Games Workshop announced a worldwide ranking system today that rewards you for entering the battlefield and defeating your foes! You earn points for every sanctioned event you join, and you earn even more for each victory. It’s easy! Just find a participating location near you and play! Oh wait. Nevermind. I mistook GW for a company that's actually in touch with their players. You know - the guys who care enough about the game to put things together like the
INAT FAQ so we can do the larger-scale social activity associated with wargaming called tournaments. Let alone the dozens of individual FAQs and formats of all the tournaments that people put on because they love the social aspect of this hobby. If we only ever wanted to play 40k with a few friends, it would be a typical $25-$100 boardgame. Not something I spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours on - that's something I want to show off, and use as the social entry point for meeting new, like-minded people (AND CRUSH THEM!!! /grin). I certainly don't want to only ever face at most the few people that I know well enough to go have a beer and pretzels with on a vaguely routine basis. I simply don't understand how GW continues to miss the boat here - it is 2011 after all. With social media in all its varying forms available - not to mention the thousands of gamers who practically bleed this hobby - there simply isn't a good excuse. The writing is on the wall and competition is scratching at the door - with a battering ram. The cause for this post, and I keep hoping to see a headline like this for GW in the near future:
Yahoo Boss fired...over the phone ! , share prices jump 20% In fact, I expect it, unless GW's shareholders are (or continue to be) utter twits. So much potential for greatness, wasted. Sorry for the short post - but then again it's a rant - and those are best done with just enough research to make them sting like a rapier going in... oh - and the bandwagon pic is because this rant seems to be
occurring elsewhere too...
PS - GW, if you're reading this: fix the Tyranid codex/FAQ please.
If GW fired Kirby, you'd hear all of us over on the Back40K squealing like little girls at a Beiber sighting.
ReplyDeleteheck, SandWyrm might even faint.
Assuming Kirby was an iPhone correction for "Jervis" ? I can't imagine the blog- and forum-gasm that would occur. Probably best not to try to imagine it actually.
ReplyDeleteGreat article! GW need to open their eyes to the fact that the tournaments are the lifeblood of Warhammer/40K.
ReplyDeleteIf there were no tournaments - would you be in the hobby today? And would you have a fully painted army? For me it's no to both questions, likewise for most of the Warhammer hobbyists I know. It's us tournament goers that spends silly amounts of money on this hobby, and draw in the new blood so we can have someone to play and train against.
And fix the Tyranid FAQ.