Is it time the Games Workshop split itself in two?

Well after yesterday's tough love (and it was love) for Games Workshop, today I try and offer what I think would be a sensible way forward for them. You see I've been thinking now, pretty much for years that Games Workshop was a really bad business model, not necessarily in the sense of purely making money, it seems OK at that right now, but I always felt it might have a tendency to go stale or be susceptible to shocks. I thought it was weak in other areas when I worked part time for them while I was paying my way through university and I've continued to think it to this very day. Yesterday as I said I posted a blog about whether the Imperium was becoming a metaphor for the Games Workshop itself and indeed whether the Imperium was Games Workshops ultimate destiny. I'm not going to go over old ground again because you can read it all here, plus I think it upset a few people so why try and upset them some more?

Lets be clear though, Games Workshop must be doing something right otherwise we wouldn't all be talking about them and we wouldn't have purchased their products in the first place now would we? However that's not to say their isn't room for improvement; in any business there is always room for improvement. So today I want to pick apart why it is that I think Games Workshops various wings and departments are quite frankly getting in each others way and screwing each other over and suggest ways in which the various parts of the company should be split up and broken down into its constituent parts. Then re-modeled and reshaped to do their individual functions far better than they are currently doing them right now and maybe even get them thriving again. Maybe what you're about to read are the ramblings of a nutcase, but this nutcase is quite good at systems analysis and right now looking at the Games Workshop as a system its clear to see that at some points its broken and has got itself into a toxic cycle.

Retail

Often cited by those close to the company as the 'drain on resources', or 'the problem'. I don't see it that way entirely and although I think there are problems with Games Workshops retail department and model I think there are bigger issues at play. Its often said that the retail arm of the Games Workshop struggles to support it's three core game systems and I hold my hands up, I've been guilty of this blisteringly dumb oversimplification myself at times. I think if you look at it as a rational system it can't be true that retail is struggling to support the core game systems. Just think about it for a second, when a business struggles, auditors never say 'well HMV was struggling to support DVD sales and console sales' do you? Its farcical, no the product range is unable to support the retail business and its structures.

Is the Imperium a Metaphor for Games Workshop?

I don't think this is meant to be ironic, but...

Now I'm probably not the first person to have thought the Imperium could be a metaphor for Games Workshop itself, and I'll probably not be the last. Hell, I'm probably not the first person to commit the idea to paper or the Internet, however I am a lazy bastard at times and I can't be bothered to go search around the place looking at other people's thoughts on the topic, especially when I have so many of my own opinions, thoughts and yes, my own brain dump to achieve. Yeah, I'm sorry this is going to be another one of my "its in my head and it needs to come out" posts, so if you're one of my readers who couldn't give a flying feck about what I think, you may as well go do some painting or something...

Blood Bowl by Yogh-art - Here

If you're still here, put some music on and make yourself a drink, this is going to be a long one. Why am I dumping my thoughts on Games Workshop into a stream of consciousness? Well, I was talking to a friend and he said that my blog should return to the subject of my displeasure with Games Workshop, because it struck a chord with so many people, and that if a few readers could just see that I'm genuinely like them, that I once loved Warhammer and 40k, that I actually brought Gorka Morka and all the iterations of Epic, that I ran Blood Bowl leagues and Necromunda campaigns, that I care, then maybe, just maybe, all my other points and articles might hit home. Yes, I love the 40k fluff. I still think it's great. Yes, I love the back story and characters of the Old World no matter how generic and formulaic it might bloody well be. I love it. I grew up with it. It made up much of my childhood. So yeah, I'm like much of you... except I've seceded from the Imperium. It's also been partly inspired by chats I've had with Jake Thornton over the last few months, and the HoP blogger SinSynn, so I'm acknowledging their involvement here as my inspiration, so to speak.

