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http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/games-workshop/id/6252#.Unkz_ic4RA1

I thought some people might find it interesting, it was written in the latest eddition of the bi-monthly publication along side an interview with John Blanche, who also produced a fantastic cover for the magazine.

Games workshop took what could be considered a huge risk by not developing the warhammer mmo in house?
Did I read that right?

That was a pretty naff article. Shallow and uninformed.

For an article purporting to trace GW's trajectory, it doesn't...you know, do very much tracing of its trajectory. The origins of GW gets one paragraph, and you can sum it up as...

"founded in London. Had a meteoric rise".

"They have also taken what could be seen as a massive gamble by not branching out into creating their own online games, instead they licence the IP to others and let them deal with all that mucky stuff."

Right, and I suppose the safe option was to make their first video games themselves? I bet Matt Ward, Jervis Johnson and Jes Goodwin would be great at designing video games.

That wasnt to bad. It could have gone into more detail but for the un-initiated it would be a good read.

And maybe a chance for the cult of GW to gain more minions. For their inevitable world takeover.....

Just as a bit of backgroung, Left Lion is a free bi-monthly arts and culture magazine. the whole thing is non proffit and often made up of work submitted by students and writers hoping to get their first article published. The set up really was for the interview with John blanche, which i think is elsewhere online and is very interesting.

As you probably know GW are VERY strongly against being involved with any kind of outside press, so it was good to have an outside perspective.

An interesting but quite shallow article, I think. More relevant to those who pass the GW headquarters and wonder just what goes on in there...

There was a much better article on GW's early history in Wargames Illustrated, issue 302, which had an interview with Brian Ansell, the founder of Citadel Miniatures and former owner of Games Workshop.

For anyone interested in interviews with key people on the early days of GW, I'd point them to this blog:

http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.com/

(list of key interviews in the right-hand sidebar!)