Hobby Weekender 28/06/2019 The Industry and Social Media

[mageParticipant 20596xp 1]

**Heads up the title refers to the incoming questions*

 

Hey all,

 

Hoping the summer weather isn’t interrupting your ability to hobby, prime, airbrush or simply chill out. By Irish Standards it is hot where I am, but I’d imagine in the warmer parts of the world this is tame. Also if its generally hotter, you might be experiencing something more than your used to. Moving on!

 

Welcome to the Hobby Weekender. This is a collaborative thread, please be encouraging, don’t be a dick, keep politics and religion out, be supportive and constructive. To quote one of the Latham’s of GW from one of the facebook groups I’m in: be hobby positive. I’m gonna keep this short as folks generally knows how this works and what happens, and if they don’t and are new then we can elaborate, show what we do (as opposed to tell).

 

Post music, and good music. Be respectful. Talk to people. Post pictures. Write hobby background, make terrain, spray stuff, build stuff, play stuff and tell hobby anecdotes. Show us your homebrew. Points will be awarded equating to real world value Disney Dollars, as well as unlockable forum Achievements that reward actual XP.

 

So, make a pledge and respond to questions. A more detailed answer fuels the discussion, discuss things with people and give us all something to work with and grow as people and exchange ideas, as well as create new ones.

 

(1) Is Social Media with hobbying replacing forums? Are forums slowing down and becoming less convenient then a Facebook group? There are lots of facebook groups.

 

(2) Are websites going the way of the Dinosaur? Will search engines and browsers be replaced by social media? I’ll make this a less tenuous link to our hobby. GW have their own store, and facebook pages for their games. On youtube they have Warhammer TV. Is their own Citadel Painting website which is upcoming necessary in this context? Should they keep doing Warhammer TV? Or is this a shameless ploy to move away from one platform to their own for money and control? If it is, is it a bad thing?

 

(3) I know photos, articles and other information trickles out at conventions and events for our precious games, but should there be more social media reveals and information? Would it be a better, more modernised and appealing way to broadcast this information, like a Nintendo Direct or E3 where it is also filmed and sent out? Since announcements are done at presentations anyway would it hurt to film and post it?

 

 

 

[Anonymous 0xp 0]

Pledge
Going to finish the 10mm Dwarfs I have been painting, get them varnished and work out a basing scheme.  Also am going to try and get as many items from the Hit the Bench boxed set ready for the slow grow league.  The hobby shed was 32C yesterday evening so I might have to bring stuff down into the house where it is a bit cooler.  I’ve also started to knit a Dark Angels dice bag, so will see how I get on with it…

(1) Is Social Media with hobbying replacing forums? Are forums slowing down and becoming less convenient then a Facebook group?
The question is difficult to answer because it implies that a internet forum is just a piece of software or location rather than what an internet forum actually is;  a place that gives the user an ability to communicate with other interested parties in message form on the internet with archival functions.  A Facebook group, Subreddit and even Twitter essentially provide the same function as what OTT provide here.  They are all just forums, but not on the traditional platform or software (it is like comparing a bus/lorry and a train – they both can transport you to your location but you just get there in different ways) .  It would be more accurate to say that some hobby discussion is switching to non-traditional forum platforms and the reason for this is very simple, social media companies are just providing a more convenient (and essentially free) way of creating or joining a forum.

(2) Are websites going the way of the Dinosaur? Will search engines and browsers be replaced by social media? I’ll make this a less tenuous link to our hobby. GW have their own store, and facebook pages for their games. On youtube they have Warhammer TV. Is their own Citadel Painting website which is upcoming necessary in this context? Should they keep doing Warhammer TV? Or is this a shameless ploy to move away from one platform to their own for money and control? If it is, is it a bad thing?

If by Way of the Dinosaur you mean going extinct, then the answer is a simple no.  If by Dinosaur you mean nearly becoming extinct then evolving into something different and passing on their DNA for many, many millions of years then that is a more realistic proposition but my crystal ball doesn’t go that far.   If you mean that birds came from dinosaurs, and that dinosaurs are a direct ancestor of the chicken, and that chickens are the most successful species on earth of complex living being in terms of evolution, still probably no. In 50 years, what we call search engines, browser and social media will perhaps be replaced by something else.  If I could predict were the internet is going to go, I would be very rich in a few years.

