Warhammer Live Kicks Off December 14th On Twitch
December 8, 2016 by brennon
Games Workshop are really getting into this live broadcast thing as they look to stream on Twitch with Warhammer Live beginning December 14th 2017.
The idea is that you'll be able to watch a range of different content each week with the initial schedule looking like this so far...
The first week is going to be free to view but after that it's said that you'll be paying a £5 subscription to watch each month. It will be interesting to see how this goes down after we get a look at the content on offer next week.
If this turns out well then this could well be a step in the right direction and it would be good to see more battles being fought out, especially for Age of Sigmar.
What do you think of the news?
"The first week is going to be free to view..."
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
and people complain about the BOW subscription?
This always both amuses and shocks me that people begrudge BoW subscriptions.. Many of gentlemen and ladies who contribute to this site rely on this as a source of income. The sense of entiltlement that some (and on this site, I would say a small minority….. this place is a haven of sanity in the wilds of the internet) people with regards to creative people who contribute to their entertainment with the expectation that people should be able to supply them with something for nothing (or new models for the price of the plastic). Creative people need to be able… Read more »
I have mixed feelings on it. On the one hand it’s around 20 hours of content a week for a little over £1 pro rata, which is less than the cost of White Dwarf. Two-thirds of it is people playing games, though, which is less valuable to me unless the people playing are particularly entertaining. Then, on the other hand, I think this might be better as a loss leader for GW. The people who will pay are probably already playing, and this is an opportunity for GW to present their two main games in the best light to potential… Read more »
I’m looking forward to seeing this. Rob from Warhammer TV has been speaking to a few podcasts about what is will be and it breaks down like this. (copied from the website) “Wednesday will be dedicated to gaming in the Mortal Realms, with both an ongoing narrative campaign, and matched play games streaming each week. We’ll be showing the full range of what gaming in the Age of Sigmar can be. Warhammer 40,000 will follow a similar pattern each Friday, showcasing thematic battles from the iconic battlefields and war zones of the 41st Millennium, as well as more competitive games,… Read more »
The content I have seen to date isn’t good enough to warrant a fee let alone that fee. In fairness outside of Duncan’s guides there is no interest for me. Far better podcasts and channels to support who it it considerably more.
This is something that interests me as my gaming interests are almost exclusively GW and have been since the start of the year.
Assuming live means filmed live but available on demand, 6 hours of content a day would mean that I could pick and choose which content to watch.
I’m kind of at the point where I’m mostly just watching the weekenders at the moment – half an hour of 40k content most weeks isn’t really enough for me.
The internet has to change. We all want quality entertainment, great content and good production values. How can that all be done for free?
As I understand it – the content is free if you can watch live.
Why not support this idea and see where it leads. I subscribe to BoW to support the concept not that I want or watch all the content.
The new GW open door is about feedback, so why watch, support and feedback to get the shows you’d like to see.
Why support a multi-million multi-national when you can support individuals providing better content?
This is GW charging you for marketing. Independant channels do it as they have a passion for thier content, donations help them do more.
So why not support it? Because its advertising
Totally agree, everyone should be able to be rewarded for creative content. Patreon – is a great tool for this. I’d also agree that the old White Dwarf format had gone too far into marketing their products. I didn’t buy it for that reason. But they listened, have changed the format and now I’m subscribed again. If the channel ends up doing the same as the old white dwarf then I’ll not bother paying for it. But it seems to offer more than that, games, tips, narrative campaigns, meet the designs/creators/painters and the chance to feedback to get more content… Read more »
Just because its not a commercial doesn’t make not a marketting tool. It still drives sales just in a more subtle way. People will do what they feel is right, and I am sure it will get a large number of sign ups, but to my view this is setting themselves up against those that have through enthusiam of the hobby have promoted them when they did not.
How intentional that is I don’t care to speculate on.
As I say, I don’t think a little over £1 a week is a lot for that much content (assuming the content is good). It compares favourably with the cost of White Dwarf, for example. That said, whilst it’s paid-for video content with a subscription service, it differs from BoW in two important ways. The first is that my £3.79 backstage subscription is essentially the only product BoW offer for purchase. If I want to give more of my money to BoW I’m basically just left with buying a gift subscription for someone else. The second is that video content… Read more »
*psychologically
Do we get a free Twitch subscription with Amazon Prime over here too, or is that just the US? If so I’ll be using mine on this 🙂
I’m quite excited by this 🙂 I do however have a single reservation … by turning this content into a product will they now be exploring ways of stopping others from making the same product. (Look at all the recent actions being taken in the video gaming world to stop monetised (i.e. With advertising) play throughs etc Also from experience that is an enormous amount of content to produce (do not underestimate this undertaking – because you have to do it every single week!), the temptation will almost certainly be to keep stuff back for paying subscribers. Will this stifle… Read more »
It seems as if the bulk of the content will be live streaming of games being played. Whilst I don’t doubt that needs some prep, it doesn’t strike me as needing the same amount of time invested in producing an edited video. There are lots of people who produce live streams of games (like, lots and lots lol) and it doesn’t seem to be a great time sink for them.
