Quote from: thedungeondelver;612144Games Workshop's business model is thus: GW wants and expects a customer base with a median age of 17. Yes, that's right. I know what you're thinking, "But Delver, that's ridiculous, look how expensive their stuff is! What seventeen year old has the wherewithal to buy a whole army?" Well, they don't but mom and dad do. So little Johnny Chaosarmy hits mom and dad up 'round the holiday season and asks for a 5000 point army box set (or whatever they're onto), a shedload of paint, brushes, "official" terrain and modeling tools and so on (like their $20 wondercutter for foam sculpting that you can buy at a craft store for $2.00), plus various rulebooks, and Mom and dad comply and the fix is in for $300-$500.

Now comes the really cool part. Little Johnny Chaosarmy spends eighteen months (GW's ideal mean for players to play) going to this show or that, maybe taking a passing interest in trophy painting, and so on, buying an extra model kit or four here or there, plus the inevitable monthly catalogue for $10 (you know, the one that masquerades as a gaming mag?) When all is said and done, Johnny has been painlessly separated from $2000-$3000 of his parents' largesse and then they quit. They piss off, get interested in girls in a serious way, decide they want a car more than more WH40k/WHFB stuff, and either ebay the whole shebang for 10% of what they paid for it, give it away, throw it out, let it sit on a shelf and gather dust, etc. but they do not stick around playing after that eighteen months.

GW wants this churn, this turnover, because guys like "us" screw up the equation. Here's what "we" do: we very carefully build up an army $10 - $20 at a time, never throwing down for an army deal. We cherry pick the "hero" minis we want, and we use everything but the shittacular GW crap paints, brushes, glues, etc. What's worse is we tell other gamers that we do that and then they (potentially) start bucking the system too. The penultimate insult though comes when we've got our armies we've gamed with for years and years and years without upgrading, without spending $1000 in a single whack, etc., and we cleave to the older versions of the rules and don't supplement, or we just grab back-issues of WD to get the new rules, and so on. The REAL thing "we" do then to piss off GW is we stick around for years, dribbling out a tiny, tiny, insignificant amount of money into their coffers if any at all. Content to show up at GW "events" or stores that simply have a huge GW draw, we'll use proxies, ("That stand of Reaper orc archers are Black Orc bowmen," etc.) we'll basically not bend over and offer our rosy behinds to GW weekend in and weekend out and act like we're happy about it.

This is all that GW wants out of the consumer. All. Not to enjoy, not to be a die-hard for years, but to kindly fuck off and move out of the way for someone to burn through another two or three grand. The rare specimen who toes the party line and stays for years get the exalted job of paying to be a GW employee, pushing events, judging, etc.



GW wants your business - for 18-24 months.  Then they want you to leave the hobby forever.

Seriously, I had a beef with GW the day they turned WD into a house mag that was all about WH and WH40k for the kids and deprived the rest of us (in the UK) of a brilliant and affirming monthly mag. But really - who else was bringing in the new draft of 12 year old boys who were (and could still be) the new life blood of the hobby? It was a smart and effective marketing strategy they pulled off really well, and more power to them for it. I wish the same had been true of other publishers, or that it were done in a way by GW themselves, that would have fed more of those punters into the games that I'm personally invested in. But that's just vanity. Take from it some reassurance that if properly packaged and marketed our hobby can actually be something other than a niche for 30- 40- and 50- something persistent geeks who carry the flame for things we enjoyed when we were young and still cling to.

Quote from: Piestrio;612131The strategy is also based on discarding customers at regular intervals. GW does its damnedest to pump as much money out of a person for a few years and then they throw them under the bus.

Sounds similar to the business model of top40 popular music.  :rolleyes:

Quote from: thedungeondelver;612144Games Workshop's business model is thus: GW wants and expects a customer base with a median age of 17.

I was under the impression it was even lower than that - 17 is "learning to drive", "having a part-time job" and "saving for guitar/uni/girls/car" age in the UK, 12 - 13 is the age you want. Old enough to have pocket money, and young enough to have no idea what to do with it.

I kinda miss playing and collecting, but then again, grown-up responsibilities etc.

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Near the end of when I played WHFB, I was considering getting a unit of Harpies for my Chaos Warrior army, but unwilling to spend £50 on a unit of them if I didn't like them much. So I took some Battlemasters Beastmen (Which were much smaller than the WHFB ones at the time), cut out some paper wings, and blu-tacked them on. A fair proxy, I felt. Obvious what they were, obvious what they did, based on a Citadel miniature.

So I take them along to the store, and get matched in a 2-vs-1 game, alongside an Undead player. While we're deploying, my team-mate (An older gentleman, I'd guess he was in his thirties or so) is somewhat dismissive of my Proxy Harpies, and just when we're done deploying, he turns to me and says quietly, "If I ever see you using those stupid paper Harpies after this game, I'm going to break your knees".

We played the game. I was pissed off and not playing my best, and we lost. The Harpies were pretty ineffectual; I don't think they even saw combat. A GW staffer comes up to me and tells me, "right, you've had the chance to try out Harpies, now you can't use those proxies again".

I didn't buy them.

Quote from: Ladybird;612178I was under the impression it was even lower than that - 17 is "learning to drive", "having a part-time job" and "saving for guitar/uni/girls/car" age in the UK, 12 - 13 is the age you want. Old enough to have pocket money, and young enough to have no idea what to do with it.

I kinda miss playing and collecting, but then again, grown-up responsibilities etc.

