Re: [GZG] Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi!

>G'day,
>
>>  The teleporting commandos of doom are now gone....
>
>And this is where my main objection to GW comes in I think. My very
>first thought response to this is "but for how long?". In the 16 years
>Derek and I have been together now I can't say how many editions of GW
>products I have seen come and go. That is true of many products
>admittedly, and it seems a perverse aspect of human nature that many
>people can't say "oh that's nice but I'll stick with the one I like
>actually....". With GW in my experience the push to new has been
>exemplified. Whether that is because they are trying to entertain a
>younger audience I'm not sure. Now as a marketing tactic I can
>understand where they are coming from, but as a consumer this is a
brief
>summary of what grates with GW (I'm not flaming just stating the
irritants for me, which may not hold for many others):

>[snip]
>
>10) The shop front bully boy tactics of the GW company itself used to
be
>disgraceful (holding up shipping to people supplying competing chain's
>lines etc and effectively financially bullying people into towing the
GW
>line and nothing else). That may well have changed in the past decade,
>but it can take a long time to live down such ma  reputation down.

One of the things that did a lot to sour GW's reputation in the UK 
was their practice in the '90s of finding a town with a good, healthy 
independent games shop and initially supporting them up to the hilt, 
giving them loads of incentives to become a major GW stockist (often 
to the detriment of other lines they had been carrying) - then as 
soon as GW's marketing boys saw that said independent's sales of 
their product were up to a certain level, they would move into the 
same town with one of their own stores and effectively withdraw (or 
at least massively downgrade) their support for the independent 
store. Of course, in most cases this meant the independent went 
under, which left the GW store with a monopoly on the gaming scene in 
that town, especially among the kiddies. It's almost impossible not 
to imagine the maniacal laughter ringing through the halls of their 
marketing department as another hapless games shop proprietor loses 
his livelihood before their unstoppable master plan....

I suspect that different business laws in the US made this tactic a 
bit harder for them to implement over there, which may explain why 
the attitude of many US gamers is less vehemently anti-GW than is 
often the case over here - but this happened a lot in the UK, and 
those who were in the hobby at the time have long memories.

All personal opinion of course, and YMMV as usual.....	;-)

Jon (GZG)

>
>
>[snip]
>
>Beth
>
>
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