WARS Radio/Episode 4 transcript
Decipher WARS Radio Episode 4 (16 July 2004) carries the second part of Mark Tuttle's interview with Warren Holland, on the five factions of WARS TCG and Decipher's plans for the property, followed by listener email and news. Participants: Mark Tuttle (host), Warren Holland.
Source: Ep. 4 - Decipher WARS Radio (16 July, 2004): Holland Interview Part 2 and a Gongen Big Reveal!, Player's Council, YouTube (uploaded 15 May 2022; originally released 16 July 2004).
The text below is from the video's automatic captions, corrected for names and card titles; it has not yet been checked against the audio. Words that could not be made out are marked [unclear].
Transcript[edit]
[00:03] Mark Tuttle: Welcome, everyone, to week number four of Decipher WARS Radio, a web radio program devoted exclusively to the Mumon Rift WARS TCG, Decipher's latest and greatest trading card game, which is set for an October 6th release. I am your host, Mark Tuttle. Big show for you today, folks. We've got some news of the week on the way, got a great Big Reveal this week, so get your pencil and paper out and get ready to write down this web address. Also, we'll read some emails, and we'll do a correction from last week's WARS Radio, so that'll be exciting.
[00:27] Mark Tuttle: Right now, though, let's continue our interview with Warren Holland. Warren is the Chairman and CEO of Decipher Incorporated. Last week we had a great talk with Warren; this week we shall continue. Warren, welcome back to Decipher WARS Radio.
[00:39] Warren Holland: Ah, thank you. Nice to be here.
[00:41] Mark Tuttle: A lot of great comments on last week's interview. You told us all kinds of great stuff about the origins of the Mumon Rift WARS TCG, the storyline and all that stuff, and people are excited about it. They're really looking forward to seeing that.
[00:52] Warren Holland: So are we.
[00:53] Mark Tuttle: Now, WARS—the first, the Star Wars CCG—it was about battle, it was about conflict, it was about the Star Wars—
[01:00] Warren Holland: Correct.
[01:01] Mark Tuttle: —good versus evil. In the Mumon Rift WARS TCG, or WARS TCG, we're introducing five factions that all have their own agendas, their own reasons for wanting to fight one another. Where did you start creating the conflict here?
[01:12] Warren Holland: Well, we started by doing a lot of background research, and we also hired Mike Stackpole to do some background writing for the story. But we have a whole team of people here that are involved in this process, and the concept was to create factions that have very unique personalities to them, but also are on equal footing in terms of all the war and battle and stuff that will happen in the gameplay.
[01:37] Mark Tuttle: Is anyone evil?
[01:39] Warren Holland: Oh, yeah, sure. Really. Yeah, there's good and evil spread throughout the game, and we have a whole series of heroes and villains. The rift itself actually is the dramatic element that allows us to bring all of these things to light. The rift enhances the kind of inner light that all of these characters have. So if you kind of lean toward the light side, all of those characteristics of that character will get enhanced. If you lean toward an evil side, all those characteristics might get enhanced.
[02:18] Mark Tuttle: Now, an interesting trend that I've seen on the message boards, and in emails I've gotten from listeners of WARS Radio, is the assumption that the Quay are monsters and that they're evil, because they're ugly, because they are the monstrosity. And it's an interesting sociology experiment, but that's not exactly true, right?
[02:39] Warren Holland: No, actually, the Quay have the same kind of mixes of personalities that the other factions have. In fact, the Quay are, in terms of a reference, very similar to, like, the Apache Indians, or very similar to the Israeli special forces, where the race itself was enslaved by the Shi for a long period of time. So they have a whole bunch of revenge that's kind of building up in their belly. But they are kind of evil-looking, and they are monsters. So when they make their way into our solar system, by that time they've built up an awful lot of rage, so it's got to go somewhere.
[03:20] Mark Tuttle: Right. Give us your thoughts on the other four factions.
