Thank goodness for GW
Now before anyone reads the title of this editorial and wonders, I was not recently at a week long retreat in Nottingham where I spent 60 hours watching Tom Kirby inspirational videos while eating a diet of low protein gruel. And I most certainly haven’t change my opinion that the current management of GW are slowly killing a great company. That said, I think we all need to make sure that we distinguish between our dislike of the actions of the current management and the company itself.
The fact remains though that the entire wargaming industry, with the possible exception of the historical market, really owes its existence to Games Workshop and while people may currently be wishing ill of the company I think that it is in the long-term interest of every wargamer to hope that GW continues to exist.
As I mentioned in last week’s editorial Games Workshop dwarfs all of the other companies in the industry. Even Privateer Press is a minnow in terms of size and sales. GW has not only expanded the hobby but also popularised it. In much the same way as a complex eco-system thrives under the branches of a larger tree, there are many companies that exist and thrive in the market space that GW has carved out. I don’t say this in a dismissive fashion, only to point out that I think that without Games Workshop companies like Pig Iron Productions, Crocodile Games and even Privateer Press wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the audience that GW built up.
And it is that audience that is critical to the current and future health of the hobby and the industries that have been developed to support it. Every gamer that gets brought into the hobby by GW’s 40K range is a potential customer for some other company. All it takes is a way for companies to reach that gamer. Thankfully the internet has made this much easier to do and I think that the current crop of new miniature ranges like Avatars of War is due, in no small part, to the ability of these creative folks to reach out to GW’s existing client base.
This is also why I think that it is even more imperative to get a management team at GW that looks at the long-term health of the company and not just at quarterly results. Games Workshop spent the last two years trimming down their product line to a very lean and focused set of games that maximises the return on the companies investment. Its also a path that I think we all see as being ultimately destructive since it does nothing to foster new gamers.
GW once made a wide range of games and gaming products. And I think that there are probably a vast number of people that fondly remember the boxed set games like Space Marine, Space Crusade, Space Hulk and even board games like Talisman. The Games Workshop that developed those games is the same company that helped create the hobby as we know it. Space Crusade may have been a rather shoddy Space Hulk clone but it was popular and it got a lot of young people playing with minis. A Games Workshop that brings in new gamers, expands the market and helps foster and grow the industry is a great thing and a boon to everyone.
We should all feel free to complain about where the management of GW are taking the company but lets not forget what that company still represents: a great deal of opportunity.