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To absolutely noone's surprise, Rick P has revealed in an interview the reasons behind why he left the company:
It May not be quite up there with the Kennedy assissination as a ' you will never forget where you were when you heard...' moment, but a shockwave rippled through wargaming in November when Rick Priestley left Games Workshop after nearly three decades with the company. The man behind all of GW's top three selling systems - Warhammer, 40K and LOtR Strategy Battle Game - says he felt that "Games Workshop and me drifted apart" after he was given a job with Forge World (GW's resin model division) on a new product that introduces fantasy to their range. "This was not a comfortable fit, having previously worked at executive level," says Rick, "but I fully expected to continue working at Forge World - and had got stuck into and just completed the first book - so it did come as a little bit of a disappointment not to get to continue. I had what I thought was a very good idea that would make for an entertaining back-story and model range, revisiting some classic GW themes and giving them a new twist. We had also just taken on two very promising young sculptors so I do regret not being given the change to finish at least one book".
Rick reflects somewhat ruefully on the changes he has seen at Games Workshop over the years. "GW used to be about creating new ideas and games with no limit to the horizon," he says. "We once had all kinds of little projects and off-shoot companies dabbling in whatever took our fancy. It was just a question of applying imagination to what it was you wanted to do: music (Warhammer Records), comics, fiction publishing, board games, card games, role-playing games and so on. We even had a go at live action role-play with paint guns and costumes based on our Dark Future game and films were talked about. It was a very open agenda. Then, over time, GW became increasingly Warhammer and 40K - which was nice in a way, because those were my creations - although we still continued to produce other games such as Blood Bowl, Epic, Mordheim for some years".Rick suggests his passion and enthusiasm became crampt, saying: "working in what became a successful but - from a designers point of view - predictable company was not satisfactory." The gang based skirmish games Necromunda and Gorkamorka show "what 40K can do - expanding and adding detail to the universe", Rick adds, and "at the other end of the scale thhere's Battlefleet Gothic and Space Hulk taking players into the depths of space but the potential for developing the Warhammer and especially the Warhammer 40K, mythos has never been fully exploited - not even close!".
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