I used to play warhammer when I was younger and am honestly astounded gamesworkshop is still in business let alone one of Britain's biggest companies. At least in the 00s and 2010s, they were the epitome of a greedy corporation squeezing blood from a stone.
Sales were down? Increase the prices of everything. Something not selling well? Change the game rules to make that it more powerful (or conversely, hype it up constantly so people only realize it sucks after they buy it). And of course constant changes so it was likely any models you bought would eventually become uncompetitive due to new, flashier, more overpowered things released.
Basically every bad business practice we see now was Games Workshop's wheelhouse. And while this may come across as bashing on them, I'm psyched to hear the company is thriving because their games are immensely fun and its impressive they've avoided stagnating or run out of ideas. It gives me hope for the software industry because if an in-person, expensive niche hobby could survive through social media and the pandemic, tech can bounce back from the current enshitification and short-term profit seeking.
If you have the money and enjoy lots of lore/worldbuilding and complex strategy games, Warhammer is a fantastic hobby I'd recommend checking out
> Something not selling well? Change the game rules to make that it more powerful
It probably didn't sell because it wasn't very good. So you re-balance it later and now it doesn't suck. Like, fundamentally keeping the "best" and "worst" models/armies/strategies from stagnating keeps the game interesting (and drives more sales... so depends how you look at it).
I don't think they've every been super good at balancing though, and that at least is a fair criticism - albeit a hard task given how time consuming playtesting is to get data.
I agree completely, the game would get boring if things didn't constantly change. It was more-so the way they'd go about it, not the general sales strategy. Perhaps I should have said overpowered, typically they'd intentionally overcorrect so a unit would go from too weak to way too strong.
It didn't help they had 2 very different philosophies in the creative/design department. For example if an army was getting a revamp, competitive players would pray Gav Thorpe wasn't in charge of it. Whereas other people loved how he made the game more fun and goofy.
We did have that discussion and almost certainly the DNC also had it with more than a handful of media appearances written off as gaffes. They decided their best chances were to stick with Biden.
There's no reasonable debate about whether the US has the capability to capture Greenland. Obviously they do. It's in their backyard in an area the US military has been patrolling for decades, with (admittedly decrepit) US bases already present.
The question is whether the US is willing to pay the costs to do so. Sending European troops is attempting to raise the costs of invasion so that any rational actor would decide against it. Of course, we wouldn't be in this situation if all the parties involved were rational actors.
We had the capability to capture Iraq and Afghanistan too. Occupying a territory is the actual hard point. For one, Greenland is in the middle of nowhere compared to everywhere else the US has to keep eyes on, whereas its in the back yard of Canada and the UK.
More importantly though, its an incredibly cold and unhospitable place thats inhabited by 50k people whose little kids have more arctic survival skills than US special forces and who really, really don't want us there. Unlike Afghanistan, you can't patrol the skies nonstop with drones either due to the cold.
Basically, this isn't a choice between owning Greenland or keeping all our allies. Its a choice between keeping all our allies vs getting bogged down into the ultimate guerilla war and suddenly having nothing but hostile neighbors to the north.
Are the Greenlanders really up for a guerilla war? Resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan was driven by a common religion and a long history of wars.
If Greenland really did become a state, they'd actually have a fair bit of political power. At least, until oil companies shipped in tens of thousands of employees. I can't see the Greenlanders laying IEDs for American troops, but I suppose I can see them making life very, very hard for civilians.
Trump has been very open in his admiration of Andrew Jackson and emulating him. Its no mystry what would happen to the Greenlanders if Trump took Greenland.
This has worked very well in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is a giant island in the Arctic Ocean, populated by Inuit and people born on a pair of skis. If they don't want you here, they will make sure you freeze to death in a troop transporter stuck in the snow.
It would destroy NATO, the global financial system, our supply chains are so intertwined that pharmaceuticals, air transport, and most advanced technologies would be completely disrupted for years.
Intellectual property rights, judicial cooperation, international recognition, and all those things would be dead.
I doubt it raises the costs of invasion very much. I don't expect the Danish to fight to the last man. If shooting starts, they will evacuate quickly.
But it meant that the US will have fired shots at NATO soldiers, rather than just walking in and declaring themselves in charge. That raises the political and economic stakes, if not the military ones.
It's making absolutely clear that this means the end of NATO, and puts all EU/US relationships in doubt. It could even mean that we were automatically at war. They're hoping that somebody around the President will consider that too high a price to pay. Which is a long shot, but is probably the least-worst option.
Remember, the US already has treaty rights to build bases: the defence strategy of Greenland before this nonsense was "be a member of NATO, nobody would be dumb enough to attack us because if they did the USA would defend us".
Wouldn't they just burn down again?.. if this were any other properties besides high-priced real estate, people would be up in arms at the thought of government prioritizing rebuilding homes in wildfire zones.
So apparently the mass homeless crisis, forest fires, mismanaged water rights, declining schools, healthcare being taken away... all of that was just background noise until suddenly the state has crossed a line expecting fair returns for people who profited from the state the most?
Even leaving out whether it is fair returns or not, you will notice no vision or political goal in this article other than fighting taxation. There is no concept of winning support other than whining that people are ungrateful.
But that's the point of the article. The state is failing in all of these dimensions, while state tax revenues and budgets have nearly doubled! We have more spending, but it's not fixing the issues. Many Silicon Valley people are upset about the ineffectiveness of this spend.
Now the spend is going to go even higher, driving out Silicon Valley in the process, but it will not achieve any of the objectives. In fact, it may be destructive to California on a whole.
Thank you for this comment! I am not a resident of California, I just read the news and the complaints I hear from people who do live there tend to sync up. I still have very little sympathy for the calls to outrage but thats a much more reasonable perspective.
A while back there was some investigative report on a private intelligence agency based in India that revealed a lot of dirty laundry on an international scale. Nothing too scandalous but it shone a light on a company that wanted to stay in the shadows. Based on an Indian court ruling, even American media sources had to take the story down. Worldwide.
Regardless of whether you think these kinds of orders are justified, allowing 1 country's court to restrict speech worldwide is a pandoras box. Nobody will be happy with the longterm implications of doing this.
I believe their currency is under the direct control of the politicians/clerics running the country, and the government doesn't seem too concerned with the country. So its plausable they could be bribed to change monetary policy.
I think drinking is declining for the same reason as dancing... any situation involving relaxing in a social way has gone from "what do the people around me think of me?" to "how could someone make what I'm doing look stupid to get upvotes/likes on social media?"
edit: It deserves mentioning the level of drinking involved in socializing was never a good thing and I think everyone is more aware of the dangers now.
Sales were down? Increase the prices of everything. Something not selling well? Change the game rules to make that it more powerful (or conversely, hype it up constantly so people only realize it sucks after they buy it). And of course constant changes so it was likely any models you bought would eventually become uncompetitive due to new, flashier, more overpowered things released.
Basically every bad business practice we see now was Games Workshop's wheelhouse. And while this may come across as bashing on them, I'm psyched to hear the company is thriving because their games are immensely fun and its impressive they've avoided stagnating or run out of ideas. It gives me hope for the software industry because if an in-person, expensive niche hobby could survive through social media and the pandemic, tech can bounce back from the current enshitification and short-term profit seeking.
If you have the money and enjoy lots of lore/worldbuilding and complex strategy games, Warhammer is a fantastic hobby I'd recommend checking out
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