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  1. #1

    Default Games Workshop AGM opinion piece.

    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]

  2. #2
    Occuli Imperator
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    Moved to wargames corporate...
    Fan of Fuggles | Derailment of the Wolfpack of Horsemen | In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

  3. #3
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    Click image for larger version. 

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  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Robert View Post
    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.
    Last edited by Cutter; 09-21-2015 at 01:21 AM.
    "Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a **** about the rules? Mark it zero!"

  5. #5
    Chapter-Master
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    ****s ****ed and GW is pushing the same old "reasons"
    Morbid Angels:http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?7100-Morbid-angel-WIP
    I probably come across as a bit of an ***, don't worry I just cannot abide stupid.

  6. #6

    Default

    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.

  7. #7

    Default

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

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by Filthy Casual View Post
    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.

  9. #9

    Default

    Funny how FC makes assumptions with nothing to back them (and that's why I have him blocked and only see the quoted stuff). In the past year, I've gotten all of the hardcover End Times, Nagash, Thanquol, a new Bloodthirster, a Verminlord, some Stormfiends, an Ogre army, the LE of AoS's main book (gaming history, might as well have one), the regular version of the second big book (trying to figure out the story), the new Marine codex, Skitarii codex, Knight codex, Harlequin codex and a smallish Harlequin force, Eldar codex, Execution Force, an XBox One (because Madden 16 doesn't work so well on the 360), several video and computer games, X-Wing and one of every Scum & Villainy ship for it, Star Wars Armada and some Rebel ships, a D&D Player's Handbook at full retail (to support the shop I play in), Warmachine starter set, books for Bolt Action, a ton of board games, a shelf full of Star Wars stuff (plus posters, some stuff to display at work, various other things)... I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff to list. And I'm a season ticket holder for my local NFL team with tickets just outside of the ridiculously expensive "club" seats (and not the nosebleed area, either).

    Yeah, I got money. And I'm still complaining about GW's prices. Because I can buy all of that other stuff, and recognize the cost of GW products just doesn't work in comparison. I only bought the stuff I did because I was playing games, and I haven't spent much on GW lately because 40K's getting to be too much of a cheese fest and they killed WFB and replaced it with something that hardly anyone around here plays. Meanwhile, with the money I'm not spending on GW, I've gotten a ton of other gaming stuff, because it's so much better value. But hey, they don't want my money, I'm a dirty gamer who admits he's playing with toys.

    It's not that GW's trying to make money, it's that they're trying to show "profit" and the only way to get that right now is cutting costs and trimming as much as possible, which doesn't work forever. They don't recognize that they're pricing people out of being customers. They don't care that people wanted to play their games. They don't see that they're alienated people and making themselves too much of a niche.

    The guy writing the article is writing from the standpoint of someone who discusses investments, not a gamer. He's not making comments against GW earning money. He is, just like I am, expressing concern about GW's policies being bad for expanding business and actually making more money. Their current process doesn't really set them up to continue "forever."

    More than the prices, the thing I was most annoyed with was the attitude toward gamers. They are a company who make TOY soldiers for GAMES, and without those games, their TOY soldiers won't sell anywhere near as well, which they admit silently with the creation of AoS to try to move their game pieces that aren't selling. Yet they act like games are awful and people who want games should look elsewhere.

    So fine. I'm doing what they want. I'm going to buy games from game companies. I'll buy my toy soldiers from companies that don't lie about who they are and loathe the market they're in. I will take my money elsewhere.

    And yeah, I've got money. I'm not freaking rich, but I'm certainly not poor or a cheapskate.

  10. #10

    Default

    Then stop buying their products, they've told you time and time again that they're not aiming their products at you, how ****ing entitled do you want to be to demand a company do what you want them to?

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