THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, December 11, 1995 TAG: 9512090048
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 171 lines
REMEMBER THAT famous scene from ``Star Wars'' of the dice hanging from the cockpit of the ``Millennium Falcon?''
You know, the one where Chewbacca hits his head on them?
No?
Well, frankly, you have to look pretty hard for it, but that's exactly what Leslie Burns did, poring over the first of the three ``Star Wars'' movies frame by 70mm frame.
Burns, who works in the art department of Decipher Inc., found it, clipped it and the rest will be history in, say, two weeks or so.
That's when Decipher, a game manufacturer based in Norfolk, will debut what promises to be a customizable card game worth many millions of dollars, produced in six languages over two years from the plainest of storefronts on Granby Street. Han Solo's dice will be on one of the first cards released.
Then you'll be able to see the dice, too. Well, maybe. Maybe, because the first printing of the 324-card game has already sold out, weeks before it is to be shipped.
``It's the first print run that people really want and that's what is going to be huge about our `Star Wars' game,'' said Matt Mariani, marketing director for Decipher. ``Cards have made this company grow from $3 million to easily over $10 million in a year. And we'll do better than that this year. The cards are just phenomenal.''
Decipher is familiar with phenomenal success. It holds card game licensing agreements with the two hottest science fiction properties around, ``Star Wars'' and ``Star Trek.''
Last year, it released the ``Star Trek'' customizable card game, which was quickly snapped up by collectors and people who actually play the game. ``Star Wars'' is expected to be even bigger, because it is, worldwide, the more popular Star.
``Our job is to pull out as much of George Lucas' vision as possible,'' said Dan Burns, creative director of Decipher. ``The details are set in the background. By bringing them to the foreground we are showing fans something they've never seen before.''
The game itself is not simple, but the concept is. It's a battle game for two players, ages 12 and up, manipulating characters and the Force to gain control of locations throughout the ``Star Wars'' universe. One plays the light side (the Rebel Alliance) and the other plays the dark side (the Empire, Darth Vader, and all that).
The money-making part comes here: Out of 324 different cards, each player can use only 60 in the game. The cards are sold in packs of 60 (a starter set) or booster packs of 15. The cards are randomly assorted in the packs, meaning you may or may not get certain cards each time you buy, and you will probably get some duplicates. And the cards are produced in varying quantities. Some will be rare (only a few printed), some uncommon (a few more printed) and some common and easy to obtain.
If you want to play the game, you want to assemble a powerful 60-card deck, so you keep buying packs or trading/selling on the secondary market with other players. If you want to collect the cards, you keep buying packs or trading/selling on the secondary market until you get them all.
``The suggested retail of the deck is $9 to $10,'' Mariani said. ``On the after market, they'll go anywhere between $20 and $50 a deck.
``The closest thing I can think of (for comparison) for this product is marbles,'' he continued, explaining that marbles players (remember marbles?) tried to collect the best steelies, aggies, whatever, before shooting, then traded them and claimed bragging rights when they got an especially good one. Same holds true for the ``Star Wars'' game.
``It's more sophisticated than marbles,'' Mariani said in a classic understatement, ``but it's the same sort of concept.''
It's a complex game, but it only takes 30 to 45 minutes to play once you become familiar with the cards and rules.
Making the cards is also complex.
In an upstairs office in Decipher's building, game designer Rollie Tesh was resting his tootsies one November day by walking in his stocking feet. The other designer, Tom Braunlich, was resting his by remaining seated at the table, where he was busy pasting up prototype ``Star Wars'' cards so Parker Bros., the boxed-game company, could have a look the next day.
Translating the cards into German, French, Dutch, Spanish and Italian may be tricky, because some of the quotes were a little garbled when the movies were first translated into those languages. To keep it consistent for foreign fans, the cards will have to bear the garbled quotes. A bigger problem might be the German language itself, which requires a good many more words and letters to get a point across than does English, and space, while vast in the universe, is limited on a playing card.
