How Games Workshop Should Change Their Everything

By Guest Author | October 17th, 2022 | Categories: Editorials, Games Workshop, Warhammer 40k Rumors

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We’ve looked at the current Games Workshop sales strategy, but here is an opinion on what they should probably be doing to keep customers happy and sales high.

Guest Post by Ben De St Paer-Gotch: Twitter @nebuk89

Over the last two blog posts I have done, we looked at why Games Workshop is changing their behavior at the moment and what I hypothesize they will do next in regards to their sales strategy. This has been fun, but my reason for this run-up is I think that GW’s current product direction is just… disappointing given their opportunities and I would love to see them do an insane level up on this.

(To be clear, anything expressed here is not done so with any internal knowledge and us my opinion only based on my experience)

If I can give any advice to GW right now, it is that they are really falling short on how to become a membership-focused company- and that they have an insane opportunity here. Putting a subscription out there doesn’t make you a member-focused company! It just changes how you charge people.

GW could embrace lessons from the wider examples of what membership should deliver for its customers before it delivers to the company.

To start, they can even just step back and look at their customers’ goals.

Customers & the Community

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GW’s customers’ goals are to enjoy the hobby of a thematic universe of amazing adventures, to create their own armies and characters within this and lead them through games, or just to create beautiful models. GW needs to create a growing business model from this and do so in a way that secures its future.

And the best bet to do this is with the community (which hasn’t always been the case)!

If we look at examples in other industries, we see companies that embrace people who contribute, create public “most value people” programs, and generally embrace community-created content. They do this not by accident but with a clear intention of how it will fit into their company strategy.

As a first step to doing this, it would be amazing to see GW hire a bunch of community managers. These are not people who will go just to GW events, or only go to GW stores. These are people who are online working on Twitter, joining army Facebook groups, reaching out to publications, attending other tournaments to see what people love doing, and talking to GW customers!

GW could work out what programs to create for visible community champions. GW can’t onboard every content creator to Warhammer+. It would be amazing to see them establish how and what they will do to surface the best of the community more! (Honestly, I can’t believe GW missed having ‘the’ Warhammer forum to the point that the boat sailed so long ago!)

How They Could Embrace the Community

An amazing example of how they could embrace this would be to double down on how the GW community drives the whole thematic universe; with modern technology, they could do so much. Why not get a virtual universe map and let people claim worlds for their chapters?

Create a campaign based on this and then publish a whole map of every chapter of everyone in the world – universes can be huge, after all. Why not help the community feel invested in the narrative of the universe? To the extent that they engage with the GW brand and other community members more.

This is a tiny example of scratching the surface of what ‘working with the community could do. This isn’t the community of ‘amazing STL file creators’ or ‘passionate YouTube producers.’ This is the whole gaming community of anyone who has access to a computer, is in any Facebook group, or who has ever posted a picture of their models online.

I will come back to dedicated content creators in a minute.

Onto Warhammer+ Plus

Next, Warhammer+. GW has a paid subscription service, but the goal right now appears just to be to sell content. GW’s goal should be to get the people into the universe and those already in the universe to become even more invested in the hobby and to become greater advocates for your products.

It would be amazing to see GW think about how to evolve the product to make it something that embraces both the physical and digital size of the hobby, and they started with a price point that enables this. Maybe if they added a more premium tier that you could subscribe to, like a ‘large’ for £15 a month that came with store credits worth a bit more than this or an ability to subscribe to new models from a particular army…

Or even just a bunch of models from any army at a scale that makes it worthwhile.

They could keep with this a digital-only sub at a lower point, but if GW wants a model still built around their models, they need a clearer two-way exchange of what is in the subscription. Imagine if the Blood Angels series came out over two months; in both months, you got some marines, paints, and videos were published around doing Blood Angels model painting – that would be enticing.

With this, you are delivering more value and creating a cycle of – people getting things they need to consume (new models, part of an army). This is actually (IMO) better for GW than what they have now, as this flow creates members who have armies they need to pad out and get paints for, get more models to support, etc.

Or maybe there is another way to address making Warhammer+ something that helps your business and creates 10x customer value – but it needs to be more than just a ‘Warhammer streaming service and gaming app that sort of links. GW has many things they could do with this.

