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An unexpected quote.
This taken from the Games Workshop boards. It brought me a smile to my face.
Posted by Mat Ward, developer at Games Workshop:
[i]Okay, it’s White Dwarf time again which means, amongst other things, that a certain amount of forthright opinion as to the content, specifically the LOTR content, of the magazine has once more come to the fore. With this in mind, and with a certain amount of weariness at seeing the same criticisms made month after month, I’d actually like to clear a few things up. None of what follows is specifically written to defend individual articles – not because I believe myself to be above such things, but because to do so is to simply invite a flame war of potentially epic proportions. No, instead I’d just like to clarify a few things about how we formulate White Dwarf articles.
Simply put, White Dwarf is there to support the products we release, not vice versa. This is true for all three core systems – LOTR is not a special case. This means that surrounding a product release, such as BoPF or SoG, the focus of the articles will always be on that product, and specifically the miniature range that goes with it. This is an immutable rule that has stood for literally donkey’s years, and by far precedes the arrival of the LOTR game. Much as I, personally, would love to do so, there is a limit to the new troops/rules/releases that we can provide through White Dwarf. Would you believe that we have a little more latitude with LOTR in this regard, as some recent articles (Fiefdoms, etc) have shown? Yes, this means that the miniature support is often done by people whose primary skillset is not painting or converting/sculpting, but the result is often one that is actually more achievable. It is, of course, fair enough to say that ‘if we love the fiefdoms so much, why don’t we make a supplement about them?’ Absolutely we can, but you’ll have to wait five or more years to see it. We can do it earlier, but the you’ll get no plastic Dwarves, Elves or other wonderful stuff in the short term – instead we’ll stick with Gondor for years at a time and I can guarantee you’ll all be bored witless by it before we’re done.
As to complaints about adding to the world Tolkien created? Well, first of all no one is trying to rewrite Tolkien, or rather, no one within Games Workshop is. Everything that we write fits into the spaces, rather than over the top. That said, every time this subject rears its head it’s accompanied by ‘why don’t they do Mirkwood/Khand/Rohan properly before making stuff up?’ Let’s just get down to cases here – what do we know about, say, Mirkwood?
- It’s a forest
- Elves live there
- One of them is called Thranduil
- He has a son called Legolas
- They don’t like Dwarves
- They really don’t like spiders
- They’re in ‘The Hobbit’
This is a slight oversimplification but, even so, how much of a supplement can you make without expanding that information? Not much of one really. The same is true of practically anything other than Gondor. I can understand that what is written is not to some peoples’ taste, or it does not match their vision – the films, after all, have created a similar situation. However, it is important to maintain perspective – you can take as much or as little of it to heart as you wish, but only one man can say if it is right or wrong, and if he were alive today he’d doubtless have more pressing concerns, such as ‘how did I get buried alive?’
Finally, there is one key thing about White Dwarf support – if you have ideas about how things could be done better then I do listen. This an offer open to all, not just those who have been so vocal thus far – if people think some things are being done right but just need a little tweak to prod them in the right direction, it’s important to hear those also.
The key word we’re looking for here is ‘constructive’. Opinion is fine, I like to hear people’s opinions; it’s when they come across as ‘the spirit of Tolkien is speaking through me, and he declares this heretical’ that I tend to get a little jaded. Several of you have talked about Masterclasses – this feedback has been passed on. More hobby articles and terrain building is also on the way. Others have talked about more battle reports – we’re working on getting more of those into the magazine too.
So, as Ed Wasser would say ‘What do you want?’
I’m sorry, but it is not enough to say ‘I do not like this, bring me something better’ because that is precisely what I’ve been endeavouring to do now for several years, apparently to little purpose. If the universe is finite, I am finite, and you all are finite, then ideas are also finite and they do not all belong to me. Similarly, if you cannot give some ideas as what we should do then, frankly, should it come as a surprise that those same ideas evade me? To stretch a point, I am just as human as you lot, and my desk is not in an ivory tower. One thing that I am increasingly aware of is that it’s very easy to criticise, somewhat harder to do so from a position of objectivity, honesty and possession of all the facts. I’ve tried to give you some of the facts (and possibly too much opinion).
