Is GW a gaming Company or collector's item Company?

[DemonGSides]

51 minutes ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

OK, then can one say that GW is a collectable wargaming miniatures company? With “collectable wargaming” being the modifiers and “miniatures” being the basis. Apart from it being obvious imo, it covers the main options.They were around before Warhammer, although WH was the first environment where the IP was fully owned, and not a derivative of somebody else’s concept, such as the LOTR miniatures, the Dredd line etc. Earlier in this thread Bob Naismith’s LE “Imperial Space Marine” was discussed. The inset posted is from Citadel’s September 1985 catalog. That is 2 full years before WH40K was officially announced, yet that pre-existing model (that kinda dropped out of the sky as far as the general public is concerned) is more interesting to me because of its similarities to the 1st ed WH40K Space Marines rather that its differences. Sure, the Star Wars franchise and its Empire were firmly entrenched by then, and that may have been an obvious starting point in the thinking of GW. But that perhaps enhances the possibility LE2 was a trial balloon, and WH40K development had already started. Perhaps all our discussions are concerned with GW’s thinking of two years ago as it manifests now, so-called “leaks” notwthstanding 

 

In any case the latest official audited GW documents show a company that is doing very well in a somewhat adverse environment. Someone must still be playing the game.

 

Don't let the old heads on this forum convince you 40k is dying. Anecdotally my local scene has never had more players, and more shops to play in. I'm also seeing a lot more tournament-level and higher competitions sprouting up in the two major cities I live between.  My personal playgroup has even expanded. 

 

Combined with the company doing pretty well financially, I think the game is resonating. Theres definitely some better things they could be doing, but that generally true of any company in charge of someone's hobby. It's never gonna be a one size fits all.

Edited April 9 by DemonGSides

[Halandaar]

3 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

Don't let the old heads on this forum convince you 40k is dying. Anecdotally my local scene has never had more players, and more shops to play in. I'm also seeing a lot more tournament-level and higher competitions sprouting up in the two major cities I live between.  My personal playgroup has even expanded. 

 

Combined with the company doing pretty well financially, I think the game is resonating. Theres definitely some better things they could be doing, but that generally true of any company in charge of someone's hobby. It's never gonna be a one size fits all.

 

Definitely this. I'm an "old head" now and even though 40K the game is not really to my taste anymore, it's obvious that it's more popular and more visible than it's ever been. Despite what some people would like us all to believe, GW do not need to keep the old guard around to continue to be a successful company as long as they can continue to attract new blood, and the increasing accessibility of the mainline games and the pushing of the franchise into more and more visible spaces (CoD crossover being a prime example) are succeeding in that whether us oldies like it or not.

 

Arguably GW are even planning for this and designing products around it; what is Old World if not a game designed to welcome the people who thought it was all better before Stormcast and round-based fantasy minis? Heresy has a similar appeal to people who just thought the rules shift in 8E 40K was too much.

Edited April 9 by Halandaar

[phandaal]

2 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

Don't let the old heads on this forum convince you 40k is dying. Anecdotally my local scene has never had more players, and more shops to play in. I'm also seeing a lot more tournament-level and higher competitions sprouting up in the two major cities I live between.  My personal playgroup has even expanded. 

 

It is the sovereign right of every Old Head to complain about days gone by, and an established fact that whatever happened yesterday was better than whatever is happening today, and WAY better than whatever will happen tomorrow.

 

That is mostly separate from the "miniatures company vs games company" discussion, but one could argue that being a miniatures company first and game company second does insulate Games Workshop from the ups and downs of whatever happens to be the current game version.

 

2 hours ago, DemonGSides said:

It's never gonna be a one size fits all.

 

This is very true. People should definitely not force themselves to play if they do not want to, and by the same token they should not feel defensive for liking the game when other people do not.

