"What could Games Workshop do to turn their business around?" Topic

In your opinion what could Games Workshop do to turn their business and game empire around? If you played their games in the past, what would bring you back to gaming GW.

By the way, I have no dog in this fight,and I do not work for GW or any GW related gaming business. Just curious about the opinion of the grognards on TMP.

I wouldn't presume to give them business advice, but as far as me buying their stuff again?

Proper support for Epic or do a nice reprint of Rogue Trader, warts and all, like WOTC did for the AD&D books.

Good ideas, Weasel. You got what I meant: what would it take for you to buy their rules or minis again?

Are they in trouble?

Raise prices?

Winston Smith. They had lost some of the profit margin over the last couple years. They still make a profit and are probably one of the largest wargame and miniature manufacturer in the world. They have closed many shops in the USA and around the world and fired many of their employees recently. Their annual report is published online so you can check it out. In addition, there relentless price increases and rules rewrites and re-releases have annoyed and alienated many long time players. Perhaps the long time players are not GW's intended audience.

Cosmicbank: GW has raised prices again and again and again, and yet their profit margin dwindles.

cosmicbank 29 Jun 2015 6:22 p.m. PST "Raise prices?"

They have already tried that too many times!

I've never really played any of their games but bought a lot of White Dwarf magazines over the years for eye candy and painting ideas. I have some Epic 40K minis but came to that game too late to really get into it before it died off.

But their biggest flaw in my opinion is they always acted like PT Barnum was running the company, there was another sucker player born everyday. But market saturation has meant that people do have choices of what to play, and eventually you run out of suckers. But their never ending cycle of redoing codexes to make old troops ineffective so you have to buy the newest ones to win is a big part of it. Their resistance to people using anything non-GW and their overzealous copyright vendettas turned too many people off. I don't know if you can get that back, especially as it looks like they have chased away a lot of their best game designers and sculptors away.

The rub is that GW's very financial success, through its pricing policies, aggressive marketing/market saturation of its products and copyrighting of common sci-fi terms like "Space Marine" are what turned many of their original fanbase away in the first place, so to "win them back" would take some sacrifice on the part of GW that may be contrary to her profit-making raison d'etre.

While making money and winning back fans are not mutually exclusive, GW has to have more incentive than simply winning back any fans it may have "lost" to break from its current, highly successful business model.

Their many store closings have been pointed to as a sign of their decline, but it's simply "corporate restructuring" necessitated by overexpansion and overreach at a time of global recession after the bubble burst in 2008. They're lowering overhead and moved their operations in the US from Glen Burnie, Maryland to Tenessee, which also made them more "efficient."

And let's face it, despite all the talk of GW's imminent demise and financial unsustainability, GW has made the necessary adjustments and no other company in the industry comes even close.

Not dropping the WHFantasy rules completely for starters, Yes, i know, Age of Sigmar, end of the world thing . . . But it's a good set of rules and deserves to be available.

Let Forge World have it's head again, especially supporting the Specialist Games things again. FW was the last bastion of creativity in sculpts and design ideas and now it languishes in the same doldrum as the rest of the company.

Concentrate on the 30K developments – credit where it's due, the latest releases of a steampunk nature to support their Horus heresy period armies are damn nice and show a surprisingly innovative approach from what has become dull and just plain odd ( Citation: the Grey Wolf armour of the past 6 months, and that Tau Sunshark :P ).

And maybe consider casting in metal – it would make things more accessible, and as they've never done it before, bring new blood into the company.

Well, I sent them an email a while back explaining why they were getting no more business from me. I am a huge fan of GW's background, love the BL (still get their books second hand), but can't stand the company proper I don't feel the need to spill any more digital ink over pricing, so here were my other points:

Communication: GW needs a forums, a Facebook page. Somewhere for fans to drool over previews of the new stuff being released in a couple months, and to share feedback, both positive and negative.

Love of the Games and hobby: The website is a glorified store. I want to see modeling articles, scenarios and AARs, campaign ideas, galleries of paint schemes, and I want to know, really be able to tell, that the guys working at GW love the games as much as me, or even more.

Simplify the Sculpts: Yes, we understand that modern technology allows much more detailed models, but the newer stuff is plain cluttered, not cool. I have a copy of Space Hulk 4th edition, and I have one Terminator with a base coat, everything else is bare plastic. Why? There's too much crap on the armor. I can't get anything painted properly when to get the chestplate painted red, I have to work in a couple square millimeters surrounded by a chain and skull and a skull on a chain and the obligatory honorary toilet paper and seal and yet another chain and an Imperial Aquilla, I would have been much happier with mostly unadorned Termies with maybe a trophy or two on every few guys. And it seems like more and more models are getting this cluttered. Keep the quality, yes, but sell paintable figures, and bitz packs separately for those who want to take the Gothic look too far.

