[DoctorEldritch]

@ChristianRasmussen Hmm, I am not sure YouTube is entirely blocked by GW, but it may be because of a sheer amount of content. OR, possibly, because of the law that allows material that is qualified as "parody" to be made without agreement or royalties for the IP owner. So we get those YouTube series like "If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device" and some fan songs and comics. But I am not sure if this is because GW is very selective, does not have the capacity to monitor everything, or there is a loophole in how the material can be used.

One can understand the GW approach from a financial point of view: why would people buy figurines if they can have digital ones that are also convenient to play with friends who live far away, and you are right, so long as TableTop itself does not violate anything, it can be used by enthusiasts to play. But I am hoping that the Amazon series may be a turning point: if they see good publicity results and an increase in sales, that may encourage them to ease the grip on IP a bit. Star Wars did it, and it worked well for them.

[ChristianRasmussen]

@DoctorEldritch

GW is not blocking youtube, but when they started their own Streaming as part of Warhammer + they denied any and all that even had the slightest with their IP, Either you come work for them or took your youtube down. Until that most of the the hype about the game where driven from outside GW and it really took at big part of that away. So not you see them run countless ads for Warhammer + , but most of the artistic people they pulled in and the ones that worked for them have already lest and doing something on their own now. So it feels like it is slowly dying be the strangle hold GW themselves apply.

The digital aspect I fully agree, but can the get around the 3D printing is here to stay.
I hope the movie or series will be great, but a turning point.
There is also the patchworks magazines, sadly not here in Scandinavia. Where you can get models for far less and it is heavily used in the countries where they are published.

[DoctorEldritch]

@ChristianRasmussen Thank you for letting me know, I am really behind with my updates on what's going on with GW house, I did not even know they had their own Streaming. I know they had some Christmas songs and a few videos floating around, but I did not realise they had something like a platform. And I can see how that decision would drive some artistic people away, after all, creative freedom is important. I am not sure what GW is thinking with this model.

3D printing is an interesting one. The more available to the average consumer it gets, the less there would be a need to buy figurines from the official stores, I would not be surprised if some hardcore Warhammer enthusiasts got 3D printers for that reason alone. It would be interesting to see how GW would tackle that.

Hopes are always high for series of this calibre, especially since Amazon is involved. But I am being cautious: Witcher and The Rings of Power were disappointing to me personally, and Warhammer 40K can be a tricky universe to grasp, with its unique mix of hopelessness and pathos. It helps that Henry Cavill likes Warhammer games but, as the Witcher series showed us, him being a fan may not be enough to make the series good. But hopefully, it will be.

It is true and sad that Scandinavia gets fewer magazines and models than some other places, doubly so for me as I think that, mind-frame-wise, Scandinavia would be very good at these games. Maybe it's a conspiracy and the rest of the world is just afraid to be second-best once Scandinavia catches up, and that's why it's like that? 😅

[ChristianRasmussen]

@DoctorEldritch

Creative freedom is very important for artistic people. And giving them the choice to come work inside an small office, where they have to produce a certain amount of shows on a fixed schedule or simply delete all the GW related content of youtube or where ever it is.
The content and amount of shows is extremely lover then what GW set out with and many have quit.
My original idea was to sign up for a month to see if it is worth it at all. But by the amount of content not being produces or delayed I will wait at least to the end of this year before reevaluating it.
Many of their shows have also already leaked out on the internet and each episode is 10 to 15 min., so maybe you only need a week to consume all the content on there.

I find it really sad, because the artistic people where the ones that created the interesting content around the game and now they are behind a pay wall (locked away).

When it comes to 3D printing, GW is fully against something that looks like their product and they recently won a case over someone who had taken the rendering from Total War Warhammer and made 3D models, so they did not look exactly like GW ones, but was still taken from their IP. A clear violation.
And yes there are many that print stand-ins, that also sometimes look better then the original.
Only the real models are allowed in GW own tournaments, so they are mostly used for casual play.

When it comes to hachette partworks magasines (Warhammer magazines) I think there is an easier answer to why they are not entering Scandinavia: Aller.
I think Aller is all to dominant in Scandinavia and might want a piece of the profit if they want to distribute it here.

[DoctorEldritch]

@ChristianRasmussen Very true, and when it comes to gaming, it can go beyond purely artistic people, too. Since the last time we wrote here, there have been those Ubisoft strikes, which goes to show that game devs can be paywalled even by the company they work in when it comes to the gaming industry. It really is sad about artistic people, but also for the fact how widespread those problems are.

I want to say the indie scene is where it's at in terms of artistic freedom, and there are good examples of that (Supergiant Games comes to mind), but even there for every success story, there are many of those who do not make it.

It is smart thinking about the shows. I usually do the same, though because I like my shows (and games, for that matter) to be out completely before starting to watch. Not because I like binging, I know it is not that healthy, but more because I like to know that all the season/series are out and I will not need to wait each week to watch and I can relax and watch on my own pace, and if there is a cliffhanger, then I can watch the next part right away. I usually would not, but I like knowing that I could if I wanted to. This is the reason I am only now making my way through Attack on Titan now that it finally ended last November.

It is interesting about the printing case, but I want to ask, did they sue a private individual or an organisation? As in, were those figures used commercially for something, or were they just used privately by that one person to play? If it was commercial then rules would be stricter (and, to be fair, rightly so), but if they went after a private individual with a 3D printer, that would be illuminating too.

Aller may be a force to be reckoned with, but do they still hold so large a sway in this age of digital distribution? I mean, if you want a magazine, it is possible to get one delivered from abroad to your door without hassle. Of course, it would be easier if Aller played ball better, but can they have a say over, for example, Amazon order? Then again, I never looked into it, so not sure...