"The Quiet Success that is Games Workshop" Topic

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Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the company is a gaming business Juggernaut.

I don't hate 'em -- I've moved on. They lost me when they kept pushing new rules updates and invalidating all the prior lists designed to force you to by new rules and figures to play in "official" tournaments (a big part of the gaming society of Warhammer products). They had ne back when they did Mordheim, loved that game -- but they made a corporate decision to kill it off because they felt it detracted or even cannibalized some percent of their core Warhammer sales. Silly, if anything else that game got me buying their stuff again. I also liked the LOTR line, but they mushroomed the cost of product and lost me there as well. Oh well, people enjoy their games and they can serve as a gateway to other systems.

I started wargaming before they did and was never attracted to either their figures or their rules. I did do a bit of Fantasy at one time but never anything GW, it just didn't and doesn't appeal to me.

It always seems a bit daft knocking them for their commercial practices if you are not a buyer, or even a potential buyer, so I usually don't bother.

People get ripped off by commercial enterprises every day of the week, why should they be that different ?

I worry a bit. No doubt SBminis is right that they're a "gateway"--sometimes. But I worry about the reverse--the kids who never get to historical miniatures, or even picking their own rules and figures in F&SF because they met GW early on, and think that's all miniature warfare is or can be.

Probably paranoia. But even paranoids are right some of the time.

Philadelphia Eagles fans are a good reference point WRT the WH40K milieu. I got USO tickets when my ship was in the yard in Philly. Went to the game. Eagles won (don't remember against whom). I felt safer on the ground in Bosnia (as a Navy officer, not a ground warfare person) than I did in the parking lot after the game. YMMV.

As the article describes, I enjoy the milieu. Haven't liked the games beyond original Space Hulk. They're not bad or wrong or evil (well, I mean somebody in the company probably is), as stated above, I'm just not the target audience.

I wouldn't worry about people getting "stuck" in GW games. Most people I know that play WH40K play other games as well. I think if someone got "stuck" there, it would be no different than a person getting "stuck" in Napoleonics, or playing Star Frontiers. And if they really didn't want to play other things, you probably wouldn't want them playing other things with you.

Also, GW, like many companies, isn't the same thing today as it was in the 80's. Hopefully it will be something different ten years from now.

I wouldn't worry about people getting "stuck" in GW games. Most people I know that play WH40K play other games as well

Well, honestly, if people play Bolt Action, Flames of War, or Kings of War -- they are still playing Warhammer/W40K…

Maybe in some ways, SB. (WSS actually published my rant on the subject.) But I think in all the other cases they're more aware of the options. They at least have to go to stores which sell other choices or provide whatever the parent company doesn't.

But GW is a pretty good vertical monopoly. You step into a GW shop, and you get all the options GW provides (but only those options) and they're complete--rules, castings, scenarios, magazine, paints, brushes right down to the cup of water to clean out your paintbrush. You can do GW and never need or be aware of anything else. How common this is, I have no way of telling.

None of this keeps me from buying their paints, or even some of the F&SF castings. But I'd worry less about them if they didn't have their own retail outlets.

I suppose the Great Wargames Survey could ask where people s red art in terms of genre, and where they have ended up. You'd see whether GW was a gateway, but I can't think of a way to identify anyone who got 'locked in' who might otherwise have entered the wider hobby.

I don't give them a second thought. I am not interested in the vast majority of what they make; I have picked up a couple of used figures to use for other things. If people want to keep giving them money, more power to everyone.

Thought about that myself, advocate. With the right questions, you could determine what percentage of general miniature wargaming people in a given age group started with GW, but since the survey is outside GW's closed loop, it can't tell you how many people start with GW and never go beyond, and since it surveys wargamers it can't tell you how many people sampled GW and decided that GW was miniature wargaming, and they didn't care for it or had outgrown it.

And since we can't measure it, it's entirely possible I'm worried about a non-existent problem. It's just that they are so many and we are, comparatively, so few that I sometimes see the pre-adolescent hordes as lost horse & musket players.

It is rather amusing to see GW referred to as a 'gateway to the hobby' when, in fact GW IS the wargaming hobby.