And for the love of Sigmar, bring back Specialist Games. Obviously totally counter to GW's policy, it's my policy that I won't play a wargame (rules, period, or scale) unless I can enjoy a reasonable game for the price of a nice, FFG style boardgame. Specialist Games had great rules, and if you know what you're doing, you can enjoy small games of Warmaster, Epic, or BFG for under $100. USD I always wanted to play the Specialist Games with more of the legit minis, and to try Man O' War.

TL;DR:
-Be social
-Love the product
-Stop making the minis overly intricate, I want to be able to paint them
-Warmaster and Epic or GTFO

And that is how G Dubs could win me over as a serious customer, rather than a guy with lots of BL books, some single minis, and a hodge-podge of legit and DIY SG stuff.

Re-release all of the Man O'War rules as a single book with the errata included. Re-releasing the ships would be a bonus, especially if they were plastic.

Neither of those is ever likely to happen, sadly.

Nothing, for me, personally.

I suspect cosmicbank may be on to something for others though……….

Their many store closings have been pointed to as a sign of their decline, but it's simply "corporate restructuring"

Actually this was more in line with keeping what profit they had.

Lower costs, increase prices, fire workers = Profit.

Thing is they can only do that for so long and they end up with no Profit.

Age of Sigmar looks horrible with the Asgardian miniatures.

Their decisions to kill off so many of their games and their current focus on overprice Codexes/Army Book and miniatures just means that they will continue to lose customers.

Since those customers will head off to other games that don't cost as much.

Today there are very few new gamers who will amass the number of armies that us old timers have.

For Warhammer Fantasy – 5 Armies

For Warhammer 40K – 5 Armies

For 40K Epic – 5 Armies

These are not Armies that are less than 1,000 points but 3,000+ Point Armies.

My Ork and Gobin Army is well over 500 Models.

A new gamer just can't do this due to their prices.

Re-release all of the Man O'War rules as a single book with the errata included. Re-releasing the ships would be a bonus, especially if they were plastic.

That would be a smart thing to do, which means that GW won't do it.

Slash prices. Make an effort to engage their customer base as a community. They might, *might* be doing the first with Age of Sigmar, or at least lowering the entry level bar.

More support for old titles such as Battlefleet Gothic, Mordheim etc. would have helped; perhaps that could be resurrected.

1: Strip Tom Kirby of his stock and kick him out of the company. Maybe even take him out back and shoot him, but taking his butt to court for Corporate Malfeasance and personally bankrupting him would be a nice start.

2: Now that Tom Kirby is gone, have someone sit down and do an analysis as to where the prices should be. When your revenue increase % is less than the weighted-average price increase %, you are selling less product.

3: Find someone who understands the internet, and how to generate excitement.

4: Rebalance the [expletives deleted] rules, with a complete re-write on the order of the difference between Warmachine MkII and original rules, or N3 and earlier Infinity rules.

5: Playtest the everliving daylights out of the new rules, in tournament setting with Win At All Costs rules lawyers attempting to break the rules. Repeat until rules are pretty well abuse-proof.

6: Bring back Specialist Games. Play massive games of Warmaster and Epic using 28mm minis.

7: Put the Specialist games back into White Dwarf as CORE GAMES.

8: Strongly reconsider licensing the Lord of the Rings stuff, unless it's actually making money.

9: Consider bringing back Warhammer Historical.

They deal in addiction, therefore:

1. Admit they have a problem.

They should pour all their money into advertising on TMP.

They should sell their Trademark to all the smaller companies that make models that very much look like GW/FW … And workout a good profit sharing plan …

I suppose if enough evidence of Kirby's demise was presented one might take a chance on revitalized Specialist and Historical divisions.

Bring back the best of the old stuff?

Warmaster. Barely dipped my toe at the time, but would love to have a second chance.

I hadn't realized they were moving the US branch to Tennessee. That's a very smart business decision. Memphis, TN is the major shipping hub for much of the US, while Nashville is a crossroads for three major east/west and north/south interstate systems. And the state is a very low tax state and a right to work state, which reduces company overhead. The low cost of living also makes it possible to pay workers quite well (in terms of their personal purchasing power for The Things They Want) without having to go into exorbitant salaries. (Compare the east or west coasts, where a modest home is likely well over a half million dollars, whereas in Tennessee the same home (on a larger lot, too), will be well under a half million dollars.) More bang for the buck, happiier employees, lower labor costs.
So that, at least, is a good move.

