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Pointless Views: Was Warren An Arse?
November 15, 2019 by crew
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Dare I say…… 1st??
Pointy views… yeah!
Regarding Blitz Bowl: Ok, what I just found out is…
“Blitz Bowl wird bei ausgewählten unabhängigen Einzelhändlern in den USA und Deutschland erhältlich sein.”
“Blitz Bowl will be available at selected independent retailers in the USA and Germany.”
This is GW again at the game of “throw it at the wall and lets see what sticks”. They did the same with the magazine “Warhammer 40.000 Conquest”. It was due to release in Germany but weeks after the initial release for Germany passed (without anything being delivered) they just said “nope, will not do” and then cancelled every order. And as far as I am aware the magazine is selling elsewhere like candy.
You just can’t get hyped for things GW any more as long as they are not AoS or 40k direct because you can’t be sure they will ever arrive at your FLGS/webshop/dealer.
Source: https://www.bloodbowl.com/de/blitzbowl/
I haven’t seen Conquest magazine anywhere in my area either.
So yeah … region exclusives suck, but a last minute denial has got to be the worst.
It wasn’t “last minute”… it was “some time later”
that is just mean …
Disappointing there isn’t a podcast version so I can download and listen at work
Thank you
I shall watch later. Though I can’t remember what Warren was meant to have been an arse about this week
Great conversation.
To anyone worried about these guys tearing each other apart during the break I got a sneak peak into the inner workings of OTT and they were all very cheery and happy so no harm done. @avernos is a lovely singer btw.
Oh and shameless plug for Boris’ master: check out the web store. He has great minis.
https://www.heresyminiatures.com/shop/
Also, he sacrifices blood to the blood good regularly. (Just follow him on twitter and see the pictures of his cut fingers every now and them when he sculpts XD)
Integrity @warzan … Have you heard the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore treatise on that subject?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUQJcssN8Vw
love these two 🙂
My favourite has to be “Lengths”, but then again I used to work in a bureaucratic organisation.
@warzan If you didn’t think Blitz Bowl it wasn’t newsworthy enough, then at editorial control should have dismissed it. It should never have gotten past the editor, who should either have ignored it or bottom drawed it, pushing it to the bottom of the news draw.
Lots of things get dumped on my desk as an editor and I have to decide what is newsworthy for my readership. Currently Brexit tends to be top of the news pile, along with the election because of the effect both will have on my readership. Others items come along and I decide that it may be newsworthy but not enough to go in the magazine or paper and it’ll go as an online article.
Basically if you didn’t think it was newsworthy then maybe next time don’t make it the news,as you’ve now given Blitz Bowl far more air time than it probably deserved. You have inadvertently made it newsworthy by making it a controversial news item thus doing the complete opposite of what you wanted.
It all comes back to editorial control.
Should you apologise, no not really you expressed an opinion, a valid one as I agree with you. Should you use it as a learning experience, yes, don’t make tat newsworthy in the future ;). Lol. . kidding…for the future make editorial control tighter, maybe ask why should this item should be more newsworthy over another. You’re a media outlet, like all other media outlets you need to decide what makes the news and what doesn’t.
im not sure how far you have watched, we do discus this 🙂
adding comments as I watch lol
So question one is..are these bits of information news? Yes I think they are.
Question two – are these worthy news?
That deeps on what value each person puts on them, whether it is of personal worth to the individual or worthy to a community (or “the” community)
Do we look at each as a separate bit of news or as part of a bigger picture; part of the story of each of the organisations involved?
For Barnes and Noble it is part of their diversification from what they used to be know for – mainly books, magazines, gifts and the ones in NZ had coffee shops imbedded in them …
But they are no longer here, and brick and mortar retail is contracting, evidenced by empty shops and malls….
So they need to offer something else and thus Blitz Bowl, which came out roughly a year ago, and now they are producing more teams to play with.
So to me the news item is the realise of the expansions and the story is that both parties found success in the initial release to an extent that they bothered with the expansions.
very good points!
To me the most important question at this moment is “why”….