[jaxom]

On 4/8/2024 at 10:30 AM, Rain said:

I think it’s actually highly related, as it serves to show what *kind* of gaming company GW is, to the extent that it is one. I think that some of the confusion and tension in this thread is from the fact that when WH longbeards say “gaming company” they mean “tabletop hobby wargame company. But when a business exec says “gaming company” they mean Activision.

 

This is partly at the root of things, I think. GW is very clearly attempting to ape modern video game conventions such as “seasons”, constant balance “patches”, a hard focus on balance and tourney results in general, as well as more lean unit rules, more in line with RTS than with tabletop games.

 

Internally, perhaps. But a large part of the issue is external. 40k, as a game, was originally a historical miniatures game set in the future. Now, 40k is more like chess; though yes, tweaking units also adds in an online RTS aspect in terms of 'balance' between piece utility.

 

On 4/8/2024 at 11:26 AM, Dr. Clock said:

The answer as always is just to take ownership of your own game. Play the games and paint the things that you love, in the way you love. Find others with similar values, and pay attention to what corporations do, not what they say.

 

This part of why I think 40k is now more like chess. I grew up in an area with a lot of pick-up chess matches in parks. People came and went over the years, you could go weeks without playing the same person twice, but the game was always the same. It was very different from what I saw in Searching for Bobby Fischer where there were chess clubs were everyone knew each other and they played out specific problems with a more limited set of pieces.

 

I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but if I had to describe my early pick up games in 40k, they were against people who bought into creating a fake historical narrative. There was a level of creativity in explaining why the battle was happening based on the mission our roll resulted in and who was defender and who was attacker. My games in the "modern era" of 40k haven't really had that. Sure, there have been really narrative moments from me and my opponents. But it felt, as we put our stuff out, that we were getting ready to play a game with an uncertain outcome and not improvise the results of a pre-existing event. For those of you who watch YouTube battle reports, it's the difference between watching the average Table Top Tactics video and the average Art of War video.

 

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. Maybe that taking ownership is dependent on circumstances. Maybe that the common denominator for pick up games has changed and the current rules-design philosophy at GW has changed with it. Maybe, because we can't discuss other systems on the B&C we're stuck with a false sense of no ownership. I love this place, the people, the conversation. There's no other forum I've found quite like it. I don't want to leave it, but (if I ever get that fed up with GW and 40k) I might have to as part exercising that ownership. It's similar with game clubs; when 40k is the gorilla in the room....

 

On 4/8/2024 at 2:35 PM, Orange Knight said:

A lot like him have lost their passion for the game due to how soulless the beer and pretzel experience has become.

I read "beer and pretzel experience" and I think of a more intimate group than a gaming club or game store TTSG night. Is that the case here or was I reading it wrong?

[Bryan Blaire]

I would say that it’s a false dichotomy to try and pigeon hole GW as a gaming company or a collectible item/model company - I think it really has to be acknowledged that once you are so far down the hobby trumpet that GW doesn’t really mesh with what you are wanting, then it doesn’t matter what GW wants to style themselves as.  Everyone has to determine at some point whether what GW produces is really for them any more - if you are fed up with what they are doing, then it might just be time to look at other things?  No one has to stay a GW customer forever, and just because you are an “old head” doesn’t mean that their Specialist Games products should be for you - for instance, I have zero interest in playing Horus Heresy no matter how it might light the fires of some that preferred 40K pre-8th/9th/whatever - it might as well not exist as a game to me.

 

No one here or anywhere else is a better person for being a dedicated GW customer.

 

I know that their decisions have certainly curtailed my once substantial spending on their products, and that is pretty much meaningless to me or them (well, to me it means I have more money to spend on things I actually enjoy).   We can both be successful in our WH40K pursuits without each other, as I and GW are doing now.

Edited April 9 by Bryan Blaire

[phandaal]

20 hours ago, Bryan Blaire said:

I would say that it’s a false dichotomy to try and pigeon hole GW as a gaming company or a collectible item/model company

 

Yeah, they do not pigeonhole themselves by excluding games obviously. They understand that the game is their IP and the IP helps them sell miniatures. In the end it might be all about moving that plastic, but games are an inextricable part of that.

