I do have to say, i have experimented with all sorts of miniature battle and skirmish games, and always knew that Warhammer was the most popular. Since watching a few of your videos I have learned about OPR and Warsurge being things, and intend to try and spread the word that there is a new way to warhammer. So, the next time I set my warhammers on the table for a game of OPR, it will all be thanks to you.

Came for the hobby commentary, left knowing a crap load more about heroin.

I'm german, "Heroin" doesn't translate to "strong", it means the same thing and presumeably has the same etymological roots as "hero", "heroism" or "heroine" in English. Legend has it that the name came after a fellow Bayer employee tested the supposed painkiller and stated, he felt "like a hero" or "quite heroic" after taking the drug. The german words for "strong" are "kräftig", "kraftvoll", "stark", in case anyone wonders.

I got stoned and went to the gw store to feel what it was like to get marketed too by them. It was a trip. The staff had marketing responses to everything I said. And they followed me around the store. They seemed irked when I said I was playing 2nd edition. The display cases are fun to look at though. I might have even bought something if the guy wasn’t so intense.

It's also worth saying that most big IPs don't call their wargames wargames, they call them miniature games. Much more of a marketing friendly and SEO optimizable term.

As an old non-WH grogie, I'm just starting to realize how completely GW has taken over the broader hobby in the minds of more recent gamers. Thank you Discourse for promoting an incredibly diverse and interesting pastime that yes even includes little fashy Space Marines.

I for one would like to see wargaming companies marketing their products as implements of the Warhammer hobby, if for no other reason than to see GW rebrand the game to Bellum Malleo 40,000 or some other faux Latin nonsense.

It needs to cross the pop culture line, if people paint ‘warhammer’ to play dungeons and dragons. We’ll then we have a chance

For non nerds any form of tabletop games are Warhammer. Hell even painting other things, like flames of war or display miniatures are often referred to as Warhammer. It's not that absurd an idea.

Branded as a unique experience? I could agree. It is the only store I have walked out of with a book, a set of dice, and a blister pack while willfully being mugged of my wallet.

Heroine addict = 'Smack head' and now Plastic addict = Sprue head? I'm picturing a guy with his hands in the toilet, elbows deep in excrement trying to retrieve his brand new Warhammer model..... like in Trainspotting!

This subject feels ripe for malicious compliance, consumer-style: "Oh, you want to be the biggest company on the tabletop block? Well, then, from now on all minis, no matter which system they're from are going to be Warhammer... why are you sweating, GW? I thought his is what you wanted."

Just recently I was at my LGS and was playing Star Wars Legion. Had a random guy walk up and ask if we were playing Warhammer. Have even had this happen before in the past while playing Warmachine. Miniature Tabletop Wargames have been slowly called Warhammer due to the "Big Guys"

I'm from the old guard, but I'm up for calling every wargame miniature a Warhammer miniature just in spite of games workshop

Thing is, GW has been referring to the 'Warhammer Hobby' since at least 1995, so all a good paralegal need do is read some old issues of White Dwarf, and... ...Of course, these are the same maroons that insist we now call the Eldar Aeyaldarianans, or something, because they lost the right to copyright 'space marine' as a term. Perverse and Petty, yet Peculiarly Profitable is the Games Workshop maxim.

I love warhammering my models when I'm bored with my Warhammer paint and going to Warhammer store to play Warhammer with others who are in the Warhammer hobby

If and or when Warhammer becomes a genericized term, like in the vast majority of cases, it will be because of parents, grandparents, and significant others who have no clue about the hobby. As you pointed out, to my family every console and handheld was and still is a Nintendo. All role playing games are Dungeons & Dragons. All animation is cartoons. All sci-fi is Star Wars. All sodas are Coca-Cola. And all blue jeans are Levi’s. So, yeah, GW keeps throwing Warhammer in the mass public’s face and it’ll be an eventuality. “Where’s Chris?” “Oh, off playing Warhammer with some friends.” “Warhammer? Isn’t that that thing Henry Cavill was talking about? What is that exactly?” “They build and paint little toy soldiers, then they play on a table with cute little buildings and trees. And I think it uses some dice as well.” “Oh, it sounds like the Dungeons & Dragons Sam plays. Maybe they could play their little games together.” [end scene]

This for me just confirms what I've already been seeing and realizing. Pretty much what we should come to expect from a company with the level of arrogance to sell an "official", $33.00 "Citadel Hobby Knife". Or better known as a $2.50 Xacto knife.

