Could Space Hulk foreshadow changes at Games Workshop?

Liam Merlot's excellent article on how Games Workshop drew him into the gaming hobby got me thinking about the market that GW left behind, in its single-minded pursuit of its business plan. Might the company that dropped its boardgame line reconsider, in light of new market realities?

GW's current business plan has been successful, but it appears to have reached its natural limits. Only a young demographic has the time to paint armies and shape their schedules to fit GW-sanctioned events. That demographic also has a limited amount of money it can spend, and eventually people leave the ranks of the GW faithful. Therefore, GW has essentially two options to stay a healthy company: (1) aggressively recruit new, younger players into the "GW hobby;" (2) expand its product portfolio.

While GW has firmly rejected option #2, it may be time to change that attitude. If the new Space Hulk is selling as briskly as it seems to be, there's definitely a boardgame market that GW can reach, even at $100 per unit. If GW treats Space Hulk as the point of the spear for a new business, it can draw strength from both its competitive advantages and the state of the market:

• Reputation. People may be pissed off that GW dropped games like Blood Bowl and Warhammer Quest, but they're grateful when GW reprints them.
• Graphics. Future publications don't need to hit the high bar that Space Hulk sets for production values to be appealing. And GW can do good production values in its sleep.
• Channel.Customers at the GW stores will have something new to try.  Other retailers have customers who will give new boardgames a try, whether they're from GW or another publisher.
• Intellectual property. GW doesn't have to invent new games from scratch, but just publish their older games.
• Modularity. If it's too expensive to reprint a game like Warhammer Quest in its original form, GW can easily break it down into smaller, less expensive components.
• Larger market. When GW decided to focus on miniature gaming, the boardgame market in the US and Europe was smaller than it is today.
• Community. The other new market reality is social media. BGG alone is an enormous marketing machine for anything GW publishes, at almost zero investment for them.

For this revised business plan to succeed, GW will have to make only minor adjustments. For example, not every game needs miniatures. As good a game as it is, Blood Bowl never reached a larger audience because of its reliance on miniatures. They could easily reprint Blood Bowl with no miniatures, just standard cardboard counters. Expansions could include new teams beyond the core ones included in the basic set, if expansions help increase profitability or revenue.

GW would also have to reconsider its product obsolescence strategy. Instead of letting boardgames fall out of print, or forcing people to "upgrade" to a new edition every couple of years, the boardgame division would have to keep the same games in print for a much longer time. Games that go out of print too quickly would hurt GW's presence in the boardgame market, making it appear like a somewhat peculiar niche player compared to FFG, Rio Grande, and other publishers. Boardgames that had too many new editions, such as World in Flames, are a big turn-off to consumers.

GW has another path that it is already pursuing, licensing. FFG is now the chief beneficiary of this licensing, producing new RPGs and boardgames based on GW's fantasy and SF backgrounds. However, new IP that GW's partners produce is certainly not the only source of expanded revenue for GW. GW can re-publish its existing properties, or let other companies do it for them (see Fury of Dracula and the upcoming Chaos Marauders for examples).

Who knows what GW will really do. Even if it's in GW's best interest to re-enter the boardgame market, corporate cultures change slowly. Still, the brisk sales of Space Hulk at your local game store makes you wonder why GW is still limiting itself to the miniatures section of the store.