So why has this idea of the Imperium being a metaphor for Games Workshop suddenly occurred to me? Well, it hasn't; I first thought it might become some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy right about the time the British Higher Education system and I finally got bored of each other and we decided to go our separate ways around 2002. I looked around at the gaming landscape here in the UK and I saw this big, supremely bloated organisation, Games Workshop, dominating the wargaming landscape. They'd crushed out all independents, pretty much, in exactly the same way the Emperor's Crusade had united the known human galaxy (by dubious means of course - he's an emperor not a UN Peace Envoy). Games Workshop had managed to unite wargaming with some of their own questionable methods, primarily buying up exclusive rights to importing products and then... not stocking them. They also at various times stopped independents selling Games Workshop stock and opened their own stores where independents appeared to be doing well... but lets not go into the details too much!!!

Dreadfleet: I'm trying to be balanced here but...

...Its really, really difficult. So they've announced a one off game in a box. Nothing wrong with that board games companies have been doing that for years now and to be brutally honest I expected nothing less really considering the Games Workshops business plan. They have an overly bloated retail chain that quite frankly skews their entire busuiness model because the retail chain struggles to support itself and the company with just the 3 core games they have now. There's much more that I could go into about how in effect the games development wing and the commercial wings of the company are effectively hampering each others performance, but I'll leave that for now and return to it in a later blog. For now however lets just say I do have a problem with it because I can't help but feel its a very, very cynical marketing move on behalf of Games Workshop. I still want to be positive about them I honestly do but here, with Dreadfleet I think I have a product that just sums up everything that's wrong with the Games Workshop right now in a nutshell.

First off I think most of us who follow the hobby as intently as the like of me will have heard rumblings months before Storm of Magic was released that there was going to be a one off game like Space Hulk this year, which made sense to me. Because in the previous year the sales bump was provided by the new Warhammer Fanatasy Battle rulebook and 6th edition 40k just feels like it's still a little way off for now. I hoped and prayed they'd do something sensible like bring back Warhammer Quest, something that might actually help them sell a few Warhammer monster miniatures and stuff as well, but they haven't. I still think Blood Bowl is 2 years away because we'll have 40k in 2012 and then in 2013 we'll get the Blood Bowl 25th aniversary edition. You see I started hearing about 2 to 3 months ago now that it was going to be a Warhammer Naval game, not a Man-o-War remake but some sort of spiritual successor. We then started getting the recent drip feed of John Blanche artwork, which all but confirmed for me it was a naval game probably based around pirates. Now regardless of whether you like John's artwork you can't say it doesn't have a distinctive character now can you? Plus it got the interweb a flutter, sadly many felt it might be the return of Man-o-War and even better a return to supporting specialist games properly because you can't have a naval battle game with just two fleets can you? I love optimists I really do, but how misguided...

Thank you Mike McVey!!!

My Sedition Wars Maps!!!

Some days you feel like the world is against you, not just rubbish, but actively working against you. You've finished giving CV's out to plenty of people who'll just chuck them in the bin and ignore you. You've sent off countless job applications to people who probably won't even bother reading it and will just pick people randomly out of a hat for interview. Hell you've been rained on, missed you're train home and dropped the change you'd saved for a fecking bag of crisps down a drain while being rained on, after missing your fecking train home. Some day's suck so hard you wander whether your life is just one big cosmic joke for some higher entity that takes great pleasure in your abject misery...

...and some day's you get home and somebody has done something really nice for you that you didn't expect and almost certainly didn't deserve!!! That somebody is Mike McVey at Studio McVey. A few days ago I mentioned how they'd published the Alpha rules for Sedition Wars and how you should all get involved. I was originally planning on using my Space Hulk board tiles and any old miniatures I had lying around because I'm skint. Well Mike has sent me some really nice looking maps for Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabster, which my cat Tybs clearly approves of. However getting the maps out of the well packaged tube something else fell out...