Part of the recent success of Games Workshop has been opening up onto new platforms and engaging with the public on social media.  You could easily argue that Duncan Rhodes has done more for the share price of GW than the previous CEO.  Games Workshop have always had painting guides on their website, so separating this from their main website so they can direct people to a website (that is being used  in conjunction with their other forms of advertising through social media) makes perfect sense.  Considering that Citadel paints aren’t just used by people who paint GW products having this on a separate website is actually a good marketing ploy and may help and attract railway modellers, scale modellers, RC enthusiasts to their products.  The website already exists – https://citadelcolour.com/.    I also don’t understand why this is a “shameless ploy to move from one platform to their own for money and control”.  They haven’t stopped uploading videos to YouTube, Facebook or stopped using Twitch or Twitter.  I am also of the opinion that making money shouldn’t be described as a shameless ploy as the connotations are that making money and profit is morally wrong.

(3) I know photos, articles and other information trickles out at conventions and events for our precious games, but should there be more social media reveals and information? Would it be a better, more modernised and appealing way to broadcast this information, like a Nintendo Direct or E3 where it is also filmed and sent out? Since announcements are done at presentations anyway would it hurt to film and post it?

I can’t think there are any companies that are launching products at conventions that are not putting them on their websites, twitters, facebooks and passing it along to physical magazines and sites like OTT.  I’m pretty sure companies have streamed their reveals and seminars – Mantic are very good at this and you can find streams of their open day on Facebook.  For most companies, they probably don’t have the resources to put on reveals and film them as many companies are one or two person bands and want people to come to their stands at conventions to see what is new in the hope they buy something while they are at it.  I don’t understand why GW doesn’t do it, but then again, maybe they want to add value to the people who attending.

[mageParticipant 20596xp 1]

@robert <70 points>

 

10 points for the pledge. I like the scheme on your dwarves, will be great to see them finished.

 

That’s one hot shed. You could consider making extra money by smoking meats in it or something?

 

Would be cool to see the dice bag.

 

 

 

(1)  Is Social Media with hobbying replacing forums? Are forums slowing down and becoming less convenient then a Facebook group?

They  might provide the same function and definition, but are different enough. Like ‘is a jaffa cake a cake or biscuit’ kind of thing.

 

Oddly enough, reddit is way bigger than facebook in Japan. Random.

 

Valid points, 20 points.

 

 

(2) Are websites going the way of the Dinosaur? Will search engines and browsers be replaced by social media? I’ll make this a less tenuous link to our hobby. GW have their own store, and facebook pages for their games. On youtube they have Warhammer TV. Is their own Citadel Painting website which is upcoming necessary in this context? Should they keep doing Warhammer TV? Or is this a shameless ploy to move away from one platform to their own for money and control? If it is, is it a bad thing?

 

Extinction is indeed what I meant by way of the Dinosaur. So we can agree Kentucky Fried Tyranosaurus would be delicious? With Velociraptor gravy on the side and Pterodactyl Fries?

I think things will go the way of ghost in the shell with people having a usb port or similar in the back of their heads for direct link up, generally speaking.

 

As for the point on GW, very true. They are making good decisions, using communication and technology when they were more isolationist. True with Duncan and to a lesser extent Peachy. It gives a relatively faceless, static company a verbal human component. Helps he seems to be a likeable guy.

 

Valid point with the website and non-GW folks. I did not think about it. After posting this thread and before this reply I saw a Gundam painted to a high standard on one of the Facebook Warhammer painting groups so swings and roundabouts. It was not a statement, but a question to see if people felt that it was an agreeable term or not, not a personal opinion, and see if people agreed with the sentiment of that statement. For instance, if it was hyphotetically part of a larger plan to completely move away from social media and get people coming to their own sites which they had complete absolute control of over time. Or not, who knows?

