Your experience with Games Workshop throughout the years

I think that some people simply have an introvert personality style, and many of the normative social interactions dont make sense for them. We live in a human society which is largely dominated by extroverts and so there is a tendency to overvalue social poise and treat it as if it were some moral good in and of itself. I think there is a great value to letting people relate to others according to their own style, provided that there is some general sense of love thy neighbour in operation. In particular, it is certainly not necesary to try to bring people "out of their shell". This is simply an act of violence.

In a hobby like ours, one is likely to find many introverted people, since both collecting and strategy games have a certain appeal to a certain kind of person. Therefore I think it good if a company does not oblige its staff to be pushy, since it is both an awkward pressure for those staff members, and invasive for customers.

If people are genuinely behaving in an anti-social manner that causes genuine distress to other customers and staff, they may be asked to leave. that seems to me quite reasonable.
 
I came to the GW hobby somewhat late-ish probably. In my mid-20s after graduate school. I started with WHFB 5th edition I think (late 90s to about 2000)? It wasn't even a serious pursuit of the hobby, I was just buying minis at the local hobby shop to paint up. After a year or so of doing that I realized that it wouldn't probably ever get any games in as the local WHFB community was non-existent (this was in Las Vegas).

So I found a new club that had only just formed and they were all 40K fans. That was the start of a 7 year love affair with GW. In those days it seemed like GW as approaching a golden age/high water mark at least where I was. They had amazing product support, there was a LA Gamesday every year. Their Rogue Trader Tournament system was actually up and functioning (at least for my part of the world) pretty well. Our club would take little road trips to play in tournaments and big games down in So.Cal and Arizona and occasionally up to Utah.

*So the ultimate positive of GW for me was how it had a real deep community. When GW itself had very good support out here the community thrived.

I don't know how much that loss of community is GWs fault and how much is the rise of tablets, pervasive internet, etc. Gamers seem to be living diluted lives these days and getting new people in on collecting hundreds of expensive minis, assembling, painting them, etc. etc. seems like it is much harder. Again out here in the western US. The old world is a different animal it seems, you lucky folks have venerable gaming clubs and entire generations of families who religiously participate in GW/miniatures/modeling/historicals it seems.

*When I first started out one could still buy GW stuff cheap online. Here in the US we had places like The Warstore where they always seemed to have some sort of crazy good deal. When you subscribed to White Dwarf (which was great back then) you could get a little kickback in product depending on your length of subscription.

*The storyline for both games wasn't constantly changing. It was pretty static and dependable.

-Since that time again from a western American perspective, things have really declined. The community out here seems to have gone from hobbyists who love the fluff and backstory and like fully painting themed armies to guys who hang out all day on the Bell of Lost Souls looking for the "net list o' the month" so they can take their unpainted minis and beat up 15 year olds at the local hobby shop. There is no further support from GW out west here, we have no LA Gamesday and they turned over the RTT/GT system to large clubs. Some of which do a good job with them, most of which use the system to get vast amounts of prize support which mostly ends up on Ebay it seems (again just my perspective, I don't know how widespread that is).

-Several codexes have been entirely re-written in ways that are very contrary to GWs methods over the previous few decades. The prices of course have continued to escalate, to the point that even somewhat high paid working professionals begin to cringe at their purchases. The community where I am seems to have completely disbanded and if you want to hang out with mini gaming hobbyists you need to just go find guys doing historicals.

*I still dearly love the 40K and WHFB universes but I am of the shared philosophy that if you don't like the current stuff just go back to the era you liked and happily play there. So there is that one final positive option with GW, if you don't like it now just go back to where you do and have fun.
 
I should add to my above comments that I have never found any GW staff member to be personally unpleasant or dislikable, on the contrary. Neither do i have any complaints about the customers.

My criticism of GW is really solely the corporate strategy, which of course staff are expected to carry out. They are really living the money-making dream in a very uncompromising way, which I find to be at odds with basic civic values. Yes fine the top people want to make theoir stack of money, but a bit less fanatical about it pls.
 
I used to love GW; going into the store when I was a kid was great. The staff were enthusiastic not about selling stuff, but about the hobby! This actually made my want to purchase stuff in there as their passion drove me to up my own game. All of the store staff were my friends as were the regulars; and so I briefly ended up working there and having a great time.