Another trick is ensuring that each card interacts in such a way that no one can customize himself a ``killer'' deck - an absolutely unbeatable hand. Tesh and Braunlich enjoy the challenge, knowing that elite card players are out there trying to out-think the game designers and find that killer combination.
Tesh and Braunlich are from Seattle, but they moved to Virginia Beach six months ago to be closer to Decipher. Moving cross country was easier than enduring a 14-hour phone call like they did last year, proofreading their ``Star Trek: The Next Generation'' card game that vaulted Decipher's bottom line into two-digit millions.
They're not proofreading on the phone this year; they're proofreading on Granby Street.
And they're proofing such information as this, on an alien creature card:
``Myo: A regenerating, primitive, violent, desert dwelling, fearless, mercenary-loving, Lirin Car'n-befriending, cyclopian Abyssin from Byss. Calling him `monoc' will start a fight.''
So don't call him (it?) `monoc' unless you've got a blaster handy. That's probably on a weapons card.
And this, on a planet landscape card:
``Yavin 4: Jungle. A Rebel alone here battles at power (plus) 2 and is immune to attrition.''
I don't know. Read the rules.
Lucasfilm, which created the ``Star Wars'' phenomenon 18 years ago, also proofreads the cards, but well before they get to this stage. A Lucasfilm lore expert came to Norfolk to oversee the writing of each card. That writing includes the name of the character or scene pictured, a bit of lore or background information, the kind of play you can make with the card, and a quote from the movie.
Everything that goes on these cards has to jibe with everything that has appeared in every other officially licensed movie, book, comic book, magazine, computer game, whatever that deals with the ``Star Wars'' universe. And there's a lot of it. But there were some empty spots so Decipher made some stuff up, like names of characters and species characteristics, and it was all OK'd by Lucasfilm. Which means that all the info on the Decipher cards is now official ``Star Wars'' lore.
You read it here first.
They had to invent some stuff, because some of the details that appear on these 364 cards were pulled from the deep background of the movie. Like aliens in the shadows of the Mos Eisley cantina. Like a single holographic playing piece lifted from the chessboard. Like Han Solo's dice.
Leslie Burns wasn't a ``Star Wars'' fan when she started this gig, but she is now. And she can quote pretty much the entire movie dialogue. That's after dissecting just the first movie frame by frame. Wait 'til she does the next two.
Over the next few years, Decipher will add booster packs to its card game bearing scenes and detail from ``The Empire Strikes Back'' and ``Return of the Jedi.'' Also from ``Shadows of the Empire.''
What's that? You've never heard of ``Shadows?'' Few people have. It will be a book, comic and computer game meant to fill in the details of what happened between ``Empire'' and ``Jedi.''
``Decipher will create the images on the cards,'' Braunlich explained. ``It's like the movie that never was.''
Decipher also hopes to put images of the new ``Star Wars'' prequels on cards, once those movies are released, scheduled for 1998 or '99. Braunlich hastens to add that they don't know anything about the plots yet. So don't call and ask.
Once Burns had clipped about 900 possible frames from the first movie, they had to be matched to the cards needed to play the game, like vehicles, characters, weapons, planets. If a frame intended to show a stormtrooper's utility belt, for example, actually showed 10 stormtroopers running down a hall, computer artists had to remove the soldiers and touch up the belt. There are lots of little details like that on these cards.
It wasn't easy. Took lots of late evenings and discussion over trivia such as: Exactly how orange is this particular planet? The film itself was surprisingly grainy, so computer artists also sharpened the images, toned down or softened distracting backgrounds, or enlarged details that no one would ever have noticed otherwise.
Like Solo's dice.
The lore box on that card says they're dangling in the Millennium Falcon's cockpit for luck. It's paired with a Solo quote: ``I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything.''
Well, Solo hadn't met Decipher Inc. then, had he? ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
BETH BERGMAN
The Virginia-Pilot
One of the challenges for game designer Rollie Tesh was to create a
game that savvy card players couldn't outsmart.
L. TODD SPENCER
The Virginian-Pilot
Dan Burns, creative director of Decipher Inc., says, ``Our job is to
pull out as much of George Lucas' vision as possible.''
by CNB