 

Making money and profit is not morally wrong, but that goes down the rabbit whole of ‘do companies exploit their customers’, ‘do companies treat their staff badly’, so on and so forth.

 

20 points.

 

 

(3) I know photos, articles and other information trickles out at conventions and events for our precious games, but should there be more social media reveals and information? Would it be a better, more modernised and appealing way to broadcast this information, like a Nintendo Direct or E3 where it is also filmed and sent out? Since announcements are done at presentations anyway would it hurt to film and post it?

 

I’m not a fan of mantic and don’t follow their stuff. I did not mention websites, but vidoes on social media and beyond (so less twitter, more youtube <back to jaffa cakes, is it an app, social media or website> or facebook): live streams with a video, like E3, a presentation or Nintendo direct – a live video and recording of said seminar. Not posts, pictures or articles. I did not say launch either, I said information being released and announced (previews – most of these vents advertise stuff that is upcoming and not due for release too soon or on the day). Building on top of what is already there. That’s all semantics I guess too, though.

 

Lets say that you were in charge of a company, how would you go about it? Lets say, a smaller company? Just curious as to the answer.

 

Valid points, 20 points.

[Anonymous 0xp 0]

1.  The only reason there is a debate over whether a Jaffa Cake is a biscuit or a cake is taxation.  If it is a cake, the UK government couldn’t tax it, if it was a biscuit they could.  Considering that they are mostly made up of the similar ingredients, the technical difference between what is classified as a cake and what is classified biscuit is that when stale, a biscuit is soft, but when stale a cake is hard.  To me it makes no difference (other than perhaps price) as to what it is classified as I gain the same utility from eating a Jaffa Cake or a Jaffa Biscuit no matter what it is called.  If someone ran a post like this on Reddit, I might join in it as well, as it is all the same to me.

2. “Is this a ploy to move away from one platform to their own for money and control?”  Once you added a negative adjective to the word ploy the question becomes loaded and has added connotations to the question and GW’s motives.

3.  If companies had the time and resources and thought it was beneficial to market like a massive video games company, wouldn’t they already be doing it?  Outside of GW and Fantasy Flight, which companies have the resources to do this?

If I ran a small company, I would look to see what the competition are doing and what the more successful and growing similar companies are doing and what I could with the resources available.   Wargames Atlantic and Bad Squiddo seem to have built up a good following in completely different ways in their use of social media and marketing.

To expand this further …Loads of companies are putting up previews and what is coming soon on their social media.  PSC, Perry, Warlord, Victrix, Bad Squiddo, Lucid Eye are all doing it for example, indeed Warlord are going down the road of putting videos well in advance of products launch – see SPQR for example, but I wouldn’t say they have done a great job in this case.  Warlord now employ over 80 people world wide so are obviously at the stage they can afford to invest more in their marketing and promotion.  The OTT newsfeed is full of what companies are previewing on social media and a lot of OTTs content is based of companies coming in or sending in product to be previewed or reviewed in advance of sale.    If you look at Wargames Atlantic they are putting everything out on social media – we know before the end of the year we are getting Persians and Irish in plastic, plus Halflings are on the way after that. The internet is also full of people constantly asking when products are being released, so I understand why small companies don’t announce things well in advance.

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

Very value points you make. Only on a smart phone now so I’ll mull em over til later

[Anonymous 0xp 1]

Shed is just touching 30C at the moment.

Dwarfs are ready for varnish, will do that tomorrow.  Need to find my soldering iron in order to attempt to make a static grass applicator but am not going rummaging through a load of boxes as it is just too warm.  My fantasy treemushroom will just have to wait for sticky up grass!

[woldenspoonsParticipant 3557xp 1]

I’m playing a tournament tomorrow. Got my painting hammered this afternoon. I posted pictures on the old thread. I’ll do them again. Just realised there is no picture of my endless spell. I’ll get on that soon.

[woldenspoonsParticipant 3557xp 1]

Fixed.

[Anonymous 0xp 0]

Good luck tomorrow @woldenspoons Give’m hell or whatever the AoS equivalent of hell is (I haven’t read the fluff yet).

