The Ansell take-over

ManicMan

ManicMan

Lord
Probably been mention a few times before but I'm working my way through Johnathan Green's new 'You be the Hero: The Interactive guide to Fighting Fantasy' book (which is an updated version of the two volumes he released in the past but.. slightly annoying one thing atleast is missing but oh well, I know why ^_^)

Just thought a couple of bits so far on the Bryan Ansell take over of GW was quite interesting. I'll bullet point some bits:

* The First Fighting Fantasy gamebook was released in 1982, written by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, who kinda regret they did it due to Penguin Books and didn't publish it via GW. As it was very popular, Penguin started to want more and more of them. Both Jackson and Livingstone found this created alot of trouble as they were working at GW in the office most of the day, an then typing and creating the gamebooks after hours and at weekends.

*1985 - This Situation lead to them deciding to promote a GW senior executive to a position where they can run most of the day to day side without needing Livingstone and Jackson. Bryan Ansell, who had been a founding member of Citadel Miniatures (along with Livingstone and Jackson, but I believe this was mostly on the side of Games Workshop investing but made have had some other hands in it, in 1978) was selected and became Managing Director of Games Workshop.

* Peter Darvill-Evans gives an interesting take how Fighting Fantasy had a huge impact on GW. At first, he liked the Idea of Fighting Fantasy as it would allow Games Workshop to get a lot of publicity and in the new market of Children's books, which would help them and get new customers. However, he turned sour on the whole thing as it became clear it was not gonna advertise for Games workshop (It was a Penguin book publication with Jackson and Livingstone) and due to them getting busy and Penguin wanting a new book every month or two, they took new writers from the GW staff, making it much harder on GW, to a point that he believed in 1985, pretty much everyone seamed to be writing gamebooks and he didn't approve of this. He was one of the people who didn't wish to relocate to Nottinghame so was out of a job when Ansell moved it. He does say though:
"I'm not saying that FF gamebooks caused the massive changes at Games Workshop; there were other factors at work, and it might well have happened anyway. But the success of the FF books certainly influenced when it happened and in large part how it happened."

*1991 - Bryan Ansell brought a Majority stake in GW, with Jackson and Livingstone retaining minority stake, however.. around the time he also sold his stake to Tom Kirby. (why? I'm not sure.. anyone remember or know why he lead the buy-out and then left?)


I just think it's interesting that, well, Looking at all the bits, FF was a huge impact on the changes. It was really them being so popular which lead to Livingstone and Jackson having to take a step back and promote Ansell, which lead to more of a focus on original content then just a general distributor for other peoples work and more focus on Citadel Miniatures.
 
Dice Men gives a good (tactful) perspective from Ian and Steve. They speak well of going to Penguin with FF and don't mention any regrets about moving on from GW. If FF had been published by GW and Bryan hadn't been given the reins to steer it onwards it's likely FF wouldn't have been such a big success and we wouldn't have had Warhammer (as GW would have stayed largely an RPG importer and distributor).
 
yep. It was more the quote from Jackson:
"We were hugely chuffed to be writing for such a well-known publisher, but after three or four titles, we were asking ourselves: 'Why didn't we do this through GW instead?' But by now the series had been established as a Penguin brand. To suddenly switch to Games Workshop would have been very confusing and unprofessional."

though it does seam for quite some time, Penguin didn't want to advertise the books, even though they were making alot of money.. Ah, I know of many a case where something is too successful to scrap but the people putting it out don't really like it much.. Business politics ^_^
 
They had a real struggle to get a publisher. The 'adult' publishing houses wouldn't touch it. If they had gone through GW it would be interesting to think of what would have been different about them. It was an indirect win for Workshop though as it got a lot of kids onto the roleplaying scene and only really GW were catering for that at the time.
 
yeah.. Though I looks like alot of it was down to Geraldine Cooke. She was given the job as an editor of the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror titles for Penguin and Penguin just wasn't really interested in that field. She brought some stuff back into print but then due to friend Geoff John, she learnt about Games workshop and thought if they could do something it would be a good hit, At first this was going to be a guide book to new RPG players, but they ended up handing in 'The Magic Quest' (Warlock of Firetop Mountain). However the company wasn't interested but she was then talking to Patrick Hardy, head of Children's books (Puffin imprint) and was more interested and wanted to publish it and saw if it was targeted to the 9-12 group, it would do much better..


I don't remember them trying to ship it to other companies (though maybe while Cooke at Penguin was trying to get them to try to publish it.. she does say it was on and off trying to get the board to agree for about a year before it ended up with Puffin). Since Jackson and Livingstone had a very good business sense and was able to get the copyrights and stuff, It's quite likely they could have also been shipping it around as it wasn't a contract with Penguin. That said, Authors are more used to keeping all rights to there works..
 
Fascinating. I loved both early GW and the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, which shared some illustrators and a similar narrative feel to early Warhammer. (Like Warhammer, you were much more apt to see hints of grotesque wealth inequality - peasant hovels ravaged by plague, panhandlers, unhealthy-looking people just scraping by - in Fighting Fantasy than you would in USA based fantasy games or art of that time, i.e., the distinctive British flavor of grimness of "grimdark." The art on american fantasy novel covers more often looked like everyone was in perfect health, often obviously derived from professional models posing in a studio, and somehow everyone's clothing always looked freshly laundered, their armor immaculately polished.

It might be heretical to say, but John Blanche's black-and-white Sorcery! illustrations are still my favorite things that he's ever done, and to me they perfectly distill the flavor of the Warhammer Old World, even though they're set in Analand, Khare, the Shamutanti Hills, etc.

Anyhow, I had no idea about how the rise of FF changed the course of GW. Great stuff, guys.
 
If you haven't read Dice Men and are interested in the early days of GW it's well worth a look. Then Talking Miniatures picks up where it leaves off. TM is quite pricey but production quality on both are excellent and the two volumes of TM are crammed with great insights into GW throughout the 90s and early 2000s.
 
haven't really bothered with Dice Men or Talking Miniatures.. Not that any book is unbias but I believe is there is a bit of a problem mostly due to that act that John Peake appears to have been very camera shy and contests some of the very early days of GW stuff.. I got this book (as part of the crowd funding) not 100% on a whim but a bit more so as I don't often bother too much with such reference books (like I normally stay care of auto and non-auto biography's (partly cause autobiography are very bias on the whole, even when they are pretty much never only by one person, and non-auto are either Bias for, or bias against on the whole) but have a couple which are for the most part, pretty sane (Oh and would of course recommend (especially the audio book versions read by the Author), the Spike Milligan autobiographical accounts of his service in WW2.. Not stuff they put him in the best light but that does help alot to make it seam very grounded, despite Spike being Spike ^_^ (though he lived local to me for many years, and I have some loose connections with him, Never really met him, sad to say..)
 
guerrilla miniature games did a video about this.

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