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Loading ...Dawn of War beats tabletop gaming
Ben Hardwidge
Would you look at me strangely if I mentioned Chaos Black, Realm of Chaos or Blood Bowl? If so, then you’ll probably have no idea about what I’m talking about in this blog, and I suggest you give Clive some reassurance about his AMD console instead. If, however, you too were seduced by the world of Warhammer, then read on and see if you agree that Games Workshop’s store days could be numbered.
I went through a titanic orc-filled frenzy in my early teens, where I spent most of my brown paper round packets on various paints, over-priced lumps of lead and copes of White Dwarf. You could call it a hobby, or you could call it a replacement for the girlfriend that this lank-haired, mullet-wearing geekboy was never going to get at this time. Either would be fair.
But even now I still have a soft spot for Warhammer, and it still forms an unnerving amount of the subject matter in pub conversations with certain friends. Heck, I even went to see Bolt Thrower at the Camden Underworld last year and, before you ask: Yes, they’re still going. Yes, the gig was packed and yes, bizarrely, there were also a surprising amount of girls at the gig too.
However, despite this childish soft spot for titans, orcs and Eldar, the likeliness of me playing a tabletop Games Workshop game again is even less likely than Bolt Thrower’s next album going top 10. This isn’t because I’ve grown out of painting orcs and planning game strategies, because I suspect that I actually haven’t. I do, after all, still have a particularly geeky love of building model aircraft and tanks. It’s because I realised that Games Workshop was:
A) A rip off.
B) You can’t go into a Games Workshop branch to browse without the sales assistants descending on you like rabid vultures, desperate to strip your wallet carcass of all its money.
‘Do you need any help?’ they ask as soon as I walk in the door.
‘Nope, I just want to have a look,’ I reply.
‘What sort of armies are you looking for?’ they ask, and I then clarify that I’d like to be left alone to have a look around.
‘What sort of games do you play?’
‘Argh! Go away – I’m not 14 any more!’
‘Why did you come in here if you’re not going to buy anything?’
‘I might buy something if you left me alone!’
I then get left alone for all of 30 seconds, before another sales assistant comes up and says something inane like ‘we’re open after hours if you want to learn how to play the games.’ I then decide to leave the shop, while shaking my head and muttering to myself, amazed at how a hobby store is prepared to lose so many customers because of its obsession with the hard sell.
I have a friend who used to work at Games Workshop, and he told me that the policy was to not let anyone walk out of the shop without buying anything. This explains the desperate hard sell technique, but doesn’t explain why they can’t be a bit more professional and use it in moderation when you obviously want them to leave you alone.
As such, I was particularly glad when Warhammer 40K Dawn of War was released. It cost a one-off price of £29.99, and I didn’t then need to spend an extra £200 on all the extra figures needed for multi-race battles. I didn’t have to fight off the Games Workshop sales assistants with a multilauncher to buy the game either, as it could easily be bought in any game store. Not only that, but the game was all in real-time; there was no mucking about with rulers, no sweets doubling up as dreadnoughts because you didn’t have enough figures, and there were also no ill-conceived rules that meant a bike could run over a tank if you got an incredibly lucky dice roll.
As well as this, I can also play Dawn of War my friends online, wherever they are (and without their other halves knowing) and the games are over in a reasonable amount of time too. This has the downside for exposing some of my poorer strategies for the travesties that they are, though. With a tabletop game, you at least get a day’s worth of play, whether you’re Leeroy Jenkins or Winston Churchill, but with Dawn of War you’ll be beaten within 20 minutes if you’re rubbish. I miss the painting, of course, but I hardly have enough time for that these days anyway.
Given how much better, at least for me, Dawn of War is than a tabletop Warhammer 40K game, I’m surprised that Games Workshop still makes as much business as it does. Not only that, but Warhammer: Mark of Chaos gives lovers of Warhammer Fantasy Battle a chance to have a similar shot at hassle free, cheap Warhammer gaming.
Does the success of Dawn of War mean that tabletop gaming could be on the way out, or could it be saved if Games Workshop adopted different sales strategies? Then again, Games Workshop must have also made a mint out of the game licenses. Let me know your thoughts.
I know that feeling only too well.
I do a bit of messing with XNA (Microsoft games development platform for those that don’t know it) and I thought games workshop might provide some insight in to the logic of such a game when building the core rules in code.
So I harmlessly wander in to this “shop” and get ambushed in that exact same fashion.
Having told the sales guy that I have no interest in warhammer other than from a logical perspective he then insisted on telling me how much better and more acurate their systems of gameplay would always be to anything us lowly developers could put together because a lot of time goes in to gettingthese right.
I politely put the guy right that it was all about random numbers in warhammer so with even the most useless of computers i still have a 1 million sided dice which more than matches any possible actions that could be taken on a table top given a set of possible outcomes.
A lot of it is apparently about “tactics” and not luck which i was happy to accept but hell whats so tactical about rolling a dice that needs an hour long conversation when i’m clearly just reading a copy of the rules i got off a book on the shelf.
Take the same appraoch in some unknown computer games retailer …
I wander in and get a polite nod from the nearest sales guy.
I wander up to the shelf have a nose and get completely left alone to make my decision whilst the sales rep is about they are not overbearing and you know that should you have a question they would be more than happy to answer it and since most of them live in games like world of warcraft they probably would be the experts on this stuff anyway.
So i make my decision and wander up to the till to pay and get only 1 question …
“Is there anything else you need whilst your here ?”
That’s how selling should be !!!
Offer that polite face and great most people will probably buy a little something extra at least in their heads this time ready for their next visit if nothing else.
Back to Games workshop and some 2 hours could easily pass you by of only nodding and agreeing to the annoying idiot who clearly still wants you to buy something despite being told brutally that you intend to rip his head off and spit down his neck if he don’t shut up in the next 2 minutes.
Be warned people …
If you’re going in then go in armed with something that usually lives only in a fantasy or virtual world as this will be your only escape !!!
Couldn’t agree more with Wardy’s last comment but where can I get a chainsword with a built in plasma pistol. Can I recommend GW in Salisbury as I have been in for odds and ends of paint in the past and not been hassled at all.(no vested interest , honest!).Got to say that all three of the SF games are pretty good but the mark of Chaos is only ok , as the plotline is too damn linear.Having said that the freeform skirmish game is much better! Nice to see a review by someone who knows what they are on about!
Likewise, I totally agree. I loved GW in my early teens, and DoW made those old interests accessible once more. I’ve bought all the expansions and will no doubt pay full retail for the 3rd expansion, out later this year. GW have had a couple of bad years (I actually read their 07 reports & accounts one night over a couple of beers - out of interest and in support of a qualification). The LotR license delivered spectacular (and unsustainable) profits, though they identify license fees as a major revenue stream these days. I wish them well, though I fear their glory days are over.