 

Off topic: in my experience it is significantly easier to find people who are willing to play something other than Current Edition 40k than it is to convince Current Edition 40k players to play Current Edition with anything besides the latest tournament mode. That was one of the reasons I was so pumped when Tempest of War became the default game mode for 10th Edition.

 

Back on topic: Once people open themselves to more than just playing the current game mode, it becomes less important whether Games Workshop is a games company or not. You are no longer relying on the current team's ability to produce a good game to determine if it is worth spending time on.

[terminator ultra]

Just now, phandaal said:

 

Off topic: in my experience it is significantly easier to find people who are willing to play something other than Current Edition 40k than it is to convince Current Edition 40k players to play Current Edition with anything besides the latest tournament mode. That was one of the reasons I was so pumped when Tempest of War became the default game mode for 10th Edition.

would it be easy finding players for a game that uses 8th? first time never played here

[phandaal]

4 minutes ago, terminator ultra said:

would it be easy finding players for a game that uses 8th? first time never played here

 

I bet you could find someone if you are flexible on the scheduling. Depending on your local scene there are usually Discord and Facebook groups where you can put out the request.

[Gamiel]

On 4/9/2024 at 12:07 AM, Special Officer Doofy said:

 

The person I quoted in that post and myself mentioned we only buy (and presumably build/paint) models to play the game. If the game didn't exist or is in a bad place, I'm not going to continue to buy/build/paint models. I personally see the building/painting aspect of the hobby as a means to an end. I liked painting my first Poxwalker. I found absolutely zero joy in painting Poxwalker number 40.

 

I personally know more people who don't care to build and paint their stuff than people who only build and paint them and see them as collectibles. The reason I tell people not to join the hobby now is because of how bad the game side currently is. If someone is only interested in assembling, painting and collecting plastic models I still wouldn't recommend wh40k (the hobby), I would recommend significantly cheaper alternatives or 3d printing, which can turn into a hobby itself. So I see the hobby as the arts and crafts side and the miniature wargaming side. You can be into just one of those aspects, but to get the most bang for your buck you should really enjoy both sides of it. Books and video games share the setting/IP but I don't consider those really part of miniature wargaming or building/painting models, aka "the hobby".

For me it seems to be the other way around. I'm in for the building, the lore, and for attempting to paint. The game is something that I plan to try out when I have painted enougth figures and I have in the back of my mind the knowledge that some of my minis may not work for the current rules but that I can proxy them for others.

 

And the ones I mostly talk Wh with are into the lore and the building/painting more then the playing, and most of the fan pages I follow seems to more care about the story they creat with their figures (or creating figures for their story) then the rules. 

[Rain]

1 hour ago, phandaal said:

Off topic: in my experience it is significantly easier to find people who are willing to play something other than Current Edition 40k than it is to convince Current Edition 40k players to play Current Edition with anything besides the latest tournament mode. That was one of the reasons I was so pumped when Tempest of War became the default game mode for 10th Edition.

Consume Current Thing. Get excited for Next Thing.

 

The ouroboros of social media hype marketing at work.

[terminator ultra]

5 minutes ago, Rain said:

Consume Current Thing. Get excited for Next Thing.

this is not even Warhammer related, (to do with my other addiction, bionicle) but I feels it still apiles somewhat

 

[Antarius]

The way Rick Priestley tells it, they wrote Warhammer specifically because they saw a market for it - people wanted to play games with their miniatures and providing a game meant selling more miniatures.

This was 40 years ago, so things might obviously have changed, but I’m not really sure they have, in this regard. The games are an important, even necessary, vehicle to sell the minis but they still exist primarily because they are the most effective way of selling minis. This doesn’t mean that the people involved can’t enjoy writing and playing games etc. - nor does it mean that they don’t care about producing good games, but it does tell us that the miniatures are the clear priority (which, as many people have already noted, tallies with what they tell their investors).
 

