Again, I'm proud of the Warhammer folks. It's just the fact that it's one of the "biggest" makes me sad.
https://www.londonstockexchange.com/indices/ftse-100/constit... ; you can easily sort by market cap. GW are on page 4. Perhaps remarkably close to the two supermarket chains, Sainsburys and M&S, but those are much lower margin.
The top has "proper" global manufacturing companies: Astrazeneca, Unilever, Glaxo-SmithKline, BAE, Rolls-Royce. Along with the resource extraction companies, and Britain's major services export industry: banking.
(oddity: there are two Coca-cola companies on the FTSE, CCEP and CCH, which presumably exists for some weird tax reason)
Then you get into the question: what counts as a "British company"? There are plenty of overseas-owned UK success stories that are still significant UK employers and bringing money into the UK, such as ARM. Conversely, does a company which is listed on the FTSE but has most of its operations all over the world like RTZ count as "British"? Successful British startups quite often exit and vanish from discourse, while continuing to operate.
To my mind the important questions are "does this bring in valuable forex?" and "does this result in substantial UK employment?" Those don't necessarily have to be in the same company. The big employer list looks different: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1218430/largest-uk-based...
HSBC still up there (over 200k UK staff!), but there's a lot of food service (Compass), retail (Kingfisher you will know as B&Q) and so on.
I've not even got into the videogame industry (very good export industry, and seemingly responsible for the success of Warhammer). If you insist on making physical objects your perspective is going to be unnecessarily narrow.
Deeply skeptical that that's actually much of a factor in their success.
That said, I think there's something to the comment. The vertical integration is key, IMO. They own the IP, manufacture and distribution. There's a lot of power in that business model: short supply chains, all profit kept in house, a lot less faffing around with third parties.
They have kept skills in house. Two of their great original designers have retired at the company in the last few years. I don't think that's been the one critical factor in their success, but they're well-respected figures who knew the business and were very much a part of building that fanatical brand loyalty. One of my gaming group occasionally plays with the great John Blanche.
And man, keeping manufacturing in the UK. As a Brit, despite my many misgivings about how they operate as a company, I gotta love that. Again, I don't know if it's they key factor here, but they've been doing this for decades, they're good at it, and that's got to help the bottom line.
Keeping things in the UK would have been a difficult decision to maintain, particularly as overseas manufacturing was taking off, but it's clearly paid off in the long run.
how do you identify their niche? Miniature wargaming has a bunch of competitors[0], and so does genre publishing.
I suppose they have more physical shops and places to play[1], and it's easier to find people to play with, so that may be what you're think of.
I myself never played the TT game, but I love the world of 40k, and have spent a lot of time consuming related content. I'd pay for WarhammerTV, if they just let me!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_miniature_wargames
[1] I recall looking slack jawed at the awesome miniatures in a GW shop in.. Maidenhead, I think? 60k people. Around ~1993, I was a kid in a "english studying" holiday.
I can't think of anything that comes close on tabletop in terms of number of active players. I've just moved to a new town (pop ~5K), there's a club and that wasn't surprising. I wouldn't expect that with any other wargame.
There's definitely a quality component, which will be part design and part manufacture. GW minis are substantially better quality than other brands.
The interesting thing now is resin-based 3D printing! I've done a load and it's great fun. The process is not quite ready for mainstream adoption, resin is icky, but that's the exciting thing to watch out for in the space.
Also, they (the Callahan government) had a plan to bring state of the art semiconductor manufacturing to the UK. Basically TSMC but in Wales. Thatcher killed it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer TV-toy
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/inmos-and-the-transputer TV-toy
https://www.transputer.net/tn/50/tn50.html M212 details
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/271372-flare-technology-an... 9.2mb/s bandwidth+sequencer_list
What happened in that crucial period? Did GW manage to spread its brand awareness to the mainstream public?
1) Total Warhammer, Space Marine, and an otherwise highly successful video game licensing program.
2) Being well positioned to ride the overall rise of nerdier hobbies being acceptable
3) A marked shift in the company towards being more open and...friendly? It's hard to overstate how much the "old GW" sort of viewed its customers with a vibe that sometimes came close to hostility. There's much better engagement now, and a business built on something other than "A mom will buy this for their 12 year old, and will lose them when they discover girls."
Ten-fifteen years later they've started making big monies compared to a kid, and nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool.
Once the iPad generations take over I suspect Games Workshop will have it tougher.
I never completed it, but since then I have played the smaller (Monopoly board size) game, Warcry.
The friends I discovered were playing the full-size games spend hundreds every week or two.
If I recall right that was when GW started seemingly letting pretty much every studio take a crack at making games with their IP. There was a lot of trash but the sheer number of games put out meant they kept having 1-2 a year that were popular.
to something broader, selling video games, science fiction novels (of mediocre quality), miniature painting alone, etc.
Many of their adult customers only buy and paint the miniatures to relax, without ever actually playing with them, for example. This has allowed them to significantly increase their prices.
They are also much less hostile towards fans. If my memory serves me correctly, in the 1990s they went after a fan who had tattooed one of their characters on himself...
Now they are hunting down 3D print models, but leaving fans relatively alone.
Which was what got me stuck in this expensive hobby
Sales were down? Increase the prices of everything. Something not selling well? Change the game rules to make that it more powerful (or conversely, hype it up constantly so people only realize it sucks after they buy it). And of course constant changes so it was likely any models you bought would eventually become uncompetitive due to new, flashier, more overpowered things released.
Basically every bad business practice we see now was Games Workshop's wheelhouse. And while this may come across as bashing on them, I'm psyched to hear the company is thriving because their games are immensely fun and its impressive they've avoided stagnating or run out of ideas. It gives me hope for the software industry because if an in-person, expensive niche hobby could survive through social media and the pandemic, tech can bounce back from the current enshitification and short-term profit seeking.