I was actually surprised to find out how many generic names for products were once branded names once, and also a little surprised you didn't bring up Xerox which had launched a fairly aggressive campaign back in the 90s to get people to use the word 'photocopy' instead of Xerox. Google is suffering a similar issue atm with people using 'google' as a generic verb for any internet search.

1. 'Heroin' is actually not an actual german word, but it leans on, as you've said, the term 'heroisch', which means 'heroic'. 2. 'He', like in 'He, come over here!', 'Ro', like in 'hero' and '-Isch' like in 'fish' 3. Actually, it was not meant as a hardcore drug, but actually as painkiller, cough remedy, drug against high blood pressure and lots of other things. And ironically, it was used to help morphine and opium addicts with withdrawal symptoms. The interesting thing is, if ingested orally, Heroine neither gives you the 'high', not does it cause addiction, at least when we talk about the dosages in the sold product - when orally digested, most of it will get digrated in the liver before entering the blood stream (which is called 'first pass effect'). The real fun thing about this is that in those times, Bayer and other drug makers used to test new drugs on their employees. And their wifes. And then their children. Not kidding, pun not intented. And it turned out relatively harmless and was sold for quite some time. As far as I know, it was chinese workers in the U.S. who, for whatever insane reason, decided to shoot this stuff up their veins, but I am quite sure that before this happened, people already discovered that really high orale doses of Heroine would give a stark high. And make even more addicted than Morphine. Sorry, the autist in me took over, I did not want to be a smartass. Greetings from a german fan!

You know I really appreciate that you decided to use a drug brand as an example of genericisation and instead of using Aspirin, which is the normal example used for this, you went with Heroin. It's that kind of commitment that brings me back to this channel.

Playing devils advocate here ... but isnt their horrendous naming scheme these days a direct indication to the contrary? Didnt they go with Astartes instead of Space Marine, and Aelves instead of Elves and Mawtribes instead of Ogers for the EXACT reason that Space Marine already borders dangerously close on "genericide"? In fact IS already mostly a descriptor for a category more so than it is a brand and therefore couldnt be trademarked? Also the key difference here is that there are already categories in place (which you use throughout the video either consciously or subconsciously) like "tabletop game" and "wargaming". There was no velcro category before Velcro, no escalator category before Escalators. Love your vids but I think this one missed the mark a little :D Have a nice day Discourse!

Its crazy that this could happen but I found myself saying "Warhammer men" to communicate that I'm painting some 3D miniatures to a friend

Delta Green players and GMs represent! I first got into it during the 90s, being deeply depressed at the time it truly managed to catch my sentiment on the horrifying hollowness of human existence. I especially remember reading a piece by the guy who wrote their King in Yellow material in which he said HE wrote it while deeply depressed and in a state of mind where he believed it to be an accurate metaphor, almost to the point of realism when he wrote it. Out of my depression came the best game mastering I've ever done, I still remember fondly the DG games I subjected my friends to. I guess it's the 90s version of modern day depressed people saying Dark Souls helped them through their bad times, lol. Either way, I have to finish this by asking: Have you seen the Yellow Sign?

I have really been noticing this in the last few months, especially on KZfaq where the algorithm heavily favors warhammer content. I've seen videos where warhammer isn't the main focus, and not a single GW mini shows up but because it's popular the name goes in the title anyways. It's like if you wanted to sell pizzas but the only way to do it was to mention Pizza Hut.