FYI I am an historical gamer with no real interest in F&SF let alone GW's various products. However, I could wax lyrically about the many things GW do well that earns them not just the position of flag-bearer of the hobby but in most people's mind, the entire hobby.

The Train & Hobby show I have put on demonstration (historical) wargames for the past 16 years has a telling perception. Nearly all the punters are very interested in what we're doing but totally bemused by our hobby….until I mention Warhammer. Then, for about half, the penny drops.
This re-fight of Rorke's Drift is a kind of Warhammer game!

I think it wise we consider Shakespeare if we want to see where our hobby sits:

"Why, men, GW doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty historical gamers Walk under its huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves."

This may or may not concern you – it doesn't worry me in the slightest. But in case it does: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

I didn't buy a lot of stock in the company, but what I did buy certainly did go up.

I have a fair amount of obsolete 40K stuff that finds its way into Traveller games, but I don't actually play any of GW's games or buy any current production. If you do though, you might consider hedging those expenses in the stock market.

People discuss GW business practice without seemingly understanding that GW is a publicly listed company. They're out to satisfy their shareholders, not their customers.

They're a miniatures company, it says so in their mission statement in the annual report, so their rules are there to get people to buy the miniatures. I don't know why anyone takes them seriously as a "wargames company".

The big question is the impact of 3D printing. Who's going to spend hundreds of dollars on an "old World" army when you can 3D print it for next to nothing. And, if people aren't buying the miniatures, the game won't be supported, so the 3D printing – to be able to play the game – could easily destroy the game.

GW 'gamers' seem to put up with a long litany of nonsense decisions, from rules changes that invalidate their model collection, to having models currently unavailable for their army, all at the whim of the bean counters.

I have some GW models, the 'fluff' is compelling, and the models are beautiful. Usually the 'fluff' is completely at odds with how the models perform on the tabletop, but I have little interest in actually playing the games.

Predictions of GW's imminent demise have been around since the 80's and yet, here we are.

Warhammer is merely a mash up of ideas from older historical & fantasy rules, even the idea of a background story (fluff) behind the characters & races was done long before GW existed.

Many wargamers of my generation (started in mid 60's) really don't think of what GW offer as the same hobby they have had for years. Related, possibly a cousin, yes, but not quite the same. It isn't arrogance or superiority, there are significant aspects of historical gaming that don't appear in GW stuff and those matter.

For the correct target market (not TMP) GW is great – Warhammer stuff from about 0:30:

Youtube – Graham Norton show – Henry Cavill

You can do GW and never need or be aware of anything else.

How is that a "monopoly"? Exactly what unfair business practice do they carry out to limit consumer choice? Is every other company that does not sell competitors' products a monopoly?

No doubt that they are a juggernaut in the hobby and take up most of the oxygen in any wargaming room. I keep wondering where the financial ceiling is for gamers who use their products, but to their credit they've never reached it.

Several of us had played Epic eons ago and were interested in the new system that just came out. It seemed like 1500 points per player was about right and we were looking at some 3000 points per side type of games. The cost was going to be somewhere close to $2,000 USD (depending upon where you ordered it from), so we dropped that idea. However, people are paying it, so they must know what they're doing.

eto, I wrote "vertical monopoly." Do you not know what that is?
Try this:
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Or this:
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I didn't say it was illegal or immoral. I didn't say it was unfair. But when you own pretty much every step from raw material to retail outlet, the term used in econ courses is (or was) "vertical monopoly." Ford used to be the outstanding example back pre-WWII, and it didn't mean GM and Chrysler weren't around. It meant that those tires on a Ford came from a Ford rubber plantation, and the engine block was cast from Ford iron ore. When you hear some company sell off a function "to concentrate on our core competencies" it means they've decided this doesn't work for them. But so far, it's worked well for GW.

