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The Squats didn't sell well enough and weren't distinctive enough in the environment of the game that demanded increasingly distinctive and identifiable aesthetics.
Ouze wrote:Speaking of, god help Games Workshop if whoever owns the Terminator franchise now sued them, and an image of a T-800 appeared before a jury next to a picture of a Necron Warrior.
I don't think anyone suing GW for Tyranids and Necrons similarities to Xenomorphs and Terminators would win. GW could make a reasonable arguement for independent creation following the archetypes of the genre. The degree of physical similarties that the court would look at is far more scrutenizing than just our passive interpretation. For example the basic notion of a skeletal robot isn't necessarily protectable IP... because its based on the human form. The Tyranids, though influenced in design have features not present on the Xenomorphs like cannons... thats a big one and there are others. With a big enough list it ceases to be GW's interpretation of the "Xenomorph" and just becomes GW's interpretation of dino-insectoid alien.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/08/09 13:39:10
I seem to remember there being a vibe that no one at GW wanted to do more Dwarf bikers in space and no one could come up with a decent enough revision so they just dropped squats.
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Ouze wrote:Speaking of, god help Games Workshop if whoever owns the Terminator franchise now sued them, and an image of a T-800 appeared before a jury next to a picture of a Necron Warrior.
To get picky, while I think it's somewhat obvious that GW was 'inspired' by the Terminator franchise (Um, the "We'll Be Back" rule for one) the case could be made that the Necrons are much more skeletal than the Terminator, which is mainly a skull-headed humanoid robot. Necorns have 'ribs' while the Terminators do not. Plus the background is quite different, especially nowadays.
The Tyranid case may be a little harder. I guess they'd need to point out that the Hive Tyrant is a different 'role' from the Alien Queen, has weapon arms instead of claws, the use of ranged bioweapons, and the overall skin texture of smooth surfaces with ridged armor plates.
Both of these are where the legal point of view gets tricky, and beyond my experience, because it really gets down to splitting hairs as to what is 'different.'
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I do think GW could successfully defend their copyright and works, but it'd be a tough sell to a jury. Even ribs and skin textures aside, I'd think that a jury would see the T-1000/Xenomorph as a distinctive enough IP that the similarities between them and their GW not-at-all-counterparts would raise lots of eyebrows.
Plus, God help GW if the jury finds out/is told about GW's aggressive and uncompromising view on copyrights on it's own works, since this would probably partially sour the jury's views towards GW ("You're aggressive following copyrights of your material after being heavily "influenced" by these works?")
Does anyone know, would the attorney representing the Xenomorph/T-1000's side be able to successfully argue that certain details like skin texture and ribs may have been omitted or altered by the process of casting the miniatures? Basically arguing that those changes are insignificant because you can't include that fine of detail on that scale or the minaiture casting process requires certain body proportions/changes? (I'm asking legally, since I don't have the foggiest how that would be interpreted)
Imagine the feeling when you position your tanks, engines idling, landing gear deployed for a low profile, with firing solutions along a key bottleneck. Then some fether lands a dreadnought behind them in a giant heat shielded coke can.
darkPrince010 wrote:I do think GW could successfully defend their copyright and works, but it'd be a tough sell to a jury.
If GW felt the same way, they can wave the jury and have the judge rule unilaterally.
darkPrince010 wrote:Does anyone know, would the attorney representing the Xenomorph/T-1000's side be able to successfully argue that certain details like skin texture and ribs may have been omitted or altered by the process of casting the miniatures? Basically arguing that those changes are insignificant because you can't include that fine of detail on that scale or the minaiture casting process requires certain body proportions/changes? (I'm asking legally, since I don't have the foggiest how that would be interpreted)
Regardless of the reason changes were made, the differences would be in GW's favor. Just as easily as the attorney could assert that GW could argue that their tyranids and necrons have distinctly different details that have been omitted for the same reason.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/08/09 18:09:14
Starcraft fans always pick the old warriors ignoring the rest of the OOP range. GW designed the zerg and the 1998 models are a clear evolution of the OOP's (also Goodwin's style was evolving into the more streamlined/eastern influence we have today).
Sorry starcraft fans you are SOOOOO wrong. The five plate aesthetic as well as the scythe arms were there long before starcraft. Snake nids are a fairly logical jump but i'll give you that. Face it they both ripped off aliens but GW did it first.
Automatically Appended Next Post: EDIT, i'm still surprised no-one's thrown this one in.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2011/08/09 22:01:36
Mary Sue wrote: Perkustin is even more awesome than me!
Perkustin wrote:Face it they both ripped off aliens but GW did it first.
So what's wrong with ripping off something another company hass already ripped off?
I guess I look at it this way: Zerglings are ripoffs of the OOP Hormagaunts, and the rest of the Zerg takes various bits and pieces of the Nid concept and models. However, Raveners are blatant ripoffs of hydralisks (aesthetically), among other strikingly similar models, so this is not a one-way steal-fest.