People predicting the end of GW/Warhammer are like Christians predicting the end of the world - they always think this time it'll happen, and they're always wrong.

On the other hand, there's Warhammer Armies Project. I'd certainly call an army built for WAP, Warhammer, even though it only exists in the same universe rather than being GW product.

every time I hear that lightning i expect you to go on a spooky adventure and solve a crime

Yeah, People into wargaming and Warhammer tend to know and use the difference appropriately. And people not into wargaming tend to either not know what to call it at all, or call it "playing with those little plastic men". Even then, I've encountered far more non-wargamer's who know to call them wargames in general terms. The only people not into wargaming that I've ever encountered saying Warhammer specifically, have always been right and actually talking about Warhammer. Usually because they know someone in the hobby, but if not then they usually know the name from reading one of the books or playing one of the video games.

I'm in Tokyo right now studying Japanese and we had to do a presentation on our hobbies and I had a slide on my custom designed 3D printed Battletech minis. 2 students asked me later if that was Warhammer and got very confused when I said no, it's a different game.

Okay, so here's the question: how would one go about "triggering" legal generici- * Thunder Clap * ? Like, what's the mechanism here? Do you sue GW? Defend a lawsuit by GW against you by claiming the term "Warhammer" is generic? Petition the government to recognize the generic nature of the name? How do we turn this quirk of trademark law into something actionable? What's the threshold, and how do we exploit it to strip GW of their trademark?

I think there's one other major group of people referring to miniatures as "Warhammer", and it's the same as those referring to all games consoles as a "Nintendo" - parents. In fact I'd argue the reason Games Workshop stores all rebranded to Warhammer stores was precisely because parents who had no idea about the hobby (but were very much in control of how much money their teenage kids ploughed into it). Not quite sure how this plays into genericisation of their brand, but presumably they knew what they were doing there.

Discourse predicting GW’s doom. Must be a Y in the day.

When I hear Warhammer, I don't think any other brand than GW. If someone called a competing model or system "Warhammer" - I'd correct them immediately.

I'm so glad I hopped on the 3d printing train early. I didn't like GW much to begin with but ever since I've started they have just shown incompetence and in some cases what feels like malice. Great video as always!

So basically, the very tactic GW used to bully it's own fanbase can be used right back at them because they're that damn dumb with wording.

Remember that wargames survey you did a while back? I ended up completing the survey too and it turns out I won a raffle prize! I've won a Gripping beast plastic box set thanks to you promoting the survey on your channel! Probably going to choose some viking hirdmen.

I started out painting a few warhammer space marines and a dreadnought when I was still quite young, but I had some star wars minis as well. At this time I actually didn't even realise that there was a tabletop game for these miniatures, I had just been using them like action figures with my imagination pretty much... Only recently have I started grabbing books and what not to play Kill Team... I've got the rule books and I've got Into the Dark, but I've just discovered Planet 28 and Five Parsecs from Home as well as Inquisimunda and I've been absolutely loving these games. I haven't actually played a game of anything yet, but the freedom these games provide for the miniature making side of the hobby is just beautiful

i have heard some (mostly very young) gamers use it in the generic but that has always soon faded out, and it was mainly back when the market was way less diverse than it is now.

I dunno that you can claim the creators of Ogors and Aelfs are unaware of what genercism is.

Yeeeeep, painting some Warhammer figures Little clone troopers from Star Wars Legion, a little Goku and Bulma mini

The one GW term I see going this way fast is Contrast paint. Every paint paint that works in a similar fashion I hear refered to as contrast paint, or army painters contrast paint line. Any company that makes similar paint lines I've heard it refered to as their contrast paint line.

But "Warhammering" has been around longer then GW! Back in tne 1970's. if your party had a Dwarf with a hammer, you were "warhammering". If your Cleric had a hammer, you were "Warhammering" with the Cleric. And so, on! DnD is the original "WARHAMMER".