Why is someone doing this or not doing that…
The others – “how”, “when”, “what”, “where”, “who’ – still good but “why”
Any parent, and I’m not one so can only go by portrayals on screen, must get sick of that question.
this looks like a hard episode to edit. i can see and like the direction of this type of show is heading but it does need some work.
im struggling to follow the discussion. i will have to think about this and possible ask some questions later to help me consider my pointless view.
yep this format is likely to evolve rapidly as we try to find better ways.
@avernos came up with a ‘panel’ type approach we can try which sounds promising.
As I watched the show I wondered, as you had to explain to each person that you brought in where you were at in the discussion, if this format would be better as a “LIVE” show.
Could the show be broadcast on discord itself, so that those going to be joining the show know where you are “at” – of course being recorded at the same time.
Yes thats exactly what we thought after recording. @avernos thought up an idea that we think will work much better for this. We’ll keep plugging away at this because I think when we nail it the end result could have legs 🙂
The reason I put “I promise not to swear” is because I swear like a trooper. Indeed I spent most of my time on air thinking… “don’t swear, Robert”, “don’t swear, Robert”, “don’t call North Americans a bunch of c@nts” etc, etc. I love Ryan too much to make him edit my swears because I am not-a-c@nt.
we really appreciated the effort it took from this total cult 😉
*for your international friends it’s worth pointing out that the c word is oddly a ‘loose’ term of endearment in our society lol
I think a watch list of ‘what makes us n.irish/Irish’ with episodes of FTed, Give My Head peace etc would give a lot of insight into what makes us tick lol
N.Ireland – where brutal banter is the sincerest form of endearment lol
This is true. I have far better things to call North Americans. It is like when I explained why I call English people “kippers” to my former English boss. I am glad he got the joke.
It’s the same here in Australia. A very common “Greeting” is “Scarn Cult”. Women really really don’t like it but the men of Australia are very fast and loose with the word.
We call American’s Seppo’s (Septic Tank = Yank).
Maybe they should record the Show on a Monday if they’re going to have Rob and a bunch of Australian’s on? Give poor Ryan a chance to edit it all.
You are a good bean!
I’m blushing!
One thing I had meant to say was why GW and Barnes & Noble have to partner this way, and why we won’t see GW in supermarkets. But being on the show was a bit like making love to a women for the first time. You do you research, plan it out, spend time trying to stop yourself swearing… but when you get into heat of the moment, you forget all your special moves and spend the next day full of regrets.
Anyway, it is simply a way to get around competition laws – rather than Warren’s comparison argument. By differentiating a product and calling it exclusive allows you to get round treating B&N differently than any other company. You won’t see GW in a supermarket, because they don’t want it in a supermarket. They won’t change their terms of trade and there is no way that Tesco are going to buy GW stuff at the price GW sell it at wholesale.
If would also hazard a guess that if this is successful, we might will see similar stuff in Waterstones or it launching in other parts of the world – though it may only be an American thing due to geography and competition.
Since getting rid of Kirby, when he thought GW was an actual monopoly and tried to operate GW as one, GW have been very, very smart from an economics point of view with their pricing and product placement and profit maximising. It would actually make a fairly interesting undergraduate economics dissertation, in my humble opinion.
From my small exposure to the culture and commerce in the US, I think a lot of their big retailers want “exclusives” as a way of differentiating themselves from the competition.
And of course there will be differences in competition legislation in the US.
But they are all based on the same principles and any case simply comes down to which group of economists have the more convincing argument or have have rigged the data more convincingly.
Barnes Noble issue I personaly could care less, I have enough trouble sitting through all the GW noise on this channel as it is, let alone some GW derivative being sold on the other side of the world. And though I get the cynasism over Small World meets World of Warcraft, after thinking about it I actualy think it was a good idea. I have Small World, it is a great game, but it is a bit scattered thematicaly. It kind of reminds of playing Kings and Things 20-30 years ago and having to invent justifications for the ‘Things’ being involved in the game. Giving it a cohesive theme maybe just the thing to improve the game.
As to whether these are news worthy or not apears to be more of an editorial question on the day than any real presuasive argument that they dont add anything to the gamers universe.
@warzan I think its an issue of opinion delivery, not really of the opinion, you sounded a bit odd, more fast to reply.
