There's a lot of speculation regarding Games Workshop's seemingly misguided commercial actions and their reasons. I think that a large part of it is due to the company's internal structure at the corporate level, as shown here. This post is not mine, I'm just copypasting it.
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>If you are the private and sole owner of a company, it's yours to do with as you please. You can extract as much money as you want/can from it, run it into the ground, etc. in accordance with your whims.
>However, a corporation is collectively owned by its shareholders. A publicly traded company has shares that can be bought and sold on the open markets, a privately-held corporation usually has restricted shares - for example, a company might have in its charter that an owner has to sell his or her shares to the other owners under such and such circumstances, and otherwise cannot sell shares to a third party. I'm not too familiar with the various rules there, but it still comes down to this: the shareholders own the company.
>In order to ensure that shareholders' ownership isn't usurped by the company's officers doing whatever they please, most (all?) countries have rules about how a corporation has to be structured and operated. In both the US and the UK, corporations typically have a board of directors. The members of the board of directors are effectively hired by the shareholders (that is, shareholders have the power to vote for who will be a board member and can vote someone out), and work for the shareholders and nobody else. They often do not hold any stock in the company. Being a corporate boardmember is considered somewhat prestigious, and often high-level or retired businesspeople wrangle their way onto multiple companies' boards
>>44004164
>Members of the board hire and fire the company's officers, including (most importantly) the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). They also typically set the officers' compensation, including both salary and (very commonly) stock options, equity (just piles of in-the-money stock), and severance packages that can include lots more money and stock.
>The board of directors by law have what's called a fiduciary duty to the shareholders. That is, they are legally* bound to act in the shareholders' best interests. Scholars often break this duty down into categories, like "Duty of care" and "Duty of loyalty" and sometimes two or three more, but basically what these duties boil down to is that the board is supposed to take actions that are to the maximum possible benefit to the shareholders. That benefit can be fairly broadly defined, though: for example, the board is well within its rights to take an action that could lower the company's immediate earnings (e.g., reduce shareholder value) in anticipation that long-term earnings will be improved. Or vice-versa. A board can vote to sell a company for a certain amount of money per share, ignoring what individual shareholders might think those shares "ought" to be worth, or that most shareholders are holding stock in anticipation of long-term earnings... all they have to do is have a reasonable argument that selling the company now is the "best" option.
>*Common law, actually, at least in the US. Which is supported by a lot of case law. But the legal complexities are beyond my understanding. Suffice it to say that fiduciary duty is encoded in the legal system in such a way as to make it essentially binding, but with some wiggle room so that lawyers can still regularly extract multimillion-dollar paychecks from litigating cases that can take a decade to fully resolve.
>>44004187
>Where things can become very muddied is when the same person is acting as both board member and as an executive officer of a company, or when a board member owns shares in the company. On the one hand, you could argue that simply by virtue of being a shareholder, a board member is even more invested (literally!) in "what's best for the shareholders." On the other hand, when a board member owns shares, he or she might have immediate financial interests that are different from those of the majority of the shareholders. Perhaps he or she needs cash right now, and isn't worried about ten years from now. Or perhaps he or she is perfectly wiling to gamble the stock, taking big risks in the hopes of a long-term payoff. For this reason, most large corporations in the US have a board of directors that are not shareholders.
>Another potential source of problems is when a member of the board of directors is also an executive officer in the company. There is a potential conflict of interest here: the company's officers are supposed to be engaged in the day-to-day running of the company, held to account by the board of directors, hired and fired if they don't do their job well. But if the executive officer has one of the small number of votes of the board, by virtue of being one of those votes, he or she is much harder to fire, gets to vote on his or her own compensation package, can presumably more heavily influence the board's decisions, etc.
>There are common arrangements to help mitigate these problems. In the US, companies sometimes set up things so that if some officers might be taking actions in their own self-interest, specifically designated "noninterested" decision makers must approve the action. These decision makers could be other board members, or the shareholders (by putting the action up for vote), or both. This sort of thing happens a lot when a company is being acquired, sold, is issuing new shares to officers, etc.
>So now we come to Games Workshop.
>>44004199
>http://investor.games-workshop.com/the-board-of-directors/
>Kevin Rountree is Games Workshop's CEO, and a member of its board of directors, and a shareholder.
>His predecessor, Tom Kirby, is "non-executive chairman," meaning he's the chairman of the board but not an executive officer of the company. But he is a large shareholder: the largest individual shareholder and third-largest overall shareholder of the company, with 6.7% ownership.
>http://investor.games-workshop.com/shareholder-statistics/
>The other executive officer is Rachel Tongue, an accountant. The other non-executive officers are Chris Myatt, Nick Donaldson, and Elaine O'Donnell. None of these people, nor Rountree, own enough shares to get onto the shareholder statistics page, which means they each own less than 3%, but they could still have significant holdings.
>Here's a list of insider transactions that shows that O'Donnell and Rountree both own at least some shares, though. (Insider trading rules require that insiders, defined as employees of the company who are in a position to have significant knowledge of the company's finances and major decisions in advance of the company's reports, have to report their stock transactions to the market, and usually have to schedule those transactions well in advance.)