I have never played any of their games or bought any of their figures but I still wish them success.

martin

I started with GW stuff and started with the WHFB rules back in the late 80's early 90's. I lost interest rather quickly after they pulled their first big crap-a-thon on retailers such as Wargames West. (Yeah I am that old).
I've done some 40k. Didn't interest me.
I looked at BF Gothic. Liked the idea, then realized that GW would kill it, so I passed.
I looked at Warhammer Historicals, that short lived line of rules, (and picked up the western and pirate rules), and watched GW kill the line.
I've watched them develop, produce, sell, and then kill each product line, (kind of like what they are doing to their LOTR stuff now), and I have passed.
I do support them by buying some of their paints, and the occasional scenic piece that can be used, but that's about it.
The way they keep shafting their fan base and yet people keep coming back to them is similar to "battered wife syndrome"….

I understand what both vertical integration and a vertical monopoly are. And how they are different, but related things. Both of your sources (and many others on the topic of vertical integration) explicitly make the distinction:

As a company engages in more activities along a single supply chain, it may result in a market monopoly. A monopoly that occurs due to vertical integration is also called a vertical monopoly

A monopoly produced through vertical integration is called a vertical monopoly

Unless you have evidence of a legal or government granted monopoly, GW operates in a capitalist system, where a monopoly would have to be gained by subversive means.

Also, while we're on the topic … what monopoly? What lack of options do I or anyone else have?

I think it is wonderful that a toy, model, and game company is doing gangbusters. I don't have stock and I don't even play, but their models are first rate and (as far as I know) they are not 100% responsible for climate change.

Fair enough, eto. The distinction was not made (as I recall) when I was locked in econ classes long ago, and examples like Ford were explicit. If it makes you happier to say that GW is massively vertically integrated, please consider my initial statement so amended.

But the point for the purposes of this discussion remains: the persons playing any other of the franchise systems are connected to a broader miniature wargaming community. GW players need not be so.

Going back to "locked in" players: perhaps surveying GW customers and asking if they do any other figure gaming. And show that against length of time with GW. I don't know if GW would care, though.

The type of VI you are talking about can enable a customer to have a "one stop shop" for (in our case) rules, terrain, minis, accessories, supplies, and a venue. WizKids had a similar VI for MageKnight and HeroClix (though you didn't need supplies).

I don't know how either of those approaches severely limits a customer, unless they were looking for the 1SS in the first place (whether they knew it or not). Especially in the 21st Century, if you're looking for WH40K, you are pretty much exposed to other options. Unless you lived and never left an isolated location where a GW shop was the only option (I never heard of or saw one until I was in my late 20's), I think this is just a consumer choice to go with the 1SS.

In terms of sheer size/depth/breadth, there isn't a scifi game genre even approaching the same radar.

Regardless of feelings, GW is the wargaming ambassador by default.

Good grief, eto, are you on their payroll? I said as much--and also that I simply couldn't tell whether my worries were justified. I didn't see a GW shop until I was well into my 30's--but the plural of anecdote is not data. Neither of us is a 12 year old in a town whose only wargame retailer is a GW shop.

Not sure "most common first experience" is the same as "ambassador" Augustus. GW doesn't represent anything, and the only interests it works for are its shareholders.

"As is their fiduciary duty."

Quite true, Mad Anthony. I tend to look at GW the way I look at credit card companies which rely on collecting interest from people who can't or won't pay them off, or book publishers who turn out poorly-made hardcovers in the happy thought that no one will read the book twice. (Looking at you, SMP!) It's a little embarrassing that they can be successful that way.

And frankly, I find the thoroughly broken GW fanboys a bit embarrassing. The average miniature wargamer is pig-headed, opinionated, intelligent and reasonably well-informed. I may not agree with them, but they're worthy opponents. The ones I hear at the game shop complaining that GW has invalidated their army while buying more from GW--paying them for having done this--are more like sheep. Heaven forbid that they write their own rules, or even continue to use the previous versions. They wouldn't be Official!

I get along fine with the Oldhammer crowd, or the guys who like a game of Necromunda between TSATF and DBA, but people who would give up armies and rules they love because some suit in England told them to don't feel like wargamers to me. At the least, they're poor representatives of the hobby.

Except that if I accept GW is part of "the hobby" I and my pig-headed well-informed friends may be the outliers. So I don't do that.

Neither of us is a 12 year old in a town whose only wargame retailer is a GW shop.

Does that place exist? The GW business model would seem to not make them viable unless the community could support a wider variety of retailers. I've only seen them in such places.

