Guest Editorial by Raw Dogger
are reading this article you are somehow, someway invested in the table top war
gaming hobby. I would also feel
confident betting the vast majority of the people reading this article play
table top war games developed and manufactured by the lumbering gaming behemoth
Games Workshop. I myself have been
playing Warhammer 40k, and to a lesser extent, Warhammer Fantasy, since around
1997. Describing to non-players the
first time I was introduced to the (then) amazing White Dwarf Magazine on a Boy
Scout camping trip at the age of 13 is a lesson in futility. My years of lining up little green army men
against each other and playing out mighty battles on my bedroom floor had
kindled my love of wargaming long before finding the magazine, but for the
first time I saw a way to interact with others and I fell in love with a hobby
that I didn’t even know existed. Fast
forward 16 years, several editions, and an ungodly amount of disposable income
later, I find myself just as much in
love and enamored with the Warhammer games and universe as I was when I was 13
years old. So why do I secretly hope
Games Workshop goes out of business?
I love Games Workshop. I love
buying all of the new models and playing with them in tournaments, however, I also want them to fail utterly and
miserably. I would like nothing more
than to see them go out of business. I want
Jervis Johnson to lose his house. I want
Matt Ward to pawn his sweet black leather vests. I want Bugman’s Bar to burn to the fucking
ground! That might be a little harsh,
but hey, I’m being honest. I know that I
am not alone in feeling this way. There
is not a day that goes by that I don’t read online blogs and see comments along
the same lines (ok, maybe not so harsh).
Go ahead, try it. Next time Bell
of Lost Souls of Frontline Gaming runs an article describing a price increase
or an expose regarding the closing of a GW store or some such thing, the doom
and gloomers come out of the woodwork. You will find comments such as “I’m going to
laugh when GW goes to out of business” or “They’re finally going to go under
since they don’t realize they have competition”, and so on and so forth. I
smile inwardly when I read these comments.
I think to myself, “that will show them”, though what THAT is I have no
idea. So why do we do this? Why do we secretly want the company that
develops and produces the games we love to play to go out of business?
is the ‘smugness factor’. Think about
it. This can be the neighbor that always
has the newest car or gadget, the sports team that wins every national
tournament, or the sibling that garners the most attention and adulation from
your parents. You like them on a certain
level; your neighbor is nice enough and he even invites you over to his weekly
BBQ (where he shows off his new TV or game system). The sports team plays well, and the
quarterback is so handsome (I’m talking about The Patriots). Your brother is your blood relative, so he
can’t be all bad? The fact is, when your
neighbor’s house gets egged or the Patriots lose in the playoffs, you smile a
little. When your brother calls you at
3am to bail him out of jail, you’re thinking ‘JACKPOT’! You want to see these smug bastards taken
down a peg.
changes due to the fact that they KNOW people will keep paying to play the
hobby they love. Not releasing models
that are IN THE CODEX, then taking companies to court that had the audacity to
manufacture said items because they saw the demand. Matt Ward’s vest! The list goes on and on and whole articles
have been written on the topic. The
fact of the matter is that we, as a gaming community, have done this to
ourselves. We SECRETLY dislike games
workshop. We continue to let them run
roughshod all over us. I feel nostalgic
for the day that Games Workshop was truly into the hobby aspect of the
games. Remember rough riders? Remember their partnerships with local game
stores that ADVERTISE THEIR GAME SYSTEM FOR FREE? I do, and I miss those days. I don’t know how to fix it. I do know that I will continue to buy and
play with their models, grumbling and writing bumbling blog posts. I’ll be the last one to buy a $125 Land
Raider and turn the light off when I leave.