Roll forward fifteen years....

I fucking despise going to GW! The staff are morbidly obese mutants whose personal hygiene standards are very similar to those of a plaguebearer. The whole store stinks like a beaver's ass; as those of you who read my blog know my girlfriend is very supportive of my hobby and even plays games with me; but even she is disgusted by the stench of unwashed troll that permeates every inch of the store. Not only this; but instead of leaving me alone to quietly peruse the shelves and gag at the ambience they waddle over to me and insist in trying force feed me the latest generic piece of shit that head office has churned out. When I challenge them on price rises, or the fact that prison cells are now more atmospheric places than their store they scuttle off into the darkness. Last week I cleared the area around me by vocally challenging the new white dwarf; pointing out that it now costs me £17 + for their monthly magazine as opposed to £5 it cost me last month. The drones ran and got the manager as I vented for five minutes; by the end of my inflamed oratory I stormed out of the store and forgot to buy the paint I went in there for.

If my child had come up to me 20 years ago and said he wanted to collect GW I would have encouraged him; and helped him on those first few steps. If he said the same thing now I would slap him across the face and hand him an xbox controller!

Pah.....corporate dogs!!!
 
I first experienced Warhammer and Games Workshop back in the mid-80s when I was 13. This was a few years after I had started playing Dungeons and Dragons so was primed for the whole fantasy gaming vibe. I had moved to a new area and went to my first GW store as a place to get general gaming sundries. Back then the store was manna from heaven; RPGs galore, gaming mags, adventure board games, Fighting Fantasy (remember them?) plus all manner of dice and this thing that caught my eye called ‘Warhammer’.

I immediately took an interest in the game and eventually ended up with some Dwarves, Goblins and the old three book boxed set. That humble collection, plus a few bits of home made scenery, were all I needed for countless games. After a few years I got older and developed other interests. So my Warhammer was shelved and collected dust in the attic. However, I dipped in and out of the hobby every couple of years. At each of those junctures I felt like some out-of-place time traveller on each occasion I visited a Games Workshop store. A bit like re-visiting your old neighbourhood that has slowly changed beyond recognition over time.

The one thing that made me realise time had a’ changed was in the mid-90s. I was browsing the store one day during my lunch hour and saw some guys off the street, obviously non-gamers, being ‘hooked’ via a demonstration game with some very pushy high-fiving sales staff. Lots of patronising comments about how amazing they were during the battle and so on. All of which, of course, was leading up to get them to buy something. “What’s this place become?” I thought.

It was a period of regular weekly gaming with work colleagues from 2003 – 2010 that made me realise how stark the change had been. During store visits to peruse the paints, or maybe buy a small box of minis, I was pounced upon by the staff reeling off a sales pitch under the pretence of interest in my game. Found it all a bit intense and made me dread my next visit. Also, the whole shop, nay company, had become a production line churning out figures, boxed sets and Codex’s with incredibly short lives. It was almost as if the shelves had the same armies on them albeit this year’s design. Creating a kind of peer pressure where many may feel compelled to buy each new incarnation of their old army. Needles to say GW stuff ain’t cheap, and I’m a professional guy in my 40s. What’s it like for some kid in his mid teens being coerced into buying his army only to buy the same thing in a year’s time?

Feeding this addiction was White Dwarf itself. No longer the parochial, eccentric yet entertaining magazine full of random articles, pictures, illustrations, opinions and game scenarios. It had become a pure marketing tool, a catalogue telling you what to buy if you wanted to win battles.

Now, I know that’s a bit cynical, and ultimately Games Workshop is a business which needs sales, but my mindset is still one of a hobbyist wanting to drift through the hobby, game and store in my own time. Yes, times have changed and the shop I walked into on Liverpool’s Bold Street in 1986 no longer exists, (both physically and figuratively) but the hobby remains. Albeit obscured by the modern realities of commerce and profitability.

So what of my experiences today? Well, I get most of my Warhammer stuff in charity shops. Seriously. Every few weeks I’ll get lucky and buy some old unit or character and I’m happy with that. If I really want something I’ll look on ebay, but overall I’m not going to break the bank. To me it’s still a pocket money pursuit. The only time I visit the stores is to get some paint, but I have to be quick. The sales staff are lurking behind the next shelf!
 
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