>Now, I'm not that familiar with the details of UK's corporate governance laws. Clearly this arrangement is, at the very least, legal; it may also be very commonplace, especially for a small company like GW. But, in my opinion, it leaves a great deal of room for unethical behavior. I think it's an inherent conflict of interest to have major shareholders running the company's board, for the reasons listed above as well as the one thespaceinvader specifically pointed out... it's possible for the board, as major shareholders, to simply transfer a huge proportion of the company's value (and its future) into their pockets by paying out dividends, granting themselves more stock, etc.
>>44004222
>That said, they could go a lot farther. For example, the board could decide to issue new, "preferred" stock only to the company executives, and then only pay out a dividend (or pay an outsized dividend) only to those preferred shares! The rest of the stockholders would have no other recourse than firing the directors. Or, they could simply issue huge piles of common stock to themselves, gradually increasing their percentage of ownership even while diluting the shares held by everyone else. These sorts of blatant actions do tend to rouse suspicion (and lawsuits) from other shareholders, though. I'm just saying.
>So, legally: it's clearly legal and even fairly common for insiders, executives, and even board members of a company to hold stock in that company, and benefit financially from doing so. Ethically... well, the courts and lawmakers have generally assumed that the best judges of what is ethical or not are the shareholders themselves. The law makes sure that the shareholders can act if they find their employees (the members of the board) are not acting in their best interests. They can vote them out, or sue them, or both. If the shareholders are OK with it, who are we to say that there's an ethical problem?
>The reality is that small-time shareholders are usually the ones who care the most, and they have essentially zero power. Major shareholders are usually big investment companies, stock funds, banks, etc. and they only give a shit if things get really egregious or if they suspect that the board is actually screwing them out of huge piles of money. When they do act, though, those big boys tend to come down like a ton of bricks, because they have serious legal resources. This situation is very rare, though, and often only happens after the worst of the damage is done and irreversible.
>>44004242
Some posts later, someone else responds.
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>[Now, I'm not that familiar with the details of UK's corporate governance laws. Clearly this arrangement is, at the very least, legal; it may also be very commonplace, especially for a small company like GW.]
>Well as it happens, I am. My day job touches on these issues and I've been a non-exec director myself in several UK entities. Now the subject is staggeringly huge and would fill page after page if we got into it, but if Leperflesh or the thread at large want to formulate some questions then I can make an effortpost to answer them.
>GW's structure is self-centred enough to raise eyebrows in the UK...GW just doesn't care. Indeed, in the last thread at one point some financial analysts were quoted as saying the stock was a poor buy due to inept management. Having the market say that about your board is usually pretty lethal - shareholder revolts oust board members all the time, and having your stock value clobbered because the market thinks your management team are crap usually makes shareholders start fingering their voting forms thoughtfully.
>Market analysis of GW has actually been like this for a while, and yet Kirby held onto his post until recently. So either GW's CEOs are remarkably charismatic and can keep the shareholders calm (which is entirely possible; even the institutional funds are still run by actual people and they will give the benefit of the doubt to a great bloke everyone likes), or they've convinced everyone to hold the course while Age of Sigmar ramps up to the dizzying heights of success it is sure to attain.
>>44004222
Oh, I forgot to paste the link to the insider trading log.
http://www.stockopedia.com/share-prices/games-workshop-LON:GAW/directors-dealings/
I worked a bit as an intern in an asset company, so I'll say it again.
Investors don't care. Not in the slightest. They give their money to the company which will, in turn, use it to make more money.
It's partly computers, meaning that as soon as the values go down, they pull out the plug, and go on another company.
I've had to work on things like clients investing in cinemas and then, at the first sign of problems, pulled their money out, because obviously the company can't lose the client's money, and then invest it again in things like an IT company.
The major shareholders like Kirby sorta know the company of course. But they get money, they don't care if it goes down bit by bit. Chances are, they have shares in hundreds, if not thousands of other companies.
As soon as the profit won't be there anymore, they'll pull out.
I've seen companies ruined in less than a day like that.
>>44004481
Oh, definitely. At a stock level, GW is doing fine, all dividends and no debts. But I don't see it lasting, especially if AoS is selling even less than Fantasy before it got canned.
My personal, reaching speculah? Kirby and company are maximizing profit for themselves and making sure the land is salted behind them. Once they jump ship, GW as a company will implode.
>>44004555
Probably
As I said in the other thread, one can dream that by losing value and becoming dirt cheap, GW could be bought by anlther company like Bandai, and then left to its own business by old employees because they have a bit of common sense.
Even then it's not sure, because one can think that since those old veterans did not manage to keep GW from falling, might as well change them.
>>44004555
At that point we can only hope that the IP is sold on and not hoarded away for a rainy day, some fucker taking the IPs and chucking them onto the pile Disney-style is the worst possible outcome.
>I've seen a few comments about AOS being the main game due to the statue at Warhammer HQ in Nottingham. I visited the place less than a month ago and I can say that there is no statue in sight now
Oh shit, can anyone confirm?
>>44004744
>old veterans
Most old veterans have their own companies by now.
Mantic, Warlord, Perry Bros.. all do their own games and own miniatures
>>44005707
Its ten past 11 here in Bongland, so unless there's a local about you might not get an answer till morning.