And I am regularly around those people while they’re doing it. I’ve played in major tournaments where someone was both live streaming the top table at the same as they played on another table.
I would be astounded if it was 6 hours of that.
There are certain levels of quality that must be reached just to maintain ‘the brand’ 🙂
Anyway you cut it, it’s going to be very hard work to do it to a level that feel’s like ‘The Number 1 Company in the Industry’
I’m excited to see how they approach that 🙂
We got two studios connected to Twitch this week as it happens, so will try a bit of live participation stuff soon 🙂
As would I be surprised though the point was more that live streaming games is low maintenance compared to videos that require post-production. Steamforged broadcast their Worlds on Twitch a couple of weeks ago. They had fixed cameras on multiple tables, floating cams, someone who was switching between them, graphics showing the player names, team, and score, a two-man commentary team, and runners bringing information from the tables to the team. Outside of the time they were on air and broadcasting, it didn’t take the the many additional hours of post-production that you put into videos.
The work still gets done, in hours of pre-production and large numbers of personnel all active at the same time. We have through experience found that there are few shortcuts, (there are some though) but rather work is moved from latter phases to early phases, but it’s still about the same amount of work. Live is also very unforgiving from a human error point of view (we are all human and do and say silly things or have moments when things just break down – eg someone says something totally innocent and it’s miss heard by someone else as something… Read more »
Also the commitment to 6 hours per day for 3 days a week is immense. The pressure on the team to keep that up will be pretty staggering.
The hours involved in producing only the weekender (about 3-4 hours of content per week) is easily in the region of 40 hours of pre and post production. (not counting recording time)
And it’s heavy going week in week out to keep to that schedule…
Sure, it’s not my intention to say there is no pre-production work. Only that if you wanted to produce six hours of video content, then live streamed games is a very low maintenance way of doing it. It doesn’t require the kind of 10 to 1 ration of work to video output that the Weekender does, which is why there’s such a proliferation of it about.
they need to do painting tutorials and tournaments along with the interviews and game content.
it would be easier to split the package into free and paid content.
payment barrier seems to be missing the point a little unless its mustard and people feel compelled to get involved with GW because of the whole package.
if this works for GW I wonder if other big hitters like FFG will follow suit?
with forums, podcasts, video content ,painting and playing both narrative and competitive, novels, comics and magazines, following and keeping up to speed is getting pretty time consuming but very immersive.
FFG already do live streamed games. Here’s around 60 hours of coverage from their world championships last month – https://www.twitch.tv/ffglive/videos/all
I expect the production values on Warhammer Live to be higher, but the principle is the same.
They also are very willing to work with third parties who produce video and audio content based on their product. For example, if, say, you were heavily in Warhammer 40K Conquest LCG (prior to the license getting pulled) and so started up a fortnightly podcast about the game, and assuming the podcast was of a certain standard, then you would get the likes of the designers of the game and the people responsible for the tournaments on your show as guests, and you’d be given a couple of cards from each upcoming pack to exclusively spoil on your show. Do… Read more »
i wonder if going solo is the right way to go for them considering how much content is available for free along with the wider reach of sites like beast of war. being over controlling or grabbing at short term gains has bitten them before now. i hope they don’t underestimate the need for entertaining and charismatic people. i’ve seen some of the team covenant coverage before and thought they did a solid enough job. they could give team covenant a contract plus painting, podcasts and interviews for a one stop site for all your needs. i’ve been thinking beasts… Read more »
Agreed on the need for the on screen talent to be entertaining. I can get pseudo-science for free all over the internet, but I pay to watch it here because the people are entertaining lol. I’m sure GW are aware of that. I’m curious to see where they pitch the tone of the content. They see their audience as primarily being younger viewers, so presumably want the content to be suitable for them. Duncan’s painting tutorials managed to square the circle of being suitable for young viewers but still having broad appeal.
We do pretty regularly 🙂
The reluctance is not on our end mate 🙂
Why must they use such an cursed service as Twitch? It NEVER works for me. In the end it should be interesting to see how this ship sails.
I think I follow with the line of thought that this is a marketing tool which we should pay for. I think the content for their main products should be free as it is advertising their product. I am only interested in 40K and maybe a little of the studio talks. However, on BoW I get far more content for a considerably smaller fee. If the AoS and 40K content was free and the subscription would include studio extras, exclusive interviews and painting guides, then this might be of interest to me. Otherwise i just stick with 40K chartered for… Read more »
Reading through the comments I think something obvious has been missed. This content is going to be playing in every GW store on the planet. In effect GW is finally extending their marketing into TV. This will be a major step at reducing variation in the messaging of why Warhammer is great and why we all need to play. I wonder how long it will take for GW to take this content and craft some 20 second commercials for prime time tv. That would be a game changer.
GW always could have ran TV spots but they made a deliberate decision not to because they felt it would be of no benefit to them and just a waste of money. When their product appeared in the LotR magazine ads, Kirby made a point of saying that it wasn’t their ad because they don’t do ads. Now, Kev has already broken the long-standing bar on external advertising with the AoS release last year, so a TV spot is not out of the question now, but it won’t be because they can do it now thanks to Warhammer Live, they… Read more »