Games Workshop AGM opinion piece.

[Robert]

Found this over on the Warhammer Forum, thought you all might like a read of it.
[url]http://www.iii.co.uk/news-opinion/richard-beddard/games-workshop-agm%3A-relentless-profit-machine[/url]

[Wolfshade]

Moved to wargames corporate...

[Lexington]

[Cutter]

Found this over on the Warhammer Forum, thought you all might like a read of it.
[url]http://www.iii.co.uk/news-opinion/richard-beddard/games-workshop-agm%3A-relentless-profit-machine[/url]

Hmm, apparently my company wants to protect me from the harsh truth,

"This Websense category is filtered: Online Brokerage and Trading."

so can any of you non-filtered souls give me the short version?

(Cos obviously I wouldn't want to waste any of my own time reading it at home :-))

++Additional++

Crisis averted, an associate did the necessary. Grim reading, but nothing terribly unexpected.

[daboarder]

****s ****ed and GW is pushing the same old "reasons"

[Erik Setzer]

The short version... Admittedly, I might not be putting this in the best light, but... Basically, if you want to play games, go to someone other than Games Workshop, because they don't care about games and claim only 20% of their customers are gamers, and if they made games like FFG with X-Wing, they'd be a "toy company." It all comes off as way too arrogant and insulting and, frankly, depressing.

The closing really sums up the feeling of the piece. (Joe is his son, by the way.)

Sigmar sounds like a good product, and I think maybe I should buy it for Joe for Christmas. But as I walk back along a tow-path to the railway station the spell wears off.

He just wants to play. He’s not an anointed one. He doesn’t have Warhammer DNA. I don’t think he’ll ever walk into a Warhammer store because he wants to paint a Stormcast Eternal.

Maybe we’ll get him X-Wing instead.

That's what the guy got from his discussion with them. His son wants to play games, so clearly his son isn't a GW customer, and should go get a "real" game ("toys," as GW seems to think of them).

It's all just depressing from a gamer standpoint and also for anyone who likes honesty. While they snidely look down on X-Wing and all, forgetting that they are selling TOY SOLDIERS and thus, despite their protestations, they really are a toy company, they're also actively looking to put their products in toy stores, book stores (alongside other toys and games, not models), and comic stores. They're recruiting a position in the US dedicated just to selling to TOY stores. Their own actions and plan show that their tired mantra is a lie and they know it. To say nothing of the point that if the games aren't that big a part of their company, why the heck are they still charging so much for them? Why bother spending money completely redoing the WFB game into AoS? What, WFB was doing poorly because people hated the models? Okay, so why didn't they get all that product off shelves? Why redo the rules and all? Clearly it was the models people disliked, not the game, because otherwise the models should have still been selling, and changing the game rules won't help sell those products. Of course, we all know the truth, but bugger if GW's going to admit it.

They "made the company profitable" by cutting costs everywhere they could. No other real strategy, just cut costs until there's profit. No look to making things more affordable. No concern for gamers. Gamers come off sounding like the enemy. Heck, anyone who doesn't have a massive amount of money burning through their pocket sounds like someone GW doesn't want around.

At this point, I think I'm ready to oblige them. I don't want to sit at home and just make stuff to put on a shelf. I dislike putting my models on display, even the ones I'm most proud of, because it means I'm not playing games with them. I want to go out, play games, enjoy social interaction, and use that to show off my modeling and painting work. If that makes me the wrong kind of person for GW, so be it. I'll gladly give my money to all the former GW guys out there, FFG, and other companies.

[Filthy Casual]

Business focuses on customers with money to spend, people without money to spend shout "what about me?!", same old, same old.

[Caitsidhe]

Business focuses on customers with money to spend, people without money to spend shout "what about me?!", same old, same old.

We shall see. Although it bears mentioning that they had to can WHFB because <gasp> nobody was playing it. The lack of people playing it seemed to directly tie into the drop in sales. Hrm. I must put on my thinking cap. Think. Think. Think. Could it be that sales are tied to game play in a significant way rather than just the modeling hobby? Hrm. Think. Think. Think. Odd. 40K is their biggest selling game and also seems to have the most active gaming and events and tournaments going on. Even so, GW doesn't think that has anything to do with it. So they decided to copy the look of the models rather than the play of the models. They put on their thinking caps and decided making their fantasy models look like vaguely disguised Space Marines would magically work. As I said before, we shall see.