“Jackal ignored him, throwing his arms wide in a mock flummox. ‘The name escapes us. Anyway, he’s some inbred, overstuffed sack of shit that weds his cousins, fucks his sisters, and has small boys attach leeches to his tiny, tiny prick.’”
In “The Grey Bastards” by Jonathan French
Didn't Warcraft come about because they were originally developing a Warhammer game, then lost the license before publishing? Yes. Do we need another Warcraft book derivative with half-orcs and shit like that?
Claims:
Many spin-offs or Plan Bs have become much bigger than the Plan A:
- The Playstation became much bigger than the N64, for whom Sony were developing a CD drive before they had a bust-up and Sony decided to do their own console
- Warcraft/WoW became many, many times bigger than Warhammer
- "Assassin's Creed" was initially created as a Prince of Persia game but converted into something that became ten times as big as its origin franchise.
- "Star Wars" was what George Lucas created when he couldn't secure the rights to "Flash Gordon". Guess which IP is bigger now?
- Hasbro/Tomy created "Transformers" as a response to the Bandai "Robo Machines/GoBots" toy range, and were accused of ripping them off. Thirty years later, Robo Machines are pretty much forgotten, and Transformers movies make billions.
- "The Hunger Games" lifts very obviously from "Battle Royale", but THG is now a worldwide IP titan whereas BR is now thought of as a well-regarded cinematic footnote.
- "Mac and Me" became far more famous and successful than E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial, and is now one of the most highly-regarded movies of the 80s.
- Do we need another Warcraft book derivative with half-orcs and shit like that?
One of the above-mentioned claims is false. Care to guess which one...?
Coda:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
This book is crap
And the sequels will be too.
NB: This world seems to know no CGI-battle (the book equivalent I mean) saturation point. It'd be cool if this book were just about some orc refugee rambling around the landscape, eking out a living on the edges of the conflict zone, maybe falling in love with a human refugee and the whole thing going down with zero scenes of violence, some Orc-philosophy shit and inter-species love on top pf everything else. It's hard these days not to thirst for violence-, foul-mouthing- and conflict-free books; they're such a rarity.
