Games Workshop - the omega of monopolies gone wrong?

[Thaluikhain]

Space Marine Centurions. Three models in a pack. $98 Canadian. To put that in perspective, when I quit playing years ago, a box of Terminators had FIVE models, and cost $65 Canadian.

Not a good example, the Centurions are much bigger and much stupider looking than Terminators.

(In my day, if we wanted Terminators, we'd buy the old Space Hulk set, with 10 Terminators, a bunch of Stealers and a game about Space Hulks)

 

[Weaver]

I quit because of the cost, personally.

I remember when Tac-Squads were $20 dollars. Now they're $50.
I bought an all pewter Dreadnought for $35. Now they're plastic and $55.

 

[KeyMaster45]

Tabletop gaming has always been an expensive hobby, and Warhammer happens to be the poster child for the out of control prices. It's incredibly stupid of Games Workshop to do it that way, since the only people who can really afford it are middle aged men who have been playing tabletop games since the original D&D[footnote]And I don't mean AD&D[/footnote], but I guess it's on them if their products wind up dying out in 10 or 20 years because they failed to hook the next generation.

In other words, greed is not good.

It's okay, 3D printers are supposedly going to become the household norm in the next decade and then people will just start making their own models. Won't that just be a fun legal romp to watch spin wildly out of control? I for one have already setup my chair and warmed up the popcorn machine.

But yeah, their competition is soon going to start coming from people who just say eff the prices and start making their own knock figurines for their games. If Games Workshop is smart they'd adapt at that point and start selling 3D printer ready model files of all their stuff at a much lower price, and slowly phase out their mass production of physical figurines.

Of course that's all just hypothetical, the 3D printing fad may end up dying out before it ever gains any legitimate speed in the consumer market.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Tabletop gaming has always been an expensive hobby, and Warhammer happens to be the poster child for the out of control prices. It's incredibly stupid of Games Workshop to do it that way, since the only people who can really afford it are middle aged men who have been playing tabletop games since the original D&D[footnote]And I don't mean AD&D[/footnote], but I guess it's on them if their products wind up dying out in 10 or 20 years because they failed to hook the next generation.

In other words, greed is not good.

It's okay, 3D printers are supposedly going to become the household norm in the next decade and then people will just start making their own models. Won't that just be a fun legal romp to watch spin wildly out of control? I for one have already setup my chair and warmed up the popcorn machine.

But yeah, their competition is soon going to start coming from people who just say eff the prices and start making their own knock figurines for their games. If Games Workshop is smart they'd adapt at that point and start selling 3D printer ready model files of all their stuff at a much lower price, and slowly phase out their mass production of physical figurines.

Of course that's all just hypothetical, the 3D printing fad may end up dying out before it ever gains any legitimate speed in the consumer market.

If it does die out before hitting the consumer market, it'll be because of companies like Games Workshop lobbying to make them illegal. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if Star Trek-style replicators ever existed in the real world, the manufacturing industry would make them illegal. We know this because they already exist for digital files, and the content industry has pitched a hissy fit and labelled it "piracy."

 

[Atmos Duality]

Here's an easy explanation:

Their tactics are having the dual effect of 1) making it more expensive for new TT gamers to enter the market, and 2) alienating their less 'loyal' consumer base.

So why have GW been making less miniatures for the same price, dropping quality, and increasing the price of their print items? Because they're shifting the lost revenue from their rapidly shrinking fanbase to their still existing fans.

If this is the case, I expect the resale market for models to be flourishing.
There's an interesting study in this for sure.
Maybe a trip to Ebay is in order....

This is why I washed my hands of the whole tabletop thing 5 years ago and I'm done with gaming outside of the indie scene right now, both the video games industry and the tabletops are having the exact same problems.

Yeah, and it's always the biggest firms doing this. In the video gaming world, it's EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Square-Enix etc. I'm not nearly familiar enough with how it is in the miniatures tabletop business, but I've also seen similar problems creep up in the regular tabletop biz: Especially from White Wolf and Hasbro.

A company succeeds for so long, that they become too big to uproot, yet too internally bloated to adapt to change.
Unfortunate, if your favorite developer or game series is attached to such an entity, but it's kind of an inevitability.