>>44005747
Its funny really, GW's continued hubris and incompetence over the years has meant Nottingham in particular and that part of the UK in general has loads of game writers and mini sculptors working on their own thing and with very little affection for The Company.
>>44005859
What's more funny is the hubris and incompetence shown daily by /tg/ posters who know nothing about finance or business but like to whine about how they should run GW or what GW is doing wrong.
People who don't even know what production "overhead" is, talking about prices.
>>44005912
Enlighten us, anon.
>>44005927
Lurk on /tg/ for more than 72 hours and you're bound to see one of those threads.
>>44006065
No, I mean, enlighten us about finance, business and production overhead. If you can explain to us what goes on with GW's prices, that'd be pretty great!
>>44005912
There is no chance in hell that the overhead for GW minis covers the price. They have got to be raking in profits in the quadruple digits. Look at the most recent Chaos models for Aos, 200 USD for three models
>>44006201
Apparently that's Australian dollars, not USD. Still pricey as hell.
>>44006201
>>44006219
Kiwi dollars lads, they're 170 dollarydoos.
>>44006201
Yeah, its £60 in the UK, and $100 US. Which is a bit funny, because by the website I just used the exchange rate should make them about $90 at the moment
£20 / $33.33 each is a hell of a lot to me for one figure. Maybe for one
>>44006417
Sorry, was going to say for a one-off special character HQ but even then I'd be really, really hesitant. certainly not if I'd have to buy another two just to get one.
>>44006417
Jesus those things are ugly. the only cool thing about them is their name
>>44006177
I got your answer anon.For real though, if the other anon can explain why the prices keep being jacked up for any reason other than GW thinking they are making better models, I'll give him virtual thanks
>>44004744
>GW could be bought by anlther company like Bandai
I have the feeling that a lot of people on /tg/ really overestimate just how much GW and its products are worth in the grand scheme of things. What do 40k or Fantasy or AoS have that a big company could look at any of them and think to themselves "Hmm, I could market this to the public and make big money off of it.". To be honest, nothing really comes to my mind.
>>44005859
>Its funny really, GW's continued hubris and incompetence over the years has meant Nottingham in particular and that part of the UK in general has loads of game writers and mini sculptors working on their own thing and with very little affection for The Company.
And how many of them are really in a position to do anything and not just working at some small fish company that makes GW look huge in comparison? Priestly puts out Gates of Antares, how many people actually appear to give a damn?
>>44007416
Depends on what you're talking about, a lot of AoS stuff is high in price because the miniatures are significantly bigger.
40k clampacks are expensive because very few people go out there and buy up ten of a single model, either because the rules or lore are a roadblock or because the buyer doesn't want a bunch of models that basically look the same without any conversion work, as is usually the case with clampacks.
How the model actually goes together is important as well I think, a clampack that consists of a few big parts is going to be less expensive than one that is broken up into multiple pieces that can easily be switched out or used elsewhere. This probably goes for the price of GW's kits as well, a lot of them are modular to some extent.
>>44005927
>>44007416
>expecting people to explain entire majors and career paths to you in a single thread, let alone a single post
How about you try explaining how you think you know so much about GW first. You're probably not even a shareholder, and anyone can easily buy one share and have access to their quarterly reports.
Do you even know what a financial statement is?
>>44008643
The thread started with an overview of corporate law and structure, in case you didn't notice. So you should do no less.
>>44008643
Nigga that's what I've written.
If the anon that was saying other people can't judge easily could explain to us why, I'm all ears. The less stupid I am the better.
So the people who run my local GW tell me that the price of models is based on these factors
> The utility of the model in game
> The complexity of the sculpt and the details / building of it
> Size of the model and how many would be expected to be sold, a blood thirster will be purchased once, while blood letters will be purchased many times.
Also, how does forge world play into all of this?
>>44007416
It's pretty hard, and in the stock oriented world of today and tomorrow it's even worse.
See, I used to work for a company that was more or less state of the art. Not wargaming or anything, and I left on good terms so it's not slander.
The CEO can be rewarded with stocks. Hell, any exec-level guy is usually rewarded with stocks as a part of salary. Except the CEO can be rewarded with a few % of the gross revenue worth of stocks.
It used to be a good insensitive for CEOs to have results, however it turned into an insensitive for CEOs to have good results IN THE STOCK EXCHANGE.
It has nothing to do with long term. The stock exchange don't care about your results past the next annual book.
>>44009849
>insensitive
Incentive, anon. Sorry.
And yeah, the main post touched on that, but when you have an officer post, a seat on the board AND a controlling share then your decisions are going to be very fishy compared to the rest of the shareholders.
>>44009927
Sorry, English is my third language and I am pretty drunk.
Anyway never expected public shareholders (aka not long term shareholders) to have any kind of plan beyond next year, and don't expect the CEO to be better, even if they sit on litteral gold.
You guys think GW is a poorly run company, you's be surprised at what a clusterfuck Privateer Press is.
In the last 5 years they almost went under twice.
>>44010313
Privater press don't hold two of the most popular licences in fantasy and sci-fi.
After all NXP an Freescale had to merge to survive. You don't hear about it because they didn't have much IP for them.
>>44010394
True, but people talk about PP like they are some "savior" of the industry when it's a horribly run company.
