Games Workshop started handing out bits of the Warhammer License like candy - but did it work? We think so, and here's why!

Do not fool yourselves. It is not Total Warhammer. It is Total War Warhammer Hammer (Total)

Shit, now all I can imagine are goblins in business suits in a conference room somewhere. ...shit, that actually sounds like EA.

Its not a shot gun approach, itz more dakka, and our boyz know you can't have too much DAKKA!!!

What do you mean James needs an intervention? He sounds like a totally normal and functioning citizen of the Imperium, but you on the other hand...what your prescribing him to do sounds alot like...heresy

Of course GW lives, the emperor protects it

I would totally play a Farmer Maggot game. Gotta keep them hobbit kids outta my mushrooms

And now on to James' intervention.

this is how Star Wars games should be handled...

Well for GW, if you have a Warhammer, everything looks like a nail.

Pawnshop = Gamestop ... Extra Credits is SAVAGE.

1. I didn't know there was a game called "Snotling Fling". 2. I'm sad a game called "Snotling Fling" is listed among the not-good games...

I still want Space Marine 2 :(

That intervention joke killed me

The ironiy of the farm maggot reference when farm maggot is a citidal miniture, and in Games Workshops lord of the rings game can lead an army of gonder or dwarfs (or any good race!) against the forces of mordor. Actually as far as the hobbits go hes actually pretty tough.

Make a cheap yet controlled space for experimentation and incentivize the best ones to greatness, its really brilliant and overall very good for the industry, kudos to them for creating this system.

total war: warhammer of war 2: more war this time. Did I mention the word "War"? War war war war war. War.

0:13 "2016: A bad year" Me, in 2020: oh, that's cute.

All I want is an RPG set in Fantasy....BUT THEY BLEW IT UP, THE ANIMALS, THEY BLEW IT UP. SIGMAR DAMN THEM. DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL

GW's Tactic: Throw as many dice as possible, count the good rolls. Kinda like their games.

I'm kinda sad there was no mention of battlefleet gothic: armada. Damn that game was good at launch, such a shame it died.

Before watching: I DONT CARE, I NEEEED A SPACE MARINE SEQUEL Mid video: Vermintide was sure an experience and they gave fatshark a bit more of the world, now they can work with chaos and different especialized units. By the end: So...you guys are Ork/Ultrasmurf mains...Interesting

Now can you do an episode where you compare and contrast this approach with the shift in the Star Wars game market? Literally the exact opposite thing happened there (EA got an exclusive license and has made exactly 0 good star wars games). At the same time. It was like Either IP took the others idea. (Yes, disney merger and mickey killing Lucasarts).

I'd like to play a good Warhammer 40.000 isometric rpg.

Glad you cover this again because necromunda is coming out, and that's a good spinoff. sad you didn't mentioned "Space Marine" or "Fire Warrior"

loved that karl pilkington orc in the intro. nicely done

Well if no one else will... BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

Drawings were on point this episode.

OMFG!! Someone else who finally calls it Total Warhammer. Here I thought I was the only one who thought that would be a much better title combo.

For the Emprah!!

"Because even the bad Warhammer games still have that proper Warhammer flavor." Yeah. All except DoW III.

Where's my Shadow of Maggot preview?!

2:13 upvote for Toad's hairy legs!

It's actually Total Hammer War Total War War Hammer Total War Total Hammer War War Hammer.

8th edition 40k being a hit (in the miniature wargaming space) also helped, I think.

I personnaly loved the space marine pic with his list of heretics, not only it is a funny joke for fans of 40k, but it also shows the sheer numbers of characters in the universe. (after all when you choose to create a sci-fi universe in the year 40.000 rather than 3.000, it's normal that your numbers of "everything" are high)

I would buy a Farmer Maggot Spin-off.

Man, I just want more dakka.

"Where there's death, there's maggots" killed me, I need that game now. Painkiller reskin?

Your visual puns are so good, the recap cracked me up pretty bad xD And the detailed look you give us is really interesting, I fell like I learn something each time I watch one of your videos

"But I want ALL the money"-Most AAA publishers

This is great way to license well known IPs. Compare to this, EA has monopoly on star wars license from Disney. Guess how that turned out. License fee became exuberant so only few games were made (only 3 in 5 years, battlefront 1 & 2, star wars mobile) and EA has to rely on loot boxs to fill its coppers. I think its time Disney to re-think of their licensing strategy.

0:18 "Now, I'm not sayin these anyting wrong with da Gretchins, innit? But honestly, do we need em?" -Karl Orkington

"An intervention might be in order" That's Heresy

And sometimes, a previously obscure character or reskin gets so much personality that people legitimately love them more than the Main character. Like Luigi is to Mario. And as a result people wanna see the company go even deeper into developing the obscure in the setting. Like how Waluigi desperate needs his own video game.

