Punishment for Greed: Space King Shows Games Workshop How to Do Animation

The result of Games Workshop's aggressive policy towards fan content creators is Space King. This is a parody series based on the grim Warhammer 40,000 universe from the YouTube channel Flashgitz. It focuses on the local version of Space Marines and their attempts to correct their own mistakes. How? By bringing good and causing joy, of course — in the most brutal and cute senses.

War with Free Advertising

The grim Warhammer 40,000 universe is vast. Numerous factions exterminate each other for the amusement of the laughing gods. The war has been going on for tens of thousands of years, and mountains of official books are dedicated to it.

Those unfamiliar with the franchise are sure that this is a world of the future where fantasy races shoot each other in space. Those who have begun to delve into the plot will say that the world is full of nuances and will learn with interest the features of the factions involved in the global conflict. Veterans who have been studying the universe for years will declare that this is a world of the future where fantasy races shoot each other in space WITH PARTICULAR CRUELTY! They just already know that delving into all the details and the constantly changing canon is harmful to the psyche.

It is safe to say that the universe is very interesting and fascinating to study. Numerous fans created content in the form of videos, drawings, and modifications for games with enthusiasm alone. Thus, they gave Games Workshop a huge amount of advertising, which played a significant role in popularizing the franchise.

But Games Workshop wanted more! The company tightened the rules for fan content, which forced many authors to delete their works or stop releasing them, fearing lawsuits. The goal of this behavior was to create the Warhammer+ platform, where, in theory, controlled content creators were supposed to bring even greater profits to the overlords. The result was much weaker than what people created for free.

Initially, the Flashgitz YouTube channel released videos where Space Marines from the Black Templars order fought with a community of Slaaneshi (hedonists) in fluffy animal costumes (furries). After massive raids, the Space King project was created, which differs from Warhammer 40,000 enough to avoid lawsuits from Games Workshop.

New Grim Universe

The authors jokingly stated that they created the project for "sick-in-the-head boys and thirty-year-old geezers." In Space King, attention is paid to explosions, destruction, and bloodshed. The source of chaos is psychowarriors – armor-clad Juggernauts from the X-Men, analogues of Space Marines.

Although psychowarriors are similar to Space Marines, they have significant differences:

• Space Marines are severely trained from early childhood, after which they undergo modifications. Ready-made Space Marines produce gene-seed — the rarest resource that is needed to create super-soldiers;

• To create a psychowarrior, you need an ordinary boy. Holy globules are implanted into the boy, and after a few seconds he turns into a full-fledged super-soldier. At the same time, his memories are replaced. If the holy globules are destroyed, the psychowarrior dies forever.

Psychowarriors are divided into legions and perform specific tasks. Among their ranks are commanders, warriors, medics, engineers, and chaplains who monitor the spiritual development of their brothers. The symbolism of psychowarriors is made in the form of a disfigured mask of hatred – it is placed on armor, weapons, ships, titans, and even displayed on explosions of superweapons.

Although psychowarriors are physically healthy men, psychologically they remained at the level of boys. They destroy aliens by the trillions for fun, fool around, and generally complicate the lives of those around them with their idiocy. Due to the lack of a self-preservation instinct, the holy globules of psychowarriors are constantly destroyed, which leads to a slow decrease in the number of super-soldiers.

Psychowarriors fully live up to their name. With rare exceptions, they know no pity, logic, or common sense. They are constantly looking for enemies to destroy – if this is not done, then the super-soldiers will literally die of boredom.

Sacred Scavenger Hunt

The plot of the series is built around the personality of the Space King. In fact, this is the local version of the Emperor of Mankind. The difference is that the Space King did not ascend to the Golden Throne, but disappeared – presumably during a cigarette run. Psychowarriors are religiously loyal to the Space King and eagerly await his return.

A group of main characters is tasked with finding sacred artifacts that the Space King interacted with in the past. Legend has it that the Space King will return when all the artifacts are collected. From the outside, it looks more like the giant skulls watching over the psychowarriors made up the legend in order to use the inexhaustible energy of their charges for a useful cause – the extermination of enemies and victims of humanity.

The main characters combine the task with entertainment, and during the search they look for someone to shoot, or make the color of their lasers a cooler shade. The most frequent opponents for them are aliens, who are divided into bloodthirsty monsters and pathetic punching bags.

One of the episodes showed AI. In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Artificial Intelligence is called Abominable Intelligence. It got this name because in the past it almost successfully exterminated all of humanity. In the world of Space King, AI is naive and dreams of learning to be human, and the main characters showed amazing solidarity. They taught him hatred!

The Christmas episode showed psykers and renegades. Psychowarriors exile their brothers who did not fit into the team – all sorts of alien-loving perverts, or capitalists. The psyker turned out to be a psychowarrior named Rudolph, who used his big red nose to read minds.

Diagnosis

If you compare Warhammer 40,000 and Space King, the latter is much simpler and more straightforward. However, the new grim universe is well thought out and developed enough for fans of simple violence and humor to enjoy. And the quality of animation exceeds almost all the crafts that Games Workshop puts on Warhammer+ – another proof that you should not cut the branch you are sitting on.

At the moment, each episode collects millions of views. Netflix has already become interested in the series and offered to buy the rights to it, but the authors decided to remain independent. Now they send to each such proposal an animated image where a character named Hatemonger tears the "cave of low harmonies", or, more simply, the ass, of an anthropomorphic remote control. Only hatred for corporations, only hardcore!