When your manager comes to work half-drunk and blurts out "I dont even know if we'll have a job next week" when you ask him for a new project then leaves the room because he's starting to cry, things aren't going well.
>>44010553
This thread didn't bring up PP until you did. If you want to make a long form post on internal clusterfucks, make a new thread and link it!
>>44010687
look 2 comments up
>>44010687
Making comparisons is perfectly reasonable.
You sound like a PP fanboy.
>>44010813
He didn't once defend PP. He's saying GW have enough market share to have stayed afloat without much trouble despite mismanagement.
It's kind of telling that people believe there can be no criticism of GW whatsoever from people that aren't unwashed fanboys for any other company, whether it's PP or Corvus Belli or Osprey or whatever.
>>44005912
Fuck off, Kirby
>>44012679
True, but some of us have worked for some of those companies so we know what it's really like without the "rose-colored glasses".
>>44008643
>nobody is allowed to criticize a company that holds a dearly beloved IP for its business decisions on my Chinese image board
>>44014021
>II
Aren't Dark Angels the second legion?
>>44014073
>>44014203
Goddammit dog, don't be like that
>>44014073
DA are the first
>>44014396
Oh. Then who is that nerd? >>44014021
>>44014021
You should get called out on your criticism though when you're blatantly pulling things out of your ass.
See the thread earlier when there was at least one person claiming that the Perry brothers were probably sacked because GW wanted to replace them with a cheaper intern, on the contrary they left of their own volition and on good terms, supposedly even having a going away party.
If you're going to make the same old claims that GW is going to fall any day now you should also be prepared to back up your assertions.
>>44014405
Could be numerous Chapters or even fanmade Second Legion or Chapter based on the Second Legion.
>>44014525
Christ, you're sounding like a Russian POST PROOFS paid commenter. And if it's true that they left so happily then that makes GW look even worse - why the hell did they allow literally world-class sculptors to simply walk away? Especially since their ongoing efforts prove they're very much still active in the industry.
>>44014687
>Christ, you're sounding like a Russian POST PROOFS paid commenter.
Burden of proof
>And if it's true that they left so happily then that makes GW look even worse - why the hell did they allow literally world-class sculptors to simply walk away? Especially since their ongoing efforts prove they're very much still active in the industry.
Maybe they didn't want to work for GW anymore, maybe they wanted to focus on their own business, focus solely on historicals?
From the sound of things they were mostly relegated to doing stuff for LotR and the Hobbit, both of which eventually had to come to an end and which GW pretty much disowned. It also depends on what models they really worked on, AoS at the moment really has nothing like an Empire, Bretonnia, or Dogs of War and if they really didn't do much beyond that there isn't a real reason to keep them around. They also apparently prefer to do more realistic sculpting while GW is obviously focused on heroic sculpts.
>>44009288
>> The utility of the model in game
:| in other words, they literally believe that they can charge more for a model if they inflate its stats...
>>44015154
When Magic does it, it's called P2W.
>>44015154
I'd believe that more if its referring to the number of options the kit offers.
>>44014895
>heroic
bad*
>>44008643
holy shit anon you really don't want to accept that they cant into business
>>44014525
>the Perry brothers were probably sacked because GW wanted to replace them with a cheaper intern
Partially true. GW was replacing many of the "Old Guard" with less expensive newer sculptors not only because they were being paid more and having contracts where they received a portion of the profits from their sculpts, but also because many of the older staff were resisting changes to the company as whole and were causing problems.
Newer sculptors wanted that same arrangement but were told no, since GW wanted an ironclad "ownership" of all models produced. So they offered older sculptors a new deal which most didn't accept, which is one reason among many that a lot of the older sculptors left GW.
>on the contrary they left of their own volition and on good terms
Only because the writing was on the wall that they would be leaving on way or another. It's always better to leave on good terms (this is something Privateer Press could do to learn about it's staff).
>>44004164
>http://www.stockopedia.com/share-prices/games-workshop-LON:GAW/directors-dealings/
>>44004187
>>44004199
>>44004222
>>44004242
>>44004268
where is this copypasted from?
>>44020842
>It's always better to leave on good terms
This is also why you don't hear any of the old GW hands that have moved on say anything untoward towards Age of Sigmar. There is no point in burning their bridges like that.
>>44022508
One of the Warhammer threads in Something Awful, same one that had this history of GW/Citadel Miniatures.
>>44022512
>This is also why you don't hear any of the old GW hands that have moved on say anything untoward towards Age of Sigmar. There is no point in burning their bridges like that.
Well, at least not in public like on a forum. Privately a lot of them are pretty happy GW seems to be fading from the Glory Days.
At this point anyone they actually care about doesn't work for GW anyway, so there are no more bridges to burn.
They have their own careers and companies now and many Ex-GW people in the industry feel the same way towards GW.
The primary reason they don't publicly bad-mouth GW isn't because of burning bridges, it's because it's not considered professional these days and can give you a bad image.
Then again, there have been ex-GW staff (and staff of other companies like PP, Warlord, Mantic etc) that have been very vocal.
And DESU, speaking as a former employee of a few of those companies, nothing bad I've heard being said about them online has been false or exaggerated. It's all been pretty accurate.
