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Made in us
Stealthy Warhound Titan Princeps






Question's pretty simple, per the title.

As we all know, GW releases dominate miniature wargaming/hobbying Youtube channels every Saturday, showing the world the latest/upcoming products, reading through rulesbooks, unboxing new miniatures etc. A lot, if not most or even all of these big channels get these products for free from GW. I'm aware of this and I don't even consume that much wargaming content via Youtube.

Are Mantic, Atomic Mass, Privateer Press, Corvus Belli, etc, also sending out review products as graciously/aggressively as GW? Are people more in tune with this than I seeing paid/sponsored Mantic videos?

Or are these content creators buying non-GW product themselves?

Thanks!

I'm on a podcast about (video) game design:
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Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Depends.

I'm very sure any of the major firms like Infinity might well send out promotional material to content creators.

Even 3D print firms can often send out material to a few people early for previews and such - less common but that's in part because 3D printing moves much faster so the time between when a model is sculpted and when its put on sale is often pretty tiny. But they do network with content creators.

Heck I've known artists to get paid to paint up models for promotional purposes and such.



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Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

TTCombat apparently sent out promotional Dropfleet minis to tournament organizers. I’m pretty sure other companies send out promotional material as well.

Highlord Tamurlaine is probably the best person to ask about this.

   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Beast of War often gets promo material from non GW companies (and sometimes runs segments on them, or does an unboxing etc)

but the folk there also buy a bunch of stuff (Gerry especially)


 
   
Made in us
Battlefield Tourist




MN (Currently in WY)

Short answer, Yes.

Slightly longer answer, Osprey Games has a list of content producers that they send pre-release copies of games in order to have reviews and other buzz hit at launch.

Many other smaller companies do the same, and this practice happens for games, terrain, models, and gaming accessories.

If you are a content provider, the easiest thing to do is to reach out to them; and let them know your stats. If you hit the criteria.... great! If not, well better keep growing if you want the free swag!


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Made in us
Stealthy Warhound Titan Princeps






Thanks for the responses!

While I am a content creator, I'm not actually asking this for my own benefits, haha. Although thinking about it, free stuff might not be a bad thing!

The backstory behind this post is I watched a video this morning (from a couple of months ago) where a content creator suggested that GW was killing Youtube channels, twitch streamers, etc that don't host GW-related content and their tactic for doing so is flooding content creators with so much GW material, free of charge, that the algorithm doesn't think people are interested in wargaming, but that they are interested in Games Workshop.

So it made me think, well, if GW is doing this and it's working so well... are other companies doing it? I thought about it and I had never seen a video mentioning it was based on free stuff from any company but GW or paint companies (or 3d printers, but that's tangentially related).

It sounds like other companies are doing it but their marketing departments aren't big enough to push through the GW shroud. No individual company probably has the budget, even if they pushed it, to independently compete with GW's massive marketing department but perhaps if every company expanded their budget, together, they might make the algorithm topic wargaming instead of Games Workshop.

Anyways, that's just me rambling. Thanks for your thoughts so far. Would be interested if anybody has anything else to add or any replies to the rambling above!

I'm on a podcast about (video) game design:
https://anchor.fm/makethatgame

And I also stream tabletop painting/playing Mon&Thurs 8PM EST
https://twitch.tv/tableitgaming
And make YouTube videos for that sometimes!
https://www.youtube.com/@tableitgaming 
   
Made in gb
Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

To be fair sending out pre-release info a perhaps 20 or 30 youtubers isn't a huge thing for a firm like GW. I think the big difference is that GW has a department whilst many other firms are much smaller. They might not have a marketing "department" that only does marketing and instead have staff (maybe even just one) who do other roles alongside marketing.

So in some ways they might just not be as "on the ball" simply because they've got other duties to do alongside and such. Another angle can be that smaller firms sometimes have to be careful with marketing pushes as they might not have resources to expand rapidly so their marketing has to balance their capacity and expansion potential.*



Also don't forget one of the ways a good few youtube channels get hits is emotional hotbutton content - that often means negative content against GW in the wargame market. Heck you can sometimes even see a pattern where a channel might have several non GW related videos with steadily dwindling viewer numbers and then BOOM an anti-GW style post that jacks the numbers up for a bit - rinse and repeat.



I suspect GW isn't "driving others out" so much as they are simply pushing themselves forward really hard. Then again pushing for your firm above others is a staple of any marketing strategy.



*a good few kickstarters have had this hurt them - Kingdom Death is the prime example where they expanded with an insane customer base way beyond their production capacity without having resources to invest into a massive production increase and without sustained massive interest to justify a huge outlay in massive production increase

A Blog in Miniature

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Made in gb
Scouting Shadow Warrior




NW UK

I got sent Firefight 2nd edition after I reached out to Mantic. My Firefight videos were doing (for me) crazy good numbers. I asked for a rule book and an army book to get some Day 1 videos sorted for launch but due to a comms error I got it after release. But they sent me the full box, so every cloud and all that.

Every other game on my channel I have either bought specifically, or had in my collection anyway.



Casual nerd and occasional content creator Hobby Quick YT channel  
   
Made in si
Foxy Wildborne







Algorithms are self-reinforcing, the biggest topics get recommended more, so get seen more, so get even bigger. No need for any nefarious action on GW's part, it's just an inherent property of this dystopian modern social media hellscape.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/10/05 21:01:25


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Moustache-twirling Princeps




United Kingdom

Back when the Gaming Club Network (GCN) was a functional thing in the UK, member clubs could request free stuff via it from manufacturers such as Mantic & Warlord. Sometimes it would be pre-release stuff, and some clubs did do unboxing & review videos.
   
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Deranged Necron Destroyer





Warcradle does, there's always videos of the new Dystopian Wars stuff ahead of release from a couple of creators
   
 
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