The Church of Games Workshop: Why the Games Workshop hobby stands apart from other tabletop hobbies.
Games Workshop has established itself as the start and end of the conversation for many hobbyists. Those wishing to get into the hobby of tabletop wargaming are usually presented with GW as an easy way in. You can get the game, the models, the lore, the paint, the brushes, the sprue clippers, the dice, the water pot, the files, the hobby knives, the model holders, and so much more all from GW. I suspect it is rare that someone just looking to get into the hobby will go to their local GW store and walk out with all these things in one shot but there is a good chance they will pick up the “necessities.” Maybe they’ve played some of the video games, maybe they have seen the memes, or hours long lore videos on Youtube. Maybe they have a friend who is part of the hobby and has some notions of what being in the hobby means. By any of these means they are already exposed to the Church of Games Workshop and with such investment, how could they leave?
The rest of the tabletop wargaming hobby cannot rely on one source for all the above. There are some properties which are close but none so monolithic as GW. Many GW hobbyists scoff at the material excesses of the product line and a meme that GW would sell you a pencil with a silly name and a significant upcharge is not totally crazy. Even that light criticism of GW is itself a part of the culture of the hobby. Culture and community are hard to pin down but for the purposes of this pretentious post I consider it a combination of the shared symbols, language, rituals, and myths which a community can use to varying degrees to identify themselves and others with. So let’s examine how those things set Games Workshop apart from the rest of the hobby.
Starting with symbols, there are many obvious game/lore related symbols to signal in group status. The imperial aquila, the chaos star, hundreds of space marine chapter markings and so on. All those symbols relate directly to the setting and are useful signifiers, but the truly powerful symbols are memes that sit outside of GW products themselves. Recognition and use of these memes can further delineate GW hobbyists into subgroups. For example, Angry Marine memes and their use signify not only in group status to 40K hobbyists but also with 4Chan’s /tg/ board. Whether or not you pursue in group status within that subgroup of 4chan user nested within the GW hobby can be a determining factor in not only your use of such memes but also one’s recognition of it. An Angry muhreen meme may mean nothing more to you than someone’s homebrew chapter but if you are made aware of the group affiliation of that symbol, one may recoil or embrace it. In that way, the memes refer to distinct and proprietary aspects of the GW experience. The non-GW hobby community lacks such strong symbols because it is too diffuse for it’s memes to have those levels of specificity. If a meme in the historical wargames community is tied to a specific ruleset or period then it can only act as an in-group signifier of a very small portion of the community to say nothing of it’s applicability to RPG players. If it is broad enough, then the lack of specificity means that there is too little to hold on to and a community can only identify with it in the most surface ways. I think it is safe to say that memes about rolling 1’s are not nearly as engaging as a meme about your favorite space marine chapter. In short the symbology of GW products has such well developed canon that is specific to it and no other tabletop hobby means it is very easy to signal one’s in group status. On a very basic level it is easier to relate to those who engage with GW by sharing symbols and memes than it is for other tabletop hobbies.
The language within the GW hobby is for me one of the most interesting parts. The “Imperial Guard” faction was renamed to the Astra Militarum and caused something of a schism within the church. I am not going to speculate on the reasons GW made the change, but it was not well received by the congregation. In official GW media the name will slowly gain more and more ground as it is stamped on product boxes, on official list builders, included in more and more books, and so on. This point of language is another group signifier because reflexively using Imperial Guard to refer to the faction will signal that you were part of the community longer than the change or simply disagree with the change. Similar with Space Marines where few people call them by their official, more trademarkable name. While this schism may seem damaging as the congregants disagree on a point of doctrine with the mother church, it strengthens it. As alluded to earlier criticism of GW itself is it’s own form of community participation. But why then do they stay within the community? If the community is actively engaged with backlash over minor points of language, then they will come together in unison against the “big other.” So long as the negatives are kept below a certain threshold the community will grow stronger through this shared “hardship” of sorts and seek to identify themselves in opposition to it.
Simply using the term Imperial Guard and nothing more says something about where one stands within the group but it is not a fundamentally contentious position that can ruin friendships and vibes. The language around politics however can. Warhammer 40k is awkward politically because of the authoritarian themes and causes many problems within the community but ultimately those discussions however heated are about interpretation of art. In historical wargaming those same discussions are much more fraught because those discussions become about interpretations of history, real lived experiences and the lessons of the conflicts we play out for enjoyment. The lack of canon and rocky politics of historical wargaming necessitate a more fractured community.
