NYT on Warhammer

Spoooon wrote in to mention a New York Times story on Warhammer, old skool table-top wargaming favorite. (registration required) From the article: "In a culture dominated by virtual diversions and mass marketing, Warhammer has acquired an ardent following by being tactile and mysterious, using no advertising at all. Games Workshop, the British company that makes it, has licensed two video-game versions, but it is usually played with three-dimensional figures by opponents who face each other across a real-life table." In related news, registration for GenCon Indy 2005 opened on Monday. Best four days of gaming, and all that.

Comments

Games Workshop

[garwil]

Is commonly known as Geek's Workshop in my local area. ;)

The problem with WH and 40k

[Bootle]

And Games Workshop even admits it, is that 99% of the audience is between 12 and 16. Why do you think there is a new edition every 4 years?

Realizing that it takes 6 hours to play a game, countless hours to paint armies and make terrain, etc. then only kids who haven't discovered the opposite sex will ever have time to play. Which is quite something considering how well this game must help stunt that discovery...

I played mostly 40k (2nd edition) and the new editions both look exciting, but I'm not going to hang out with a bunch of home-schooled 14 year olds, even if I had the time.

Games workshop is in a tough position, with their demographic so narrow. If I was in their position, I wouldn't know of a quick fix to expand market share

Re:The problem with WH and 40k

[RedHat Rocky]

I've been playing since around 2001, started right in the middle of the Game Store Crash (another topic). Games don't take 6 hours to play any more, typically 2 hours if both players are wanting to get done and not sitting around BSing (which is common in friendly games).

Tournament games typically have a 2 hour time limit, which includes setup/deployment.

Most important point: I've met exactly one player below the age of 23. Average age is 25-35, on a guess.

Re:The problem with WH and 40k

[RedHat Rocky]

I'd recommend drafting your friends (I have the same problem as you, small town with torches and burning crosses for those dirty gamers).

A new twist to 40k is Combat Patrol. Small points games (400) that are fun and don't take a lot of models. Perfect for getting back in and taking someone with you.

See more here:
http://www.patrolclash.org.uk/index.htm

Re:The problem with WH and 40k

[Grab]

"Quick fix?" It's GW who deliberately elected to be in that position.

I played at school and briefly after, from about 13 to about 20. That's the time when it started going all cartoony. To start with it was very much the "dark future" approach - a great gothic atmosphere to all the games. Then when I was about 16-17 it went right downhill. The Orks/Orcs became comic relief, the rules were dumbed down, everything became "heroic", and suddenly it was bright cartoon colours everywhere! Quite simply, GW deliberately aimed for the young-teen market, altering all their games and introducing new figure lines to do so.

And since they were aiming at kids, they chose not to charge pocket-money prices (like TSR did). No, prices started at £1 a figure (when TSR figures were about 50-60p) and had reached £3 when I jacked out. The intention was clearly to target adults buying these for kids as presents. If you wanted to buy them out of your own money, well, tough.

It's an interesting comparison against TSR (or whatever they're called today). TSR deliberately kept it adult, and as a result still have a zillion adult roleplayers and games. GW consciously went kiddie, and as a result have cut off all their adult audience, who left to other fantasy games or historical gaming. They made their bed, so they can't bitch about having to lie in it.

Grab.

Warhammer Online

[SteelLynx]

It's a shame Warhammer Online never got finished. The screenshots etc they released looked very close to my image of the world.

Tactile dimension hardly unique to Warhammer

[JackBuckley]

TFA contains the following quote:

"But for these toy army generals, craftsmanship matters as much as tactics, and it is this aspect that most distinguishes Warhammer from fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons."

Maybe I'm showing my age, but back when I played D&D (and that would be AD&D, youngsters) we spent a lot of time custom painting lead figures for our 3D tabletop model of the game. I still have a bag of plastic sea creatures and dinosaurs and other yard sale beasties as well that could serve as creatures we didn't have leads for in a pinch, but PCs were always lead and painstakingly painted.

It's hard to beat a physical representation of the game for settling disputes ("I wasn't near that chest--my character was on the other side of the room spiking that door, remember?") and visualizing what's going on.

Re:You're kidding me

[RedHat Rocky]

GW publishes a magazine, White Dwarf, which is pretty much one giant ad for their stuff. Oh, and the occasional interesting piece for the players.

But mostly, it's "Look, new cool models released this month!! And see, they beat this other army, wow!".