Also, does this location not have Internet access? I would have a hard time constructing a web search that only returned GW exclusive responses (i.e., didn't take me to a site that sold other wargaming stuff beyond GW).

I haven't picked up a copy of White Dwarf in a while (I got my wargaming stuff from a bookstore, back in the day in a rural area), but I remember (OK, I just checked…) having ads for non-GW stuff in it.

Is this actually an issue?

And frankly, I find the thoroughly broken GW fanboys a bit embarrassing.

That's a different thing.

It doesn't require any type of undue influence or malevolent scheme. In fact, this behaviour is prevalent in areas other than wargaming for people who have multitude of options. It stems from a desire to participate in an activity but only contribute in a minimal way to making the activity happen.

I don't think its any different for them to hemorrhage money into a One Stop Shop for wargaming than anyone else who patrons a 1SS for anything else. I find it less heinous than people who blindly advocate for politicians while putting no effort into understanding the actual details of the policies in play.

I would not be surprised that the people you call "fanboys" are equally embarrassed of … uhm … "greybeards"? … who complain about no consensus on rules and mini basing systems. They have a consensus. Why can the people complaining about that see that it is right there in front of them?

While I am not on GW's payroll … GW makes use of their desire for a wargaming 1SS. I make use of the GW business model of obsolescence that gives me what I consider to be really nice figures on the secondhand market for <$1 each.

I think we'd have to rope an Englishman or at least a Brit into the conversation to know about shop distribution, eto. Seems to me I'd heard them grip a bit about communities where the only game shop was the GW one, but I wouldn't swear to it. As for the web search, that presumes the hypothetical kid already knows about miniature wargaming--precisely the situation I wasn't complaining about.

Nor have I complained about basing--though please note that anyone who standardized for Warhammer or Gorka-Morka has had the rug pulled out from under them. Same thing for rules. Same thing for troops. Though in each of these cases I suppose you could argue that "whatever GW says this week" is a consensus of sorts, it's hardly standardization.

How old was that White Dwarf, by the way? Lots of things were different early on. The first GW shop carried other peoples' products.

Oh. And the term is "silverbacks."

Silverback is waaaaaay to complimentary to describe me (even if reasonably accurate in the literal sense). ;)

If the kid knows nothing at all of wargames, they won't find anything at all, because he won't know to look.

The web search I was talking about was searching for "GW" or any associated GW specific property. While Google (not the only option) does customize web search results based on history of searches and options selected (so … YMMV), I get results that take me to sites with more options that GW in the first ten.

The old WD? Well, three of them … Didn't you notice the 45 minute pause in the middle of my last post? DOM is trying her hand at GMing Call of Cthulhu. There was a nice D&D article in one that I'm going to refer to her. And lots of great, nostalgic eye candy.

I didn't say I would agree with them about standardization. I just said they could see it that way. And the fact that I am not interested in all the unpleasantness (for me) that goes with that choice doesn't make it an unsound argument.

It's "grognard" to us and to them.

This list – link – (which has some issues) lists 124, but is close to the 135 listed here – link – None of these are isolated in small villages. They are all in shopping centers where you would expect to find a bookstore with other wargaming and RPG stuff. Extracting city names and cross-referencing population was easy enough, but I don't have a grad student to pull up all the maps of the shopping malls they are in and search adjacent stores within, say 10 miles.

U have a hard time swallowing the myth of the GW store on a remote promontory with no other civilization around for miles and miles. I've been to (and lived in a few) remote areas where people had Porches, but none that had Porsche dealerships.

Plus, you add in that Alaska has remote places that isolate you from other influences … the UK, not so much.

It's not all about linear distance. I've lived places where it's easier to go 60 miles one way than two mountains the other or places where five blocks away is functionally a different planet. Still having a hard time seeing it ….

It's "grognard" to us and old fart to them.

That's a upgrade from "nerd", so I'll take it!

Years ago, when they were a new company with few employees, I made a transatlantic call to order rules & figures that weren't available in the US & the gentleman I spoke to was very impressed & grateful that I did so. He gave me a discount on my order & added a condensed set of rules & a few free figures. It seems that their business model has changed. I also like Mordheim & have run games at cons & at DFW game shops & a junior college.