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Mr Mystery
01-19-2014, 03:32 PM
Hiya.

Just a quick one this time.

Let us suppose there is a change of management in GW Towers, from a new head to an entirely new board.

What might actually change?

I ask because I have about as much business sense as someone with very little business sense, and I'm interested in what the general trends are when such a thing happens.

And please, no wish listing without meaningful contribution.

Wolfshade
01-19-2014, 04:54 PM
I think the important thing would be to listen to the fan base. The 1 man stores seem to be working quite well in the UK and Europe, yet in the US we hear of examples of the thriving stores are the large local game stores.
So the first thing would be to do marketing/sales differently in each region to reflect the needs of the region and how each one works differently.

The next thing would be to consider that people do not buy a certain number of kits/month but a certain £/month. Now, while I usually defend the GW prices, I am very concerned that the price point is moving out of the reach of the new player.

For the most part I am quiet excited about how quickly GW are turning round new dex's and new material. The re-vamp of WD weekly would be interesting to see and I am hoping that this will mark a more content driven.

DarkLink
01-19-2014, 07:41 PM
I can see two things. For one, they seem to currently be sacrificing volume of sales for increased prices. That bubble seems to have just burst if their revenue problems hold, so either they have to start chasing volume again, or adjust their strategy in some other way.

Secondly, they might try actually advertising. Marketing is such a huge part of any business that the fact that they not only don't advertise, but that they actively avoid any and all marketing, even when it's free to them, and refuse to provide any customer support and/or quality work in the rules of their game that acts as the driving force for selling their models, is astounding.

Cap'nSmurfs
01-20-2014, 05:38 AM
They do a sort of advertising/marketing - events, school leagues, introductory games, and of course the licensed properties all perform a sort of marketing function. I agree, though, that their failure to exploit traditional advertising methods is genuinely bizarre. Even banner ads on websites would be something!

I don't think they've ever really understood the American market properly. It's a whole other world over there; not least in terms of the retail infrastructure.

I'd love to see - at the least - some kind of price freeze.

Mr Mystery
01-20-2014, 05:45 AM
I reckon we might see Web Advertising at most.

It seems to be pretty cost effective as not only do you 'pay per click' as I understand it (quite possibly wrong) but with Wibbly-Wobbly-Googley-Woogley, the ads are quite well targetted at your likely demograph.

This helps to mitigate the natural downside of advertising - One campaign raises sales and thus profit, hopefully negating the cost of the campaign. Miss a campaign season, and your sales go down with the exposure. Which means you get into a cycle of constant advertising. This is what has put GW off advertising in the past (I know, they told me when I was on the managers course. In the High Lords of Terra suite at Lenton :p )

But as said, Interwebular bannery ads do seem the natural step forward. Actual advertisement can be designed in house, linking to either a specific webpage (enter post/zip code, and find your local store) or the main GW site.

Price freeze does seem more likely than a price drop. But, we have recently begun to see money saving bundle deals, particularly with Nids. Probably just a toe in the water right now, but I reckon we'll see more of these.

DarkLink
01-20-2014, 06:17 AM
It would also help if they actually acknowledge that their rules are the vehicle they use to sell their models. Warmachine built itself on quality rules, with models second. Warhammer has plenty of great models, but mediocre rules. It seems logical that if sales are suffering, and you can't necessarily cut costs on producing models, the most blatantly obvious way of selling more stuff is improving the quality of the rules. If GW is smart, they'll realize that this does not mean making X number of units in the latest codex massively overpowered. That only decreases the quality of the gameplay and drives players away to companies that actually care about their rules. Instead, write quality, balanced rules, and suddenly you begin attracting players and sales go up.


They do a sort of advertising/marketing - events, school leagues, introductory games, and of course the licensed properties all perform a sort of marketing function. I agree, though, that their failure to exploit traditional advertising methods is genuinely bizarre. Even banner ads on websites would be something!

I don't think they've ever really understood the American market properly. It's a whole other world over there; not least in terms of the retail infrastructure.

Never seen any of that here in America, as you kind of point out.

Cap'nSmurfs
01-20-2014, 04:49 PM
Instead, write quality, balanced rules, and suddenly you begin attracting players and sales go up.

I don't think there's much evidence that rules drive people away, or indeed would attract many. I know you come from a very tournament-focussed scene - which is cool - but I suspect the majority of GW's playerbase worldwide isn't quite so fussed about "balance".

The other problem with rules-focussed business analysis is that unlike production costs, sales volume and prices, there's no way to make "rules quality" legible to businessmen. There's no objective standard - you say it's balance which makes a good ruleset; the GW design studio would say it's the ability of the rules to evoke a rich background and allow for a variety of forms of play. The thing is that neither of you is "right" - furthermore, it's impossible to measure or mould a ruleset in such a way that it's immediately obvious that this is the right way to go for the business. At the moment, GW says it's a models company, which means it writes rules to bring its models and its strong IP to life, but which can be played basically however the playerbase chooses.

And if you're Alessio Cavatore - probably the GW developer who most had balance and tournament play at the heart of his philosophy - you say, well, balance in this kind of game can't really exist. Or at least, never to the extent that a hardcore tournament player (which he is/was) will ever be satisfied with. :)

You're also treating it like a zero-sum game; there are plenty of people who play Warhammer AND Warmachine AND X-Wing etc. The trick isn't to keep a finite pool of players from migrating to the One System They Can Play, but making sure that your system is one of the several that people play - and if you're the market leader, ensuring you're the default or the introduction.

DarkLink
01-20-2014, 05:56 PM
While there are a good number of people that do play multiple systems, that still draws business away from any one particular system, and for many players it is genuinely a zero sum game.

Also, the idea that this game cannot be balanced is bull****. Warmachine does a pretty solid job. Sure, you'll never have perfect balance. But when you compare how 40k tournaments are almost always won by one of the top, say, 3 armies in the game, and anything other than those armies is lucky to get to the top tables, versus how in the largest Warmachine tournaments not only are all factions represented at the top tables, but you can legitimately win with even the weakest factions based on skill rather than pure luck. 40k could be much, much better balanced than it currently is.

Wildeybeast
01-21-2014, 11:25 AM
GW do do advertising. What is WD and the website? Not to mention their store displays and intro games. Plus, who do they advertise to? Anyone who is interested in playing tabletop war games will already know someone who can introduce them or at the very least will be aware of the existence of GW. There is no point them putting ads on the likes of BoLS because we already know full well about them. Mass market advertising like newspapers and TV would reach so few people who are interested but unaware of the existence of GW that they might as well just burn their money. I never understand why people bring up advertising as a solution to GW financial issues. Who are they advertising to and how?

Mr Mystery
01-21-2014, 02:36 PM
While there are a good number of people that do play multiple systems, that still draws business away from any one particular system, and for many players it is genuinely a zero sum game.

Also, the idea that this game cannot be balanced is bull****. Warmachine does a pretty solid job. Sure, you'll never have perfect balance. But when you compare how 40k tournaments are almost always won by one of the top, say, 3 armies in the game, and anything other than those armies is lucky to get to the top tables, versus how in the largest Warmachine tournaments not only are all factions represented at the top tables, but you can legitimately win with even the weakest factions based on skill rather than pure luck. 40k could be much, much better balanced than it currently is.

Yet Warmachine achieved that at the price of army variety.

Every army is a variation on the same theme. And every game can be won by simply nobbling the opposing Warcaster.

Whereas GW offers genuine differences between the races. War machines factions to my mind are akin to Space Marine Chapters. They all ultimately function in a generic way, but each has a couple of things to set it apart. And Hordes doesn't introduce much more variety either.