From a Warhammer Fanatic

[discordja]

I've followed Warhammer for the better part of 10 years now, and have tested or played nearly every game they(Games Workshop) have created. Blood Bowl, Talisman, Fantasy and 40k, Gorkamorka, Gothic .. the list is pretty large.

The article, I feel, does a remarkable job discussing aspects of the tabletop wargamming industry that makes it so enticing. If you like chess, chances are these productions will probably not fail to interest you. Seems like every week, even after so long, I learn something else, am surprised by the ingenuity of my opponents, think of better strategies to annihilate my adversary. I honestly do not believe you can ever master the game.

But I think that, for the most part, this exists for all highly tactical games. Warhammer is unique however in that along side their decent rules (which change every few years to keep things fresh and interesting), they have a fantastic creative direction. Their monthly publication White Dwarf is filled not just with rules and battle reports, painting primers and strategies; but with a hefty helping of fluff, fiction, heroes, betrayal, victory and all the things that make a good story.

Many players, myself included, choose armies often times as a telling of themselves. The never say die dwarves, the emperors finest space marines, the wildly hillarious skaven (all of their war machines are nearly as risky for the skaven as they are for the opponent), the haughty high elves.

Their lead is simply the best in the industry. It's highly stylized, out of proportion. Orcs wielding high tech weapons in one hand and "Choppas" (mechanical axes) in the other. They have massive vehicles like the Steam Tank and the Land Raider. The game is simply oozing with flavor.

While I've generally no problem with their no advertising mentality, GW has classicly been a bear to deal with if you are a shop owner. If you sell GW merchandise, they want you to buy everything in 6 blister groupings, they want you to meet a certain dollar ammount per week, so a lot of shops turn to groups like Alliance who buys and bulk and acts as a middle man for small stores that don't put through enough sales to keep up with GWs demands.

The only other real complaint is that the cost of entry is high. I've had years to collect, have 6 different armies and would estimate my collection well over $4,000 in value. That is not to mention the time expenditure to paint, base and secure all my models. It makes it very hard for a new player to enter the market, so hunting for new blood is a bit of a chore. They have tried more and more however to become the drug pusher (The first one is always free) and that's helped get interest from those that can afford it but would be hesitant otherwise.

Specifics

[Thedalek]

For those who might be wondering, "Gosh, what could GW have done that was so bad?" consider the following:

GW has set up a system whereby hobby-level shops (Mom-n-Pop type independently owned stores) can obtain virtually anything GW makes for 50% retail. That gives the stores a 100% markup, which is good for small stores. So far, so good.

However, when sales in any geographic region reach a certain saturation level, GW moves in, installing a Games Workshop store, undercutting the retail stores they supplied to by about 25%. If Warhammer was the primary source of income for the local Mom-n-Pop stores (which it probably was, if sales reached the saturation level), the Mom-n-Pop stores die. The local Warhammer market dries up, and the GW store moves out.

Add to that the fact that, in competitions, the paint job on your army counts more towards winning the tournament than winning a battle, and it's obvious why many are leery of the whole thing.

Myself, I don't trust any game you need a tape measure to play.

Games Workshop doesn't care about the hobby

[ChaosDiscord]

I played Warhammer for several years and a number of their other games (Dungeon Quest, Warhammer Quest, Talisman (multiple editions), Space Hulk) for even longer. Like any company Games Workshop (GW) is a bit of mixed bag, but it was the attitude that irritated me the most.

I think GW's attitude is best summarized by how their in-house magazine (White Dwarf) describes the hobby. It's not the "wargaming hobby" or perhaps the "gaming hobby". No, it's "the Games Workshop hobby". Feh. Tabletop gaming is a small market. Wargaming (which is most of what GW does these days) is a subset of that. The hobby as a whole has had a rough decade. What the hobby needs is unity, to grow the hobby as a whole, to not be selfish pricks about it. Sure, I wouldn't expect GW to advertise for other products, but to try and control the language to deny the broader hobby is wrong.

Beyond that, it's a series of minor missteps that irritated me. Sure, release new editions of your games every few years. Release new models to go with them. But to declare that models from previous editions are not allowed in tournaments is bogus. Demanding that the models be genuine Citadel miniatures (Citadel being Games Workshop) is awfully selfish. Building a miniature army is expensive. Expecting customers to exclusively use your product and to buy (and paint!) an entire new army every few years is the wrong attitude. This is the sort of thing that turns many people off to wargaming as a whole.