For example here I am not sure you really meant “I would rather have a bad sellout game than a good sellout game” because a good game is always a good game and a good game/ product is always a good thing.
I can reason that you meant
“I would rather it be bad so they stop reskinning games for quick cash” though I think it is unlikely
“I would rather they had a good original game rather than a reskin game” probably what you meant but it did not came out this way
“I would rather they did something original and good than a reskin of a good game that is assured to be good with a more popular skin on it” another probable, but did not come out this way.
I (speaking from a work perspective – industry watcher kind of thing) would rather they took a risk to show their gaming credentials and have poor sales, than go lowest common denominator and have a successful re skin.
Now the above is a very difficult statement to make and stand over as I wish no ill will on any company and I wish all ‘risks’ were rewarded, although I know that’s not the case.
Its always strange to be asked would you support them doing something great and have a shite outcome. My response is failure is always a noble outcome of taking a risk and one which I respect, because equally that risk could have payed off in gigantic ways.
And the relationship between artists and the art is always tricky and at some point each have to ‘pay the price’ to the other.
Does that make any more sense? 🙂
I understand, I think you want to say, that while you respect industry companies decisions in looking at their bottom line and taking the safe route, you would rather have the huge companies in the industry invest in industry pushing design and publishing rather than taking the safe route.
While I understand and respect this opinion, unfortunately big companies became big usually for this reason, innovation usually comes from the small and new who burn bright and crash fast and then the industry collectively picks up the remains and refines them.
A great show this week, and I’m glad @warzan was able to really articulate what it was that was bothering him. Though, I agreed much more with @avernos
At the end of the day, the decision of worth is one for the editorial team.
I’m a little disappointed I wasn’t able to be involved, but you guys covered it pretty well.
I’m so sorry we missed you and @horus500 – I was bitter disappointed about that, but we are exploring the format and have other options to try which I think will help 🙂
Yeah I’m sorry I missed the chance too as sadly I totally disagreed with you Warren. About everything.
The way you objected to the news was too much. By the tenth interruption I think most of us were over it. I realise there’s a ‘drama’ played out in the telling, but news that should have lasted a minute lasted 10 because of the interruptions.
Was it news worthy? Of course it was. Firstly, lets face the facts, the viewers/listeners want to know what the Big Boys in town are doing. People want to know what GW are doing because it’s GW. If you disagree, try not reporting or mentioning GW, Azmodee, Battlefront or any other well known company for the next 4 weeks. Try only taking about the thousands of companies that are relatively unknown and see how long people keep listening. The truth is the bulk of your viewers wouldn’t give a tinker’s jizz about them. How much crap does OTT cop when it does a weekend focused on one game? People whine and wail about it. Try focusing on games no-one knows about or plays and then there will be some real whinging!
Game developers and manufacturers come to OTT for that exposure, hoping to get a fraction of the buzz that every release GW does gets. GW and those big companies aren’t just making news, they are the news.
As for re-skins, lets remember that they aren’t always disasters either on the gaming table or in Hollywood. Star Wars is a reskinned Forbidden Fortress, Rogue One and the Magnificent Seven anyone? And as for the same product in a different setting, I defy anyone to say that Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Richard the Third’ set in a WWII setting wasn’t amazing. K47 was originally in FOW scale not Bolt Action, Warmaster became Hail Caesar, Warhammer Quest became Blackstone Fortress, Man o’ War and Black Sails, and so on.
The truth is that playing wih toy soldiers is a niche, within a niche, within a niche. Gaming makes hundreds of Billions of dollars every year. Board games make a few billion and miniature gaming makes hundreds on millions. The easy of entry by GW is a strategy they have been persuing for quite some time. Why to you think theres a “Getting started in AOS” 5 pound starter, the 25 pound “Storm Strike”, the 50 pound “Tempest of Souls” and then the 95 pound “AOS Straters Set, Soul Wars”. They do the same thing in the Conquest magazine (it’ll be called ‘Mortal Realms’ for AOS). The idea is to get our niched, niched, niche hobby out of dingy hobby store corners, Warhammer shops and FLGS and get them into newsagents, book stores, cafes and the public at large. We (miniature gaming hobbiests) are often derided as socially awkward, smelly, lisping nerds (40 year old virgin, The IT crowd, and so on,) so anything that moves our hobby towards the mainstream and helps dispell that myth is news worthy.