>>44023836
>Then again, there have been ex-GW staff (and staff of other companies like PP, Warlord, Mantic etc) that have been very vocal.
Links?
>>44008228
> because the miniatures are significantly bigger
Oh yeah dude, there's just, like, so much more plastic and, like, plastic is money dude
>>44024060
I remember the first major price raise about ten years ago was explained in white dwarf as due to the "rising cost of oil", from which plastic is derived. But, oddly, no matter where the price of oil goes, the price of GW products goes in only one direction
And as far as defending other manufacturers, I most assuredly don't, I think it's idiotic that so many companies choose to set GW-esque prices because GW gets away with it so they can too, instead of actually competing the way rival firms are supposed to. It's kind of like informal price-fixing. As long as no alternative to GW undercut their prices, neither GW nor any competitor will feel any pressure to lower prices.
The only place I don't see this trend is in historical, where Perry, warlord, and Victrix all price very reasonably, at least compared to PP and GW, but historicals are really a distinct market, so I don't see it exerting as much competitive pressure as should be exerted
>>44024603
>The only place I don't see this trend is in historical, where Perry, warlord, and Victrix all price very reasonably, at least compared to PP and GW, but historicals are really a distinct market, so I don't see it exerting as much competitive pressure as should be exerted
A real fucking shame. I mean, look at this:
https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?products_id=3356&osCsid=45rjtvp96qt3psdt9q9i6d0975
Now this is an actual starter kit for hobbyists.
>>44004164
>There's a lot of speculation
Bullshit. It's a money laundering operation.
This isn't speculation - it's the only explanation that fits all the facts.
Why else are the majority of GW shares held by a handful of faceless hedge fund managers with Cayman Islands post boxes to mask their true identities?
http://investor.games-workshop.com/shareholder-statistics/
How else can a "company" with such a long history of top-down, suicidal, antiproductive blunders continue to exist?
FACT: There is no secret financial genius at Notts, no last-minute corporate salvation was found in some little-known UK law, no magical faerie dust exists to turn decades of serial disasters into IRL profits - so it's a scam. It has to be.
>>44025418
I don't really see a lot of modularity there. Sure they're made of polystyrene plastic, are multi part, and seem to do more than repeat the same couple poses, but they still appear to be part A goes with part B goes with part C.
>>44027470
Different historicals plastics have different standards of sculpting or "moddability," warlord kits are usually about as customizable as GW but with somewhat worse sculpting, whereas Perry has equivalent sculpting but less "moddability," but I certainly can't see that GW's quality warrants prices which are, in many cases, 5 to 10 times higher. Most historical plastic kits average out to around $1 a figure, in many cases less. GW's cheapest infantry kits are, iirc, about $2.50-$3 per figure. And the trend in GW has been to reduce moddability ever since they started doing one-piece bodies in warhammer fantasy for the Bretonnians and lizardmen. For the bulk of GW kits that have been released in the past decade, you simply select a head and arms, maybe a few accessories. This is equivalent to most of what Perry makes (their civil war and napoleonic ranges are more statically posed because they're intended to rank in tidy formations, their hundred years war or war of the roses lines have more customizable options than most WHF kits).
I can't say anyone meets GW's standards 100%, but the price difference for the manufacturers I've discussed usually more than makes up for that.
That's why I never got into warmahordes when I first heard of it, sub-gw quality at GW prices, but now I haven't bought anything from GW in 5 years except a box of empire archers for mordheim conversions, and I'm probly going to switch to bolt action to satisfy my 40k urge and (OOP) warhammer ancient battles for my pre-modern combat needs
>>44029993
This. That Perry ACW starter box is around $143 plus shipping. Over 170 figures for two full armies plus terrain and rules. GW wants $100 for three chaos knights in funky horses and nothing else.
>>44026725
>Why else are the majority of GW shares held by a handful of faceless hedge fund managers with Cayman Islands post boxes to mask their true identities?
I don't know if you're a UK resident or not but that's really, really common here.
>>44026725
>How else can a "company" with such a long history of top-down, suicidal, antiproductive blunders continue to exist?
Because they don't actually have a history of that and you're making the classic mistake of confusing online echochambers like /tg/ with the real world, the people who inhabit those echo chambers with the literal entirety of GW's customer base, and decisions you don't like with financially ruinous ones.
If your only frame of reference was /v/, you'd think the Call of Duty franchise was one of the biggest disasters in gaming history.
>>44014895
>all that assertion
Prove it.
>>44030626
The first part is merely speculation
You can it being said that they were mostly relegated to work for the LotR and the Hobbit in threads dealing with their departure from GW.
What work they actually did for GW with regards to other ranges is again speculation, all I really ever see people bring up is how they did models for the Empire, Bretonnia, and Dogs of War. The thing about them preferring more realistic sculpting can be found on their Wikipedia page.
>>44031266
>found on their Wikipedia page
Top quality info sourcing right there champ.
>>44004164
Hm. One thing that's continuly bemused me is how ineptly neckbeardy GW is about breaking 40k in to a wider market.
Some of it's not on them -Space Marine sold damn good and a sequel was in early planning -except that THQ had to /wrists and flame out.
