Supply, demand and Bretonnia

So a couple of days ago, completely out of nowhere, the long-missing resin Bretonnia kits just reappeared on Game Workshop's webstore: Grail Knights, Questing Knights, Grail Reliqueae, Field Trebuchet, Battle Pilgrims, the Battle Standard Bearer and the Bretonnian Lord with a lance and Harry Hill's collar. We're still missing Mounted Yeomen (which is no great loss) and the Questing Vow Lord that looks like Sean Connery (which is) but they were never made in Finecast so that's not surprising.

By the time I got to the store the next morning to order some of the things, with the clear intention of ordering the lot, all that was still in stock were the Grail Knights and the Battle Standard Bearer. Harry Hill is now back in stock (so the “temporarily out of stock” tag seems legit) and you bet I'm ordering it today.

This is not the first time, even this month, that GW has been surprised by demand. The second End Times book came out last weekend, it had sold out on pre-orders within twelve hours and even a really big GW store like Reading could only get five copies on release day. Now a bunch of old models from a very minor army with the oldest and most out-dated army book still in service get a new pressing and sell out in a day. So I guess what I'm saying is this:

Can we please, internet, end this idiotic comment meme about how “No one plays Fantasy so why does GW support it?”, a comment exclusively written by idiots for idiots.

First of damn all, we have two separate examples of GW being surprised by demand for Fantasy products. I can understand why they would have under-produced on Bretonnia resins for all the reasons I just listed but The End Times: Glottkin was designed as a marquee product so that actually surprises me.

Now, I'm under no delusions of why the Bretonnia resins were resurrected and why they sold out so rapidly: Bretonnia is a huge part of Glottkin. They just got an enormous marketing push with a load of really cool visuals and background and the models were pressed to capitalise on that.

And they still sold out.

I guess I am just sort of gloating at gamers on the internet (one extremely irritating individual in particular) who keep insisting my favourite army is getting the chop. Proof has just been delivered that if given the product the fanbase will buy the product in enough numbers to not only justify but exhaust a production run based on a huge marketing push. Now imagine what could be achieved by replacing those resin kits with more highly-detailed multi-part plastics?

So yes, internet, people play Fantasy but they need different forms of encouragement than 40k players, who tend to be younger and more prone to switching between armies than Fantasy players. Once GW engages Fantasy players they'll lay down the cash. The End Times has been engaging (and creating) Fantasy players like nothing I've seen since Storm Of Chaos. I admit, of course, that it isn't as big a seller as 40k but the idea that GW has an entire product line they pour real cash into to zero profit is an insane claim given its usually voiced by the paranoid and delusional individuals who cry foul at the very idea that a corporate entity might have to make money to support out hobby. 

Getting my chivalric hopes up again

“While I yet draw breath, the lands bequeathed unto me

Shall remain untainted by evil.

Be they foul orcs, giants or mountain drakes

My foes shall fear my armies and my blade alike.

It is my sacred oath to lead wars of errantry and crusade

And to honour the duties of the King.

My love of the Lady shall be as a beacon, inspiring and bright

Even when darkness spreads its wings o'er the land.

All this I shall uphold as I become one with Bretonnia

Lest I join with her in death alone.”

- The King's Vow

That was presented as the final part of a two-page history of Bretonnia's King Louen Leoncoeur by Phil Kelly's in his Codex: Apocrypha article in this week. Its a well-written piece but what strikes me is how much of it is new, or at least new to me. All or any of this could be background from the fifth edition or earlier given a modern spin but even if it is this is what I take from it:

Two pages of a very short magazine targeted at advertising Games Workshop products was spend on advertising Bretonnia, an army with a two editions old army book and massive gaps in its model range. I'm not saying next week or even next month is going to see a new Warhammer Armies: Bretonnia, if for no other reason than I don't think there'll be a standalone army book until after The End Times wraps but I do think this means something.

Now you could say that this snippet of background took no time or effort for GW to produce. You would also be wrong. They paid Phil Kelly his wages for whatever time it took to write and edit this piece, they spent money printing it and used up 5.8% of their magazine on it. Small effort is still effort and there are probably better things one of your lead game designers and background writers could be doing of an afternoon than banging out two pages of fluff for an army you haven't supported in a decade and don't even offer a full range of miniatures for anymore. Something like, oh, banging out two pages of background to remind people this range exists because there are plans.

I'm not usually one to accuse GW of being completely mercenary but I do accept that as a relatively small company in a niche, luxury industry most of their activities are based in savvy marketing. You see, unlike far too many hobbyists on the internet I understand that if I want GW to continue making products they have to make enough money to stay in business. It is baffling how many hobbyists don't understand the very, very simple economics of this equation.

Ugh...

