GW - What's Gone Wrong - A Personal View

GW Hammersmith at Grand Reopening in 1987 (photo from Level 2 Blog).

I have to make a confession. My association with GW as a customer and supplier of articles goes back to the Livingstone & Jackson days when it was a single RPG and boardgame shop in Hammersmith. My relationship has waxed and waned over the years but has been fundamentally unchanged until recently.

I am afraid my attitude has hardened in the last few years after a series of recent bruising encounters when I felt some company representatives showed contempt for me as a writer. OK, maybe I can be a bit precious but that's not unknown amongst creatives. :)

Nevertheless, I liked their product and continued as a customer. But you know, I have bought virtually nothing from GW in the last year. So why is that?

The bottom line is that they have failed to produce products that excite my interest. They've fired all the creative people that produced the stuff that excited me. The key turning point for me was when they dumped Rick Priestly, a games designer I have always admired. He was the person that made it all possible, the bedrock of the company's success.

The continuous way above inflation price rises are a factor by making me reluctant to take a risk on unknown product. This is especially true of the rule book costs: £50 every time they decide to tweak the rules plus £35 for every army plus every allied unit. Two year cycles for rechurning of the rules and codexes, oh come on guys!

But I reiterate, the cost is not the key factor. I am an impulsive model buyer. I have bought Forge World titans, for God's sake. Fire my enthusiasm and my wallet drains when it comes to shiny toy soldiers.

As a general point, it is difficult to see who is their customer base these days. They have dumped the kids upon whom their growth had been based. Saving money by firing most of the retail staff means that there is no one to teach each new crop the games. The turnover rate among the kids is huge. This will be a major customer base just wiped out in a couple of years.

This is a massive change to a successful business model.

So who will replace the kids, adult wargamers? Hardly!

GW have regarded the rise of social media as a threat not an opportunity with increasing mad IP-protection attacks on their adult customers online. Witness the Space Marine debacle with Amazon and the failed Chapterhouse court case that resulted in their lawyer leaving the company. Then add the astonishing closure of GW's Twitter and Facebook sites because of the hostility the company has generated online.

Indeed, apparently GW now thinks that their customer base are toy soldier collectors.

Really?

Collectors buy diecast models and rarely take them out of the boxes. Model-makers buy a handful of one off sophisticated kits a year. Only wargamers buy boxes of toy soldiers to fill out armies.

Oh well, wargaming can survive a GW implosion should it happen but it will be a sad day.