When such a company reaches that state, it's best to just stop doing business with them entirely for a bit to see if they can recover; especially once the arm-twisting begins. If they are actually running an efficient business, they shouldn't feel the need to gouge the customer routinely, or constantly charge premium prices for inferior product.

I have a feeling within about 5 years Games Workshop will end up pulling a SEGA and get out of the miniatures business altogether, they'll just stay open for business marketing their game settings to video game companies and authors.

It sounds like they will, especially considering how many viable "knock off" firms have sprung up around their miniatures business. Knock-offs of comparable quality apparently.

 

[Callate]

I'm still more irritated with them for trying to claim a legal lock on "space marine" than anything else, but I've never been big into miniatures, so I don't really feel that particular pain so sharply. (I used to have a couple of handfuls of figurines I'd use for D&D, but they were made by various manufacturers and didn't have to meet some particular standard to work within that game, just fit inside the hexes or squares.)

Still, I'll agree that charging 25 euros for what amounts to a couple of ounces of plastic and trying to justify it with your inadequate manufacturing processes is somewhat on the pale side.

 

[Gromril]

Wanna be mad at someone? Be mad at the people buyng armies consisting of nine of these things http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod1900035.

If people stopped buying £360 worth of flyers (plus the £60 or so for the infantry and command to make it legal) GW would re-evaluate the pricing structure they employ.

Hate to trot out the old and often dumb "Supply and demand" thing, nut it's relevant here.

 

[WindKnight]

Cost of miniatures and materials was the main reason I quit the tabletop game. And that was a good 5 years ago now. God only knows what the prices are at now!

I remember the days when a Codex was £8. Those were the days.

Space Marine Centurions. Three models in a pack. $98 Canadian. To put that in perspective, when I quit playing years ago, a box of Terminators had FIVE models, and cost $65 Canadian.

I remember there being a UK mail-order company who's prices and shipping were far cheaper for countries outside the UK than actually buying the miniatures at local stores at local prices.

As soon as GW realised this, they changed the terms and conditions of their contract with the site for forbid it selling abroad.

 

[ShipofFools]

Games Workshop actually died in our gaming club! We collectively realised there are so many other tabletop games to play, tabletop games that DON'T cost you your first-born and your dignity.

 

[Andrew_C]

I truly don't understand why people feel obliged to play Warhammer or 40k and pay GW's ridiculous prices for miniatures. Despite GW's efforts, there are still dozens of manufacturers of miniatures and hundreds of fantasy and sci-fi wargaming systems, all of them cheaper and many of them aimed at people brought into the hobby by Warhammer. And none of them insist you use the official miniatures. Hell, you can play Warhammer without using the official miniatures, you just can't enter official tournaments (or play in GW stores). And so what if there isn't an exact replica for a particular miniature. Use your imagination, use a chess piece, a dinky car, a match box or a piece of cardboard, hell glue them all together!

I used to occasionally play historical tabletop wargames, which had a reputation of being terribly snobby, and no-one gave a damn if you used a squad of Napoleonic hussars, (or a few dinky cars) to represent tanks in a WWII battle (for example). You'd get lots bad jokes, of course.

 

[Nicha11]

Three years ago I moved onto Warmahordes and never looked back, GW had just gotten far too expensive for my (meager) budget.

 

[Nickolai77]

Interestingly, I saw Games Workshop at a graduate careers fair in Liverpool recently- they were looking to recruit graduates to be store managers. Apparently you don't even have to be a Warhammer fan to apply! I wasn't sure what this says about GW as a company, It could be good or bad news for all I know, but I just thought it was interesting enough to share.

Me and my friends who were there got talking about it and had a very similar conversation to how this thread has gone. I don't think it would be wise to apply to GW as a graduate, I'm not hopeful about the company's future. By pushing up prices they are pricing out all but most loyal of fans who have disposable income. This means in the long run they're going to have a declining customer base which means they'll have to downsize their franchise. If 3D printing takes off then that could well ruin them as a business, and they could go the same way as HMV.

If 3D printing does become a major problem, I agree with a previous poster who said that GW should phase out manufacturing miniatures and instead sell 3D blueprints online. This will massively reduce their costs so they can survive as a company. Still, I don't expect GW will actually do that- Instead they'll do something silly like trying to ban 3D printing!