But, anyway, between this article and the huge amount of ink The End Times: Nagash spend entirely upending Bretonnia's status quo right after the Wood Elves army book spent a huge amount of its timeline introducing a Bretonnian civil war. People will read this, they'll be interested, they'll go to the GW webstore and find...

… well, a tragically out of date army book, a complete lack of knightly characters to lead their armies and models for only five of the ten units in the tragically out of date army book. They'll see that and they'll ask: where my 8^th edition book at?

I can only hope. 

Male feminist rantings: The bleak, existential horror of Wartune

Here are my vital organs, please stab one!

The two reasons I count myself as a feminist:

Reason one: I am, or believe myself to be, a decent human being and so want to treat the other human beings in a decent fashion. As I believe that gender should not be a barrier to this behaviour I classify myself as a feminist.

Reason two: I am a geek and what's more a geek who is mostly straight. Therefore the perception, both inside and outside the geek demographic, that some of our interests are for “men only” kind of pisses me off. It is an exclusionary mindset that does nothing more than create self-fulfilling prophecies:

“Women don't buy comics!” Yes, they do, but they're turned away in droves by the big companies ignoring female talent and marketing their female characters as fetish objects.

“Women don't play wargames!” Yes, they do, and there would be more of them doing so if the community at large didn't treat them as outsiders or as personifications of the “nerdy girl” fantasy, if they just treated them as (God help us) gamers.

“Geeks don't get girls!” Yes, they do, in droves by just being decent human beings around the lady folk. However, if you're going to repeat this bloody stupid sentiment you will look like an entitled dick who thinks a woman should get in bed with you just to show social conscience rather than as a considered and consenting action based on things like attraction, friendship, mutual respect or some other interaction of your actual personalities.

“Women don't play computer games!” Again, they do, but when the most iconic female protagonists are marketed purely on their sexual characteristics (Lara Croft, Bayonetta) you are losing more potential female customers than you gain.

It is a well known fact that nothing says "medieval
fantasy setting" quite like a latex bikini

And so we end up, finally, at Wartune: a free browser game whose adverts turn up on any games-based forum you care to name. The image at the top of this post is actually the most restrained one I could find with some simple Google-slinging. Yes, the woman is impractically dressed and you don't need my Red Cross training to notice the sheer number of vital organs and arteries her armour exposes.

Example number two gets “better”, completely dumping any sense of the game's ostensible fantasy setting to have a woman in a bikini (and anyone who thinks it's a Dead Or Alive character is probably right) and a strapline containing one of the worst erection gags I have ever heard and I have seen every episode of Up Pompeii.

So how does this all relate back to my point about the exclusionary aspects of fandom? Example number three:

She's Korean, on her artist's side

Here we have the full panoply of the problem: The character art, as with the last example (and doubtless the first, though I can't identify that one) is plagiarised. This is, I am told, a character from a Korean MMO called Forsaken World. This one says “Adult Gamers Only” twice but some versions of the ad have “Male Gamers Only”. One of the ads even has the strapline “You deserve an orgy.”.

What may not be plain from all this is that the game is not pornographic. Clicking on the link will not take you to dark, sybaritic pleasures of the binary code. Wartune is a Real Time Strategy Role Playing Game. There is some turn-based combat and even, I shit you not, a farming sim mechanic. What is consciously lacking in the player experience are titties of any kind (okay, there may be cow-milking, I didn't go too far in researching this particular aspect).

What this amounts to is a company creating an Age Of Empires-style RTS with some basic JRPG combat mechanics and marketing it through images of scantily clad women. And even worse they don't even go to the trouble of commissioning art of their own scantily clad women but steal them from all over the place. This company has made a conscious decision to lie about its product because expecting of men to follow a link promising them boobies is a surer bet than coming out and announcing a free to play RTS/RPG.

As a man, I am insulted by the idea that quality is unimportant to my consumer experience so long as some primitive sexual reflex is stimulated. Not even satisfied, just stimulated, this company literally thinks it can lead me by the cock towards its substandard product. As a straight(ish) man with quite a few female friends I am embarrassed that this is how the larger culture sees my relationship with them. As a geek whose female friends are by and large also geeks I am enraged that they should be consciously excluded and their custom tacitly declared worthless in favour of mine.

And what pisses me off the most? It bloody works for them! There is no worse aspect than that. These corporate behaviours continue and are repeated throughout the culture only because they produce positive results. That's how capitalism works in practice. If a large enough section of the gaming population looked at those ads and thought “Well, that's a load of sexist shite!” they would disappear but enough people have clicked on them, stayed to play this Age Of Empires knock-off and handed over money for the higher level benefits (and these don't include titties, either, before anyone thinks any element of honesty went into this marketing strategy).

So, yeah, a company has made enough money to maintain a free to play RTS/RPG by betting on male gamers being sexist and easy to please.

Fuck.