When I watched the front stage show I very much felt I was watching something that should have taken place off camera before recording – it was an editorial meeting rather than a news segment. And the tone of it was awkward, I actually felt sorry and uncomfortable for Ben.
The actual topic was fine as a discussion point, but the framing of it felt wrong. The Weekender isn’t the appropriate venue. Maybe XLBS, certainly Pointless Views, but not the show that goes out to the least community engaged audience.
To sum up though, I’m fine with these products existing and by all means give them a little nod on the news feed (why not? Content is content) but maybe leave them off the Weekender and give more creative things the limelight.
I agree with this entirely. It was uncomfortable to watch, and it came across like Warren was throwing Ben under the bus on camera and berating the choices made for the news. If he didn’t want it on the show, there are more diplomatic ways to approach it that didn’t make for an awkward segment that never seemed to end ….not to mention that it could have been edited out before posting to YouTube.
That being said, Warren’s opinions are dead-on correct in this case and I agree with them wholeheartedly, they shouldn’t have been on the news.
I think what we need to take away from this is that the picture of grumpy @warzan is amazing and he should use it as his display picture
@robert is officially famous
Don’t think this will generate the same number of calls as when I was on Crimewatch….
It was a lovely picture on Crimewatch though. You really suited the black and white filter #blessed
I ponder if this is a cultural view from Europe, which differs from the United States. Especially at Christmas time, many toys are exclusive to a particular store; try to buy some of the new video games. From my view this is more a B&N marketing strategy to compete against their competitors than any strategy of GW. With this view, I can’t blame GW as they are simply making a buck (quid) within a domestic USA marketing strategy.
I think for GW it is to extend their reach across the US.
Back in the 2000s GW had a big number of stores across the US, a big Bunker store, a multiday Games Day, their own edition of White Dwarf and a magazine that was sent out with online orders – I still have a few of these.
Then GW retrenched, got rid of the different WD editions, played around with whether their own stores should sell the Black Library items, cut the personalities out of WD, then added them back…
I don’t know, but I’d guess that the number of stores has yet to reach the same levels as there were at their height.
I think that repenetrating the US market would be their number one growth goal.
Certainly Battlefront’s CEO left NZ to setup in the states as that is where they see the most potential for growth. Some of my gaming friends think that is also the main reason for FoW concentrating on the Late War period as the US gamers seem to prefer it. Kiwi players from around these parts prefer Mid War, I think as it is seen as the turning point of the war and thus more at a point of balance in the game.
I see your point. GW isn’t loosing anything on this deal and anything that reinforces their market share in the US can only be viewed by them as a positive direction to take.
This US gamer didn’t prefer any of the periods for FoW. I just wished they had stayed in one period as long as the period historically lasted or longer. Having to build a “new” army every 2-6 months caused me to just drop and purge the game entirely.
Correct @irondragon6 – in many ways I am of course making a mountain out a mole hill – but that’s my prerogative right 😉 lol
#itsallbreadandcircuses
Of course, one point I was hoping to get across is opinion comes from ones point of view (and the experience from norms that surround then). Opinions are never wrong, seldom right, but never wrong. I love everything about your channel, although work fronds on employees joining a cult. ?
Petty World Of Warcraft:
I don’t think that Asmodee is a big company in the same way that Blizzard Entertainment and Games Workshop are big companies. It seems to me that Blizzard Entertainment and Games Workshop are empires, whereas Asmodee is a monarchia. That is to say that, although Asmodee’s head office might make decisions (on behalf of their private equity owners) as to what’s worth funding and investing in and coordinate distribution, Asmodee is otherwise a collection of smaller companies that have not been integrated into a single coherent operational whole. So i’d put it to you all that the Small World Of Warcraft game that is being discussed is a product of a collaboration between a smaller board games company: Days Of Wonder, and a video games company: Blizzard Entertainment. Not that this necessarily means that it isn’t a somewhat lazy money grab devised by a couple of lawers cum accountants cum what have you, but it’s something of a different context.