As for the rest, yes, they have PR issues. All companies have detractors, but when your core market is also your source of detractors, you've got a problem. Microsoft fans are never gonna love Apple, but Apple's not selling to them; the haters aren't their customers and probably never will be. But GW haters are typically one-time GW customers; that's BAD. It may not look bad right now on their bottom line, but it is bad. Heck, they're a TOY company. How does a TOY company manage to p*** off its own cistomers? If you're whole raison d'etre is to help people have fun, you have to be really screwing things up to wind up having people MAD at you, especally people who once loved your products. Granted, it's a geek market, and we'll get mad about anything, but still…
How to turn that around?
Get back to letting people have fun the way they want to have it, and just put out things with which they can have fun, and make it easier for them to get those things.
Right now, it strikes me that GW is trying to exert too much control, like a man squeezing water; he closes his fist, and all his water trickles out, and no more gets in. Cup the hand and let the water flow freely, and the hand is always full.
(This grasshopper moment brought to you courtesy of the fact it's almost midnight and I really need to be in bed…)
Point being: open up distribution. Let little stores sell at whatever discount they like. Loosen up on the "tournament" mentality. Support multiple editions. Find more low-cost-of-entry solutions, and more low-cost-of-build-up solutions (in short, lower prices to increase sales).
Just some thoughts.

Well-put!

Maybe I'm showing my age but I remember GW from before they got "distracted" by fantasy war gaming and then by miniature figures.

If they ditched the idea of writing games where the player who can afford to spend the most on miniatures wins and just went back to old fashioned strategy board games I'd certainly sit up and take note. Even their first fantasy battle games using cardboard counters (all of which were in the box with the rules when you bought the game)were good until they started using rule sets only to sell miniatures.

The best game they ever designed, one which won numerous awards internationally, was based around planning railway networks in 19th century England, great game for serious strategy enthusiast to plot and scheme over, yet still simple enough for the whole family to play every Christmas just for a bit of light entertainment.

They could open a Chinese market by the discovery of a half dozen or so lost Chinese Primarchs.

Based on the continued interest in a number of discontinued games it would seem that they have a number of good games which could be reintroduced. Those I am familiar with are Space Hulk, Epic 40K, Battlefleet Gothic, and Man O War. Dreadfleet seemed to be an attempt at a re release of Man O War in a limited edition with a new twist or two. It did nothing for me like a reasonably priced new edition and new factions for Man O War would have. Space Hulk was apparently a re-release in a limited edition format. Great for a quick shot of cash but not a steady income stream. Limited edition re-releases do not garner ongoing profits. If they re-released some of the older games which have demonstrated an acceptance by the gaming community at a reasonable price and as ongoing product they might establish a positive income stream. Based on the original popularity of some of these games they should also draw interest from new gamers further increasing revenue.

One would have to feel they are in need to turn things around.

GW would seem to disagree that is the case.

Nothing GW really do interests me. I still play my 1984 edition of Warhammer and Rogue Trader, along with Necromunda and Mordheim. Nothing they currently do interests, and I cant see them wasting resources on bringing back niche games when they obviously require a far bigger revenue stream…

Stop making their orcs so green with huge Cptn America chips would show a change of direction ;D

I'd like to see a new version of the Valley of the Four Winds game….

and the sorcerer's duel game was good too.

To "get me back" they'd have to become a wide ranging game company again, but since focusing tightly on two or three games has made them a huge world wide success they probably don't want to get me back!

Hilarious joke thread!

Give away their miniatures for free, or maybe at cost? Pull out the old molds and start marketing the dated and crappy looking miniatures from 25 years ago? Pay for a company website forum so TMP members can go there to rant and rave against their EVIL ? I have a feeling that this is what you are looking for to "turn thier business around" and attract TMP members.

How about just continuing to make cool stuff.

They make stuff I like, I buy it.

They make stuff I dont like, I dont buy it.

I don't need to feel like a special snowflake when I purchase something from a company. My ego is not hurt by Tom Kirby (especially to the point of shooting him).

There is excitement generated for their products… Age of Sigmar has really generated quite a lot of excitement locally (But whether or not its actually any good remains to be seen).

Honestly, this hobby isn't even expensive at all compared to other grown up hobbies. The real expense is the time you spend building and painting stuff.

As far as their base hating them… you can't satisfy nerds, they will complain about the fluff, the miniatures, the prices, etc. The more they like something, it seems, the more they hate on it.

But nothing lasts forever. Its possible that GW could go under at any time. Then there will be a collective "I told you so" across the Internet, emanating from each and every dank parent's basement as the 20+ years of neckbeard predictions finally come true.

