[unofficial Weekender] Why is G'Wullu seemingly invincible?

[sundancer 42980xp 2]

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Topic of the week:

Why is G’Wullu seemingly invincible?

My take on this:

Every time I (and others) talk about why G’Wullu is seemingly so invincible in our hobby, the same argument keeps coming up:

• Visibility: Warhammer is *everywhere* Every medium, every toy shop – there’s Warhammer everywhere. From collector’s magazines in the supermarket to Monopoly 40k in the games shop to speciality games in bookshops
• Recognisability: If you’ve seen one Warhammer product, you’ll recognise them all. The design is so uniform that there is hardly any confusion
• Money: G’Wullu has resources and can afford a lot. Such as distribution centres outside their home country.

But there’s one thing I’ve never realised (at least not to me): they offer their products in several languages at the same time! With most other manufacturers, you have to wait (sometimes a long time) for the (often English) rulebook to finally come out in your own language. G’Wullu releases its shit in:

• English (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Ireland etc.)
• French (Canada, France, Belgium)
• German (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)
• Spanish (Spain)
• Italian (Italy)

This covers an enormous area. Africa and Asia are somewhat ‘left behind’, but in both cases there are also many countries that have Spanish, French or English (still a gift from the colonial era)

No small business from Nottingham and the surrounding area can afford that. And as long as G’Wullu remains ‘universally readable’, other manufacturers will have a hard time knocking it off its throne.

[pagan8thParticipant 10863xp 0]

Achilles had his heel. Smaug had his missing scale. There’s always a weakness. Just have to find it.

Would an elder sign work on G’wullu like it does Cthulhu and friends.

GW made itself vulnerable this year with the custodes lore change and mention of female space marines. If the 40k series goes ahead and they break the lore… hard core fans may withdraw from the game taking their money with them… that’s their true vulnerability… money… if people stop buying their overpriced products they become weakened.

I went through a GW phase, so I have pile of their crap. Now I only buy if I see a miniature I want and that’s usually for something other than a GW product. The 40k setting is horrible because everyone is skum. AoS is too focused on fantasy marines. Old World used to be interesting, but the new edition is too focused on selling books for each faction.

My skirmish games of choice now are 7TV and Dead Man’s Hand and I can use whatever minis I like for both of those.

P.S. GW make everything sound stupid with their made up pseudo latin names for factions, units, weapons etc

[kiranamida 5791xp 3]

I think that Games Workshop also benefits in that, for better or worse, there are multiple avenues to engage with them.

You can play their games which is buying into the rulesets. You can get their models, either to play said games or something else. You can get your paints and tools from the. They sell fiction based on the worlds that comes from this.

Now some of us might argue that one of these are the best example of any of these but they are somewhat uniquely placed to be a one stop shop for the new hobbyist. Even when people go elsewhere a lot of people stay attached to the company in some way. Take myself for example, I never buy Citadel tools, rarely the paints anymore and don’t play the rulesets but I buy the minis because they are are cool toys representing the fiction and I buy the stories for the same.

Few other companies have so many different means to interact with customers so “walking away from the company” is much more straightforward with the smaller compa ies where they may only have one of two lines of product.

In that way I imagine a lot of people stay with GW, even when they move away.

[guillotine 16039xp 5]

GW made itself vulnerable this year with the custodes lore change and mention of female space marines. If the 40k series goes ahead and they break the lore… hard core fans may withdraw from the game taking their money with them…

Nah. The people online who rage about female Custodians or Space Marines are a tiny but loud minority and bunch of people looking to piggy back on the rage-youtube. The real fans who actually buy their products and engage with the events and gaming groups are either happy about GWs approach or don’t care either way.

What you follow up about money in general, I do agree with, and especially pricing. There is a saturation point where they cannot keep increasing the prices anymore. Clearly that’s not near yet with the success they’ve recently enjoyed.

 

The time when GW was vulnerable was after the Lord of the Rings hype vanished and they were moving away from metal miniatures by replacing them with the poor quality finecasts. They also had some weaker game releases after that time and I felt lot of people lost interest and went to other games. However they clawed back from that, with better 40k rules and far broader plastics range catching up and generally new miniature releases being better all the time. Many people were unhappy about the end of Warhammer Fantasy, likely though commercially that was a good choice. And now they’re getting lot of that back with nostalgia and the Old World doing amazingly well.

Fundamentally GW seems “invincible” because they have amazingly good product. And by that I mean the comprehensive “Warhammer” hobby. Just what @kiranamida wrote above, there’s so many ways to enjoy the hobby. And the lore and the miniatures are just so good they keep drawing new people and also old faces like my self back as their customers. These are all further boosted by the licensing deals, which bring money but also visibility. There are SO many people checking out Warhammer now due to the Space Marine II release and I’ve understood lot of Total War: Warhammer fans have gotten now to miniatures for the first time with the Old World. Imagine what a potential smash hit Amazon series would do?

