History of Games Workshop and Blizzard, Part 2

We're continuing a deep dive into the anecdotes I've overheard about the game company Blizzard and the Warhammer games in my time at  FLGS's. In the previous post, we looked at the relationship between Warcraft 1 and the Warhammer fantasy game. The two we'll focus on today are "Starcraft Started at a 40k game" and "Games Workshop changed the name of their Space Marines to Adeptus Astartes because of a lawsuit involving Blizzard's Terran Marines from Starcraft".

As we went over in the previous post, Warcraft 1 was considered for being a licensed, branded Warhammer game. It sounds like it wasn't a serious consideration, possibly never leaving internal discussion, and if it had, Games Workshop wasn't interested in the slightest.

So, today we'll look at the other two anecdotes I've heard in passing. First, did Starcraft start as a 40k game? Well, right away, we know that the folks at Blizzard were aware of Games Workshops' work, and of course were influenced by the same banquet of science fiction that GW was - specifically for 40k and Starcraft is obviously Dune, Aliens, and Starship Troopers, to name a few salient inspirations.

Interestingly, Maxx Marshall (a 3D artist for Starcraft) said on their DeviantArt,

"(OH, and FYI, i truthfully had no idea what a Warhammer 40K was when i started designing the zerg. I was more a comic geek... and still am. after the game hit E3 i was told that i stole the idea of aliens that fight space marines from warhammer... wow)" [1] 

I'm not really sure what to make of this; they aren't on the credits for Warcraft 2, so it's reasonable that they hadn't been there or heard about having pitched to Games Workshop, and didn't know of the influence Warhammer fantasy had had on Warcraft (covered in previous post). 

Early Version of Starcraft 1

Early Versions of Starcraft 1 Units. The Interceptor is remarkably recognizable.

Another aspect was Starcraft's development. Originally it was planned as a "simple" reskin of Warcraft 2 using the same engine and toolset, set to come out in 1996 [2] An alpha (kind of) was shown during E3 1996, and was anecdotally "widely panned for being 'Orcs in Space'". At this stage it is much harder to see any connection between promotional artwork and Warhammer 40k, which I think makes a good argument that the game didn't start as a Warhammer game - the artists hired to work on it up to this point weren't aware of the game, and the art style is radically different, not even including "space marines" at this point.

After feedback from fans and professionals at E3, Blizzard decided to pivot the game after jumping in to help Blizzard North (née Condor Games) ship a little game called Diablo. 

"The massive success of Diablo reset expectations about what Blizzard should strive for: StarCraft became the game that defined Blizzard’s strategy of not releasing games until they were ready. But a lot of pain had to occur along the way to prove out this strategy."

"At the time of the StarCraft reboot, according to Johnny Wilson, then Editor in Chief of Computer Gaming World, the largest-distribution gaming magazine of that time, there were over eighty (80!!) RTS games in development. With so many competitors on our heels, including Westwood Studios, the company that originated the modern RTS play-style, we needed to make something that kicked ass." [2]

Meanwhile from 1995 (Warcraft 2's release, kind of the earliest that SC1 could have started development) until 1998 (Starcraft's Release)[3], Games Workshop was equally busy. They'd released "Warhammer Quest", "Necromunda", "Space Hulk" (1 and 2), "GorkaMorka", "Epic 40,000", and "Blood Bowl" (3rd Ed.) [4]. Their development strategy at that time felt clear: Growth, by releasing many new physical games (and accompanying miniatures) during this time period.

It is also apparent at this time that Games Workshop was "skeptical" or "uninterested" in the video game market, as discussed in the previous post. (Despite this, they did release Chaos Gate and Epic 40k Final Liberation in this time, so I think I read that as being cautious rather than absent)

I also did my best to try and dig through court records in both the US and UK during this time period to see if there was any meat to the "Space Marine" lawsuit rumor. I could not find any cases in that time describing any suit between Blizzard or Games Workshop. However, I'm not a professional, just someone with a search bar, and my research here is probably woefully inadequate. It doesn't help that many of these records require you to be either a lawyer or in the court in-person. I'm not flying anywhere for a blog post, ha.

I can say, however, that GW is relatively litigious when it comes to that term, "Space Marine". Gizmodo reported in 2013 [5]

"Games Workshop claimed it owned the trademark on the phrase “space marine” due to its popular Warhammer 40K games. As far as we know, Games Workshop’s lawyers haven’t stopped making absurd claims about having a “common law trademark” to a phrase that goes back to the 1930s."

"‘Warhammer’ and ‘Space Marine’ are registered trademarks in a number of classes and territories. In some other territories and classes they are unregistered trademarks protected by commercial use. Whenever we are informed of, or otherwise discover, a commercially available product whose title is or uses a Games Workshop trademark without our consent, we have no choice but to take reasonable action."

Interestingly, I wasn't able to find "Adeptus Astartes" as a registered UK trademark, but "Space Marine" is, since 1991 [6]. The rest of the trademarks registered to that entity can be found here [7], and Adeptus Astartes isn't among them, implying to me that it's just... not owned by them (or cannot be trademarked), for some reason. Which would put to bed that rumor. (Again, huge disclaimer, I know very little about the UK legal system, and my understanding of copyright and trademark comes from the US. I am sure there are things I missed).

As I combed through tons of internet posts asking the above questions (trying to see if anyone had evidence in either direction; short answer, nope. Just comments, lol) I also discovered a new rumor that I'll try to investigate real quick.

Did Tyranid get redesigned because of Zerg?

One of the typical images used to illustrate the rumor

This one is popular across older forum message boards, in the early 00's (Around the same time Warhammer 40k 3rd edition released [8]). At that time, Tyranids had a bit of a thematic consolidation in their design (which the above image tries to illustrate) coinciding with third edition Codex released in 2001 [9]. While the above image depicts a clear-cut stylistic change, however, it is a little misleading, showing 2nd edition warriors (released 1992 [10] and skipping the 2nd edition sculpts) to the 3rd edition warriors (released in 2001 [10] almost ten years later). Yes, those dates bracketed Starcraft 1, but in that time, Citadel Miniatures also changed their sculpting and manufacturing processes, going from 1:1 sculpts to 3:1 scale sculpts, and thus could fit much more detail and regular visual patterns into their designs [11][12]. Many other pieces of media released during that time, including Jurassic Park (1994), Alien Resurrection (1997), Event Horizon (1997), and Starship Troopers (1997) [13], and that's saying nothing of the other space-alien video games and iterations.

As I've said previously, I'm not here to comment on "who stole from who" since again, in my lived experience, that's not really how creative inspiration works. What I find interesting is charting the myriad influences of a piece of media, what the context of the world was at the time when it was created. (This video essay and it's sequel are some of my favorite examples of this, charting the path of Metroid! And hey, what do you know, another potential inspiration for Tyranids!). So that's all to say, I feel like I can see a little bit of something from that era in the Tyranid sculpts - raptorial like Jurassic Park, long blades like Zerglings, Chinitous armor like Starship Troopers, elongated heads from Alien.

So my answer to that rumor "did Warhammer 40k steal from Starcraft?" (or vice-versa) would be no. "Are there elements of Starcraft in Warhammer 40k?" might be the better question to ask, and that I can say pretty confidently, yes.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Next time some regular crafting stuff. Lots of cool AoS things cooking right now. Bye!

- Miss Captain Bear