But really. 40k's a setting where you can tell _any_ story, any tale of exploration and adventure or sinister politics and skullduggery, or even a cute little "slice of story" that starts with Bob Audience Perspective Character and his job at the lasgun lug manufactorum and slowly descends into supernatural paranoia, demonic possession, and eventually a desperate fight to escape a hive with a population of over a billion becoming a demon-zombie-culist infested hellscape.
Nnnnnnope.
You could make any kind of cheap app game -Fruit Chainsword and the fruit are heads.
Or Farmville, except it's Hive Management. Or really go lazy and make it Agri-World-ville.
A Diablo-alike title. Chop open a Ripper, find an Hateful Eviscerator of the Eagle? What?
(yeah, I know someone called 40k: Martyr is being made and odds are that it'll be myopic in scope and generic in execution. The 40k brand is managed a like a bad series of comic book movies where every last one is a reboot because why give your old fans what they want when you can impress people who won't care with your generic "gritty, realistic" watered-down rendition)
A dating-sim; "sempai Farseer is so cruel, uguu~" (ok that would suck)
Racing? "Armegeddon has it all: Dunes! Jungles! Lava! ORKS!"
Any topic. Any format. Do "Papers Please" but with cultists.
NNNNNope.
The combination of BL's "LOL lore" and GW's "CANON IS ALL" approach is utterly baffling. You could make a Metroidvania game in delicious dat-ass 16-bit style featuring a Guardsman, an Astartes, and a Ranger and stuff it full of lore-conscious details for a couple of million and sell a shit ton.
GW dun care. They're like a museum; the displays are for looking and not for touching.
>>44004555
>AoS is selling even less than Fantasy before it got canned.
AoS is selling more than old fantasy anon
>>44032171
That isn't so much because GW doesn't have an interest in doing those things, it's because no one has approached them about doing them.
They seemed to lay it out pretty clear in a recent article, if a developer is interested in doing something related to one of their IPs video game wise, they'll give them a listen. They've actually put out quite a few app games over at least the past year or two.
>>44032583
You'd think that an Age of Sigmar beat 'em up would sell like hotcakes.
>>44032171
(Cont...)
This is like Star Wars being sold: if Disney bought GW I'd cringe...and than gradually acclimate because frankly it couldn't get much more incoherent.
So the idea that GW swings between wildly mis-managed for the chance to wring out profit and left to the devices of the beardiest motherfuckers to ever jerk off in a converted tenement basement doesn't seem implausible to me.
How can you have Space Marines, Ninja Space Elves, planet-eating monsters, zombies, pirate, and fcking Pirate Space Orks and fail to get a foothold in popular youth culture?
Oh right. By never evolving. By managing to be neither serious and complex or fun and adventurous. By making sure the thing the audience knows is that the Emperor is Always Right, the Imperium is Always Heroic, and anything you see to the contrary is ignored by the setting itself.
PS: the Grim Darkness of the Far Future is also eternally White and Male. Just how it is, brah.
(Gonna be fucking funny when the demographics start to finally tip Brown and disposable income stops being always Cracker-flavored)
>>44032697
I'm not even hating on the Imperium; I'm hating on the idea that every damn story has to start and end on that point.
Can't be actually Grimdark because nobody actually wants to play the Stalinist Space Nazis. Can't be Mass Effect jr because everything is the HATE THE XENO bumpersticker. Can't be a rebel because God Emprah. Can't be a goddamn plain vanilla human because SPACE MEHRINES. Can't tell a wretched, awful war story because Commissars are SUPERMAN!
Can BARELY manage a decent Space Marine story because either mechanics or inability to write a sympathetic protagonist.
Can't even make a freakin' CoD:Blops story because... well, budget limitations, frankly. Oh right and IMPERIUM.
I haven't seen a brand be this far up it's own iAnus since Apple.
Goddamn this is such a pathetic way to manage such a potentially infinite setting.
The real joke is that everyone takes what they want and ignores the rest anyway. Are the Night Lords tormented, misunderstood rebels? Sure! Is Capt. Bloodflagg and his merry crew and their Space Hulk totally a thing that could happen? Sure! CAN Love Bloom?! DUH!
Every fan finds that thing in the setting that most speaks to them, and the only actual obstacle is GW's insistence that the Imperium be central to everything. That above all 40k exists to sell Space Marine sprues, that the highest form of the game is a private server that's locked Loyalists versus Traitors on de_dust forever and fuck letting anyone else play.
>>44032527
Source? Because only a couple boxes were sold here and all the Fantasy players ragequit. The store managers are lamenting their inability to shift either AoS or old Fantasy stuff anymore because nobody wants it. 40k is going up and down a little, nobody wants to play 30k because 'muh xenos breh'.
>>44010553
Holy shit did that really happen? I could imagine how quickly I'd be looking for a way out if my boss did that.
I mean, we've been in some tight spots but goddamn, even if the company recovers that fucker should be busted down to a janitor even if he singlehandedly blowjobbed the company back into solvency.
>>44032583
Than apparently this is the right time to be alive. I blame Dan Abnett.
...I still blame GW though.
I've seen the Plants v. Zombies title, and it's pretty wretched. The mechanics look weak, but more than that it looks ...predictable. It's another "reboot" just with Dark Angels this time.