Games for the games god!

This was facinating. Just goes to show the industry seems to be moving more and more towards medium and small sized studios

0:13 "A BAD YEAR" "HOLD MY BEER" I died laughing

Having watched this episode the other day, it just recently occurred to me that there's another franchise which could really benefit from this approach: Dungeons & Dragons. Which is kind of fitting really, considering Warhammer and D&D are the most well known examples of their kind of gaming (Tabletop Wargaming and Tabletop Roleplaying Game respectively) D&D has everything that Warhammer has to make this approach work. It doesn’t just have a vast, fleshed-out universe: it has multiple of them, a vast multiverse. Even if you’re not interested in the traditional fantasy D&D (Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms) there’s so many settings that at least one of them has to appeal to any you. Want some gothic horror? Ravenloft. Low-fantasy Steampunk? Eberron. D&D in SPAAAAAAACE? Spelljammers has you covered. Want to play in a Dune or Mad Max style post-apocalypse? Dark Sun can be made to fit both. Or can’t you settle on any one specific genre and what to hop between them all? Planescape! With just all these settings (I haven’t listed 1/10th of them above, just prominent examples) when you then delve into the specifics of each of these universes the sub-licensing possibilities become endless. Like the Warhammer units, there’s enough creatures with unique identities that could have entire games built around them. A game in which you play as a Beholder, firing off different kinds of lasers, rays and beams from your many eyes? A detective puzzle game in which you play as a Changeling investigator, able to take the form of the various characters you meet to play upon the relationships of the suspects with each other? A city management style sim in which you play as a tyrannical Sorcerer-King, having to utilize both your political and magical prowess to keep the city under your control and fend off usurpers? Whilst each of these ideas could appeal to people who have not played anything D&D related, D&D fans will also likely give a look into genres they’d never usually play if one of their favourite monsters or settings is involved, without the need for heavy marketing such as in the GW example, with D&D also having their own media and marketing channels to push the really good games. And perhaps one edge D&D has over Warhammer is that by the very nature of the game, D&D encourages players to make alterations to their IPs to suit their taste. D&D games can get away with a lot more in terms of straying from pre-established canon, as the game already encourages that and each game can simply be described as that developers version of the world, whilst informing the player they too can alter their worlds or create vast new worlds of their own, providing a nice little hook into D&D proper. Thinking about this I really hope the guys at D&D see what Games Workshop has been doing and begin to take this approach themselves. There’s been plenty of D&D games over the years, but despite the many fascinating universes and gameplay styles they could example, the vast majority of these games are all RPGs set within a very specific portion of the Forgotten Realms, that being the Sword Coast. Taking this approach and sub-licensing out anything and everything that developers want to work with would massively help the D&D brand and allow the creation of some really fantastic games that otherwise would never happen, at least from everything I can see about how GW has handled this.

Speaking of gambling?.....

The art this episode. Oh my god. I loved the "uh oh words" and the game eating a bag of money.

Who ever is doing the art now a days is doing a stellar job, it's just getting better and better. Great job to the whole extra credits team, though the artist is the MVP this week!

Why did you give Toad leg hair?

Total "Warwar" Hammer. Just saying.

It also helps that they boosted community engagement, made some populist choices for their wargames and put out more specialised boxed games.

love how it went from "a bad year" to "hold my beer" heres hoping 2018 will be "wait this wasn't so bad"

2:10 You know, BLUE TOAD wouldn't have shown up to work without his pants on. BLUE TOAD is a professional. BLUE TOAD can defeat Bowser AND save Princess Peach, even AFTER Mario jumps on his head and sends him down a pit. Just saying.

Now let's see if this actually works longer term. That and if this approach would work for other IP's such as Mario or Sonic.

Worth noting, Vermintide was a success and now its sequel is getting the iconic Chaos Warriors. I guess the promise of a meatier sublicense next time was right. Nice call, EC.

1:53 What a missed opportunity for a joke with "If any of these do ring a screming bell..."

