With WAR now being a year old, and rumours of an expansion for the controversial-in-some-circles Dawn Of War 2, I thought it would be fun to get an article together about the entity that sands at the root of both games, Games Workshop – part personal history, part case study…
Games Workshop (hereinafter referred to as “GW”) has been around for a long time, and, in the UK at least, dominate the tabletop miniatures wargame hobby with a kind of dominance that rouses some very strong feelings. There are, it seems a million reasons to hate them.
From the age of 13 I, like many of my school friends, became a massive fan of their stuff – the entry for me was a long-forgotten game called Dark Future, a Mad Max inspired post-apocalyptic vehicle combat game, which I started playing in school lunchtimes – I’d never played anything more complicated than Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs or the “Fighting Fantasy” books, so to be faced with huge multi-page rulebooks with lookup tables, weapon stats and so on was like entering a whole new world….
Dark Future led on to the all-time classic (recently re-released in a gorgeous new edition) Space Hulk, which was my personal introduction to the Warhammer 40k universe, and from that point on, the bulk of any money I earned that didn’t go on the occasional PC game, was shovelled directly into GW. I built up a reasonable 40k army of Space Wolf Space Marines (well, almost. I only ever won one game with it).
As is often the way, I grew disillusioned with the whole thing once I went to university – in fact pretty much the first week I was there I went into GW Manchester and realised I was already older than the staff. I held on to the army for a few years until I needed to perform an extreme slimming-down of the junk I owned for a house move and gave most of it away.
Space Hulk gave rise to a couple of great videogames, so this post isn’t off-topic at all…
And that, pretty much, was it until I bought Dawn of War in early 2006 for research purposes – needing to get up to speed with the current state of RTS gaming, and given the choice between it and Warcraft 3, I went with what was familiar – and it came as a bit of a shock just how familiar it all was. Rhinos and Land Raiders looked a bit different, but very little, really, had changed in the 11 years since I’d paid any attention to GW stuff.
So, I started reading DoW forums, which then led to reading 40k forums, which led into me setting back foot in a GW store, and forking over cash for some plastic space marines and paint.
So what about GW the company? It was certainly noticeable that in the time I’d been away, the little side-interest or introductory games have been sidelined in favour of the big hitters – one of the sore points with many of the older fanbase, in particular the fans of the bigger-battles, smaller-models “Epic” system. For a long time, the Company has had a tentative relations ship with online communities, famously shutting their own forums a few years ago as they had become a pit of misery, anger, and arguments (the work of the Ruinous Powers, perhaps ;-)). Still, they’ve recently launched a new site that includes a blog and have a useful Twitter feed.
I think one of the reasons for a lot of the animosity directed towards GW is that, in the UK at least they’re almost the only game in town. Alternative companies and systems have a very hard time unseating such an established player. That’s not to say that GW is unassailable. I was in a branch of Hobbycraft at the weekend and saw that they were now stocking the Flames Of War WW2 Miniatures wargame which has been gaining popularity. (Hobbycraft is, if you don’t know, a chain of large shops that mostly sell craft stuff to a primary audience of women. A few years ago, though, they had the idea of adding what I term the “bored husband section” to the store, containing Airfix and Tamiya kits, Hornby Trains, and Scalextric. A couple of years ago, GW products started to appear, and now Flames of War.) This is the first serious mainstream competition that the company has had in a long time and it’ll be interesting to see how it pans out. In a way it’s impressive that GW has managed to make the miniatures wargaming hobby something approaching mainstream at all.
Of course, another thing that raises the ire of people regarding GW is the prices. And it’s true, it’s not cheap. But there aren’t many hobbies that are, these days. The start-up cost for Warhammer compares favourably with buying a console, a musical instrument, a decent R/C car, or model railway set so in that context maybe it’s not so bad. Still it’s hard to shake memories of being able to get 30 space marines for a tenner in 1991 and to buy the equivalent number of marines today will set you back the thick end of £60.
To bring this to a sort of close, there are a lot of hobbies that, really, are wasted on the youngsters they’re considered to be for. I in no way had the patience in my younger years to do the painting thing properly, only reaching a level of near-competence towards the end of my time in the hobby, and while now I’d still not say I was good, I’m patient and skilled enough to get results I’m not embarrassed about. In the time since that first visit back, it’s taken a place in my life as an enjoyable second “winter” hobby after gaming – ideal for those times when I need a break away from the screen.
Some of the Space Wolves I painted a long time ago. points if you can name them all :-)
To finish, I’d like to send a brief open letter to THQ, the current holders of the Warhammer 40k licence.
Dear THQ,
PLEASE MAKE A VERSION OF THE SPACE HULK BOARDGAME FOR XBLA. WITH MULTIPLAYER. DO IT NOW. NOW! NOW! DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE.
Love,
RFT.
Oh, and if you were wondering about the title of the article, it refers to this great illustration of GW's somewhat unrealistic, though fun, depiction of battlefield tactics…
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![Picture of the [time frame]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FWynoGXrlRs/Stbk8-L4j6I/AAAAAAAAAd8/NyuoY7fNkfU/S1600-R/Image1.jpg)