Also: Is this worth discussing? Discuss.
Happy too lol
“(Reuters) – Asmodee Group, the French maker of board game Catan and distributor of Pokemon cards in parts of Europe, is exploring a sale that could value it at more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion), according to people familiar with the matter.”
Now it all comes down to weather you consider that a big company or not?
I don’t think it does come down to whether someone considers Asmodee a big company or not because it could be valued at 1.5 billion Euros, or at least i’m not sure it comes down to that for the reason i gave above and which i’ll expand upon here.
Let’s say that Games Workshop (for example) and Asmodee were valued at the same amount. Let’s say it were 1.5 billion euros each. I think it might be a mistake to therefore equate Games Workshop and Asmodee as being two similar companies with the same kind of capacity. This is because, to use another analogy, Games Workshop is an armoured uber knight and Asmodee is 20 goblins. Yes, they may have the same total points cost, and yes, in some regards, such as the number of wounds they can take, they may, in aggregate at least, effectively be the same, but in other regards, such as whether or not anyone can actually land a wound on them, they are potentially very different. Games Workshop is one big company with a number of departments. Asmodee is a collection of smaller companies all collected together under one parent company. Forge World, Black Library, and the local Warhammer store are all extensions of, and an integrated part of Games Workshop. Fantasy Flight Games, Z-man Games, and Days Of Wonder are all largely independent smaller companies and operate as such, or at least that’s my strong impression. And that, essentially, is my contention; that is that the company producing the Small World of Warcraft game is not so much Asmodee, rather it is Days Of Wonder, a small(er) company, albeit perhaps with the assistance of it’s parent company Asmodee.
Ok…I am commenting as I watch PV.
I do not feel @warzan is being elitist, he has damn good points. Blitz Bowl should NOT be exclusive to the 3 shops. They are the ones being gatekeepers with a stupid ‘exclusive’.
I will say that I love the idea of a smaller faster Blitz Bowl. A travel version basically, something to whip out at lunch. Basically a small skirmish version. I think GW made a big misstep with this game.
I do see why @warzan got a wee bit miffed on this.
But!and its only a little but!
I had seen the news item, was vaguely interested, mainly as I really was only glancing at and originally just thought it was Blood Bowl…. think it was about half way through the article before penny dropped, and it was only in the show that the exclusive bit hit me.
So as a piece of news to me it was up there with the Aussie Football results, its news but not as I care to know about it.
So if you hadn’t mentioned it wouldn’t have registered.
I think I understand where you’re coming from @warzan with the little game. One great gaming company teams up with a world renown IP and that’s all they come up with? It’s not that what they produced shouldn’t exist, it’s the loss of potential and effort on their part.
I can’t remember if it was Gerry or Justin who said it, but a World of Warcraft dungeon crawler on the tabletop sounds like a no-brainer to me. The dungeons and raids are already designed in the video game. Imagine playing them out on the table. Playing WoW without the grind, or monthly sub, “Nice!” – to use the quote of the day.
From a gaming PoV I don’t have much interest in Blitz Bowl: I prefer Dreadball; would love a crack at Guild Ball; have a Blood Bowl team ready to paint (and an eye on the ogre team because ogres). The 40k thing I genuinely would be interested in. An easy way to get into 40k without going all out for a 1750 point army (is that the usual points value these days?). It’s no biggie that I can’t get one, I’m not short of models to paint or games to play.
GW have also done this in the past, simpler versions of their specialist games. I think they even had Blitz Bowl. I had the simpler version of their space combat game (I remember it as Battlefleet Gothic but talking to Dead Dave in the pub a few years back I think it was its predecessor). The legal constraints were different in a pre-Amazon era but the idea is nothing new.
I think both products are fine, the story is newsworthy; it’s just maybe not quite for us as obsessed gamers.