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Near the end of when I played WHFB, I was considering getting a unit of Harpies for my Chaos Warrior army, but unwilling to spend £50 on a unit of them if I didn't like them much. So I took some Battlemasters Beastmen (Which were much smaller than the WHFB ones at the time), cut out some paper wings, and blu-tacked them on. A fair proxy, I felt. Obvious what they were, obvious what they did, based on a Citadel miniature.

So I take them along to the store, and get matched in a 2-vs-1 game, alongside an Undead player. While we're deploying, my team-mate (An older gentleman, I'd guess he was in his thirties or so) is somewhat dismissive of my Proxy Harpies, and just when we're done deploying, he turns to me and says quietly, "If I ever see you using those stupid paper Harpies after this game, I'm going to break your knees".

We played the game. I was pissed off and not playing my best, and we lost. The Harpies were pretty ineffectual; I don't think they even saw combat. A GW staffer comes up to me and tells me, "right, you've had the chance to try out Harpies, now you can't use those proxies again".

I didn't buy them.

I hear stuff like this from people about GW shops in England.  Is it illegal there for you to laugh in a shopkeeper's face as you tell him to go fuck his mother?

Quote from: Ladybird;612178I was under the impression it was even lower than that - 17 is "learning to drive", "having a part-time job" and "saving for guitar/uni/girls/car" age in the UK, 12 - 13 is the age you want. Old enough to have pocket money, and young enough to have no idea what to do with it.

I kinda miss playing and collecting, but then again, grown-up responsibilities etc.

I will take that correction, it actually is probably a lot closer to 12-13 in the overall.

Quote---

Near the end of when I played WHFB, I was considering getting a unit of Harpies for my Chaos Warrior army, but unwilling to spend £50 on a unit of them if I didn't like them much. So I took some Battlemasters Beastmen (Which were much smaller than the WHFB ones at the time), cut out some paper wings, and blu-tacked them on. A fair proxy, I felt. Obvious what they were, obvious what they did, based on a Citadel miniature.

So I take them along to the store, and get matched in a 2-vs-1 game, alongside an Undead player. While we're deploying, my team-mate (An older gentleman, I'd guess he was in his thirties or so) is somewhat dismissive of my Proxy Harpies, and just when we're done deploying, he turns to me and says quietly, "If I ever see you using those stupid paper Harpies after this game, I'm going to break your knees".

We played the game. I was pissed off and not playing my best, and we lost. The Harpies were pretty ineffectual; I don't think they even saw combat. A GW staffer comes up to me and tells me, "right, you've had the chance to try out Harpies, now you can't use those proxies again".

I didn't buy them.

Holy shit.  This garbage right here is what's killing the hobby.

GW is doing fine, no? It sounds awful on the part of both the shopkeeper and the other player, but that is what lets them keep selling product.

In the states people seem to be more interested in the modeling/ conversion aspect.  Even at "The Bunker" in SoCal no one gave a shit about the GW rules unless it was a highlighted GW event, IME.

Hell if you put paper wings on your harpies, at least you were trying, I've seen jokers use Tonka trucks for Land Raiders.

Quote from: CRKrueger;612195Hell if you put paper wings on your harpies, at least you were trying, I've seen jokers use Tonka trucks for Land Raiders.

That sounds like a lot more fun to me. As a kid I got the WHFB intro boxed set, got bored trying to paint the damn things, ran screaming from the prices of the models and then just used risk pieces, legos, a stuffed hedgehog (nurgle) and anything else I could dig up. Was fun playing 10,000 point battles over a course of a week against my brother in the space room. He was not happy when my skaven cannons killed his big demon before it ever saw combat, but what did he expect, I had like 20 of them

Quote from: Piestrio;612156I often thought that "mainstream" popularity could only be achieved by making the game completely unacceptable to a huge portion of current RPGers.

4e proved it was not that easy.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;612150Well, I want the industry to die, but I'd like the hobby to live.

Eh, I like full color glossy hardcovers too much to want the industry to die.

Quote from: vytzka;612245Eh, I like full color glossy hardcovers too much to want the industry to die.

Me too!

Quote from: Daztur;612199That sounds like a lot more fun to me. As a kid I got the WHFB intro boxed set, got bored trying to paint the damn things, ran screaming from the prices of the models and then just used risk pieces, legos, a stuffed hedgehog (nurgle) and anything else I could dig up. Was fun playing 10,000 point battles over a course of a week against my brother in the space room. He was not happy when my skaven cannons killed his big demon before it ever saw combat, but what did he expect, I had like 20 of them

I always wanted a miniatures game in which the two sides really were whatever toy soldiers or lego people that happened to be hanging around.  Battles would take place on specially prepared places of battle within houses (ie tables) and landscape would consist of coffee cups, pizza boxes, and whatever obstacles might happen to be there.

I have something just for you.

Quote from: vytzka;612253I have something just for you.

This (a link to Brickwars, tss tss, no blind links on the RPG Site, guys, please), is awesome.

You should totally have a look at it.

Quote from: LadybirdWe played the game. I was pissed off and not playing my best, and we lost. The Harpies were pretty ineffectual; I don't think they even saw combat. A GW staffer comes up to me and tells me, "right, you've had the chance to try out Harpies, now you can't use those proxies again".

It is legal and profitable, right? They are not even as bad as this little outfit named Goldman Sachs, right?

Well, if this is what it takes the hobby to live, I'll say some lives are not worth living. Fuck these guys, and their 'business model'.

Quote from: Benoist;612258(a link to Brickwars, tss tss, no blind links on the RPG Site, guys, please), is awesome.

Sorry, didn't know that was frowned upon. I don't like the look of bare links, but I'll keep it in mind.