Got all the City Guard painted up and given their first wash.  Noticed I have missed one guys face and a hand… I’ve been over them 4 or 5 times and I didn’t notice.  Oh, well, they can get sorted tomorrow.

[mageParticipant 20596xp 0]

@woldenspoons <150 points>

 

You raise a high bar, did a lot of work and have a lot of units too. 150 points.

 

Best of luck at the tournament, my friend.

 

@robert <30 points>

 

Nice work, 30 points.

[mageParticipant 20596xp 1]

My Own Pledge:

 

> Start a 40K Project log or two

> Work on the Chaos Space Marine half of Shadowspear (Night Lords Legion)

> Work on the Space Marine half of Shadowspear (Carcharodons)

> Assemble, prime and paint some terrain from Conquest Magazine

> Finish painting the classic plastic chaos warrior shields I ordered online*

> Paint some Beastmen up for Mordheim*

 

I will wait to add to this when I can think of something else. I am not planning on finishing anything.

 

*The are the edits I added back in.

 

***

 

Off to Brightburn soon. Then staying up late to paint when I am home to prepare me for the nightshift tomorrow.

[tuffyears 23171xp 1]

Desided to paint Picard up, from the star trek set I won off here last year

[Anonymous 0xp 0]

@tuffyears is thatone of the Modiphius figures?

[tuffyears 23171xp 0]

@robert yurp, TNG bridge crew

[limburger 21709xp 0]

Hi folks 😀

We’re getting all sorts of warnings and precautions because of the expected heat (30 degrees celsius) and as such I doubt I’ll get to do any hobby of any kind. I do have a kickstarter to collect & unpack. That’s probably all I can manage.

(1) Is Social Media with hobbying replacing forums?

I think I’m too old to understand this ‘social media’ thing.

Or maybe I just don’t get it.

To me what I see on social media is exactly the same as forums.

The only real difference is that everyone can create a group/forum, which used to require black magic and access to a credit card.

However … (and I think this is important).

The average social media group like the random forums and newsgroups and bbs sites (anyone old enough to remember those ?) lack the one thing that make sites like OTT work : a sense of belonging and theme that turns bits&bytes into something welcoming to all. There’s more to making a forum (or facebook group) work than choosing a spiffy theme and catchy title.

I guess that’s why I didn’t really miss Google+ when it was cancelled.

It never was a community. At best it were the same old folks posting the same ol’ thing. Strangers would wander in, but there’d be no real reason to stay.

And while I made the jump to MeWe ( https://mewe.com/group/5bcd69e9a40f306ae071c51d )  it’s not as easy to use and fun as a professionally run forum like OTT is.

I also think that Facebook will either make a mistake that will make Cambridge Analytics like childs’ play.
Or I will be one of the last remaining humans who values privacy and ownership of their personal info. People tell me that I don’t have big digital footprint … and that’s true, because in addition to keeping my presence limited I also actively sabotage any attempt at making me reveal personal info whenever possible.

It’s why I don’t mind paying for OTT as well, because I know that the only part of me that’s providing money and clicks is the stuff I choose to publish in projects. There is no secret deniable datamining operation that sees me as a source of free money.

(2) Are websites going the way of the Dinosaur?

Nope. Tech may evolve, but the ones that survive will have one thing in common : they know that a website is more than a space to dump content. You need a goal and regular updates that make sense within your chosen context. Anything else and your precious website is the internet equivalent of the flyers that get handed out and thrown in the garbage.

(3) I know photos, articles and other information trickles out at conventions and events for our precious games, but should there be more social media reveals and information?

I prefer actual reviews and honesty over any artificial hype created by manufacturers by abusing social media and lame attempts at ‘viral marketing’.
Every single one of them is convinced that their latest game/product is the best thing since sliced bread.
Businesses are the worst source of info on products.
And none of them are willing to show the flaws of the game (or ready to admit those exist).

I think that’s enough of a rant from yours truly.

Music time :

And insanity time :

Fun factoid : the original Dutch actors did the German dub … which is why it can sound a bit *eh* weird.

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