Here’s a hot take for ya: whining about Games Workshop prices and business practices is silly. 

Welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we bait the trolls with gusto!

All right, all right, all right, let me burn a fifth level spell slot and cast protection of, uh, protection from comment section hate. If you’re just a Warhammer player, that was a D&D reference. Okay, yes, obviously today’s title is meant to be click-baity, but it’s also the legit topic of this video. Let’s start with disclaimers:

First off, I don’t think wanting a company to lower their prices or do something different than they’ve been doing, I don’t think that’s silly. We all react to things, we all think things. We all think things? Yeah, I’m a good writer. 

I do however think it’s silly to waste a lot of mental energy complaining about something that doesn’t really have any solution and also just goes against plain logic. I’m not here to preach or lecture, you know that – I’m just here to shoot the [bleep] with you about tabletop gaming stuff.

So. Games Workshop. Let’s call them the Apple of the tabletop wargaming hobby. Oh, but if they’re Apple in this metaphor, then who’s Microsoft? I don’t know, I don’t think things through, where do you think you are? Miniac’s channel? Goobertown? Nah-uh, you ain’t there, you here. With me. Re-evaluating life choices, that sorta thing.

Anyway, let’s talk about capitalism. Ostensibly we are supposedly living in a capitalistic society. We don’t truly, but that’s a different video and probably different channel altogether. So IN this wonderful society, YOU, that’s right, you, sitting right there, other side of this screen, YOU can start a company. Start one today. Start one tomorrow. Whenever you want. Point is, you can literally just start a company. Pick out a name, provide a service or a product – or, you know, pull an Enron and just make shit up – but then file some paperwork, and boom – you’re off to the races. 

So what’s the point of your company? I mean like the base-level, fundamental point of the company? Unless you’re a non-profit organization – and even that’s a little iffy – but unless you’re a non-profit, my guess is one of the fundamental reasons for starting your company is to make a profit. Yeah, I know, super revelatory, right? You didn’t see that one coming at all. You wanna make some money! Put food in the fridge, a car in your garage, ducats in your bank, crypto-wallet, under the mattress, whatever. 

Now of course there are probably secondary goals, like creating something useful for people, making or providing something people love to engage with, etc. but we also live in a world where pharmaceutical companies are for-profit – in SOME countries … okay, maybe one country – anyway, the point is, they charge blatantly exorbitant fees for life-saving medication. Welcome to the world we’ve decided to build for ourselves. Have a good time!

In the overall scheme of things, Warhammer is a luxury item, just like an iWatch. And just as completely unnecessary. Warhammer – and iWatches – are solely for entertainment. There’s a whole lotta people who might wanna play Warhammer that simply can’t afford it. Luckily, there’s a whole world of tabletop games out there that they might be able to get into with less financial investment and there are thousands of videos from excellent content creators discussing exactly how one can get into the wargaming hobby for as few ducats as possible.

Just an aside here: “ducat” means “gold coin”. So for our purposes it just means money. Gimme them ducats!

So this perpetual complaint floats around the ether: why is GW so expensive? Why can’t they be cheaper? Why can’t I buy an iWatch for $200? It’s just so unfair!

Here are some things that I, personally, keep in mind: Games Workshop is selling an experience – a fully designed and immersive experience, from website to table. They are the Disney of wargaming, the Apple Store of game stores. And that experience, as well as their high-end product, is expensive to produce. And one thing I’ve learned from … living … is that almost every single thing out there is more difficult to do than an outside perspective would initially lead one to believe. 

Now, does producing all this high-end product require all of GW’s profit? No, of course not. Most of their profit goes to their shareholders and that’s a whole ‘nother ball of demented wax that needs to be dealt with. Personally I feel like the shareholder phenomenon is doing a lot of bad things for the world in general, but hey, we all wanna git rich right? 

But the shareholders are financing GW’s production costs on future projects. Invest, then ROI – that’s what everyone wants. Even you. You invest your ducats in game products and you expect a long term ROI, that’s “return on investment”, which, in this example, isn’t financial, but rather spiritual and mental. You wanna be creative and you wanna have fun with your friends. Or you wanna play a non-physical competitive sport. Or you’re collecting products ‘cause you’re addicted to buying things. Don’t look at me like that, I know what I am. Anyway, that’s your return on your investment.

Let’s get back to your hypothetical – but very possible – business. You’re running your shop, you’re making things, you’re doing things, and someone walks up to you with Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase. And they say, here you go, take this, go make bigger and better things, grow your business, make more profit. Go on, take it, it’s yours, we believe in you. Well, that sounds great right? But of course, you’re wondering, what’s the catch? They shrug and smile and say … no catch. We just want a share of your future profits. That’s fair, right? We line your pockets now, you line ours in the future. 

So. Who’s gonna turn down Marsellus Wallace’s glowing briefcase? You? Doubtful. But down the line, you realize them shareholders, they’re a little more demanding than you thought they were gonna be. And because of all this paperwork you signed and promises you made, you gotta get them some money. Every month. Of every year. Forever. Cause if you don’t, they’ll pull their funding outta your business and then you gotta fire half your staff, slow down production, lose customers, lose marketshare, and watch those digits in your digital bank account shrink like shrinky dinks. I know – I’m a wordsmith. Moving on.  

I’m sure up to this point, it sounds like I’m defending Games Workshop as a company. I assure you, dear viewer, I am not. I criticize GW and a bunch of other companies in my head all the time. And in conversation with other people, sure. Criticism is an intrinsic part of society, which is not only totally fine, but frankly, absolutely necessary. 

Criticism is definitely one way to affect a company – but there’s effective criticism and then there’s just complaining. And change in a company’s attitude or business practices isn’t gonna happen unless customers put their money where their mouths are, i.e., keeping their ducats in their pockets. Keeping their ducats in their pockets! Ducats in their pockets – what am I saying? I don’t – I don’t even know. I don’t know what I’m saying. Now don’t get me wrong, I personally feel anyone can say whatever they want about a company, free speech and all that, I’m for it, of course, and your feelings are yours, they’re no less or more important than anyone else’s, especially mine. 

But I will say this – Games Workshop has exactly 0 incentive to capitulate to most criticism – in fact, they’re usually just getting free advertising from it. The only action that will cause Games Workshop to shift its prices is their customers actually NOT purchasing GW products. And if they ever do lower prices, I’m sure somewhere in the company, existing quality will fall, somehow, some way, something will be impacted. They’ve got so many artists and designers, writers and producers, managers and technicians working for them, it just costs a lot of money to bring you a brand new bitchin’ box of Skaven or Space Marines, it just does.

And touching on their prices, other than those $35 and $40 heroes and commanders, their boxes of multi-miniature units are really not that much more expensive if you compare them figure-for-figure cost-wise to similar quality single miniatures produced by other companies. But don’t worry about GW, we might get what we want sooner rather than later. The 3D printing revolution is just getting started. We’ve got AI that can create illustrations from a descriptive sentence and we’ve got print-on-demand centers in most countries that allow smaller game systems to produce and ship products locally to customers, we’ve got virtual tabletop simulators for people who want to play tabletop games with their friends who live on opposite sides of the planet! There’s a lot of disruption going on, a lotta change and it ain’t gonna slow down. We are all spoiled for choice. 

All right, that’s enough for now, drop an angry comment below or a thumbs down, whatever makes you happy, and I’ll see ya when I see ya – go roll some dice!

You like them eyes? Big eyes? Go roll some dice! Know how many times I’ve said that? You know how many times I’ve said the go roll some dice line? I’m not gonna tell you. See ya!