How Warhammer became one of Britain’s biggest companies | Hacker News Reader

How Warhammer became one of Britain’s biggest companies

theguardian.com

42 pointsGeoAtreides63 comments

It don't mean to diminish Warhammer's success, but part of the reason why it's one of the "biggest companies" is because many of the other big companies have slowly disappeared. Britain used to have a viable ship building industry that employed huge amounts of people. It's gone. It can't compete. And the same story is repeated again and again. Companies like Morris Garage and Triumph used to compete on the world stage. No longer.

Again, I'm proud of the Warhammer folks. It's just the fact that it's one of the "biggest" makes me sad.

Somehow all this was done seemingly deliberately, as some MBA new hire project at a BigCo. Like how Google kills off half their useful services because nobody in the C suite knows what they're for.

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.

It was a massive shame the TV-toy project at Sinclair did not work out. It was a SOC/low cost computer based on the Inmos transputer (Called the T400, an M212 without dedicated link hardware) around 1983. That might have kept Inmos afloat- they were responsible for a lot of the RAM chip innovation, VGA standard, transputer etc. so the world would have looked very different. I do wonder what could have been with that chip paired with the Slipstream chip, oh well.

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

Yes. One advantage GW has, is that it has never outsourced manufacturing. The miniatures are still made locally, so they haven't lost their expertise, nor are they threatened by a former contractor turned competitor.

> The miniatures are still made locally, so they haven't lost their expertise, nor are they threatened by a former contractor turned competitor

Deeply skeptical that that's actually much of a factor in their success.

Their success is down to a bunch of factors: near monopoly position in their niche, total vertical integration, obsession with design and marketing, and I think crucially, having the kids who grew up playing coming into a high-spending age bracket.

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.

> near monopoly position in their niche

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.

The near-monopoly comes from network effect. There are plenty of other games, I'm more of a painter and have models from a load of them, but I've only ever played GW games as that's what my friends play.

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.

makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

Yeah, it's much like D&D in TTRPGs and MtG in CCGs. Anyone you meet who is into those kinds of games will almost certainly play those specific games, and potentially exclusively them, and finding players for any of the many other games in the genre is much more difficult.

Aren't most 40k minis cast resin? The process is incredibly simple, I don't think outsourcing it to China would save a lot of money, just bringing those minis over the ocean would probably cost 10x as much as making them locally.

Injected plastic. Resin occasionally, but it's premium and GW have pretty much discontinued it.

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.

"We don't make anything" and "there are no large British companies" are memes that help people feel better about perceived decline. It's not really representative.

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.

The article does not explain much about the “how”. Games Workshop was a small company that failed to grow for most of its history, then suddenly struck gold. Look at the stock quote: it fluctuated in the 400–800p band from 1996 to 2016, then soared for five years in a row, hitting 10'000p in 2020.

What happened in that crucial period? Did GW manage to spread its brand awareness to the mainstream public?

I think Henry Cavill was a big part of why it grew in popularity. As Henry Cavill's career and profile grew, he did not shy away from putting his favorite nerdy interests in front of the media spotlight, which included Warhammer. That obviously caught the imagination of the internet crowd who ran away with it to create all sorts of memes with Cavill as the God Emperor, or "Behold the Omnissiah!" memes. That naturally sparked the interest of a lot of bystanders, and credit where credit's due, Warhammer lore is deeply enthralling.

Thanks, an interesting theory! I last played Warhammer (Fantasy) in the past century, we were a small circle of friends and I never heard the game mentioned by “non-nerds”, so it was quite surprising to me to find out some years ago that the Games Workshop Company has become one of Britain's “national champions”.

Total War: Warhammer came out in 2016 and was a massively popular game that kicked off a franchise.

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.

Yeah, they used to be immensely against anyone licensing their IP because they didn't want anyone who wasn't them making something with it, at one point going as far as to start their own record label. Now they seem to let anyone make video games with it.

They've been letting people make 40k video games for decades.

My guess would be that, like other 80s properties, many of the first generation of fans have now grown into adults with disposable incomes. I know thats the case with me and my circle.

They did really well with people returning to the hobby, especially during the pandemic.

They got me to some extent. I bought one of the largest models just the day before the first lockdown.

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.

It's crazy how much money people end up spending on these kinds of things. A hundred here, a hundred there, before you know it you've spent tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. Most probably don't even realize they're spending that much.

Adults with disposable incomes...who also have kids of warhammerable age.

I had the same thought. In high school around the turn of the millenium the warhammerers either got a few injections per year to their collections, as presents from relatives or from saved up allowances, unless they made a small business out of painting and selling figures.

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.

From someone who has been part of the hobby for a long time, I think a couple of reasons:

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."

I think the image of 12 year old boys as GW's customer base is probably outdated. I know a woman who is _massively_ into Warhammer, and spends a lot of money and time on it. An N=1 anecdote is not data, but it would certainly be interesting to look in more detail at GW's demographic.

They have successfully pivoted from a hobbit focused solely on board games, which requires travelling to someone's house with your figurines, going to the shop, etc.

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.

Space Marine 2 & Rouge Trader

Which was what got me stuck in this expensive hobby

Someone should make a parody video game called Rouge Trader.

Also Tacticus on mobile. 500k plus active players and some huuge whales. Quite fun even as f2p btw.

The thing about Warhammer is there are so many ways to experience it and an unbelieveable amount of content. I've never set hands on the codex (guide books) nor the actual miniatures (too expensive) but I've read so many books from the dark library, and engaged most of its community through its lore. I've spent the last 3 years just within the circle of the Horus Heresy, I don't know anything about the Tau nor the Orks... The game has so much to offer its actually incredible.