Btw Ii used to own that Original Dungeons and Dragons boxed game that you displayed on screen - it came with paper chits that you would draw out of a bag for multi-sided die rolls before polyhedral dice became available for purchase

I think also the historical examples you present are just that, historical. Copyright and the diversity of products you mention seem to have been generecized prior to the 00s. It seems rarer. I just think they should nationalize 40k and give everyone mandated days off to paint.

Me: *watching this video while pooping* Discourse: "You're Warhammering right now!" Me: That sounds way better

There is one thing I can add to the topic. When people, who don’t know a thing about the miniature hobby, come to my house and see my desk, they always say. « Ho, you’re doing warhammer ». And there is no warhammer mini on my desk each times it happens.

The click-bait title game is *on point!*

Thankfully I gave up GW warhammering back in 1999. Have not bought a warhammer since 1999. However, I have been gaming since 1981 and have not stopped.

Loved the video but FOR FUCKS SAKE change the background color. I ended up seeing green for half an hour.

I don't know what the video is about yet, but the only 40k I've been playing is Adeptus Titanicus. Whatever 9th edition is now is pretty big mistake, is what I'm trying to say xD

It already started two decades ago. GW thoroughly trained their staff not to refer to LOTR as ‘Warhammer’, or to even use parts from the one in conversions for the other, to observe their contract with the IP. The kids still called it ‘Lord Of The Rings Warhammer’.

One thing very funny about my journey in warhammer. I got started with a couple warmachine warhammers Then after a couple years got into some x-wing warhammers Then I got into some warhammers Then I got some armada warhammers Then Nurgle's Rot happened Then I got some more warhammers Then I got some more warmachine warhammers Throughout I've been learning about the warhammer hobby from warhammer batreps and warhammer Lore videos. Recently I've been watching video criticisms of Games Workshop Then I watched this video. And decided to make an extensive and probably annoying joke I also forgot about the SW Legion Warhammers I got. Before Armada warhammers, after warhammers Have fun with this comment TLDR, generalizing warhammer using the point made in the video

Everyday I think about the ASTARTES guy... Do you think GW is feeding him, in their dungeon?

Me: "I paint miniatures" Joe Scmoe: "Oh you play WarHammer"...... How many bloody times has this convo happened

We call it wargaming. In English because I can't really think of a term in Dutch. But nobody I know thinks Warhammer is the entire wargaming sphere. If someone doesn't know it maybe they should 3dprint some extra brain cells for themselves.

Great video again and an interesting subject. Whilst I agree that most wargamers would differentiate between Warhammer and other miniature games. Non-wargamers do tend to look at any miniature and say something like 'my son/daughter/brother/sister/friend' plays/used to play warhammer as well. When you think these people may actually be buying products as gifts we are getting close to Warhammer becoming a generic term. Commonly almost any Role play game is already referred to as D&D by non players.

Hmm so what's gonna happen to Google, at the least all other search engines could relabel the search button to Google it!. All my family & work colleagues over the years go straight to "Warhammer" when I tell them I'm a miniature painter. Also when ever they've referenced any models they see or ask about mine they call them warhammers.

I'm going to point to the contrary: a while back, GW went on a spree of renaming their armies to very non-generic names, likely with the express purpose of dodging genericide. Space Marines became Adeptus Astartes, Imperial Guard became Astra Militarum, Eldar became Aeldari, Dark Eldar became Drukhari etc (there's probably more examples but that happened when I was taking a long vacation from all things Games Workshop), possibly in response to the Spots The Space Marine debacle.

