[Weekly Top X]-Customer

The puns will continue until morale improves... err, hang on.

What's that, Lauby? Where? Waiting for who? Oh. Um. Right. Never mind, then.

Apparently I'm lucky to be let off with a caution. Anyway, this week is (mostly) about customer relations - doing it badly, and doing it well.



I admit that I haven't been following Bitzgate '13, a.k.a. the latest reason to ragequit buying GW products for six months tops, as closely as I might, largely because "GW throws weight around and attempts to dictate terms to secondary market" and "GW gouges independent gaming retailers through profound misunderstanding of how non-UK (and, increasingly, UK) market operates" are kind of old news to me at this stage. Stupid company continues to make (mostly) nifty models and (sometimes) enjoyable games, angry people post angry words on Internet, world keeps turning. However, there have been a few gems amongst the gristle; their sparkle has caught my eye and I've plunged my arm up to the elbow in wobbly meat products, that I might extract said shiny objects for your viewing pleasure.

This one from Overwatch at Capture and Control merits a look, mostly because I enjoy a good conspiracy theory but also because it's the kind of part-baked brain-dead scheme I could actually envisage someone, somewhere in the bowels of what Nottingham's taxi drivers apparently call the Reichstag, actually coming up with. Admittedly that person would have to have no idea whatsoever of how the wargaming market operates in countries where GW doesn't have a high street presence, and where independent retailers are a kind of tradition and far more significant way of generating awareness and shifting units, like everywhere beyond the shores of Merrie Englande. Said person would also have no capacity to do joined-up thinking and realise that slashing the opening hours of GW shops and reducing staff presence means those brick-and-mortar own-brand retail outlets are less capable of selling stuff, and that the local indie gaming shop going out of business means there might actually be no physical place at which to buy GW goods, be reminded that the products even exist, or generate the community and play experience necessary to ensure that products get used and repeat sales get generated. As a great man once remarked, though, like German tourists, the stupid are everywhere. I can almost hear some nitwit talking about "eliminating the competition through reducing their direct sales footprint" or something similarly bafflegabbish.

Meanwhile, The Sustainable Centre talks about GW moving back into the bits market. It would indeed be nice to purchase any component of any model directly from GW. In the callow days of my youth, this is in fact how things worked. You did have to buy a whole sprue if you wanted a plastic bit, but you could order absolutely anything for which the mould hadn't actually worn out and for which there was actually ever a mould in the first place. I actually still remember a vague feeling of outrage at the idea that this service would be replaced with 'bitz packs' containing officially sanctioned conversion material, and that anyone who wanted to do something different with their collection was basically out of luck or out of pocket. It'd be interesting to see if GW did re-invigorate a bitz service given the amount of dead plastic that would almost certainly be generated from kits with one really desirable part and five-hundred and eighty-three components with the hobby appeal of old donkey knobs. Imagine the mountain of unwanted Lychguard necks!

I'm not bitter.
Much.

The thing is, models in those days made more demands to be converted. One-piece flat-pose metals have mostly gone out of fashion, the occasional and inexplicable Konrad von Carstein notwithstanding, and so the urgent need to Do Hobby On Everything is perhaps not there any more. People still do it, but there's more appeal in just sticking with the base range than I think there used to be. One thing that I will say for GW is that they are producing things which, when I were a lad, would have been the domain of scratchbuilders - people with stacks of plasticard in various thicknesses, scalpels in various degrees of tiny sharpness, and altogether too much time and patience on their hands. I mean, look what Tabletop Fix dug up: the Mk III Breacher Squad is altogether too epic and if I had money to throw around I'd have done a MkIII Iron Warriors army already. Mind you, it's coming to something when the main range is sufficiently pricey to make me even consider Forge World as an option...

On the subject of stuff GW still does well - there's a lot to be said about, and for, their background, as this piece from Colonel Scipio over at Palladian Guard demonstrates amply. When you can get three posts out of insignia and decoration, you know that someone, somewhere is putting in a lot of creative effort, filling out those little details that make for both verisimilitude and long arguments about what Dan Abnett wrote on page 354 of Gaunt's Ghosts: The Gauntelating and how it contradicts the second edition Codex and...

... wait, that was supposed to be a happy post. MOVING ON. Blood Bowl. Blood Bowl always makes me cheer up (except when it doesn't) and HOTPanda of Standard Template Construct is bringing joy to the masses by running a local league. The drawing of thirteen players to a supposedly 'dead' game is no mean feat and, I think, speaks volumes to the potential for good times and sustained play offered by this GW product. Not that I think of it as a GW product any more. It's a Jervis Johnson game for which GW happen to distribute the rules and for which everything else is available from a range of independent retailers.

Now, in these times that try men's souls, ragequitting does happen and there are certain retailers who have profited greatly from certain other retailers' tendency to induce this in their customers, to the point where the first set of certain retailers' story might be said to be exactly that of the second set of retailers, just one or two chapters behind. All right, I admit it, I'm talking about Privateer Press, and so is Sgt. Brisbane at sons of thunder. At times like this it's worth remembering that Privateer Press' ceaseless tinkering with their tournament pack, regular errata derived from event observation and dialogue with the consumer base, and history of semi-open playtesting for major rules revisions is by no means a bad thing. I question whether or not PP set out to create THE tournament game - rules were lighter and scenarios simpler in the early days of Mark I, and no game where arcs of sight are so important should ever use round bases - but they have taken note of their tournament scene and worked with it rather than against it to make something which is a generally customer-friendly experience. When I've had a bad time at Warmachining I have never, ever felt like it was the company's fault for making something Not Fun.

However, that's not to say that it's all wine and roses on the UK Warmahordes scene. One thing which has gotten me all worked up of late is the folderol surrounding Maelstrom Games, and The Marienburg Gazette's Davey explains why. What we have here is a company with a proven track record of taking your money and not giving you anything for it, a company which survived for several months on a) goodwill and b) having a really convenient location for event hosting. Said company went flop and was promptly re-invented so that a) the venue at least could stay open and b) the actual people who'd so badly mismanaged the retail arm could more or less, walk away. All's fair in love and business, right? What galls me is the success of a Kickstarter, a model based on good faith and deferred gratification, established by people who have already demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to give you what you paid for. It's one thing to be gouged by GW, who will at least put a product in your hands while they're doing it. I'm genuinely amazed that people are lining up to give Maelstrom a) another chance and b) more money which could be just as profitably stuck up your bum and set alight.