Imo, Blizzard stole/borrowed/was given the design of the Tyranids, in particular the muscular armored version seen on a very few Tyranids models (The hormagaunts again spring to mind), and developed that as the theme for the Zerg race. Fast forward a few years, and the Tyranids are updated, with a very distinct muscular, armored theme very similar to that of the Zerg.
For GW to have devopled an entire army's visual style off of one model, as oppossed to borrowing visual elements from one of the most popular computer games of the time, seems unlikely, especially given the heavy amount of visual elements Necrons took from an extremely popular movie starring a certain Austrian at about the same time. They took a lot of cues from pop culture for one codex's visual style, so why not do so for another codex?
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2011/08/09 22:16:25
Imagine the feeling when you position your tanks, engines idling, landing gear deployed for a low profile, with firing solutions along a key bottleneck. Then some fether lands a dreadnought behind them in a giant heat shielded coke can.
I picked the zoanthrope and the hormagants for good reason, you mush them together you have a fairly good representation of the modern tyranid.
Good news everyone.
Just did some more research, the Epic trygon model from the early-mid 90's has the snake body. It turns out all the DNA was there afterall.
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The zerg argument is hereby redundant apart from the fact that raveners travel over ground.
What i think is a shame is that Starcraft is full of great ideas like the terran (con)federation and the protoss seem pretty unique as well.
Mary Sue wrote: Perkustin is even more awesome than me!
I just see the 3rd ed Nids as being more influenced by GW's works as seen through the lense of the Zerg and Aliens instead of their original ideas. Iirc, the Dark Eldar, Space Marine, and IG armies haven't gone through anywhere near as severe of a visual change of style as the Tyranids have, and I attribute that abrupt change to the Zerg over their own internal and independent design.
I do agree though that Starcraft was original (for the most part) in the Terran (Great backstory, units were meh in orginiality) and Protoss (Honestly, I have never gotten the Eldar vibe from them. Maybe, maybe a bastard lovechild of Tau and Eldar, but not straight Eldar).
Imagine the feeling when you position your tanks, engines idling, landing gear deployed for a low profile, with firing solutions along a key bottleneck. Then some fether lands a dreadnought behind them in a giant heat shielded coke can.
aka_mythos wrote:The Squats didn't sell well enough and weren't distinctive enough in the environment of the game that demanded increasingly distinctive and identifiable aesthetics.
Found this in a sticky ( think that's what it's called ) in 40K Background
Spoiler:
Jervis Johnson wrote:
I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist
Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.
First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantaties that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K.
No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realised what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regreted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on.
Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by.
Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendancy to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K.
In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based on the Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...
I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with exisiting army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army.
Best regards,
Jervis Johnson
Head Fanatic
Just a bit of info about the Squats.
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snowman40k wrote:They are always harping on about 'their IP' when what does this remind you of one of their rather stoic releases in the 40k scene...?
Was watching Terminator 4 this arvo and noticed this... sorry if it's been said already... the first 10 seconds has all you need to see...
Can you say 'Dreadknight'? It's uncanny how similar it looks to the T4 clanker... what a crock!
I disagree that they stole that me, I mean, how different can giant humanoid robots be?
You could say that the dreadknight looks like any number of robots.
Basically, if its got two legs, two arms and a roughly centrally located pilot, thats what they look like. I seriously doubt they saw T4 and went "Ok lets just draw that"
How different can you make a giant robotic exoskeleton with a bloke strapped in LOOK?
We are arming Syrian rebels who support ISIS, who is fighting Iran, who is fighting Iraq who we also support against ISIS, while fighting Kurds who we support while they are fighting Syrian rebels.
Perkustin wrote:Starcraft fans always pick the old warriors ignoring the rest of the OOP range. GW designed the zerg and the 1998 models are a clear evolution of the OOP's (also Goodwin's style was evolving into the more streamlined/eastern influence we have today).
If it comes down to it, I'll be the one waving GW's banner in their defence against any allegations that they stole anything from Blizzard, especially when it's so obviously the other way around - but let's get serious here:
The 3rd Ed Tyranids were a refinement of the Tyranid aesthetic taking heavy influence from Aliens and Star Craft. It's very hard to deny that the differences between Warriors before and after Starcraft is quite stark, and that they get closer to looking like their Starcraft counterparts.
Your use of the Hormagaunts and Zoery doesn't show a great deal because:
1. The 2nd Ed H-Gaunts look like the aliens from Aliens, just with blade arms rather than claw arms. Look at one side on sans arms and you'll see what I mean.
2. The 2nd Ed Zoey looks like nothing anyone's done before or since that I've ever seen (not even GW).
they both came out before GW made 40K, RT came out in 87 The book space marines came out in 79 and in 80 a table wargaming game was released about the space marines, sounds all too famillier
they both came out before GW made 40K, RT came out in 87 The book space marines came out in 79 and in 80 a table wargaming game was released about the space marines, sounds all too famillier
Other than the term "space marine", is it in any way similar to 40K? Did you bother to look at the minis?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/09/16 21:03:32
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