Games Workshop & Looking at Other Companies’ Sales Strategy

If we look at learning from Xbox Live and the Gamepass. Creating a better together Ultimate has changed a huge chunk of Xbox users’ behavior and created amazing returns for Microsoft, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see GW do something along these lines.

If we look at what this could combine with, it would be some sort of subscription (a la the magazines we see with models today) or simply piecemeal credits or something to build up an army as you watch each year at a higher price point. If they can create a way to make the customers who are already paying them – more likely to pay them again (again, like Gamepass), then GW will be on to a winner.

As a short note, as there is probably a whole piece on this, GW needs to double down on their Apps and decide on clearer goals. They currently aren’t quite for “building an army” unless you own the books… But are kind of? What is the goal of the app other than “have some handy rules” – as this feels limited to me?

They Can’t Ignore 3D Printing

Lastly, and this is a bit more speculative, GW cannot continue to ignore 3d printing forever, and they cannot build everything themselves – as odd as this may seem for a huge manufacturing company. This is where I would love to see GW get a bit more creative.

If GW can get a business model where users are subscribing to a lot of models (i.e., the core of the army) and then buying the odd beautiful hero, this will change how GW. No longer do they need you to spend £25 on a box of marines to build up a spare bits backlog or kitbash a new hero.

In this world, a beautiful model is a beautiful model. Your users are paying you for core content in a thematic universe where you now want them to be created (a la our creating your own planet example). How does GW bring a thematic, community-driven universe built around people creating physical models into the real world in 2021 and beyond?

Here I would love to see GW doing GW Official partners for model parts. Go to somewhere like MyMiniFactory, do a partnership, so GW takes a cut of each sale (or something), and let people offer parts that are ‘GW Verified.’

Even if that is someone checking for quality, like an intern, before that person sells them, let the creative part of the hobby flourish driven by your community and embrace the most beautiful bits as a community-driven canon. And help include GW as part of the story.

Look at something like the amazing Kickstarter for SONS OF HELLAS. Imagine if GW had sponsored this and showcased the models. They could have spiked sales of the base models to have people 3d print the pieces to customize them, done extra paint bundles for new colors for the army, or even asked the creator for a small piece of the pie.

If GW can create a world where the creative part of the hobby adopts new technologies and where GW is weaved into the very fabric of this – there is no limit to the amount of creative new ways GW can engage the community and drive consumption.

An Interesting Conundrum

I see an interesting conundrum here: GW sells itself to its board with the summarized message of “our core business is selling the models and helping hobbyists paint them.” That is the goal – the game.
A lot of what I suggest would need GW to pivot further away from this. Could GW really bring themselves to?

Well, maybe when the business gets to the right size, even they have to see that a fantasy world has more reach than just people who want to consume it through one medium. The number of small model manufacturers and the quality of 3d printers is steaming ahead, they cannot keep tightening IP guidelines.

They are trying to hold back a tide right now of the commoditization of their manufacturing facilities at an insane rate, the commoditization of model sculpting, and trying to grasp how much of their canon is still in GWs hands vs. now “wild in the community.”

GW needs to embrace its community of creators at all scales, including those who want to monetize what they create, embrace technology and embrace community engagement more to create a flywheel of creators – content – consumption – appreciation – customers.

Games Workshop Sales Strategy: In a Tough Spot

GW – you are in a tough spot given your board direction and stated goals. You are a widget-maker who is seeing a million other widget-makers spring up at home.

You didn’t run out of the gate with licenses for a lot of the things you have designed, and now you are running to catch up. Don’t. Work out how to capitalize on the clear love and momentum you have created and how that can feed into a business model for you that makes your widgets only part of the value you create.

Don’t alienate the community; turn it from a community of customers to a community of members that drives growth from both sides that you can capitalize on.

I love reading the GW Annual reports, and if you read them, you would think that perhaps I was wrong about some of my assumptions here. But the way GW has acted as of late with content creators and the community doesn’t align with:

“We aim to communicate in an open, fun way. Whoever and wherever our customers are, and in whichever way they want to engage with Warhammer, we will do our utmost to support them.”

To really change, I think GW would need to flip their strategy order to the customer first, IP second, strategic partnerships third, global 4th, and then high-quality miniatures 5th.

Don’t get me wrong, Games Workshop; I love the bits of plastic all over my desk, but please embrace the fact you could be so much more.

Check out Ben’s full series on what Games Workshop is, and how they could be so much more below!