mordheim outright from a store. All the material could be re-printed, with existing plastics to use for the game (and some still being produced that were originally created for Mordheim, and could be re-packaged back to their original form!)

Or the near- million dollar kickstarter for Dropfleet Commander, when GW has plastic and pewter molds and pre-created gaming material already paid for years ago that they could just truck out again, in an era of decently high interest in space games, especially fleet-scale ones.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Yeah, imagine how many people are buying fantasy warband skirmish games like Frostgrave and Song of Blades/Heroes because they feel that particular game strikes even the slightest bit of their nostalgia for Mordheim. Now imagine if they could just buy Mordheim outright from a store. All the material could be re-printed, with existing plastics to use for the game (and some still being produced that were originally created for Mordheim, and could be re-packaged back to their original form!)

Or the near- million dollar kickstarter for Dropfleet Commander, when GW has plastic and pewter molds and pre-created gaming material already paid for years ago that they could just truck out again, in an era of decently high interest in space games, especially fleet-scale ones.

The hurdles to overcome are stuff that we know won't jive with the new environment. For mordheim or necromunda what really made it cool and accessible was the paper terrain. Hawk wargames has shown you can still include high quality paper terrain in a starter box, but gw marketing could take issue. This is the same marketing department putting out $700 terrain sets for aos, something they marketed as accessible and scalable.

The other consideration is their stores allowing people to actually play the smaller scale games. It could take valuable gaming real estate away from the weekend's usual apoc no terrain clusterfeth But I do recall GW not allowing people to play dreadfleet or space hulk very quickly after release.

This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Yeah, imagine how many people are buying fantasy warband skirmish games like Frostgrave and Song of Blades/Heroes because they feel that particular game strikes even the slightest bit of their nostalgia for Mordheim. Now imagine if they could just buy Mordheim outright from a store. All the material could be re-printed, with existing plastics to use for the game (and some still being produced that were originally created for Mordheim, and could be re-packaged back to their original form!)

Or the near- million dollar kickstarter for Dropfleet Commander, when GW has plastic and pewter molds and pre-created gaming material already paid for years ago that they could just truck out again, in an era of decently high interest in space games, especially fleet-scale ones.

The hurdles to overcome are stuff that we know won't jive with the new environment. For mordheim or necromunda what really made it cool and accessible was the paper terrain. Hawk wargames has shown you can still include high quality paper terrain in a starter box, but gw marketing could take issue. This is the same marketing department putting out $700 terrain sets for aos, something they marketed as accessible and scalable.

The other consideration is their stores allowing people to actually play the smaller scale games. It could take valuable gaming real estate away from the weekend's usual apoc no terrain clusterfeth But I do recall GW not allowing people to play dreadfleet or space hulk very quickly after release.

Yeah I remember when they did that, only reason I own Dreadfleet is because it was bought for me and I have gotten some play out of it.
Space Hulk I had little interest in and once I found out I couldn't play it in store (really my only area for gaming at the time) I walked away from buying it and bought a doll dress instead (I'm dead serious).
It's a really pretty dress though.
When I buy a game I expect to actually be able to play it, not have it sit on a shelf. That's what dolls are for, and I still bring them into the woods for fun photos.
More then a miniature can do sans game.

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Curious how shifting to free PDF downloads affected things.

Just watch, they'll release the old specialist games as "Battlefleet Gothic Classic", "Necromunda Classic", "Gorkamorka Classic". Same models, same rules, but prices updated for the 21st century.

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Yeah, most of the rest of the article was basically what I was expecting, but that one kind of surprised me. Over printing for foreign language markets killing specialist games was really not what I was expecting to have been the cause for their demise.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 solkan wrote:
This is one of the parts that I thought was really interesting:

“But it ended up being one of the great dividing points of Games Workshop. We’d grown internationally at a very fast pace, and we had to deal with French, Spanish, Italian versions of the games. The print runs of the foreign language editions were always bigger than we could sell, and after several near-disasters where we’d printed way too many of something, GorkaMorka being a classic example, we’d nearly bankrupted the company.”

The death of specialist games by publication costs for the rest of Europe. That's not the reason I would have expected.

Yeah, most of the rest of the article was basically what I was expecting, but that one kind of surprised me. Over printing for foreign language markets killing specialist games was really not what I was expecting to have been the cause for their demise.

When i worked for GW in Memphis the warehouse crew would throw out entire pallets of foreign-language product frequently. It just didn't well well enough.