Review: Gears of War the board game

I think its fair to say that the Gears of War franchise has been a little bit of a success for Epic Games and Microsoft alike. Its shifted a fair few units and I'm pretty certain the reason I'm still clinging onto my tired and creaky Xbox 360 Elite is to sample the delights of Gears 3. No doubt the curse of the Gears RRoD will strike and finally kill off my 9th 360 for good. So why is it so successful? Its not the cleverest game on the block and neither are its protagonists but I guess that's been half of its appeal, right? The style of the characters and animation certainly owe a little bit I guess to a certain future warrior from a certain Gothic sci-fi franchise, in some cases shamelessly so. But its certainly no direct rip off and its universe has its own distinct flavour. It was the brutality of the action and the awesome way in which the Locust were 'introduced' to the game environment via emergence holes that had people hooked... it also had me thinking that its mechanics might make a good Dungeon Crawler when I first saw it. Seems that somebody at Fantasy Flight Games had the exact same idea... and I say thank the Lord above that they did!!! Here's the Fantasy Flight Games video that's been doing the rounds to give you a taster...

Product Description

The massed ranks of the Locust and the 4 COGs on parade

Its another one of those 'games in a box' that I seem so addicted to lately. I think its fair to say that the box isn't as jammed pack full of stuff as say some of the other games I've reviewed lately, say like Mansions of Madness. However the game miniatures are arguably some of the best I've ever seen in a board game and you get 32 of them. Comprising of the 4 COGs and 28 Locust of varying types, they're all really nice. There's a veritable gaggle of different game cards and card tokens. You get 9 specialist D6's for defence and attack (red and black respectively) and a load of two-sided floor tiles. Its not a small amount of stuff by any stretch of the imagination. I also liked that the cards and some other components came sealed in zip lock bags so I don't have to buy my own for a change and I hope this is something Fantasy Flight Games and other manufacturers start doing a little bit more of.

Review: Mansions of Madness

    
    

Well I've finally got through enough games of Mansions of Madness to finally feel able to say what I fairly think of the H.P. Lovecraft inspired game of adult Cluedo. I think it is fair to say my initial thoughts aren't too far off of the mark: Mansions of Madness first play. Phnglui mglw nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah nagl fhtagn...

Product description

Its a game in a box, wahoo!!! Yep its another one of those board games I've been playing and although you have pretty much everything you need within the core game box Fantasy Flight Games are set to release expansion packs for the game. The first of which, the 'Season of the witch' has already been released (and is already in this reviewers possession). In the core box though you get a large number of double sided floor tiles, a veritable bucket load of card tokens and game pieces, loads of playing cards for various tasks and some quite nice Cthulu / Lovecraft inspired plastic miniatures for playing with.

Look what just came through my emergance hole...

 Macca helps inspect the new recruit

Its much less painful than it sounds you know!!! Yes that's right ladies and gentlemen Gears of War the board game has arrived at Frontline Gaming HQ today. After many months of waiting patiently as it sat there on pre-order at OG Games, it has landed. I'm pretty darn excited about it too because unlike the other two versions of Gears of War I have this one hopefully doesn't come with RRoD. Yeah that's right while playing Gears 1, RRoD. Playing Gears 2? yeah you guessed it RRoD. Screw you in ear Microsoft, I don't need your badly made hunk of junk anymore to get my Gears fix... in your face Xbox 360, IN YOUR FACE!!! Excuse me while I go tea bag the hell outta my Xbox 360 Elite...

...and I'm back! Right so far the quality of the product looks as lovely as anything you'd expect to see coming out of Fantasy Flight Games. The cards look suitably Gears like with lots of really atmospheric artwork displayed really well on high quality gaming cards. The board tiles although not interlocking, that's not necessarily a bad thing, are as always made of thick sturdy card that feels durable and the printing is nice and clear. The miniatures are still made of the slightly rubbery or flexible plastic that board game manufacturers love so much, but like the Mansions of Madness pieces they're actually a lot harder or stiffer feeling, in fact the Gears miniatures feel firmer still when compared to the Mansions of Madness pieces. I'm going to say they're closer to the plastic pieces produced by Games Workshop than I thought they would be and the detailing is actually really quite nice. Any way Here's some pics: