The umpteenth billion gripe.

[JamesBeadle]

Its not really a mater of judgement. I am sad, and I think that when things get priced so high in a every day man's hobby like this, my knee jerk reaction (and I think it is a common reaction) is to be upset at immorality of greed, however I would not defend that accusation against GW, Its an emotional response. In a way, it represents my own greed. Like everyone else here I love the hobby, and when it becomes unaffordable I am upset becasue I cannot buy the neat new toys that once I could. No, its not about judgment, its about loss. I don't want to be priced out. I think the wisdom I have been given here is that I should just update my books  and not drool over new models so much.

 

My objection to the knockoffs was legal. Even with its legality I am uncomfortable with it because it seems like stealing to me, so there is a moral component I admit, but I cannot judge others for buying if its not illegal (honestly I have tried not to judge anyone on this anyhow, but that is harder than most want to admit it is). 

[Chapel]

Just playing devils advocate here and throwing some mud into the already cloudy waters....

 

What makes it acceptable for GW to rip off other ideas, companies, and intellectual properties/groups/individuals?

Space Marines are almost a direct image of characters depicted in the book Starship Troopers written clear back in the 50's.

Tyranid's are clearly derived from the game Starcraft, and even more closely identical is the last edition Hive Tyrant. It's almost a direct copy of the Hive Queen in the movie 'Aliens'.

Tau are definitely modeled after the Robotech genre though this one is less clear as the others.

 

While GW may have taken these ideas and changed them to suit their own purposes (who's to say who really came up with space orks eh), they clearly are borrowed or downright swiped ideas and imagery.

 

Now obviously directly copying and selling something that someone else has manufactured isn't right, but what about the ideas behind those creations? How can GW justify going after Chapterhouse or Kromlech for creating materials and items based off their ideas, when they themselves have done exactly that?

 

You mention the 'morality' of the action as opposed to the actual legality.....just because the author of Starship Troopers didn't copyright his ideas (or maybe he did and the copyright has expired), isn't it the same thing?

Just thought I'd bring it up as a discussion point, because up to this point no one has mentioned GW's morals and the impact it might have. I mean after all, if GW has already 'stolen' the content and packaged it, and you've bought that product....isn't that similar? Maybe not compared to a direct knock off copy company, but definately compared to Kromlech and Chapterhouse who have artists that have sculped original material, just based and inspired by the GW works.

[pretre]

Obligatory

 

 

 

 

Derivation is much different than creating direct knock-offs of an item.

 

Everything is derivative of something. Not everything is a replica. If GW bought Aliens toys, molded them and resold them, that'd be the equivalent of what the recasters are doing.

 

I don't support GW in their quest against CH and such, but that's a whole different thing from what we're talking about.

[Chapel]

If you don't think that the Hive Tyrant is a direct knock off of the Queen from Aliens, then I think my opinion of the definition of "Derivation" and "knock off" varies from yours.

[WestRider]

Also, the Nids preceded Starcraft, as the Penny Arcade comic indicates. I believe some of the Blizzard devs have said that the Nids were an inspiration for the Zerg, not the other way round.

[Guest Mr. Bigglesworth]

Chapel I would not say the tyrant is a direct knock inspired, derived, not knock off.

 

Starship troops inspired a trope. Which inspired a genre and there is much cross over. A knock offis a copy, give tyrant is not a copy of the queen nor is it being sold to replace the queen. Would the hive tryant in its current form exist without alien? No. But would rock and roll exist in its current form without Elvis? No.

[InfestedKerrigan]

Jim Morrison invented techno.

[Chapel]

So if I owned a company, and lets say had some damn fine sculptors on board....

Who then created some inspired, derived, but original creations and then tried to sell them....oh wait. Yea got a cease and desist letter and then sued.

 

Perhaps the point was lost in the example. I'll be blunt...

GW is far from pristine and squeeky clean on the who swiped ideas from who situation. I also read an article about the Starcraft nonsense when the new tyranids were releasing, where several developers said the Zerg were original designs from Blizzard and GW was the offending body. Some sort of settlement came about. But I digress...I also don't buy the "Everything is derived from everything else" because you have to have some originals in there somewhere. Otherwise you end up with terrible remakes like Robocop and Total Recall. Oh the humanities...

 

Look I'm not advocating buying direct copies, but I certainly can't judge them either. Not when there's culpability on both sides of the fence. Legal, illegal, guess it all depends on which side of the fence your sitting on. I like to sit on the fence and get both opinions before deciding which side to land on. Never know what your jumping into.

 

So I give.....James sorry you're feeling bummed about the current state of gaming from the GW front. Hope you pull out of it dude and still enjoy the hobby eh.

[pretre]

Citation needed on the GW/Starcraft business.

[InfestedKerrigan]

As I understood it, GW commissioned blizzard to design an RTS for them, and then pulled out. Blizzard altered things here or there and we have the franchises we have today. I looked briefly on Google for support of this, but all I located was conjecture.

[Koyote]

An acquaintance of mine purchased a number if Forge World kits from an eBay seller located in China. The average turn around on his order was 10 days, which is quicker than it takes me to get my orders from Forge World. He raves about this eBay seller's communication and customer service. The seller typically threw in a couple of small freebies with each order, which doesn't cost the seller much but it made a great impression upon my acquaintance. In comparison, my experiences with Forge World's customer service reps have ranged from neutral to abysmal, but never what I would describe as excellent or even good.

 

I had an opportunity to look at the Chinese models firsthand. I am very impressed with the quality of the product. The material is sturdier than FW resin. No oily mold release. The detail is crisp and clean. There is very little flash on the parts and minimum mold lines. None of the parts were misaligned or misshapen. Even the skinny antennae piece was straight.

 

Over the years I've ordered dozens of kits from Forge World. The FW supplied kits have often arrived covered in flash, riddled with air bubble holes, and drenched in oily mold release that I have to scrub off before painting. The large pieces of vehicle kits are typically warped and have to be straightened with hot water before assembly. Prepping the pieces and assembling my FW Proteus Landraider made me want to stab myself with my hobby knife.

 

It's ironic. Forge World's trademark protections entitles it to provide slower turnaround, poorer customer service, and a lower quality product, all at double the price. Even if the Chinese supplier charged the same price as FW, buying from this particular Chinese supplier would be the better bargain.

[tombking]

Oh jeez, everything is a rip off of folklore, etc. GW/Blizzard was dismissed as pure conjecture way back then. Look it isn't like space suit/power armor infantry is new. It was old news even in Starship Troopers. This is why public domain is a good thing you can take things previously created and throw em in a cultural blender and come up with new things. Tyranids have their roots in yes Aliens but that has it's roots in the crazy world of insects itself. They are big intergalactic locusts. Even Tolkien took a lot from folklore (man a lot of the creation myth in The Silmarillion runs like Paradise Lost, great god, angels created to help and sing praises, favored angel rebels and is tossed into the underworld, no no parallels here at all. move along). Heck pay attention to a lot of early music.

 

What GW did do is take from a lot of existing sources and mix it up into something new with the 40K universe and that evolved and fleshed out over many years. Heck look at Mantic, You could claim they are ripping off GW with their SciFi game as it has stuff that comes almost too close in look, but then they are actually doing something new with the world setting but still seem to have pace dwarfs and space orks, but dwarfs, orks, elves, etc are all from folklore.

 

What is wrong is taking the time effort GW put into the model design and production and then just copying that and undercutting them. In the early days authors were lucky to make much as printers would buy a copy, then set up their own run of a book and the author got nothing. This is where Copyright came from, it gives the creator a LIMITED time to have exclusive right to production.so you can actually make a living at producing works of art and after that time it becomes part of the commons and open for all people to enjoy. I have no problem with copyright, just the god awful long life of creator+70 years crap (thanks Disney and Sonny Bono, Bob forbid Steamboat Willie becomes property of the commons). We are actually losing a lot of stuff creatively now as things are hung up in copyright and can't be used. Sherlock Holmes is good example, that work is now public domain (except a few later stories and then only in Mexico) and look at the 2 new TV shows Sherlock and Elementary that are taking Holmes and Watson as character ideas and making it modern and doing pretty good jobs of it as well but if the Doyle estate still had rights and they just didn't like the idea of a modern Holmes and Watson the shows would never see the light of day.