Outside of political language problems, the meaning of game mechanic terms cause yet more friction for non-GW hobbyists. Game turns mean very different things between Flames of War and Might and Reason. The closest thing to shared language within historical wargaming refers to mainly historical references which again do not hold the same specificity that their equivalents within the GW community holds. Such language causes friction rather than harmony in the historical wargame community because their prior knowledge of a term may come from a different source than the game designer or the other players. For example, a skirmisher can refer to many different things across many different games. One game may present “skirmisher” as a named rule that brings certain benefits and draw backs while another game uses it as a category of unit which does not conform to the other meanings of the term and yet, a player may have engaged with literature which presents “skirmishers” in a completely different way. Worse still because there isn’t a canon of language for the broader community, a player may come to the table with the word “picket” or “light infantry” trying to refer to a similar concept but isn’t present in the game or the lexicon of other players. So what happens is that there is constant arguments about these terms. There is no arbiter of such things in the historical community as much as every member of it wishes they were that arbiter. While debates of Imperial Guard vs Astra Militarum may happen, it is at least a 1-1. Even when forced to find similes, for the GW hobbyist it is easier: “Hey Jane what’s that big gun on your big tyrranid?” “Well Tom it’s like a lascannon with X and Y differences.”
Where myth is concerned it is important to define what I mean. Myths are not just made-up stories with a moral element. Myths are authoritative, sacred and treated as true.[i] Myths do not simply inform moral views, they are normative.[ii] For the GW hobbyist, maybe the most important myth is the oft repeated idea that the games were better at some point in the past. The posting of classic models or old White Dwarf articles is common but more and more there seems to be a simple yearning for mid 2000’s era Warhammer. I am not sure if my own nostalgia gets in the way here or if there really is something to it given GW’s shift away from certain design aspects. Regardless this feeling that things used to be better, more genuine somehow, is quite common in all hobbies and culture so I won't dwell on it more than to say at least it is consistent.
Myth can become a truly leg breaking stumbling block for other tabletop wargame communities, however. The historical “community” such that it is, is perhaps worst hit by this but ask 3 DnD players what a campaign should be and you’ll get 5 different responses. The contradictions between what history says and what happens on the tabletop can be a huge problem for some. I cannot relate how many times I’ve been dragged into arguments about minutia of a game not confirming someone’s deeply held myths about history. I can be guilty of this too but I try my best. Again, I feel the need to stress my understanding of myth: Myths are authoritative, sacred and treated as true. Some gamer’s mental model of a conflict is so strong that they cannot engage with a game as such. For example, the idea of Sherman tanks defeating Tiger tanks in a straight up fight is heretical to many gamers because of their prior media exposure. Some gamers can accept certain abstractions and move on but there is still the urge to have the “chrome,” the parts of historical specificity which defines the period being played. Otherwise, why not play something entirely generic? I have a feeling that many of the bespoke historical rulesets begin with the idea of someone liking a ruleset but having deep problems with how a certain aspect of a historical conflict is handled by the rules. For the GW hobbyist the tension is also there. The lore and the rules do not always match up but again, that is the value of having the central mediator. If you are going to play a 40K game you have a sanctioned, blessed, interpretation ready to hand. The authority of the central church is usually enough to quell the disagreement. Meanwhile the Protestant instinct in the historical “community” means these disagreements may lead to players picking up another ruleset, modifying the rulesets to extreme lengths or even making their own rules. Thus the community is fractured again.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. I am not trying to make value judgements but to explore the differences between hobbies which on a surface level seem so close to each other yet, in their symbols, language, ritual, and myths are actually quite different. To try and answer my original question: GW hobbyists by and large can’t move to another hobby within what appears to be the same space because they would lose the community they currently engage with. The only way it really works is if they can bring multiple people out with them or if there is a ready made community for their new hobby pursuit near them. This is very difficult because the hobby world outside of GW is a kaleidoscope and if they do not find what they are looking for outside of GW, they may as well stay in it.
[i] William E. Paden, “myth,” in Religious Worlds: The comparative Study of Religion, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), pp.69-92
[ii] Bruce Lincoln, “Myth, Sentiment, and the Construction of Social Forms,” in Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp 15-26
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