The rest is down to you…
Mat [/i]
Posted by Mat Ward, developer at Games Workshop:
[i]Okay, it’s White Dwarf time again which means, amongst other things, that a certain amount of forthright opinion as to the content, specifically the LOTR content, of the magazine has once more come to the fore. With this in mind, and with a certain amount of weariness at seeing the same criticisms made month after month, I’d actually like to clear a few things up. None of what follows is specifically written to defend individual articles – not because I believe myself to be above such things, but because to do so is to simply invite a flame war of potentially epic proportions. No, instead I’d just like to clarify a few things about how we formulate White Dwarf articles.
Simply put, White Dwarf is there to support the products we release, not vice versa. This is true for all three core systems – LOTR is not a special case. This means that surrounding a product release, such as BoPF or SoG, the focus of the articles will always be on that product, and specifically the miniature range that goes with it. This is an immutable rule that has stood for literally donkey’s years, and by far precedes the arrival of the LOTR game. Much as I, personally, would love to do so, there is a limit to the new troops/rules/releases that we can provide through White Dwarf. Would you believe that we have a little more latitude with LOTR in this regard, as some recent articles (Fiefdoms, etc) have shown? Yes, this means that the miniature support is often done by people whose primary skillset is not painting or converting/sculpting, but the result is often one that is actually more achievable. It is, of course, fair enough to say that ‘if we love the fiefdoms so much, why don’t we make a supplement about them?’ Absolutely we can, but you’ll have to wait five or more years to see it. We can do it earlier, but the you’ll get no plastic Dwarves, Elves or other wonderful stuff in the short term – instead we’ll stick with Gondor for years at a time and I can guarantee you’ll all be bored witless by it before we’re done.
As to complaints about adding to the world Tolkien created? Well, first of all no one is trying to rewrite Tolkien, or rather, no one within Games Workshop is. Everything that we write fits into the spaces, rather than over the top. That said, every time this subject rears its head it’s accompanied by ‘why don’t they do Mirkwood/Khand/Rohan properly before making stuff up?’ Let’s just get down to cases here – what do we know about, say, Mirkwood?
- It’s a forest
- Elves live there
- One of them is called Thranduil
- He has a son called Legolas
- They don’t like Dwarves
- They really don’t like spiders
- They’re in ‘The Hobbit’
This is a slight oversimplification but, even so, how much of a supplement can you make without expanding that information? Not much of one really. The same is true of practically anything other than Gondor. I can understand that what is written is not to some peoples’ taste, or it does not match their vision – the films, after all, have created a similar situation. However, it is important to maintain perspective – you can take as much or as little of it to heart as you wish, but only one man can say if it is right or wrong, and if he were alive today he’d doubtless have more pressing concerns, such as ‘how did I get buried alive?’
Finally, there is one key thing about White Dwarf support – if you have ideas about how things could be done better then I do listen. This an offer open to all, not just those who have been so vocal thus far – if people think some things are being done right but just need a little tweak to prod them in the right direction, it’s important to hear those also.
The key word we’re looking for here is ‘constructive’. Opinion is fine, I like to hear people’s opinions; it’s when they come across as ‘the spirit of Tolkien is speaking through me, and he declares this heretical’ that I tend to get a little jaded. Several of you have talked about Masterclasses – this feedback has been passed on. More hobby articles and terrain building is also on the way. Others have talked about more battle reports – we’re working on getting more of those into the magazine too.
So, as Ed Wasser would say ‘What do you want?’
I’m sorry, but it is not enough to say ‘I do not like this, bring me something better’ because that is precisely what I’ve been endeavouring to do now for several years, apparently to little purpose. If the universe is finite, I am finite, and you all are finite, then ideas are also finite and they do not all belong to me. Similarly, if you cannot give some ideas as what we should do then, frankly, should it come as a surprise that those same ideas evade me? To stretch a point, I am just as human as you lot, and my desk is not in an ivory tower. One thing that I am increasingly aware of is that it’s very easy to criticise, somewhat harder to do so from a position of objectivity, honesty and possession of all the facts. I’ve tried to give you some of the facts (and possibly too much opinion).
The rest is down to you…
Mat [/i]
Comments
very nice :D Might want to put that little part in bold though :)