If you have the money and enjoy lots of lore/worldbuilding and complex strategy games, Warhammer is a fantastic hobby I'd recommend checking out
It probably didn't sell because it wasn't very good. So you re-balance it later and now it doesn't suck. Like, fundamentally keeping the "best" and "worst" models/armies/strategies from stagnating keeps the game interesting (and drives more sales... so depends how you look at it).
I don't think they've every been super good at balancing though, and that at least is a fair criticism - albeit a hard task given how time consuming playtesting is to get data.
It didn't help they had 2 very different philosophies in the creative/design department. For example if an army was getting a revamp, competitive players would pray Gav Thorpe wasn't in charge of it. Whereas other people loved how he made the game more fun and goofy.
By way of comparison, Games Workshop updates their Warhammer rules about twice as often as Wizards of the Coast updates Dungeons and Dragons.
I think that has in particular bothered older players, as traditionally, pre-GW, miniatures gaming was all very DIY, dominated by amateurs. GW turning it into big business and throwing lawyers around did not make many friends from that hobby old guard. There are still niches of the hobby where GW are not very popular, or just never talked about.
And yep, as far as I rememember, they were always horribly expensive.
It's not surprising that they are invalidating people's armies. They are, after all, a miniatures company and they have a vested interest in getting people to buy the new models they are making. But it is really scummy imo, because these models are not cheap. If you have a decent size 40k army, you've spent thousands of dollars on miniatures, paint, and so on. For GW to start removing those units from the game leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
1. In general I don't like their boardgames - but I like co-op Euro style board games while the majority of their games are pvp (apart from Warhammer Quest line and maybe 1-2 other ones).
2. In the early 2000s the CEO stated that they are a model company first rather than a boardgame company (and it shows in my view). They do have fantastic miniatures though.
3. Most of the cool lore was written in the 80s. Their lore is fantastic (if dated) and I do enjoy reading from the black library. To geek out, I'm not a fan of the lore change in Warhammer fantasy battle world to Age of Sigma around 2015- even if they did need to revise change the battle system the new lore sucks and come across as a money grab. I have no problem with them wanting to make money - but the new lore seems so lame (looking at you storm cast eternals). Still the AOS line seems to be doing well - I'd argue they could have had the same system in the old world.
4. The model building and painting is a healthy hobby and a nice hobby for an adult/child to do. I am about to have a child and I do want to introduce them to painting and modelling and playing boardgames - but I would be cautious about introducing them to a warhammer store - the models are very pricey, the staff are pushy, and I don't really rate the games. Maybe something like killzone or lord of the rings (but probably not).
5. Still I did pick up the new warhammer quest so they do have things in there even for me.
For me, over the last thirty years I've amassed and then sold a big Warhammer collection multiple times. It finally dawned on me a few years ago that I don't actually like playing the game (I'm really bad at it), but I loved the miniatures. No one else really made the same style of minis. About when we hit the "you can just 3D print an entire army" time period is when I stopped liking even that part of the hobby, and exited for good.
Good to know your views on playing the game! I have similar feelings (but I stopped playing with the armies side when I was a teenager).
Even then, there were cases of a certain hue disappearing from the lineup (much to the frustration of painters), due it it being banned, because it was too toxic.
There a handful of high-profile 40k and GW people who died in their 30s-40s with illnesses probably related to exposure to this stuff.
The paints are water based acrylic paints, sold as age 12+ in Europe
For the first, there was a certain color that was discontinued due to issues with the pigment (I'm fairly certain it was Citadel and acrylic) and when it came back the consensus was the old one was much better.
As for the person who died, I'm certain I remember Alan Bligh, who was the chief writer behind Horus Heresy. Poor guy died from a fast acting form of cancer at 43, and he was known to spend a lot of time painting minis. This is just a rumor, but he wouldn't be the only one who developed health issues.
I will look into the painting risks here.
I'd definitely consult an expert on how and if can you make this hobby kid-safe.
These are paints specifically marketed towards children, produced by a large company in a European country with a strong record of safety etc.
Spray primer should be applied outside by an adult (as it says on the can).
No, painting isn't "one of the most hazardous hobbies". That's something like caving, or rock climbing, or skiing, or diving, or horse riding, or BASE jumping.
And no, they aren't "questionable chemicals". They're considered safe for use by the UK, EU, USA and everyone else, as well as Games Workshop, schools, etc.
A rule of thumb is to do this stuff in a well-ventilated area. Theres a million kinds of glues Wood glue is mostly safe, superglue is generally okay, epoxies are not.
And yes, paints and solvents are the kinds of chemicals that the common man will encounter the nastiest chemicals (VOCs) which can permanently and irreparably damage your brain. Not immediately, but depending on how much you use it, and how much precaution you take, this is definitely something to be aware of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_solvent-induced_enceph...
https://matduggan.com/the-year-of-the-3d-printed-miniature-a...
apparently some do, most don't.
I think a big part of it comes down to scale- like that author mentioned, going through the effort of setting up a printer, printing, curing etc. for a handful of models is a pain in the ass. But if you're printing then curing half an army in one go (which the nature of resin printers easily allows you to do by stacking/arranging minis) it comes out as worth it over spending a few hundred USD on official plastic.
> In practice, the effort to get the STL files, add supports, wash off the models with isopropyl alcohol, remove supports without snapping off tiny arms, and finally cure the mini in UV lights was exponentially more effort than I'm willing to invest. And I say this as someone who has painted individual eyeballs on figures smaller than my thumb. I have a high tolerance for tedious bullshit. This exceeded it.
I spend more money per hour if I go to a bar.