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

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 08:58:36AM +0100, Ground Zero Games wrote:

>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

(etc.)

I think quite a few role-players went off them in the late 1980s as they
made a sudden and aggressive transition from being a general
role-playing and wargames shop to being a Games-Workshop-product-only
shop, often leaving those of us who actually wanted role-playing stuff
with no options at all. (And by the early 1990s they weren't even
claiming to be anything to do with wargaming - they were supporting "The
Games Workshop Hobby", and as with D&D you'd never have known from their
products that there was any other way of doing things.) Similarly, White
Dwarf shifted from being a general RPG (and occasional wargaming)
magazine into a "chaos spikey bits of the month for GW product"
catalogue-supplement. (Anyone else remember the Secret Message in issue
77?) There was definitely a perception that the existing fanbase, who'd
helped GW grow from a tiny operation to one of the biggest British
gaming companies, was being deliberately abandoned in favour of kiddies
with too much pocket-money to spend.

The impression I get is that this mostly happened before their big push
into the USA, so perhaps the American gaming community doesn't have the
sense of contempt that I think quite a few British gamers still feel for
GW - to the extent that you're unlikely to see GW games being played at
a general wargaming convention unless it's being done by GW staff.

R

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