Games Workshop has chucked another £500k at entrenched ERP project with no end to epic battle in sight UK tabletop wargames specialist Games Workshop has published the latest chapter in the long-running saga of how mighty IT warriors valiantly battled the intransigent forces of ERP. 3City Beach Bowl Cup, 2019: master tournament in Blood Bowl tabletop game (a Games Workshop game) Players battle over the Blood Bowl tabletop game …
Yet another failed, er, delayed ERP project that's overbudget and undelivered. Death by a thousand cuts, or change orders.
Maybe at this point The Reg do so some public service and tally all their failed ERP projects year over year like the 12 days of bork, and name the incompetent (both implementer and customers that bought into them). Might pay it forward to the next generation of poor bastards that have to implement something new. ERP systems are always such nasty, nasty projects, no one gets out alive at the end of the day. They're almost as bad as medical HMS software.
I wonder if the DM (Design Master) would allow a combination of Otto's Irresistible Cloud and Baba Yaga's Wondrous Datacenter* to create a Cloud-on-Prem solution?
*must remain within 60' of the caster who retains the principle spell component which is a set of keys.
The problem is that almost no-one adopting an "agile strategy" is actually doing anything recognisable as agile development. They will still have their requirements set in stone, and a bunch of milestones and release dates, and then force development teams to fit the work into 2 or 4 week sprints between milestones. It's not agile, it's not clever, and it never works.
I've been asked to change my way of working to agile too. I'm responsible for the power systems on spacecraft. I asked how Agile helps with that? I deliver a few cards, and they launch the spacecraft. Then later I deliver a few more cards, and they launch then to orbit, and then maybe at the end the motherboard for them to plug into and the box?
Yeah, but I bet the printed agenda for their board meetings are a LOT more fun...
"You are in a room full of people all wearing suits. There is a table and 18 chairs. On the table is a jug of water and 17 glasses.
To read the HR report, turn to page 2.
To read the financial statement, turn to page 18.
To read the director's report, turn to page 76.
For any other business, turn to page 83.
"
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"To get a drink of water, roll 1d6. A roll of 6 indicates a success.
If you roll 16 consecutive fails, then you must fight an opponent for the last glass.
Roll 3d6 for attack (red) and 3d6 for defence (blue).
Match the highest red die to the highest blue die, then the next highest to the next highest and so on.
For each pair of dice, if the attack is higher than defence, you have scored a blow against your opponent. If the defence is higher than the attack then your opponent has deflected your attack. In the event of a tie, roll that pair again.
Two or more successful blows defeats your opponent and you take the last glass.
If your opponent fends off two or more attacks, you have failed and they get the last glass.
If you succeeded, turn to page 54.
If you failed, deduct one point from your water ration and turn to page 12."
But nor do institutional shareholders go broke if a private company goes to the wall. They continue to throw more money at badly run companies. Maybe some of the company's C-suite have to live off their savings. Maybe a few auditors are struck off. And maybe a few retail investors loose their homes. But if you think the private sector learns hard lesson, they don't. Government is just another risk pool - but for services society sees as essential. Because most of us don't want our health provide going bankrupt halfway through chemo.
Perhaps, if they listened to what their audience was saying about them rather than being mired in an IT boggle they might understand why sales have collapsed.
GW has been in a death spiral since the launch of AoS; prices up, game quality down, and frivolous lawsuits / takedown orders thrown at fan-made material. The latter being the very lifeblood of creativity that goes into sustaining wargaming, if not one of the main reasons to be interested IN wargaming. Throw covid over the top and limited access to stores and gaming in person won't have helped.
One is not surprised at of course, most of the old guard have moved on to other things leaving only the accountants at the top of leadership rather than creators. I highly doubt if the senior leadership have any actual interest in the hobby they peddle at all.
I've never forgiven GW when they dropped their moniker as an outlet for all things gaming and RPG; insisting that it was their way or the highway. My old wargaming club's annual competition & trade show ditched the GW presence entirely long, long ago - when they insisted the show be GW, or not at all.
I'll be sticking to classic 40k, blood bowl & Warhammer Fantasy out of their lineup for some time to come.
Any other grognard 6th ed WRG players still here? (Or even the even more niche hex-and-counter stuff that I've spent the last three years rediscovering).
"Perhaps, if they listened to what their audience was saying about them rather than being mired in an IT boggle they might understand why sales have collapsed."
By "collapsed" you mean "significantly increased"? Because GW are doing better than ever, and sales just keep going up. You can complain that you personally don't like the direction they've gone in, and your far from alone in that, but claiming that doing things you don't like is responsible for all their terrible hardships don't make a lot of sense when they're not actually experiencing any such hardship. As for covid, it had the exact opposite effect of what you think, since everyone and their dog ordered more stuff to occupy themselves at home resulting in a boom in sales.
I'm also really not convinced you can justify the word "grognard" when talking about an edition launched this millenium. Rogue Trader or bust.
"My old wargaming club's annual competition & trade show ditched the GW presence entirely long, long ago - when they insisted the show be GW, or not at all."
My guess is you were using their branding or trademarks and they have every right to enforce their terms on this.
If you don't use their registered trademarks or branding there is absolutely nothing they can do.
In short, come to our wargaming club and play is OK. Come to our wargaming and play Warhammer 40,000 will be a trademark infringement.
It's stupid, but that's the way it goes.
No, didn't touch their branding at all. The problems stemmed from their unwillingness to allow their stuff feature at club trade shows alongside other game sellers and miniature makers. Which is completely at odds with what they were in the early 80s. Old white dwarf is full of evidence of when GW supported (and sold) a whole bunch of other games & publishers. Then pulled the rug out from under them.
Given the club's focus and competition gaming - was almost entirely on WRG having GW overrun the entire show wasn't an option.
Squashing the competition by anticompetitive practice is a well known phenomenon!
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