I think the dangerous thing in bringing up the commercialization of the film industry in this discussion is that it sounds like you’re trying to say that unless you’re a reboot or a big franchise you don’t get made. While it may look like that it’s actually quite nieve and I’d argue that the same is correct for the board game industry. Independent cinema still gets funding, the ‘smaller’ guys still get funding in film and they still do commercially well. We equally have more independent game producers getting funded now than we ever have in the history of the industry.
Equally, if Asmodee and Blizzard put together this thing and it sells well and it makes money and it’s a good game is it really a bad thing? At the end of the day if they produce a game and it sells it generates revenue which pays peoples wages. A lot of game creators get their start at companies like Asmodee etc and I don’t think we should see it with an end-times attitude just because they make something that will likely make money.
It takes money to produce something original and build a game from the ground-up and an incredibly common theme in the gaming industry is that when two companies work together they produce something safe to begin wih, that’s somewhat tried and tested before they go on to make something more original. These companies have shareholders and are beholden to them and they have to prove to them that the risk in producing products in the partnership is minimal, the way they do that is by first producing that ‘safe’ product that they know will create a meaningful profit.
Do we have to buy it? Not at all. Do we have to like it? Nope. But I don’t think we should equally be overly pessimistic of success in this industry either.
I think it’s all about making editorial decisions. Since BoW changed to OTT (and the focus went to trying to cover more aspects of the hobby) perhaps there’s a bit of information overload going on.
But I’m with Warren, that the two items being discussed weren’t really “headline” news for a weekender (although it was news). But there also so much more that could be covered/unearthed that “could” have been in the Weekender.
Perhaps there’s a bit of fatigue going on at BoW and they’ve settled into a routine (I don’t know), but from experience in such things there can only be one “editor” (nothing gets agreed by committee), and it can lead to upsets at times.
So if there’s going to be editorial decisions going on (because there isn’t enough time and space to cover everything), you’ll probably see some bruised feelings (but that’s what be professional in the workspace is), however the editor also has to know when to give way (because they too can be wrong).
I don’t know….. it’s a hard balance to make, news from big companies have a bigger target audience (and attracts more views), news from smaller companies might be more interesting, but again attracts less viewers. Perhaps you could do an “Company you’ve never heard off” each week in the Weekender if you spot anything (rules/minis) that you think is cool, or a dedicated news column in the main website?
But the “fix” here is internal to the gang at BoW and the inter-personal relationships that form from the team (and its for them to hash things out (may I suggest an evening out for a “company meal” and a bit of a “sesh” in the pub to hammer things out (it’s always where we used to come up with our best ideas (or in the smoking shelter at work 😀 )
Yes!
What about wizkids and there dice masters 40k reskin that had no creativity. Hasbro and gw can’t get much bigger.
The smallworld Warcraft game doesn’t look like a straight reskin. I will wait until I play it until I write it off.
1:12 , surely Warrens first mistake was trying to play a RPG with minis…. ?
Was @warzan being an arse? Yes, absolutely 100%. But he’s OUR Arse and long may it continue.
If owning and voicing an opinion or sense of frustration makes you an arse mate, then make room for me because I am an arse too.
I am definitely in camp Warren still on much of this.
Barnes & Noble: The limited availability of these products does make the news worthiness of this poor. I personally despise the way that your news is normally headlined by whatever GW have to say first. They are a big player but much of their release schedule is in a more of the same vein.
Reskins: Not only is this product cynical and not newsworthy my gut feeling is that the play mechanics of Small World are so separated from the play experience of WoW that they are not gonna have any gateway effect either way. Just my 2 cents.
Good show, could be 2 hours long? XD
First off, I have to say I usually love the Weekender and look forward to my morning coffee on Saturdays and Sundays with you guys.
With that said…because Warren had such a negative emotional response during the show, he wasn’t able to accurately get his point across. @warzan You absolutely came across as an elitist, if you meant to or not. I recently came across both Blitz ball and Space Marine Adventures in a Barnes & Noble and immediately thought to myself “why haven’t I seen this mentioned on OTT”. When Ben brought it up on the show, I was actually looking forward to what he had to say about them and was really taken aback with Warren’s reaction and it made the rest of the show awkward to watch. I have been a fan of the show almost from the very beginning and have been a BSer/CoG for a few years now, so I just thought you might be “having a day”. But if I was new to OTT, I might not know what you have done to help grow our community and I would log out thinking “that Warren guy is an arse”.