If they could get their games to play like their books read … they would have a great product!!

Mike B

Open white Dwarf to others to do articles and allow adverts. Welcome in others. Become the friendly face of wargame's, not that bunch of evil SNIP's we all hate. Cut back on the money men and get some real wargamer's in. Scarp the rules system and write something half good. Admit they are part of the wargaming world NOT the only part. Support old games. Bring the prices down. Change the culture from one of the customers are A-holes who will pay what we ask as they are dumb to the customer is king and should be respected. So fat chance they will ever see a penny off me.

Ho yes and make space marines 40mm tall. Real scale so they tower over other humans and make them the toughest characters in the game.

I just had another friend tell me he can't keep up with the prices and continuous releases. This is an adult by the way with no kids in a two income household. He is now selling roughly $7,000 USD dollars worth of product off steadily on EBay. GW please note that is $7,000 USD worth of product that someone will not buy from you. Sometime I wonder if GWs target audience is preteens that can't afford much of anything.

I still collect for Epic 40K and Rogue Trader 40K.

Here is what I would do…

#1 Listen to your customers the ones that actually buy your games. Your target audience might be preteens but how many of them can afford a $1,000 USD army.

#2 Stop making rule sets that reward the person that can spend the most on the hobby. The poor man gets priced out and moves onto something else. His richer friend soon follows if he wants to spend time with that friend. You want to grow your customer base not alienate it.

#3 Bring back the Specialist Games! A new exciting game being released periodically to inspire people to buy. I would also make the cap on buying EVERY RELEASE for that game at around $500. USD The game is considered complete and then move on to the next Specialist Game. If you feel the need release a miniature once or twice a year to support the game (i.e. variant of existing figure for that range)

I can't count the number of people that said, "That looks cool" and then got a horrified look on their face when they saw what it would take to field ONE 40K army. This whole he will buy a starter box and get hooked does not work.

Nothing. It is past the point of salvaging.

The end has been drawn out for a lot longer than expected, but at this point there is no possible scenario where they can keep the investors and customers happy at the same time.

One must lose out. Just as you can not keep the WAAC tourney players and the casual players both happy. The company has to choose who is more important. At this time it seems ultra wealthy tournament players and share holders- (and company suits as well) are the priority.

In the end they could survive on a tiny group of wealthy players, but this seems unlikely to me.

Just my opinion, and I am in my basement typing with a collection spanning 20 years setting all about me. I should point out that my collection stopped growing when the army books hit $42 USD and a box of 10 plastics went to $41.50 USD. It would have kept growing at a steady pace, but it became impossible to accept the price increases. And I really dislike playing against WAAC players. Which the ludicrous army books kept enabling.

I will try to shave at some point today however.

99% fewer skullz.

I think they should look at Lego 10 years ago, the trouble the company was in which is similar to GW, and how an outsider turned it around. It's studied in business classes today.

All I do is 6mm Sci-fi, since '90. With a lot of GW/FW Epic in my inventory. IMO, they need to stay out of 6mm and leave it to the all the newer 6mm Sci-fi that is currently on the market. We don't need their over priced, "Orwellain" skullduggery creeping into the 6mm sci-fi market and gaming. When I say "Orwellian" … they do "new speak" and rewrite the rules, fluff, etc. far too often, IMO. 4 versions of the long "defunked" Epic and now how many of 40K ? 7 at last count ? No GW stay out of 6mm sci-fi ! We in the 6mm Sci-fi Universe are doing very well without you …

How can you bring back the passion that was seen when Rogue Trader, Adeptus Titanicus, and Epic came out? These were adult orientated sci-fi miniatures games that erupted onto the scene and caused a frenzy for quite a few years. I myself dropped a few thousand on these games and no matter to which gaming store you went to there were games going on. Also, you had to be creative as they didn't have the various codexes, specific models, etc. You basically built scenery, modified models, used parts off of other kits, and it was a very exciting time.

As time went on and it became an endless arms race geared towards pre-teens and teens, I lost interest and sold everything I had, never to return.

I think that the mistake GW is making is that it believes it needs to change its products to improve profits (hence the changes to all the ranges for IP protection etc).

The simple thing would be to rationalise the rules into a 'single book' format rather than having a lot of Codex books and have the miniatures come with a card listing what rules they use from the rule book.

Then they need to stick to a base size and understand that people with big collections don't like having to re-base things.

Finally they need to take a look at their pricing.

GW products (on the whole) are excellent quality and many more people would get them if they were a bit cheaper and likely to remain unchanged in the rules (rather than having to be modified every edition).

One thing they shouldn't do is bring back loads of out of date stuff. If they bring back things like Epic/Manowar etc they should update the rules and miniatures to fit in better with today's market… a simple re-release would be a step backwards.