It is partly anecdotal of course, but it also seems “psychologically true” (for lack of a better term) that many, maybe even most, people collect minis more than they play with them, but that they wouldn’t collect (at least not nearly as much) if they didn’t at least have the idea that they would be using the miniatures for a game. This is certainly true for me and the people in my circle, at least.

Edited April 10 by Antarius

[Beta galactosidase]

On 4/9/2024 at 9:27 AM, EverythingIsGreat said:

Bob Naismith’s LE “Imperial Space Marine” was discussed. The inset posted is from Citadel’s September 1985 catalog. That is 2 full years before WH40K was officially announced, yet that pre-existing model (that kinda dropped out of the sky as far as the general public is concerned) is more interesting to me because of its similarities to the 1st ed WH40K Space Marines rather that its differences. Sure, the Star Wars franchise and its Empire were firmly entrenched by then, and that may have been an obvious starting point in the thinking of GW. But that perhaps enhances the possibility LE2 was a trial balloon, and WH40K development had already started.

 

Yes Rogue Trader was written over three years.  It was a very low priority project and its release was repeatedly pushed in favor of other products.  It was only Rick Priestley by himself writing, because again it was low priority.  The LE2 model was part of this project and designed by Naismith with crude sketches by Priestley.  It was always one unified but small project.

 

This history also shows that you're right and the topic of the thread is a flase dichotomy.   The design of the game from second edition forward is to prove to yourself you have the strongest collection. A person's collection is often a collection of embodied datasheets.  The value of the collection is the value of the datasheets.

 

 

[Captain Idaho]

I suspect people calling the thread a false dichotomy are likely just taking the title as a black and white, no context discussion.

 

In my first post, alongside subsequent posts, I detail the full context of how GW treats it's customers through product release and removal and what can be done to perhaps alleviate the concerns as much as possible.

 

I detail a possible solution for gamers and collectors, with folk in-between.

 

3 hours ago, Gamiel said:

For me it seems to be the other way around. I'm in for the building, the lore, and for attempting to paint. The game is something that I plan to try out when I have painted enougth figures and I have in the back of my mind the knowledge that some of my minis may not work for the current rules but that I can proxy them for others.

 

And the ones I mostly talk Wh with are into the lore and the building/painting more then the playing, and most of the fan pages I follow seems to more care about the story they creat with their figures (or creating figures for their story) then the rules. 

 

In fact this is a good example of a legitimate position. The game is secondary for some and that's cool. But removal of collection in a game isn't a priority or even a slight issue to such people (also cool) and that is one end of the scale.

 

I'd like a game I can rely on and invest in, supported and relevant, whilst others might not care as they aren't in the hobby for that.

 

I don't even see why there is a dispute on this really? I mean, surely everyone can appreciate that folk who aren't happy their products are removed (the Forge World Legends and recent AoS controversies for example) should be catered for just as much as folk who don't much care for the gaming in that way?

 

Though not everyone can be satisfied all the time, it makes sense GW should endeavour to try to find a way to satisfy as many people as possible.

[Bryan Blaire]

2 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

I suspect people calling the thread a false dichotomy are likely just taking the title as a black and white, no context discussion.

 

In my first post, alongside subsequent posts, I detail the full context of how GW treats it's customers through product release and removal and what can be done to perhaps alleviate the concerns as much as possible.

…

Though not everyone can be satisfied all the time, it makes sense GW should endeavour to try to find a way to satisfy as many people as possible.

It’s a nice idea, Idaho, but there’s no “what can be done” from us that GW is going to take, GW will GW and there is zero point to the hypotheticals proposed - GW doesn’t listen to veterans with 25 years+ down the “hobby trumpet” - they have our money, and they want more of it - but they don’t want it if you don’t want/agree with their latest offerings.

 

If anyone wants to be in that situation and give them more, that’s cool, but there does come a point where anyone can just say “They don’t make the product I want any more” and that be okay.