It's grognard-bait. It's not flashy and gutsy and bombastic enough to draw in anyone not already a fan.
It's like Flappy Bird with a Servo-Skull.
.....
Eh, whatever. Fuck it, just stopped caring. Gonna go play ME 3 mp. Pretend the Krogan bellow "for the Emperor!"
>>44032697
>This is like Star Wars being sold: if Disney bought GW I'd cringe...and than gradually acclimate because frankly it couldn't get much more incoherent.
In all honesty Disney buying GW is about the best result of a GW death spiral we could hope for. More like individual IPs are auctioned off piecemeal to wring one last buck out of the company for shareholders and no one actually makes use of any of it because everyone was really more concerned about keeping it out of the hands of competitors on the off chance that any of them actually had an idea of what to do with it.
>>44032902
Sounds plausible, yeah.
I think in that scenario the 40k stuff would probably be ignored and die; it's got, as I've been raving, no real market share.
Tangent: I was following a project to resurrect some of the quirkier dead MMO's -Auto Assault, Tablua Rasa and City of Heroes.
Wanna guess what NCSoft wants for a decade-dead MMO that predates multicore CPUs?
If you guessed $1,000,000 USD you're right!
Nevermind NC ain't doin' jack shit with any of them. That's not the point. They want a million up front because reasons.
Better to burn your toys then share them.
That's what would happen to 40k without GW or some mega-investor like Sony or Disney.
>>44032818
GW really doesn't have much experience in video games so presumably if a developer comes to them with an idea that they think works, they're going to give them a shot, doesn't seem like they lose much if the game flops.
They have managed to work with some winners. Mordheim and Vermintide seem like they turned out or are going to turn out all right and Total Warhammer still has the potential to be good.
For consistently good games to come out, GW would have to take a more active interest in video games and decide to vet the developers approaching them.
>>44032697
You almost had a point before you zig zagged off into political bullshit.
Also have you ever read a 40k ANYTHING, the Imperium is not portrayed as 'always heroic'.
>>44036668
Let's see...
Read Gaunt's Ghosts. Read 14 hours. Read that Catachan novel. Read the Ultramarines series. Read most of the HH stuff to date. Read everything by Dan Abnett. Read everything ADB. Read everything by Graham McNeil. Read that Shira Calpurnia Space Cop trilogy. Read as much codex fluff as I could get -almost always narrated from the Imperial perspective. Read all the books about the Adeptus Sororitas. Read everything by CS. Multilaser. Read Fire Caste -which had almost nothing about the Fire Caste in it ha ha. Played Fire Warrior, but that proves nothing. Played Rogue Trader. Played Dark Heresy.
Yeah, got nothing that doesn't cast the Imperium or the Space Marines as being the true heroes of 40k. Any character who says otherwise lacks any objective credibility -ie is a Traitor or an Ork, etc.
About the only exception might be from The Outcast Dead wherein one of the psions manages to get a glimpse of the future post-Heresy and sees an endless succession of wars fought for no reason by people who have no reason to live with the sole objective of having more wars to fight.
But as for what the setting says? It's the Imperium baby. Dawn 'til dusk, forever and ever amen.
>>44036668
And don't worry.
The "political bullshit" will get real eventually and if 40k can die that'll be when.
I suggest relaxing your anus in preparation.
Actually I suggest recognizing that it's there and than letting it go because fuck it it's just not important.
>>44036858
And most of this fluff portrays the Imperium as a brutal backwards place doing what it must to survive in a cruel universe.
That is not the same as always heroic and correct and if you got that impression you were not paying attention.
For gods sake the character of 14 Hours dies because a clerk in an admin hub types a digit wrongly.
>>44005912
Please do tell me how cutting the amount of LotR figures in a box in half and nearly doubling the price is entirely due to "overhead".
GW has rapidly increased its prices to squeeze more blood from a continually shrinking stone. That's all there is to it.
>>44032171
I've been wondering/saying this for years now.
Games Workshop is like that desperate 50-odd year old parent that's spent the last two decades comfort eating/shouting at America's Got Talent or whatever passed for it in the '80s/drinking heavily/building strange things in the basement/masturbating, and one day suddenly realised that it wants to be hip and appeal to whatever's currently "in". So it ignores everything that any sane individiaul would know works for it and bypasses millions of great opportunities, throwing itself at the mercy of an audience that doesn't care about it and will tolerate it as a source of comic relief.
Meanwhile the parent's kids, largely grown up, just stare and shake their heads as their inheritance gets blown down the drain on more Justin Bieber tickets.
>>44032697
>Everything before the last four sentences
Absolutely, say it bro
>the last four sentences
wut
>>44032811
>Holy shit did that really happen?
Yes, it actually happened.
And yes I left PP shortly after for Microsoft. Better hours, better pay, better benefits and believe it or not far less bullshit to deal with.
Things picked up though, since the release of the larger models that helped but they still have major issues with their manufacturing they haven't been able to fix since no one at PP has the experience to fix it.
Maintain the status quo has become the daily regimen.
>>44009288
This may explain the absurd over-detailing.
Fancier molds = Bigger Prices.
It's not like a mold is that difficult to make, you just need their corporate-tier machines.