Simple- stop being be a publicly-traded company.

They could remain the 800-lb Gorilla of Wargaming for many years to come, if it didn't have to maximize profits at the cost of its own future.

I started going to GW in the days of the Nottingham Broadmarsh Center, long before 40K etc came out. It was full of spotty, long haired teens then, so what has changed… perhaps most of the members of this forum. I don't think many here are their target market, hence the reason they don't bother to advertise here. GW sells miniatures, its games change to promote those sales of miniatures. There is no point adding extra races or games to the shelf as it doesn't increase sales of miniatures, one cannibalises the other. They have seen this in the past, they really aren't as stupid as many like to claim.
I think they've made the right move with WFB. The old versions are still there to play if you want to. I'd personally like to see a return of Epic, with big emphasis on titans. Lots of stompy things.

You can get a 40K-sized Forge World Warlord Titan for a small fortune:
link

But yeah, I just don't see popular Specialist Games like 'Epic,' 'Necromunda,' 'Mordheim,' BFG, BB or 'Warmaster' making a comeback for nostalgic reasons because these niche games are not profitable enough for GW.

Standalone board games like SH and 'Assassinorum: Execution Force' aren't exactly big moneymakers for them either.

Move to 40mm figures?

Okay, okay, okay… JK!

Jez, what you point out is true, but also part of the problem. Right now, they are a company that makes and sells miniatures. They didn't start that way. They made board games, and miniatures and a lot of other things. They were an IP (intellectual property) company that leveraged those properties via the products they sold.

Over the years, they shed nearly everything except the miniatures to just become a miniatures company, and shed all but the most profitable IP to just focus on the ones that made the most money. They went from creating IP to servicing existing IP.

In a lot of ways, they were the Fantasy Flight of their day. Now they license some of that stuff to Fantasy Flight, who is run much leaner and meaner than GW could ever hope to be.

I loved a lot of the product that GW put out, but that early creative energy gave way to servicing the brand, and honestly, even at half the price, I doubt I'd buy much more than I do now- which is the very occasional bit that strikes my fancy and the starter sets that prove to have value.

As for GW as a brand company, I'm far more invested in other companies that are innovating and creating new properties, or servicing licensed properties in new and innovative ways. I'd like to support GW, but they seem to have focused so tightly on miniatures for their existing brands that they lost true innovation along the way. I'm sure they think their new approach to Warhammer IS innovation, but frankly, it screams of the last death throes of something that has been declining for years.

As an aside, I wonder how much money they'll end up making from all the licensed video games coming out.

Might be a pretty lucrative business.

I remember when GW was just a shop in Hammersmith, and boy did I spend some money there in the day, but that was a long time ago. I stopped once they went down the road of "One Game to rule them all, One Game to find them…"

I'd personally like to see a return of Epic, with big emphasis on titans. Lots of stompy things.

Have you seen what SCP/Exodus Wars link link and TMG link is doing about Big stompy things in 6mm ? Who needs GW ? On this TMP link I list other 6mm Sci-fi … maybe worth a look. Again, who needs GW ?

Brand rebuilding is tricky, but not impossible.

In raw business terms I'd suggest the following:
1. A wider gaming industry exists, get over it!
2. Don't wait till a current gaming bubble has burst before jumping in.
3. Learn the lessons of your own business / know your own business. How long had fans been banging on about HH miniatures before they started appearing?
4. New IP – with the best will in the world GW has one product 40K – if the kidz stop find SMurfz cool you very exposed.
5. Computer game licenses are pretty lucrative, but those licenses are going to dry up if the customer base goes, see No 5. The same goes for board games – yes GW has a back catalogue it can mine, but its not infinite, and not all of its gold.
6. Licenses have been good to them. Why not pick up a sci-fi companion for LoTR – it doesn't have to be either of the big two?
7. Hire people on the basis of ability not product knowledge.
8. Entry level games, they tried it in the past using their own IP – not sure it worked that well, personally I'd hitch it to kids literature license and get at them via book shops…
9. On a personal level I'd go for a new 40K scale (15-10mm) to promote the big table battles – make entry cheap for a squad and appropriate transport (£10-15) and then pile it on for the elites, super heavies and titans. Apocalypse seemed to be good for them (see No 3), but there is only so many 28mm miniatures and vehicles you can get on a 6x4 table and Epic clearly has plenty adherents still.

I suspect No. 4 would be the most difficult for them…

Personally I don't blame the money men – as I suspect they don't formulate company strategy.

Couldn't careless about GW, haven't bought any of their figures for over 30 years.