Where's the goodwill?

[daboarder]

i see things as they are, not how they should be. What the heck does that mean? Games workshop is a publicly traded company that states very clearly that they are a model making company first...and oh yeah we have these games to. Their fans want them to be a gaming company first.

Then in 2009 kickstarter launched and suddenly other companies got a huge shot in the arm.

That's ok though, i know exactly how to deal with that little monster.

From the GW stock listing, as in how they identify themselves to the world.

Games Workshop lets ferocious armies clash without the drawback of actual bloodshed. Founded in 1975, the company designs and manufactures model soldiers, game systems, and accessories for tabletop wargaming.

[ElectricPaladin]

GW can declare itself whatever the hell it wants. It can declare itself the prettiest princess at the ball. None of that means a rat's damn if GW is failing to give it's customers what they want, because we are the ones with the money and we decide how to spend it. If we decide that we want to buy the products of a company that takes the rules more seriously, then Games Workship will die, and it will deserve to, because that's what happens to companies who invert the relationship between themselves and their consumers.

[Lexington]

There's a pretty toxic internal culture at GW anymore, judging from what people "on the inside" say. The creative side of the company feels victimized by a community that's instantly judgmental of their products, and their response seems to be to ignore all critical evaluation of their output. The business side's philosophy when it comes to dealing with hostility to their increasingly crazy practices is, in what are apparently the words of a GW rep, "get better customers." This, and their steadfastly idiotic opposition to having a PR department, makes for an awful relationship with their fanbase.

[ElectricPaladin]

There's a pretty toxic internal culture at GW anymore, judging from what people "on the inside" say. The creative side of the company feels victimized by a community that's instantly judgmental of their products, and their response seems to be to ignore all critical evaluation of their output. The business side's philosophy when it comes to dealing with hostility to their increasingly crazy practices is, in what are apparently the words of a GW rep, "get better customers." This, and their steadfastly idiotic opposition to having a PR department, makes for an awful relationship with their fanbase.

Yeah... that's a bad combination of flaws. If I were put in charge of GW, I don't know what I'd do to fix that. My random thoughts:

1) Hire a God-damned PR department.
2) Do whatever the hell it takes to improve the morale in the creative team. Super job security? Improve the pay? Facebook-style breakroom? Give them unlimited access to the public to explain their creative choices? The balance to "company that is tight and fast it's feet" is "creative team that is confident enough in its product that it is willing to do create without worrying what anyone else thinks."
3) Cut prices. Release free stripped-down pdfs of rules and codices (no fluff, no art, all the content). Release printable cutout armies. Lower the barriers to entry, trust the product to sell itself when these new players have the cash.

That's what I'd do.

[silashand]

There's a pretty toxic internal culture at GW anymore, judging from what people "on the inside" say. The creative side of the company feels victimized by a community that's instantly judgmental of their products, and their response seems to be to ignore all critical evaluation of their output.

Well, if they would actually listen to their customer base and care more about the quality of what they produce then people wouldn't demonize them. The fact that they:

1. Leave broken rules intact for years on end

2. Leave player questions unanswered for years on end

3. Tell their customers to essentially "fix it yourself" anything that doesn't work properly

4. Keep spouting the ridiculous notion that they are primarily a model company when their company name is *GAMES* Workshop

5. Keep saying their games aren't meant for competitive play as an excuse for writing sloppy rules

I could go on, but it's really all been said before. If they feel bad about how their customers talk about them or their work they have no one to blame for it but themselves.

[DarkLink]

Their rules writers also need to grow some balls and start keeping up with the times. There are dozens of units that are really bad (Howling Banshees are a good example) for no reason other than GW just keeps copy/pasting their rules from the last edition. It wouldn't be hard to make them great again, you just need to actually, y'know, change their rules a little bit. Tactical Terminators have been overpriced for a long time, but nope, GW has decided that they are 40pts, get a 2/5+, and have a Storm Bolter and Power Fist, and that's that.

GW needs to go through their books and revamp all of those legacy units that exist in theory but no one actually uses (except maybe longtime vets who pull them off the dusty shelf on occasion for kicks). Bam, there's a ton of new model sales right there. Howling Banshees are awesome models, if they were any good, everyone would get some.

[biffster666]

Thanks for that nugget Daboarder. What I was making a reference to was GW's business model...

[url]http://investor.games-workshop.com/our-business-model/[/url]

I should have included the link.

[Denzark]

I'm in the military. I sometimes refer to an 'us' and 'them'. The us is the great men and women busting their balls at the coalface, doing the scut work and making it work. The 'them' is the system, its byzantine complexity, staff officer weenies who push out policy with utterly no relation to ground truth, the adminers who **** up your paperwork, etc.


