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I have a strong hunch that the response to "Have you played Scrolls?" would be "What?" "You know, Oblivion/Morrowind/Daggerfall" (choose the right one) "Oh yeah I've played that, maybe bit too much."

That's a good point... maybe my prompting question was wrong. "Are you familiar with Scrolls lore" or "Scrolls style of play?" or "Do you like the Scrolls games?" maybe better options so they are grouped.

I've only ever heard it referred to in the plural sense as 'elder scrolls' series, across quite a wide variety of people. This is from casual players, console version players, d&d geeks, as well as the hardcore modding communities. In almost all cases someone refers to a specific game by its subtitle though, and noted above.

I'm not sure many people would realise what you meant if you asked "Do you like the Scrolls games?", whereas s/Scrolls/Elder Scrolls/ and you'd have much higher recognition. I might try asking a few people and seeing how it actually works out, but IMO the names are sufficiently distinct as to not cause confusion.

Hmm, then I retract my assumption that "Scrolls" was clear, I was under the impression that to some extent it was similar in clarity to saying "Warcraft" and people generally knowing what you mean, or saying "Warhammer".

Thanks for the clarification.

None of those things have ever been said. Cf. my other comment.

As others have said, nobody ever refers to them like that. They might say, "did you like Oblivion", or, if they're gamers hanging out in a gaming-specific forum, "are you a fan of TES?" Never, ever, have I heard anyone refer to the games as "Scrolls". It's simple not done. In the same vein, you would never refer to gcc as "collection".

Same here. Calling it just "scrolls" sounds horribly wrong and I've done a lot of gaming. I can't imagine being confused by this.

I think this is a total waste of money and wish they'd taken Mojang up on that offer to play a game for it.

Can anyone point to any comment, prior to this lawsuit nonsense, where someone actually referred to any game or the series as just "scrolls"? In all the comments over this, not one person has done that. And it's a huge internet, so someone, somewhere has probably done that. But everyone I know will say Elder Scrolls or ES or TES or Morrowind or what have you.

This seems reasonable to me... like if I created a new game called "Warcraft" that let you build siege weapons and launch attacks against castles filled with orcs. I would fully expect Blizzard to come after me.

Yes, if you create a game with the exact same name as Blizzard's and with very similar gameplay, expect to see a trademark dispute. This, however, is not the guess with The Elder Scrolls series and Scrolls.

Just to echo the other commenters here, I've only ever heard the series referred to as the "Elder Scrolls" games.

Firstly, nobody refers to either any Elder Scrolls game or the series as "scrolls", it just doesn't happen. Secondly, the Elder Scrolls part of the name tends to be subordinate to whatever the name of the current game is. These both make it extremely, extremely unlikely that anyone would ever seriously confuse Scrolls as being a Bethesda game within the Elder Scrolls series. Thirdly, the games are nothing alike: Elder Scrolls games are first person single player RPGs, it's similar to Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption, and Grand Theft Auto, except in a medieval fantasy setting; Scrolls is a multiplayer trading card game with "tactical" elements, it's similar to Magic: The Gathering, Culdcept Saga, or Yu-Gi-Oh, nobody could possibly confuse the two even if they only managed to see 10 milliseconds of game play.

The only people who could conceivably be confused into accidentally buying Scrolls when they meant to buy Skyrim would either have so little idea of what Skyrim was or so little grasp on reality that they would be equally likely to buy Halo or a bag of M&Ms.

This lawsuit is like if Blizzard were to sue the company that makes "Raft Wars" because it was infringing on the "Warcraft" trademark.

>"Have you played Scrolls?" most people would realize you were talking about ES.

False beyond imagination. You're clearly not a gamer or a fan of the series, I've been playing it and involved in the community for the ES games since Daggerfall (1996).

Not once, in any forum post, usenet post, or BBS have I ever seen someone refer to the series or an individual game from Bethesda as "Scrolls", nor has it ever been part of their marketing or branding.

This is like Microsoft claiming you can't use the word "soft" in your product because someone might once have referred to their brand as "Soft" without the "Micro".

Just ridiculous.

Chris, your point was strong enough without the bile.

The bile makes people think twice before making assertions about things they know nothing about.

Truth and how it gets publicly propagated is more important than either of our egos.

Spend some time on Wikipedia, and you'll see what happens when ego wins over truth.

> if Bethesda doesn't defend their claim on the "Elder Scrolls" name, they can lose it.

Only if there's a chance of the usage being misleading. Otherwise the usages are supposed to co-exist.

Anyways, the scrolls they refer to are actual scroll objects. They aren't using it in the slightest bit creatively.

A trademark on a game called 'The Sword of the Kingslayer' might conflict with another game called 'Spell for the Kingslayer', as they both follow the pattern '_ of/for the kingslayer' and kingslayer is a relatively unique word. Sword and spell are not.

> if I created a new game called "Warcraft"

Did Mojang create a game called TES: Oblivion? No.

So the appropriate analogy would be you creating a game called 'War', a generic thing not invented by Blizzard and not in any way exclusively associated with their games.