Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne looks at two recent launches--Game Workshop's new weekly White Dwarf magazine and Cryptozoic's Night Eternal.Games Workshop relaunched its flagship title White Dwarf last week as a 32-page weekly, cutting the page count of the magazine to a third of its previous size. I felt rather leery about this when Games Workshop announced it a month or so ago, but we had a surprising number of people pre-order it, significantly more than pre-ordered the monthly version of the title, so I upped our order significantly to the tune of over double our regular order for the monthly version. Most of those, alas, still sit on the shelf. After looking at the first issue I understand why.
Granted, White Dwarf is a house organ and Games Workshop uses it to promote new releases and armies. The company wants to hype whatever it releases that month. Fair enough. I do have to wonder why, given all the products the company has and all the armies it could chose to release a new Codex for, why chooses to go with Warhammer Fantasy Battle and especially, why Dwarfs?
In the US, Warhammer 40,000 has outsold Warhammer Fantasy Battle for over a decade. In fact, Warhammer 40,000 has vastly outsold Warhammer Fantasy Battle for over a decade. Coupled with the fact that years have passed since I have heard anyone enthuse about building their Warhammer Fantasy Battle Dwarf army (actually I cannot remember anyone getting enthused about building their Dwarf army, but the mind does forget things). Therefore, given the potential market for Warhammer Fantasy Battle in the US, compared to that of Warhammer 40,000, why did the company choose to launch the radically redesigned weekly White Dwarf with Dwarfs?
Why not Tyrannids? Tyrannids are popular. People buy Tryannids. People bought lots of Tyrannids in January, when the highly anticipated new Tyrannid Codex came out. Why not release the new version of White Dwarf to tie in with the new Tyrannid figures, especially if you want to introduce them to a new version of the magazine? Or else, hold off the launch of the magazine until a new 40K Codex launches, to drive interest in and get people to sample it?
I almost passed on asking for a copy though, as I had no idea regarding the topic of the game nor gameplay. Also, nowhere in the email asking us to request a copy did it mention that Cryptozoic has licensed HBO's True Blood series and based Night Eternal on a similar game played by characters on the show. That's right. Unless you follow the series, nothing in the email, nor for that matter on the front cover of the box, indicates any connection with True Blood. Not until you flip the box over and read the BACK cover do you see the True Blood logo.
For a company that uses licenses as heavily as Cryptozoic does (DC Heroes, Penny Arcade and The Walking Dead come to mind), and plasters logos and illustrations from said licenses freely over all sides of the game box, to not put the True Blood logo front and center on the box mildly confuses me. Maybe there is something in the licensing contract but as willing as Cryptozoic has shown itself to leverage its other licenses, I do not understand why the company had played down this one. Much like Games Workshop re-launching White Dwarf, if you have a well-known brand, especially one that you did not grow yourself but to which you bought access, leverage it as much as you can.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.