And yes, what @sundancer wrote. GW is the only truly international miniature games company. It’s a massive advantage to anyone else. I think they also have done really smart choice internationally focusing on the Warhammer brand instead of Games Workshop.

[guillotine 16039xp 3]

Oh, one more thought.

Do you remember when many people thought 3D printing would be the end of GW? It’s become pretty blatantly obvious that’s not going to happen, without some surprising breakthrough with the printer technology. Don’t get me wrong, the modern printer produce amazing quality, better than HIPS plastic at times. However the development of the printers has leveled to incremental upgrades, like all tech tends to end up. There’s no developments on making them fundamentally more beginner friendly or safe to run in homes without care. The software is still rather specialist with steep learning curve.

[limburger 21709xp 0]

nah … 3D printing may be good, but it’s not quite at the level you could sell such a printer at a non specialist store and expect people to succeed at their first print. The 3D print file collection websites are however slowly but surely settling on a standard format that just works.

The middle to high end printers are getting there, but it is far from ‘plug&play’ for the uninitiated.

I think the answer is to GW’s invulnerability is much much simpler.

They represent something that is ‘good enough’ for a lot of their customers.

It’s the McDonalds of wargaming.

Us geeks don’t like it in the same way that a hobby chef won’t like the entire McDonalds concept.
And that’s because we know there’s better stuff out there and we’re willing to do the work to get there.

For most folk GW’s products are ‘good enough’

Part of that may be ignorance (due to how widespread GW’s products are), but … we as hobbyists need to understand that not everyone is going to have the standards we have set for ourselves.

GW didn’t die when they killed off the old world, despite fans burning their games.

And lets’ not forget the last time GW’s dominance was threatened … was when a little game called X-wing was released.

It was a proper threat (even pushing GW out of the top of most sold games for a short while) and it was made by a company that had the means to do a world wide release while benefiting from an IP that was insanely popular.

The only problem was that the market that Xwing tapped into never evolved into a community.
The kind of people that bought that starter set never were going to be big gamers or collectors.
Although FFG might have capitalized on the collectors’ gene by having a more predictable release schedule, the fact is that they quickly ran out of things that entry level fans for the Starwars franchise would want to own.

But as a hobby with gaming potential ? nah …
Like the Nintendo Wii the audience they attracted were never going to commit to anything beyond that initial wow-factor.

I’d also argue that our hobby doesn’t give immediate rewards. It doesn’t have the instant-gratification that videogames have.
(and this was why Xwing also worked … it was playable out of the box, no complex rules, pre-painted minis, … it was closer to a boardgame. It may be why it just worked, but it was also its’ achilles’ heel.

[grantinvanman 2182xp 1]

GW is just everywhere. Literally, everywhere. I first got into GW 800km north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Up there, you could: drink for fun, snowmobile for fun, or find a hobby for fun. I found GW.

And even though I’ve gone through large collections, I STILL find something I want to buy and paint or play from the GW stable.

The universality of it has to be part of the appeal. Everywhere you go, you’re bound to find a gamer who is at least a little into GW. So many other games are just not that universal. So that might be it.

Not saying it’s for everyone, but it’s obviously for a lot of people. They’ve also been making roads for inclusivity which I like. Seriously.

 

[limburger 21709xp 0]

games have always been “inclusive” … (a word that makes me wanna puke tbh).
It usually indicates that a setting gets molested in the name of ‘modern morals’ as opposed to finding a way that makes things feel like a natural part of the setting.

A game set in the American civil war is going to have to deal with the fact that slaves were a fact of life in that era.
Same thing with the golden era of pirates.  Some really dark things were happening. A game dealing with such subjects is going to have to address them and when done right it ought to make people feel as uncomfortable as they should be.

It’s the clubs and gatherings that can make you feel like you are a peasant intruding in a private gathering of the local elite.

Part of that may simply be socially inept folk trying to be a club, and the rest simply being too impatient to want to help new players with the game.

Heck … a while a go we had a new discord member ask for help because his girl friend was going to have a game with someone who at that local club was nick named a ‘seal clubber’.

I’m glad I’ve never seen such grade A a-holes in real life.

OTOH … I’ve been to boardgame events that had a few demo tables for wargames. And that often felt like people having their private games in public and less like fans promoting their hobby to the uninitiated.