 

Your original post posed the following:
”But I hope to have illustrated a core problem that needs addressing and could likely be done quite easily, relatively.”

 

You are pre-supposing that a “core problem” you have identified is in fact a problem - it is not a problem that needs addressing at all for GW, and their results are what matter for their corporate planning, not you, not me.  GW’s current financials are illustrative of this - they are making so much more money than they ever have before, with little sign of it slowing at the moment.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the current game edition, just like it doesn’t matter that I don’t.  Trying to say that the company “should be this way” or “care about that” doesn’t matter to the company, because they clearly aren’t operating that way, and given their current state, don’t need to - they don’t need to cater to the disaffected former customers.

 

They aren’t pigeon-holed as a game company, or a collectible company, or anything other than what they say they are - a miniature sales company - and they will sell miniatures any way they can, whether that be as miniatures for a game that they can rules churn to get people to buy more miniatures, or as a company that sells models that are limited edition or collector’s edition or novel tie-ins.  Whatever it takes to get people to buy the models, that’s what they are going to do, and they are doing it extremely well, making fat stacks of cash, regardless of what problems those of us with 5-30+ years into the hobby think about what they are doing.  GW doesn’t want us “investing” in anything but their company, either as a shareholder or as one of the many opening their wallets to take part in that sweet plasticrack.  If you aren’t actively doing that, they have no reason to care - holding onto old models to play a new edition does them no business good.

 

Do I like models going away, not appearing in rules?  Heck no.  Does that mean anything to GW unless I’m buying the new models they come out with to replace them?  Also heck no.  Does any of that have any bearing on what type of company GW is, and does “what type of company” GW is have any bearing on what they do (which is sell miniatures)?  Nope, not if they are still running full tilt selling those models any way they can.

 

In the end, GW is a miniatures company first - how they maximize those sales is by providing products people want in a way that they can use them in the widest possible application that the purchaser enjoys that keeps the customer coming back and buying more products.  If they are achieving that, it doesn’t matter if the sales are for war games, skirmish games, collections on shelves, video game or other media tie-ins,  or any other possible way you want to say that GW should or does sell minis, and selling minis for any of those specific purposes or even targeting one specific purpose over others doesn’t mean that the company is labeled as that purpose - they are selling miniatures in multiple ways, and are introducing new ways to continue having people purchase more of the product to maximize their fat stacks of cash.  Anything that stands in the way of maximizing those stacks (like customers holding on to old products as long as possible as investments) will get left behind as quickly as they can, in favor of continuing forward sales momentum.

Edited April 11 by Bryan Blaire

[jaxom]

3 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

I don't even see why there is a dispute on this really? I mean, surely everyone can appreciate that folk who aren't happy their products are removed (the Forge World Legends and recent AoS controversies for example) should be catered for just as much as folk who don't much care for the gaming in that way?

I think there is were third party rules come into the conversation. GW has created a niche by not catering to the hobbyists whose collections were removed from the game or who don't like the way 40k currently plays. One Page Rules and F28 make no attempt to hide that those are the people their games are meant for. 

[The Unseen]

I think one thing a lot of people aren't talking about enough here is that from a purely business perspective, some of the recent decisions don't make sense. Specifically, how they are effectively erecting walls between different games that *should* have shared models between them. The plastic Heresy vehicles being the most obvious, but also with the weird thing going on with warcry teams and AoS.

 

I think this idea of making sure each and every kit is for sure *only* being purchased for this particular game system and no other speaks to a deep dysfunction between development teams, almost like what Lampert did that ended up totally gutting Sears over here in the States.

[terminator ultra]

46 minutes ago, The Unseen said:

*only* being purchased for this particular game system

*deamons

[Beta galactosidase]

3 hours ago, jaxom said:

I think there is were third party rules come into the conversation. GW has created a niche by not catering to the hobbyists whose collections were removed from the game or who don't like the way 40k currently plays. One Page Rules and F28 make no attempt to hide that those are the people their games are meant for. 