Thanks for your videos. A few months ago I considered getting into 40k or killteam to reconnect with an interest i'd had when I was a teenager and somehow when I was doing research about it I came across your videos and I'm glad I did. I ended up getting into Battletech with my friends and we've been having a blast. I do have a couple of kill teams from the starter set (hooray for sales) but I plan on using them with OPR and trying them out with osprey titles as well. As someone getting into miniatures again I'm more bothered in some ways by codex creep, rules tax, and predatory boxed set/bundle strategies than the price of models. as an aside: the stuff you were talkinga bout in previous videos about fomo and neurodivergent/autism spectrum people was incredibly interesting and eye opening for someone who is on the autism spectrum. I'd never really thought about my anxiety to aquire a ton of stuff before lol

This is super interesting. Would they be able to argue that all the smaller products within the "Warhammer" scope is an indicator that genericide does not apply?

Very nice video with an interesting topic, never thought about generalization of names like this

It'll happen to D&D *way* before it happens for Warhammer, regardless of the marketing verbiage.

As a former GW Chapter Approved store that quit when I was selling product that told my customers to cut me out the purchases. I will giggle my ass off if this happens!

I'll play the naive one here... But honestly the word "warhammer" itself has always sounded pretty generic to me, so I find it pretty funny that a company was able to ban everyone else from using it

This is why LEGO call their products Lego bricks/sets rather than legos., and get a bit shirty when people don't use the "correct" name. I think if GW had a product that was targeted at a larger general customer base, they'd be in a much more precarious position with their warhammer = hobby nonsense.

One thing that allows GW to consider itself 'the hobby' is how enclosed an ecosystem they maintain. Minis? GW. Paints? GW. Brushes? GW. Files? GW. Etc.? GW. I mean OPR is semi-contained. Minis and rules, both as downloads. But GW is set up so that many never see the alternatives.

Serve-em right for trying to copyright terms like Knight Errant.

Technically, Warhammer, being a real historical weapon, was a generic term from the start. That's probably a major element of the copyright issues they had with Warhammer fantasy. It's a bit harder to defend your legal distinctiveness when the whole brand in its entirely can be found uninterrupted in a single entry in a dictionary.

In the french side of thing, the word "wargaming" in english has became the standard one. Less and less use of modélisme. The Hobby also has became prévalent. We speak of "figurines", models. But younger, i was saying "my Warhammer" and to my uninformed mother, that stick to ALL my miniatures, even if hearing that always sound reductive, it still effective for talking about it. So générique is not out of the spot.

I always (rightly or wrongly) believed the "Warhammer hobby" was the broader term used by GW to include Citadel wargamers, but also people who are fans of the lore fiction, video gamers, or people (like myself) who only paint miniatures. It is used all encompassing for Citadel, Black Library, Forge World, Games Workshop, etc. Other table top games are "wargames" (lower case) as opposed to the big guy- "Warhammer" (brand.) Just my thoughts.

in a similar vein i use the term "poorhammer" for any cheap proxies and "math hammer" for any stats calculations for wargamming.

Hellom, can confirm other mini figures companies exist!

6:10 To be fair, the main selling point of the 40k at this point is the unique setting. Not miniatures, and not, gor forbid, the rules.

angry women is angry

Painting up some lannister guardsmen to play warhammer

I hope that if this does come to pass, that I will still be able to get the codex for the Guard

heard a few years ago that The Lego Group might be close to losing the "Lego"-name to due generization and Henry Cavill played/painted Warhammer long before he become a celebrity, afaik

I guess whenever I thought about wargames I always immediately thought of historicals before I got into the hobby, it probably doesn't help that the only nights gamestores ever run are 40k or AOS though.

A Warhammer is a blunt force weapon! So no. Also Bayer didn't lose their traidmark for heroin, Germany lost the great war!

Yes, "buy in". If we all "buy in" to gw's attempt to genericize their product, it will hurt them so badly that they may change and become a better company. We can't have that now, right?

I love to run the Xerox and copy documents while using a Hoover to vacuum up used Kleenex tissues around the office.

When I used to play quite a few years ago. While playing and being asked what I do, I would start to explain only to be cut of and asked " oh like warhammer? " so now I always respond mini war gaming like warhammer. I notice some comprehension then they walk away.

