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Trouble with satire? The world doesn’t stand still long enough for satire to be lasting.

Even Judge Dredd has changed tact considerably. From lampooning the right wing politics of the 80’s, it’s exploring modern civil rights and sociological issues, such as cash spent on decent housing and education reducing crime more efficiently than the Justice Department.

So, the overall satire is still there, but it’s developed and evolved alongside real life issues.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Trouble with satire? The world doesn’t stand still long enough for satire to be lasting.

Even Judge Dredd has changed tact considerably. From lampooning the right wing politics of the 80’s, it’s exploring modern civil rights and sociological issues, such as cash spent on decent housing and education reducing crime more efficiently than the Justice Department.

So, the overall satire is still there, but it’s developed and evolved alongside real life issues.

GW aren't putting any effort in adapting 40k in that way though, if anything they're going the other way. GW are that emo kid at high school wearing an aesthetic in expectation the culture came with it. GW are literally providing pro fascist hero characters and then in the event of critique doing the classic 'just jokes ok'... without actually doing any of the work to make it an actual joke.

If they did what you've described JD has been doing then great, there's an actual effort to maintain the satire and speak to the audience. But GW is corporate through and through and the satire is great as an aesthetic to point at, but causes too many problems trying to implement. So they'll happily play 40k straight as pro fascist fantasy until someone calls them and then they'll say 'just jokes' and go back to playing it straight again.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Could this be a course correction from their investors?

From a quick search it appears the largest holdings are various managed funds. Not sure they are exerting any pressure on the company in any specific way.

The title of that article disgusts me: “It could be marvel” - sounds like “it’s terminally ill and we’ll have to shoot it in the head for the mainstream slop transition to manifest”.
Which is expanded upon in:
"You've got to do a fine balance between pleasing the fans and giving them something that they've personally invested in, and also pleasing the mainstream fans," he says.
"Because if you don't get enough viewers, it won't get commissioned for a season two”

Of course they will always try to to bet on the second horse. If it was a passion project with a vision, the type that usually becomes a cult classic, the question of ideal balance between two groups of viewers wouldn’t even exist.

15 years ago I was hoping that 40k was going to have real movies (hideous “ultramarines” doesn’t count) and be very- very popular and grow, grow, grow.
Now I’m worried, all the edges are going to be washed away in order to please the widest audience possible, and the unique setting I fell in love with is no more- it’ll just turn into another lookalike pebble, product of Amazon.
It’s even described as “entertainment” rather than “hobby” in the article.