Pledge
Going to finish the 10mm Dwarfs I have been painting, get them varnished and work out a basing scheme.  Also am going to try and get as many items from the Hit the Bench boxed set ready for the slow grow league.  The hobby shed was 32C yesterday evening so I might have to bring stuff down into the house where it is a bit cooler.  I’ve also started to knit a Dark Angels dice bag, so will see how I get on with it…

(1) Is Social Media with hobbying replacing forums? Are forums slowing down and becoming less convenient then a Facebook group?
The question is difficult to answer because it implies that a internet forum is just a piece of software or location rather than what an internet forum actually is;  a place that gives the user an ability to communicate with other interested parties in message form on the internet with archival functions.  A Facebook group, Subreddit and even Twitter essentially provide the same function as what OTT provide here.  They are all just forums, but not on the traditional platform or software (it is like comparing a bus/lorry and a train – they both can transport you to your location but you just get there in different ways) .  It would be more accurate to say that some hobby discussion is switching to non-traditional forum platforms and the reason for this is very simple, social media companies are just providing a more convenient (and essentially free) way of creating or joining a forum.

(2) Are websites going the way of the Dinosaur? Will search engines and browsers be replaced by social media? I’ll make this a less tenuous link to our hobby. GW have their own store, and facebook pages for their games. On youtube they have Warhammer TV. Is their own Citadel Painting website which is upcoming necessary in this context? Should they keep doing Warhammer TV? Or is this a shameless ploy to move away from one platform to their own for money and control? If it is, is it a bad thing?

If by Way of the Dinosaur you mean going extinct, then the answer is a simple no.  If by Dinosaur you mean nearly becoming extinct then evolving into something different and passing on their DNA for many, many millions of years then that is a more realistic proposition but my crystal ball doesn’t go that far.   If you mean that birds came from dinosaurs, and that dinosaurs are a direct ancestor of the chicken, and that chickens are the most successful species on earth of complex living being in terms of evolution, still probably no. In 50 years, what we call search engines, browser and social media will perhaps be replaced by something else.  If I could predict were the internet is going to go, I would be very rich in a few years.

Part of the recent success of Games Workshop has been opening up onto new platforms and engaging with the public on social media.  You could easily argue that Duncan Rhodes has done more for the share price of GW than the previous CEO.  Games Workshop have always had painting guides on their website, so separating this from their main website so they can direct people to a website (that is being used  in conjunction with their other forms of advertising through social media) makes perfect sense.  Considering that Citadel paints aren’t just used by people who paint GW products having this on a separate website is actually a good marketing ploy and may help and attract railway modellers, scale modellers, RC enthusiasts to their products.  The website already exists – https://citadelcolour.com/.    I also don’t understand why this is a “shameless ploy to move from one platform to their own for money and control”.  They haven’t stopped uploading videos to YouTube, Facebook or stopped using Twitch or Twitter.  I am also of the opinion that making money shouldn’t be described as a shameless ploy as the connotations are that making money and profit is morally wrong.

(3) I know photos, articles and other information trickles out at conventions and events for our precious games, but should there be more social media reveals and information? Would it be a better, more modernised and appealing way to broadcast this information, like a Nintendo Direct or E3 where it is also filmed and sent out? Since announcements are done at presentations anyway would it hurt to film and post it?

I can’t think there are any companies that are launching products at conventions that are not putting them on their websites, twitters, facebooks and passing it along to physical magazines and sites like OTT.  I’m pretty sure companies have streamed their reveals and seminars – Mantic are very good at this and you can find streams of their open day on Facebook.  For most companies, they probably don’t have the resources to put on reveals and film them as many companies are one or two person bands and want people to come to their stands at conventions to see what is new in the hope they buy something while they are at it.  I don’t understand why GW doesn’t do it, but then again, maybe they want to add value to the people who attending.

1.  The only reason there is a debate over whether a Jaffa Cake is a biscuit or a cake is taxation.  If it is a cake, the UK government couldn’t tax it, if it was a biscuit they could.  Considering that they are mostly made up of the similar ingredients, the technical difference between what is classified as a cake and what is classified biscuit is that when stale, a biscuit is soft, but when stale a cake is hard.  To me it makes no difference (other than perhaps price) as to what it is classified as I gain the same utility from eating a Jaffa Cake or a Jaffa Biscuit no matter what it is called.  If someone ran a post like this on Reddit, I might join in it as well, as it is all the same to me.

2. “Is this a ploy to move away from one platform to their own for money and control?”  Once you added a negative adjective to the word ploy the question becomes loaded and has added connotations to the question and GW’s motives.

3.  If companies had the time and resources and thought it was beneficial to market like a massive video games company, wouldn’t they already be doing it?  Outside of GW and Fantasy Flight, which companies have the resources to do this?

If I ran a small company, I would look to see what the competition are doing and what the more successful and growing similar companies are doing and what I could with the resources available.   Wargames Atlantic and Bad Squiddo seem to have built up a good following in completely different ways in their use of social media and marketing.

To expand this further …Loads of companies are putting up previews and what is coming soon on their social media.  PSC, Perry, Warlord, Victrix, Bad Squiddo, Lucid Eye are all doing it for example, indeed Warlord are going down the road of putting videos well in advance of products launch – see SPQR for example, but I wouldn’t say they have done a great job in this case.  Warlord now employ over 80 people world wide so are obviously at the stage they can afford to invest more in their marketing and promotion.  The OTT newsfeed is full of what companies are previewing on social media and a lot of OTTs content is based of companies coming in or sending in product to be previewed or reviewed in advance of sale.    If you look at Wargames Atlantic they are putting everything out on social media – we know before the end of the year we are getting Persians and Irish in plastic, plus Halflings are on the way after that. The internet is also full of people constantly asking when products are being released, so I understand why small companies don’t announce things well in advance.

Shed is just touching 30C at the moment.

Dwarfs are ready for varnish, will do that tomorrow.  Need to find my soldering iron in order to attempt to make a static grass applicator but am not going rummaging through a load of boxes as it is just too warm.  My fantasy treemushroom will just have to wait for sticky up grass!

Fixed.

Desided to paint Picard up, from the star trek set I won off here last year

@robert yurp, TNG bridge crew