Games Day 2010

Looks like there's only gonna be one Games Day next year. FOR THE ENTIRE NORTH AMERICAN CONTINENT.

Actually, I couldn't give half a fuck about games day for the most part.

Neither do most people it seems. According to many of the first hand accounts I've hard, the US games days have gone from pretty neat to utter shit in the past years. It's down to one day, there's no tournament with it. What little is left seems more like going to Legoland than an event actually aimed at gamers. I had some friends who went to GD Chicago last year and felt a little ripped off that they 25 bucks to do little more than pick up their forgeworld orders and stare at some new releases (and a chick dressed as a witch elf).

Many people will see this move (complete with slightly horse-shitt sounding announcement) in this light:

GW to America: 'Fuck You'.

I've already seen some of that in the few comments I bothered to read on BoLS.

But here's the deal keeds, Games Day doesn't even sound fun and many, many people regret going to one in the last few years. Maybe the event IS killing them in some way or another. The cost of renting out 3 convention halls a year plus the expense of manning them and then transporting all the crap that goes with it does add up. The buddies of mine who went said the event was like a ghost town. Then there's the collateral costs of the event hurting the company's sales because it sucks so hard people stop caring about GW in general.

So if it costs all this money to host a shitty event that no-one goes to AND it harms their consumer base in some way, why wouldn't they try and revamp it?

Maybe its NOT more evidence that GW is in the financial crapper and hates America. Maybe GW actually does understand what the problem is (in this case).

I dunno. I really don't. I'm just thinking out loud here.

But then again, I don't have too much of a take in this. Except...

...for the fact that fewer games days means fewer Golden Daemons. Which is actually kind of a bummer. Fewer Golden Daemons means fewer awesomely painted models to look at once the winners are posted. It also means that many of the people who regularly compete in the event are a bit SoL.

On the other hand, if the ace painters end up traveling from all over, it means that the competition just got ratcheted up a notch* and even more amazing stuff will be produced.

I'm not really taking a side here, except that Games Day sounds and smells like abject failure.

What are other people's thoughts? Is the Games Day announcement a gloomy portent of GW's stability, is it a dick move or is their something really positive going on here?

--Foot Notes--------------

* In the past, it had been suggested that one particularly devious tactic for winning a Golden Daemon was to enter into the contest that had the least competition. There's always going to be a regional difference and some unscrupulous painters may have figured out which area was easier to win in. Now, that's not an option (whether it was actually happening in the first place).