Good news for me that this was not my first exposure to the OTT team and I will definitely be back 😉
edited to add: As far as the exclusivity of the B&N games. I thought that in order sell AoS and 40K, you had to have an agreement to sell a certain amount within a certain time to maintain the contract. With the reboxing and making it an exclusive, it gives B&N the opportunity to assess the possibility of going further into stocking mainstream GW games without committing to having to sell $XXX amount in a month. If it does well we may see B&N carrying the whole (non-web store exclusive) line.
Well it does sometime confound me. A few weeks ago there was a call for BoW to be more critical in their reviews (after the mess up with SPQR rules), then as soon as someone IS critical everyone jumps up and down saying how dare they.
With this thing called the internet I guess you can’t make everyone happy, but you can make everyone angry 🙁
Never heard of the small warcraft game before now.
I did see a new Warcraft game saying it will be like Pokemon go @warzan
I don’t see BloodBowl (or its derivatives) being an entry game for WH40k as it’s too far removed from the actual tabletop game. If I bought “BlitzBowl” for me/the kids I doubt if it, of itself, would be enough stimulation to move onto other things by GW. But maybe that’s just me.
So what I see as the main issue that was brought up about this weeks “views” is that @warzan opened up the door and let everybody into a Editors meeting. This issues are minor overall but the main thing was discussed and again this week was if the direction of the news department was going in the right direction. What most of the public don’t understand is that this is normal and feelings get hurt. I spent years working in radio as a DJ, News and Sports, and Sales, every meeting we did about the content was like that one.
As for the complaint about the Small World reskin that @warzan has I agree with him and see where he was coming from. Some of that feeling comes from the fact that Blizzard and Asmodee (almost added and extra s 🙂 ) are a couple of companies that are being run by accountants and lawyers and are now multinational big business. I don’t have a problem with making money but they are now soulless corporations. Running out a rebrand before Christmas makes me a bit cynical.
When looking at the GW and B and N issues, I see where Warren is coming from as this is an exclusive that can’t be price compared with another product. That being said @avernos seems to be on the right track with this being a gateway to more gamers coming into the hobby. This is the type of item that my Mother In Law would see while out doing the shopping and figure it would be worth a shot for her girls significant others. As Holiday shopping gets started this will be a big seller. The other side of this is that B and N are part of a big retailer group that also owns Gamestop which is on the verge of collapse due to the changes in the console and PC gaming market. Something to look at in the future as maybe this will be the change in marketing that expands GW footprint while giving purpose to the store leases. This may be the most significant item discussed.
Cheers guys!
sorry, just watching this now… so I wasn’t the only one who had no idea what the topic was….
Only someone who doesn’t work in the film industry would dismiss Scorsese’s comments as those of a “bitter old man”.
If you understand film financing and distribution, you come to realize very quickly just how unable to be creative the ‘creative arts’ are.
Joker is the perfect example of a film tricking people into thinking they were going to see a superhero movie, only to blast them with an art-house character piece that was very at home at both Venice and Toronto. How many people would willingly elect to go see an art-house movie in mainstream cinemas? The answer is not very many. Yet when they were tricked into doing it the movie broke all records, and is the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time.
The fact that the film could exist in the first place because of Joaquin Phoenix, the “Joker” tie-in, and its low-budget, just goes to show how so much of audience taste is dictated by what the distributors are actually willing to give them. You can’t say “this is what the audience wants” when that’s the only thing the audience is being offered.
The best indie-horror movie ever made will struggle considerably against the worst Blumhouse movie ever made, because of one thing. Universal is distributing Blumhouse’s stuff.
It’s not unlike GW or Azmodee. They can monopolize the scene with the laziest and most soulless releases, while the hardest efforts of independent companies or designers get completely marginalized.
Some might think that’s the inevitable price of progress, but to me, that’s only a bad thing. I don’t want to get exponentially more people into the gaming industry if that means it becomes the kind of “China-friendly, algorithm-designed, test screening-approved” affair that my own has become.