One doesn’t have to tell me that talking to strangers is hard, but when you are at a public event showing off your hobby/game you need to master that fear. It also helps to have models on hand that you can let strangers interact with …

So … back to GW.
The worst sin that they have committed isn’t the inclusion of female space marines.
It’s the simple fact that they have made them to be ‘good guys’ somewhere after the release of the original Rogue Trader.
There is nothing ‘good’ about a bunch of genetically engineered warriors who rule planets with an iron fist and use the inhabitants as test subjects or make them believe they are gods. And yet that’s what these ‘good guys’ do.

[kissmehardy 1xp 1]

To me it was the start of “gaming” 30 plastic marines for £9, no body to fight against until citadel did some metals but it led me to the hidden world of miniatures (ended up doing AWI with ‘Polly Oliver’ minis-happy days) I dabble in 30k but hate 40k due to endless rule changes/errata’s etc (Warlord have that issue now I fear but I’ll tick in) so basically mixed emotions to GW. The price point is really since they had shareholders I think, got to keep them happy I guess.

[warbossd 4562xp 0]

The multi-region thing can’t hurt them but I think the key to their dominance is a cynical one.

Back in the 1970s(?) when they were a small London retailer in a fledgling sector of gaming they made a decision to make their retail operation exclusive. Meaning they had a high street presence in a pre-internet era selling ONLY their own product.

This turned Games Workshop into a predatory trap rather than a gateway to something larger.

In terms of pure capitalism this was absolutely the right decision, and although in some countries (such as the USA) their monopolization of retail space isn’t as total as it is the UK, their complete dominance of these core markets created a very secure business model. The lack of competition this created has also allowed all of their past missteps and problem periods.

Their business cycle is approaching a pivot point I think, due to ridiculous pricing and terrible play experience from their main games. They have plenty of resources to turn it around again and create a boom to follow the bust.

The only thing that we’ll never change is Warhammer retail stores exclusivity and thus their market dominance is secure as far as I can see.

I long for the day when I can be positive about a GW product again and you never know it could happen.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 2 weeks ago by  warbossd.

[solarParticipant 2781xp 0]

GW nearly went bankrupt about 8 or 9 years ago, apparently they were within a month or two of going under. I do not think GW is invincible at all, but in this fast paced modern world we sometimes forget that things still take a long time to play out. Currently GW is very healthy but that certainly is not guaranteed and there is the possibility that in 10 years time GW might not exist just like any other company out there.

One thing I think GW need to be very careful over is inserting modern politics/sensibilities into their products. Its certainly the case that Disney and other brands have suffered huge issues from doing this with massive fan backlashes and it has caused financial losses that depending on the company can either be absorbed or compensated for, but for GW who arguably live or die by a single IP (Warhammer 40k) if they destroy that IP they will not find it so easy to replace.

[limburger 21709xp 0]

Unless the ‘fans’ are ditching GW products en masse (something I doubt will ever happen) I doubt that GW is even anywhere close to failing.

IT simply has too much momentum to simply stop.

High price point may simply result in people collecting smaller armies …

The spearhead and combat patrol boxes seem to support that habbit quite nicely.

I’d submit that the only folk who speak in the negative about GW are the ex-fans who have moved on to different systems.
The newbies still don’t know any better and they will settle for whatever GW sells them until they too get replaced by new consumers.

[pagan8thParticipant 10863xp 1]

Netflix cancel series after a few seasons because they want new subscribers and they subscribe for a new series.

Broadband deals always favour people switching to the company rather than giving discounts to existing customers.

GW (and other companies) are always trying to attract new customers rather than keep the old which they believe are hooked.

It’s a common policy in business… don’t be nice to the existing customers… you have them… lure in new ones.

[limburger 21709xp 0]

yep … squeeze them for all they are worth and then on to the next batch of fresh meat.

Cynical ?

Heck yeah.

But I’ve yet to see a (big) company actually care about their customers.
Once you become a number you’re nothing to them.

[frankeleeParticipant 1364xp 1]

Nah. The people online who rage about female Custodians or Space Marines are a tiny but loud minority and bunch of people looking to piggy back on the rage-youtube. The real fans who actually buy their products and engage with the events and gaming groups are either happy about GWs approach or don’t care either way. The people who are happy with GW’s approach are an even tinier loud minority who usually aren’t actual customers. Most people don’t care either way.

FTFY

I don’t know why people are thinking it’s somehow the natural course of the universe for GW to go out of business. Most businesses that catch on and become successful, if they stay in their lane, make a decent product, and don’t suffer the effects of some major technological or historical shift, will keep chugging along successfully. GW’s still making miniatures, still publishing bad paperbacks about space marines, and still licensing out their IP to for successful video games. They’re still an agile company who can respond to setbacks and fix mistakes when they make them, long before their revenue will dry up and force them out of business.

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