I sometimes feel the same way about GW. The individuals in stores may do the hard sell, but that is policy. The design staff are constrained for sure, the Big company influences game design and I don't like it. But mustering anything beyond ambivalence?

Its like getting upset with George Lucas for Jar Jar Binks. It sucks dogs pizzle for sure, but he gave me Empire and Jedi. So I'm not going to hate him for it.

GW may be nobbers at the moment and have been for a while. I am yet to be convinced they have reached a tipping point for change - I don't think the recent profit dip was the instigator of change ie we have all taken as much as we will and they have to change or die. I may be wrong - the recruitment of an individual to improve the shopping experience may be a sign of a new approach.

But the cost, rules issues etc don't faze me because once I learnt to deal with hte change from my beloved second to third edition, and once I got over Chaos 3.5 going the way of the dodo, I find all the whinging quite laughable.

I have attended around 10 Throne of Skulls tournaments at GW HQ. They are the pinnacle of the hobby experience for me, competitive awesomely painted (in the main) armies played by mostly good dedicated enthusiasts. This is only possible because of GW.

You could argue it is the people who make it not the company but Jervis, Vetock and Blanche would probably consider the company has a little part to play.

[SaveModifier]

People hate Valve, people absolutely hate Valve, people think Steam is evil and that Gabe Newell is a con artist.

Anywhere you look, any hobby, the big fish gets hated, its the way of the world with Nerds. The bigger and more successful a company gets, the more is expected of them and the more people invest in a hobby, the angrier they get when everything they want is catered for exactly how they want it.

People see GW as evil because GW are in control of their hobby, their are Paintballers who hate whoever it is who makes the best paintball guns, Model Train Enthusiasts who hate Hornby, video game players who hate Valve, Activision and EA, Comic Book nerds who hate Marvel and DC, people like to root for the underdog and like to think that the big guy is evil and incompetent, makes them feel more human, they'll let the little companies off with things they'd never forgive the big guys for.

[John Bower]

People hate Valve, people absolutely hate Valve, people think Steam is evil and that Gabe Newell is a con artist.

Anywhere you look, any hobby, the big fish gets hated, its the way of the world with Nerds. The bigger and more successful a company gets, the more is expected of them and the more people invest in a hobby, the angrier they get when everything they want is catered for exactly how they want it.

People see GW as evil because GW are in control of their hobby, their are Paintballers who hate whoever it is who makes the best paintball guns, Model Train Enthusiasts who hate Hornby, video game players who hate Valve, Activision and EA, Comic Book nerds who hate Marvel and DC, people like to root for the underdog and like to think that the big guy is evil and incompetent, makes them feel more human, they'll let the little companies off with things they'd never forgive the big guys for.

It's not only about that with GW though, their model prices have got exorbitant, proof of that is that some other companies can sell THEIR models 25% cheaper than their own shops do. They can't be making a loss, so how can GW justify the prices. EA, same thing, how can they justify 44-50 GBP for a video game? That's ridiculous.
GW don't write good rules, we must all agree that their rules could be better, some parts don't make sense, other things like their armies not balancing each other is just upsetting to people with the weaker armies. That's understandable. Right now (unfortunately) GW do make the best mass combat rules for 28mm sci-fi, Warmahordes never appealed to me, sorry but losing your boss causing your army to lose the game is poor. yet people love it, and when the nids did something similar with IB, people were incensed over it. Why? It was fluffy, read the Ultramarines novels, where they poisoned the Hive mind, once it died the rest of the nids began feeding on each other. yet people hated on them for that, yet accept that on a much worse scale in warmahordes. I don't hate GW, I do hate their pricing policy, their silly behaviour of making certain armies awesome with cherries on top while nerfing other armies to silliness. And the lack of thought they put into the core rules. I do love the game, though not the actual fluff, so my home campaign has its own fluff.
I like the scale of the battles that can be fought with 40k, anything from a small boarding action or skirmish, right up to a clash of massive armies. I think if GW want to keep at it and remain top dog, they need to rethink some of the things they're doing, books - everyone says are over priced, and some are depending on their value to the person, but some are not, not really if you look at similarly sized tomes they are similar in price. A dictionary the size of the 40k rulebook will cost you similar money if not more. I looked at the cover price of a Janes book, similar thickness to 40k rulebook - 60 quid. Yeah it's facts and figures, but still. If GW is pricey for their books then what was that?

I think saying people hate them because they are top dog isn't true, I can remember when EA while still pretty much top dog churned out good games, now the games that come out are all the same, no imagination to speak of, it's either shoot it, race it, or fight it. There's very little beyond that because they aren't interested in innovation, just the almighty dollar.