 

OPR Firefight and F28 tie in to the topic really well, and so do non-commercial houserules for 4th or 5th ed 40k which are popular.  While OPR Firefight and these other rules have so many advantages over 40k, they have a very similar premise of testing which collection is better.  

 

F28 has that co-op mode but that's not what I'm talking about.

 

I do a thought experiment where all the world considers a 40k 28mm wargame to be deeply enriching and valuable.  Parents bug their kids to go to 40k club every week.  People go to prestigious universities on 40k scholarships. Theres a distinguished faculty of 40k, 40k is in the olympics, the nobel commmittee awards a prize in 40k.  Most countries have a 40k version of the El Sistema youth orchestras from Venezuela. There's a version of the Erdős number for one really prolific 40k player, so for example I've never played a game against Prot but if I'd played against someone who'd played against Prot I'd be very proud that my Prot number is two.

 

I think in that scenario, 40k is very different from OPR or IRL 40k.  OPR and our IRL version of 40k are both collecting-oriented games.

 

 

[The Unseen]

That isn't the "Gotcha" you think it is. A whole bunch, I'd say all but I'm not certain of that, of the new Daemon models have been AoS specific, and would require counts-as for a 40k army.

 

And Beasts of Chaos just got punted out of AoS and back into only Old World.

[MegaVolt87]

I'll be honest one page rules and whatever other fan rules sets seem like a red herring, most people IRL will never see, feels like a YouTube and internet meme. 

[ZeroWolf]

6 hours ago, The Unseen said:

I think one thing a lot of people aren't talking about enough here is that from a purely business perspective, some of the recent decisions don't make sense. Specifically, how they are effectively erecting walls between different games that *should* have shared models between them. The plastic Heresy vehicles being the most obvious, but also with the weird thing going on with warcry teams and AoS.

 

I think this idea of making sure each and every kit is for sure *only* being purchased for this particular game system and no other speaks to a deep dysfunction between development teams, almost like what Lampert did that ended up totally gutting Sears over here in the States.

It actually makes some sense when looking from their side but it's definitely not a pro-consumer move.

 

They'll have done it for financial reporting reason, to show that product X is selling etc. Without actually speaking to customers, it's probably their only way of gauging success of a product. If people buy HH stuff, does that mean HH as a system is selling well or just that folk want the models for 40k/other game systems and no one is playing HH.

 

So, yeah, makes no sense to us but it probably makes perfect sense to the bean counters.

 

Important to note that they can't really stop 'count as' mind, at least not in the local scene or kitchen/garage/hobby room play 

[The Yncarne]

I've been playing OPR for more than a year. I can assure you people that play in my group are 40k refugees and not "collecting-oriented" gamers. In my experience OPR players are using GW figs almost exclusively with some migrating to 3D prints or legacy mini game lines. They're largely sick of the rat race that 40k has become IMO.

 

A little more on-topic is it doesn't matter if GW is a collector or gaming company insofar as how 40k the game is currently managed.

[phandaal]

5 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

I'll be honest one page rules and whatever other fan rules sets seem like a red herring, most people IRL will never see, feels like a YouTube and internet meme. 

 

One Page Rules may have started as a fan ruleset, but it is a fully-fledged game company now. They attend major conventions, they have a full model range, and they even just recently published a worldbook for their Grimdark Future setting.

 

The reason you see so many people talking about it is because there actually are a substantial amount of people playing those games. GW is still in a league of their own in terms of popularity, but if someone wants to find a One Page Rules game IRL, they can.

[Captain Idaho]

I've got friends who play One Page Rules and it's notable everyone I know who plays it, including Facebook groups etc, all are rather more liberal let's say regarding where they source their models... be it ebay or 3D printing etc.

 

So it's definitely a case where it detracts from sales in the company for those individuals.

 

Whilst many people point to GW making profits, personally as I've said before... Long term success needs a commited older hobbyist who spends money. I think rosey times now doesn't mean we don't need to see the work done to keep people happy later on. Customer retention is always key.