As someone who lives in the southeast US people here will refer to any soda as Coke Which makes me wonder if that's part of the reason for rebranding it as Coca-Cola

Isn't crack more addictive than heroin.

This is one reason copyright / trademark laws have been changed so that a company owns copyright to infinity (and beyond) these days.

I've lost count of how many times people outside of the hobby have said to me something like "oh is that warhammer?" to which I reply" no, it's a D&d miniature" or something similar. But most warhammer fans can spot a non-GW mini at a hundred paces and these days, are generally well informed about the 3rd party alternatives. None of us think all minis are warhammer, and I doubt the hobby will ever become mainstream enough that it becomes a problem.

WotC has that particular slogan because in U.S. advertising law, you are allowed to make unqualified superlative statements, but if you make a comparative statement, there must be at least one study to back up your claim. For instance, I can say "my cereal bar is the best" and not have to prove a thing - it could be trash, failing everybtaste test, im still fine to make the claim becasue im not comparing it to anything (I know thats not how English actually works, but its how it works according to advertising law) - but if I say "better than the leading competitors" I have to be able to show the study and who those competitors are that it was tested against and in what ways its better, otherwise my competitors and consumers can come after me. I'm not sure the government would. Unless I said it to shareholders, in which case I guess the SEC would?

'heroine' is not a reference to any narcotic; it is a subtype; dihydromorphone or other preparations which rely on a synthetic concentration and refinement of the alkaloids found in the poppy plant, as compared to it's natural derivatives which are simply the alkaloids themselves- codeine and morphine, namely and on the other end you have modern creations which are entirely synthetically created, like fentanyl, these are not called "heroine" either-- or at least hopefully not as when they are sold as heroine (or spiked therein) people tend to end up dead since it's much stronger stuff but idk I see a lot of cracked-out behavior from wargamers too, in addition to sedative placated behavior, soooo.... maybe best to say that GW is the plastic equivalent of 'chasing the dragon'.... lulz

We as humans need to act as if all corporate-made culture belongs to us, and we can do whatever we want with it.

The only people who labeled video games as "Nintendo" were grandparents, and that's because the genre was relatively new. Now the grandparents of today's generation call them video games, and know the difference between a Wii and a Switch. War-gaming is war-gaming. I know the genre has in one shape or form been around for a lot longer than the 44 years I have lived. So I ask, who the hell uses "Warhammer" as a blanket term for tabletop war-gaming? Seriously? 🤔

Could this happen to Tayto?

You got your 40K warhammer, your Age of Sigmar warhammer, Infinity warhammer, Bolt Action warhammer and loads of miniature agnostic warhammer

3rd party companies should start marketing their priducts as "minis and bits for use with the warhammer hobby"

I guess for a while every smartphone ever was an iPhone and every tablet an iPad and it still is to an extent but with time people wanted to differentiate their device from Apple. So many say that they play Warhammer when they actually mean the hobby altogether. But I think with time, GW will loose more and more interest of it's fanbase due to bad business decisions and anticonsumer policy that people may stray away from saying they're playing Warhammer and being more specific.

A notable exception being Instagram with the #Warhammer tag being used for virtually every painted miniature.

If you want to see any example of this check adds in writers magazines asking writers not to call copying documents xeroxing

So, my friend called me up last Saturday to see if I wanted to warhammer, and I said sure. So my friends brought their warhammers over to warhammer for a bit, but they both brought the wrong warhammers. One brought his printed warhammers and the other brought his Star Wars warhammers, so we wound up warhammering some Frostgrave.

I used to spend all day sitting in a GW store but then they seemed to not like that.Unless you were spending or painting you were not welcome so stopped going.

I am going out this weekend for BackBreaker, a one day, four games Blood Bowl tournament, it isn't really Warhammer, its more Bowl. 🏈🤯🏈