Kyrt wrote:
I am reasonably sure that the transition of the department itself from Fanatic Studio to Specialist Games studio was made after the EA release. Part of the confusion is because there had been a “Specialist Games range” for quite a while and it even had its own website as far back as 2002/2003,
At some point they did stop using the Fanatic nomenclature and became known as just Specialist Games, largely I suspect because the website moved from a “/fanatic” section of the games-workshop domain to its own specialist-games.com, which initially had the same content but then switched over to the new design when it was ready. I am pretty sure this switch was in 2005. If you think about it, this is like Forge World - the website and the division being one and the same.
And yes “specialist games studio” was commonly used to refer to the division/team rather than the range of games. The team themselves did continue to refer to themselves as Fanatic though - in the Swordwind introduction they still have the address as Fanatic even though the website is specialist games.
It was a bit different from that, but yes, the change was after the release, and there was a duality in naming conventions, so the time and way the ''Specialist Games'' words were used is confusing, but on the other side the words ''SG Studio'' are used nowhere:
-
http://www.specialist-games.com/epic/ first article is from 15th of April, 2004, as part of Games Workshop website accessed through
http://uk.games-workshop.com/specialistgames/. Still no mention of the ''SG'' words anywhere besides the Url. What i do not know is how long it went on, so probably that's the transition you mention around 2005 when they moved to the final version which lasted till around 2014.
- There is an older website from at least middle-2003 at the same
http://www.specialist-games.com/epic/ made in advance for the release of EA.
- On at least 2002 they had
http://www.games-workshop.com/40kuniverse/epic40k.htm as the Epic (40.000) website, besides or before
http://www.epic-battles.com and the others used for EA.
- The forum at
http://www.specialist-games.com/40kuniv ... ult/forum/ where all development for EA was made was closed a few months before the release on 27th of July 2003 and /http://forums.specialist-games.com/epic/ was created. At a certain point in 2004 this second one was replaced with another but i am not sure on the details.
- But the announcement that Fanatic was going to close wasn't made until the 11th of November, 2004, around two months before Swordwind's release, and there is no mention of a new Studio being created but instead insist they will be completely absorbed by the main one and only a few employees will work on the games they did till that point. It was at this time when Jervis stopped using his
fanatic@games-workshop.co.uk e-mail in the signature, personal e-mail, and as contact info to change it to
jervis@games-workshop.co.uk, and begun writing the words ''Specialist Games range'' for the first time.
- On WD (but only on UK one), from at least May 2002 onwards but not in 2001, Specialist Games and
http://www.specialist-games.com/ are mentioned, but not a Studio or a miniature range.
- Epic40k magazine begun to show
http://www.specialist-games.com/ instead of
http://www.fanatic-games.com for contact on early-middle 2002 but not a SG Studio or a SG miniature range are mentioned either.
- From at least since around 2003 onwards, the Specialist Games section of the store was up, at
http://uk.games-workshop.com/storefront ... nav=300808, but there is only mention of a SG range, and not of a SG Studio again. No mention of Fanatic either.
- Curiously, there is no mention of a ''SG Studio'' even on the 2005 Catalogue, but ''SG Range'' appears and with a logo. By the way, I see no SG Studio logo on Lexicanum which makes me think there wasn't.
So to summarize:-
http://www.specialist-games.com/ as a url for the games Fanatic worked with existed since at least 2002. Pages for each game using that Url exist since at least 2003.
- The words ''Specialist Games'' have been used by GW since 2002. Fanatic, besides the Url part of their websites did only from November 2004 when it announced it was being closed.
- The words ''Specialist Games Studio'' haven't been mentioned anywhere even in SG publications till at least 2005 but haven't checked further, and Jervis insists they will be merged with the rest and no new sub-studio part of the GW one is being created. Sincerely i am beginning to think the SG Studio is half a myth and a recent creation, so till then it was people that got randomly assigned to those games when they were needed and only till they finished with the task.
It could be that the full move did not happen till 2005? Maybe, but it is pretty sure it begun before.
This stuff is no doubt totally boring to most people here but it's my kind of nerdy topic.
You're probably right that there was no concrete organisational structure (in the way they used "Fanatic Studio"). It definitely started out as a term for the range of games, the "specialist games range" which is why there was a marketing website for them during the "Fanatic era". Similar to how "epic-battles" (system) was the earlier brand given to the related Epic games (SM & TL) that tied them together I guess? I would need to trawl through the Firepower, BFG and Epic Magazines to find specific references more extensively, BUT I am reasonably sure that articles, forum posts, news articles or such did start to refer to "Specialist Games" in the context of not only the games but of the people, perhaps like "the fine folks in our Specialist Games division". It could be a phantom memory though! In any case that doesn't necessarily mean it was an actual 'department' (and I didn't mean to suggest that), just a label for the people who work for GW who had some connection to those games that tries to make it sound more grandiose than it really was. Let's face it, GW HQ is not huge so they might not have really had an 'official' name at all and most likely the team names are rather more prosaic, but if you wanted to refer to the people responsible for Epic once they stopped using "Fanatic" - even if they only ever worked on it part time - it makes sense you'd use those words or similar. Bear in mind that they might have closed the 'studio' but people were still working there, models were being sold and they released an updated rulebook PDF in around 2008. I've worked in plenty of places where people referred to organisational structures that didn't technically exist in any budget or management structure. They exist in the lexicon as long as they are meaningful to people, whether inside or outside of the company. There's probably no such division as the "Legions Imperialis team" either but people might still refer to the sculptors, game designers etc involved with it that way.
Just to clarify the 2005 date i mentioned, this was just when the specialist-games.com website content was refreshed, carrying new branding. That fits with your date of when the announcement about Fanatic was made at the end of 2004. Before that, as you say the domain had existed for quite a while (and the terminology before that) but initially what they did was move the content from games-workshop.com/fanatic onto specialist-games.com during the development of the new website. So it's simply a reflection of the fact that Fanatic stopped being a recognisable thing, not
when another 'studio' took over.
![:{[]](./images/smilies/headbang.gif "Headbang")
Again, starting with SM1 in '89 ... I am far too old to start another round. Plus I've got far too many Epic/6mm Sci-fi to finish up before I'm recalled to the mothership. 