I wonder, would this model have worked in a Pre-internet era? Take, for example, Atari. They had a similar model of "Make all the games! quality be damned" back in the 80s. And that certainly didn't work. It meant a lot of people bought a lot of terrible games. But in this day and age. It's a lot easier for people to find out which games are or are not good. For example, I hadn't even heard of most of the crappy games you mentioned. But I certainly know of Blood Bow and Vermintide. Word of mouth spreads a lot faster now, and good games get more exposure (or games that are so bad they are good). And that exposure means more people play them. You no longer have to go to the store and HOPE the game you buy is good. That's where a big value in IP used to come from. And something Nintendo is/was great at. It's a Mario/Zelda game, so you know it's at least good. When I was younger I remember seeing Final Fantasy X at a pawn shop. But because I had never heard of that IP and thought "it's the tenth sequel? Sounds like a shoddily made cash grab." So I ended up not buying it, and I got "Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2" instead. Because I liked Sarge's Heroes and knew what that was. Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2 is not a good game, FFX is amazing. Nowadays, I would just take out my phone, and look both of those games up. And buy FFX and completely forever that Sarge's Heroes 2 exists.

Nitpicking: Marvel started their cinematic universe before Disney bought them.

I just want to give kudos to the "One Stop Table Top Shop" magazine for implementing my favorite kind of mini humor: rhyming.

I started watching this again recently, and I really like this. I fell of the band wagon about a year ago and I’m a huge fan of warhammer, so it popped up in my feed. I love you guys!

Too bad DoW 3 ended up being terrible let down. What a waste of the foundation that DoW 1 and 2 installed.

2:50 Not Mario Violence Grown up Soda Lots of Uh-oh words I want this content rating to be an actual thing.

5:27 That is a perfect drawing

3:30 Come on, now I need a compilation of Undertale references in Extra Credits xD

Innovation in business? Whaaaaaaaaa?!

I agree with you on the Total Warhammer name. Also, what about how bad Dawn of War 3 was.

*Watches Video* *Glares at Wizards of the Coast* Wizards is like the only other company that can actually manage to pull this off, weather it be with D&D or Magic or whatever.

The three games you mentioned, they're all different units. Snotling Fling - Orc Doomdiver Catapult. Doomwheel - Skaven Doomwheel. Storm of Vengeance - 40k Orks and Dark Angels.

If you name your game Total War; Warhammer you don't get to name things anymore. It is now called Total Warhammer. It's catchy and it works!

I PLAY WITH THE *M I N I A T U R E S*

I love that image of the Ork holding out a shotgun... so fun!

I miss the old Warhammer online game. The world quests and pvp was years ahead of the competition.

That's a very good toad. I hope nintendo retweets it.

*IT’S CALLED TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER*

You have no idea how much I wanted D&D to follow this strategy.

I'm a GW fan - I play Age of Sigmar, 40k, and Shadespire. It's nice talking to non-tabletop friends and have them be excited about the worlds. More people are delving into 40k lore, books, and looking at the models. People are asking me what's up with Fantasy/Sigmar. It's a fun change from rampant confusion when I tell them what I'm into.

Poor Flowey 😢

They've went incredibly deep with the sublicencing as snotlings aren't even a unit, there a minor mention in the lore that mostly get glossed over. They have no famous characters, they have no heroes and pretty much no history. They go where the orks go and the orks outshine them massively.

2:46 I will never see the Lord of the Rings the same way again.

That burn bobonga remix at the end... so good!

I would like to point out a huge IP that went the opposite direction with bad results: Disney licensed the Star Wars franchise to EA exclusivly for the last (i guess) 4 years. A decision back then on paper back to give the IP exclusevly to the biggest studio with lots off experience in AAA titles ensuring many great games. In this years EA only managed to get out a few uninspired and very mediocre titles (i have to admit i go by scores here since i can not realy judge them because none of them managed to get my attention). And now EA possibly managed to damage the brand with the disastrous public opinion around the new Battlefront 2.

For the Emperor

You almost lost me with the Blood Bowl comment (love that game) but then immediately won me back again with Total Warhammer. That IS what it's called.

WAS THAT A "FULL THROTTLE" REFERENCE!? MY CHILDHOOD!

2017 "hold my beer", what would 2018 be

What if Disney managed to do this with the Star Wars license?

im glad to see it work out for them. this way they can gather a group they like to work with, with each having very different scopes and styles and swap and change as the need calls for. to be honest im just glad to see geedubs stop stuffing us around, sure not all of it is good but what is good is really good.

"Total Warhammer" THANK YOU! More people better bloody recognize that as THE official name.

Ave Omnissiah.

i wish dnd would use this method

The smol dev character is frickin adorable.

Don't think I didn't notice that Toad. Well played.

*Cough* EA *cough*

As long as they dont try to use recent 40K lore or Age of Sigmar I be interested in their products.

It also helps that GW have taken something a U turn in their games lately, with 40k 8th edition and Age of Sigmar being much more accessible to new users (for better or for worse in terms of the game as a whole)

Did...did you just draw Mark Twain painting a Warhammer figure? I love it.