>>44010553
>>44032811
Still not as bad as Loren "The company can buy me a new house, right?" Coleman. He didn't even get a slap on the wrist for that one. Just up and wasted company money on massive personal purchases. That fund drainage nearly killed CGL's biggest game lines, too. They were struggling for almost a year to put literally any product out and had to rely on shoddy temps who didn't understand the settings involved for a lot of it.
>>44032171
>slowly descends into supernatural paranoia, demonic possession
Personally I would love the idea of a survival horror IG game.
>Be Imperial Guardsman
>Be chilling on transport ship, heading to fight some rebels or something
>Suddenly you hear what sounds like a million people screaming at once and the lights fail
>Hear people in the barracks screaming or groaning in what you assume is pain
>When your character manages to find a flashlight they discover several dozen men in the barracks are dead, fused to the ship, or have been mutated into some form of demented chaos spawn incapable of even moving effectively, you are the only man in the barracks who isn't dead or mutilated
>Proceed out of the room and scout out the ship to find out what the hell has happened
>Game is filled with Chaos horrors (primarily Chaos spawn, guardsmen who have been broken by the horrors of what has happened, and lesser daemons as mini bosses)
>Sometimes find guardsmen who have survived by banding together and maintaining some degree of sanity often willing to offer a degree of aid but too terrified to venture out with you
>Eventually discover that the ship's gellar field failed for an instant resulting in a flicker where warp entities flooded the ship
>Have to reach the bridge and find a way to send a distress signal
>Sneak (and sometimes fight) your way through the ship until you send the distress signal
>Game fades to black, cuts to much later
>Your character sitting in the bridged surrounded by corpses of various traitor guardsmen and chaos spawn, showing signs of starvation and sleep deprivation
>Some inquisitorial storm troopers enter the bridge, radio that they found a survivor
>As one of them is about to execute you they get the order to stand down
>An inquisitor enters, tells you that your actions were amazing and shit, and gives you the choice of working for him
>If you refuse the storm troopers shoot you and the game ends, if you accept the game ends
>>44036858
>Read that Shira Calpurnia Space Cop trilogy
Nigger I suggest you actually read that fucking series. The Imperium is portrayed as anything but heroic or correct.
>>44042184
One thing that Alien: Isolation nailed was actually allowing you to fight. It was almost never the optimal solution and of course you couldn't kill the alien in combat, but having that choice made the game more engaging and the alien encounters more tense since you could not deal with them the way you did with other foes.
>>44042184
Shit, that'd be great.
I wish GW made more vidya with their licenses, since they're always profitable at a minimum.
>>44041745
This, it's the massive computerized moldcutters that make things so expensive. Those machines are hundreds of millions each.
>>44010687
>o-off topic!
>>>/warseer/
>>44007284
They have to fuck up something with new miniatures.
Its either a name,a model itself or the fluff.
Or all in case of Stormcasts
>>44041756
Yeah, him too.
Apparently Kevin Siembieda is total fuck-up as well.
>>44042415
>This, it's the massive computerized moldcutters that make things so expensive. Those machines are hundreds of millions each.
No they aren't.
The 3-Axis CNC machines GW uses cost about $10,000 each (they had 4 when I left).
The injection molding machines cost around $50,000 each. The used Van Dorn machines they had in Memphis were even less expensive, around $7,000 each.
The used machines Memphis was using were making sprues for new product like Assault on Black Reach as well and those were almost 15 years old when they were bought.
It's not the machine, it's how the tools are made that are important. The machines are pretty basic, they just inject plastic then eject the sprue and repeat.
Newer machines just have more "bells and whistles" like a more modern interface and computer controls that you can program automatically with barcodes on your tools. The older machines you had to manually program casting parameters, but even then that only took about a minute or two.
>>44043551
They bought them used, not new.
>>44030533
>Because they don't actually have a history of that and you're making the classic mistake of confusing online echochambers like /tg/ with the real world, the people who inhabit those echo chambers with the literal entirety of GW's customer base, and decisions you don't like with financially ruinous ones.
If you don't think online communities are the center of tabletop gaming today you are deluded. It was possible to argue otherwise in 2006, maybe.
>>44044931
They're also the center of video gaming, but that doesn't seem to have any impact on CoD's sales. The center is not the same thing as the whole.
>>44045032
CoD advertises, a lot. GW pointedly doesn't.
>>44044172
>I'm talking about the moulds, not the CNCs
Their tools are made by hourly staffers, not contracted out to other companies at a flat rate.
So the tools GW uses are far less expensive than most people think.
>>44045087
I don't see how that's relevant here.
>>44045124
Because GW relies on its consumers to sell the product to one another. This is done online these days.
>>44032171
No way man. The very nature of 40k makes it unmarketable to a global mass audience.
Hard core space soldiers! Yes! That are monks! Whut? That don't believe in camo? That don't give a crap about women...uhhh......
Even the hobbit they had to force some kind of love interest in and look how that turned out.
The same things that make 40k so cool to you and I make a huge part of the population hate it.
>>44045469
>Hard core space soldiers! Yes! That are monks! Whut? That don't believe in camo? That don't give a crap about women...uhhh......
You're right, there is literally no appeal in the concept, GW should ditch them for high-fiving trash-talking GoW or Starcraft style American space bros