I've always wondered about the licensing on their video games. There are just so absurdly many of them. Somebody could have a game collection just made up of Warhammer and it'd be more than enough to last many years!

I used to play warhammer when I was younger and am honestly astounded gamesworkshop is still in business let alone one of Britain's biggest companies. At least in the 00s and 2010s, they were the epitome of a greedy corporation squeezing blood from a stone.

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

> Something not selling well? Change the game rules to make that it more powerful

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.

I agree completely, the game would get boring if things didn't constantly change. It was more-so the way they'd go about it, not the general sales strategy. Perhaps I should have said overpowered, typically they'd intentionally overcorrect so a unit would go from too weak to way too strong.

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.

It was definitely not just balancing rules patches for gameplay purposes - there was a clear deliberate intent to force people to buy new models. Complete with arbitrary changes to the game lore itself that accompany those updates: when I first started playing Warhammer Fantasy only the smaller lizardmen could ride the dinosaurs, and in the next edition only the larger ones (with entirely different new models) could.

By way of comparison, Games Workshop updates their Warhammer rules about twice as often as Wizards of the Coast updates Dungeons and Dragons.

People love to shit on GW, but at the end of the day they keep buying their wares. Most drug addicts despise their dealers in a similar way.

There's a somewhat niche game publisher that had very gamer-friendly practices. At some point they released older games for free, and for new popular ones they were relatively friendly to mods. Now they only operate a lootbox game. The sad reality of commerce.

There are still many smaller publishers, and individual self-publishers, keeping small niches of miniatures gaming alive and well completely outside of the reach of GW or other big companies. I follow many old blogs and some forums where people discuss miniatures games and the mentions of GW or Warhammer are so rare I can forget they exist. Depends on what internet bubble you happen to live in of course.

True. I used to play warhammer when I was younger, too. I am not suprised they are still in business, because it's a very enjoyable hobby (And I don't mean just playing, also the painting part of it).

And yep, as far as I rememember, they were always horribly expensive.

Not to mention the ‘new edition of the rules’: buy back half of your units, the other half now behaves completely differently.

They still kind of are that business imo. I'm pretty damn upset that they have pulled the card of invalidating people's armies with Primaris Space Marines. Context for those who are fortunate enough to not have a plastic addiction: about 6 years ago, Games Workshop introduced a whole host of new models for the most popular faction in 40k, complete with lore about how these are newer and better versions of the units. At the time people were concerned about their old models not being usable, and GW assured everyone that they weren't going to remove the old units from the game, and that you could still keep using the models you bought. Fast forward several years... and they have been removing the old units from the game. Just as they promised they wouldn't.

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.

They also aggressively went after fan-made variants and other content posted online, unlike almost any other miniatures/boardgame publisher. Lot of (ex-)fans upset about that.

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.

My take on Games workshop is:

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.

Mm. Part of GW's modern success is that roughly a decade ago they decided to push third parties to create a ton of Warhammer-branded experiences. There's even a Warhammer movie in the works, if I remember right. That would never have been possible before that "please use our IP" shift.

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.

Ah that makes complete sense. So they had to go with AOS for IP reasons which allowed them to have more control of videogames, comic, future movies etc. That makes sense.

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).

Isn't painting one of the most hazardous hobbies? You're working with questionable chemicals all the time. Even the official Citadel stuff (which I think is reasonably OK most of the time) needs to be treated with a healthy dose of respect, but it's so expensive youre constatly tempted to shop around.

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.

Oh that's really interesting. I hadn't thought about the health side of painting. My assumption was that the Citadel stuff would be fine in moderate use. I am aware that a solid mask should be used when applying a primer or with glue though.

I will look into the painting risks here.

I'm not an expert on this, and you might be right on the acrylic paints, but modeles use a lot more stuff (solvents, primers, glues, resin) when building and painting minis is dangerous as they often use toxic solvents with VOCs. Anything that comes in a spray can definitely does.

I'd definitely consult an expert on how and if can you make this hobby kid-safe.

Eh there's no real reason to wear a mask when using glue. Spray primer I can see more, but glue isn't getting into the air like primer is. In any case I doubt very much if the acrylic paints used in 40k are unsafe to use.

for your own and everyone's sake, please don't make unqualified statements like this. Glue toxicity goes from relatively benign (the white stuff children use at school), to 'literally has the skull symbol on the packaging' (some industrial glues used in electronics and clothing).

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...

I think the claim is FUD — or at least far, far beyond what a child would come across, e.g. professional resins, airbrushing/spraying solvent-based paints indoors etc.

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).

:( I truly regret the time I spent looking up the info in responding to yor comment. I shouldn't have wasted so much effort on a person like you.

You made a wild and massively exaggerated claim based on a rumour.

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.

Do you have a reference for this? It's a very serious accusation.

The paints are water based acrylic paints, sold as age 12+ in Europe

Apologies, I'm kind of basing this on half-remembered forum posts from a decade ago.

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.

This is going to be a really silly question. Do Warhammer players who buy the miniatures ever 3D print their own? Just curious if that's a thing.

there was a very interesting blog post on this a few weeks ago

https://matduggan.com/the-year-of-the-3d-printed-miniature-a...

apparently some do, most don't.

Thanks, that post answered the question perfectly

> 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.

The following paragraph is also significant — if you're going to spend 5, 10+ hours painting the thing, which might be free evening time for several weeks, the £35 cost isn't a problem.

I spend more money per hour if I go to a bar.

It definitely is. He also mentions that he has several unpainted sets acquired during the Obama Administration. He's constrained by time he can spend painting, not money to acquire more sets. There's no point adding to his backlog.

Anecdotal but the last time I actively still played at local games half of the players for that ruleset had at least 30-40% of their armies 3D printed. Half of that had 100% of their armies 3D printed and weren't buying GW at all.

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.

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