[03:23] Warren Holland: The Earth faction is kind of the cradle—Earth being the cradle of civilization—where all of the humans had kind of left the planet and were inhabiting Mars and inhabiting the outer rim of the solar system. And Earth has turned to a very corporate environment. The military is corporate; there's one corporate government that controls the planet. There are sections of the planet that are damaged and uninhabitable. So it's kind of a sense of control for Earth; that's really their motivation, bringing everybody back into the seat of Mother Earth.
[04:02] Mark Tuttle: And everybody would include—
[04:04] Warren Holland: Yeah, everybody would include the Gongen, which is a renaming of the planet Mars. Mostly Asian influence. Mars had been settled for about 200, 300 years. This faction was really looking for independence and had declared independence from Earth, so battles had ensued between the Gongen and Earth. And another faction that is kind of related to that, that's also human in some sense of the word, is the Mavericks, which are basically living in the outer rim beyond the asteroid belt. And Mavericks are people that were living on the fringe of society: very tattooed, there's a lot of genetic engineering in the faction, very individualistic. You get some senses of gambling and mafia, and just that freedom and independence and that spirit. And the Mavericks have actually been involved in creating some of the conflict between Earth and the Gongen, and also then just kind of taking over when Earth and Gongen could not support a lot of the outer-rim facilities, taking over those facilities. So you have three factions—the whole solar system is in battle.
[05:19] Mark Tuttle: Okay. And then the rift opens, and into that comes the Shi.
[05:24] Warren Holland: Exactly. And actually not just the Shi, but the entire planet of the Shi moves in.
[05:30] Mark Tuttle: It's like a big mobile home, sort of.
[05:32] Warren Holland: Yeah, exactly. Like a Winnebago towing Grandma behind it. They come through, and they are followed by the Quay, who are actually enemies of the Shi. The Shi are a very advanced race: high technology, very explorative. They have been using rift technology for thousands of years, and they are advanced in the same way that you would think of maybe the Roman Empire being advanced, where they had gone out and captured and enslaved other races—the Quay being one of them—over a period of centuries or thousands of years. And they have a very sophisticated technology, but when the planet moves through the rift, there's a lot of damage to the planet, so a lot of their technology is damaged. So it kind of brings them down, in a sense, to the level of all the other factions in terms of their powers.
[06:29] Warren Holland: The Quay, who have been enslaved by the Shi for a long time, are following them through the rift, you know, for revenge. The Quay really no longer even have a homeland. They come into the rift and actually take over an Earth space station in a very short period of time and set that up as a base. And there, like I said, their motivations really are revenge, so they are kind of in this place of taking that out on everybody that's here.
[07:00] Mark Tuttle: Let's shift gears just a little bit. We've heard all this great backstory. Now, how will that affect the actual playing of the game? Will story drive the game? Will the game drive the story? What kind of balance is Decipher going to strike?
[07:12] Warren Holland: Well, a little bit of both. The story is being developed as a broader property, not just for the TCG but for other projects that we'll be doing. As we move through the process of developing more and more of the story of WARS, and more and more of the gameplay of WARS as other expansions come out, we're actually planning on using some of the stuff that happens in the TCG to help guide us in terms of the story itself. So we'll see some influence of the story controlling things in the game, and we'll see some things that happen in the game controlling some of the story aspects.
[07:46] Mark Tuttle: Will fan input be any part of that whatsoever?
[07:48] Warren Holland: Absolutely. It already has. Actually, you know, we have message boards that are set up now that are very active. I'm out there reading them; all the guys in the development teams are out there reading them; marketing people are reading them. So we're very connected to the customers, and a lot of things that customers are saying are influencing what we're doing right now in the game, and certainly we'll do that in the future.
[08:08] Mark Tuttle: And I think I might be the first Decipher employee that has appeared as a character in a fan-based story.
[08:13] Warren Holland: Could be.
[08:14] Mark Tuttle: So, number one, I get to sign off on that action figure, right, Warren?
[08:18] Warren Holland: That's correct.
[08:20] Mark Tuttle: Do you anticipate collectors being attracted to WARS TCG? What would a collector find in these packs?
[08:25] Warren Holland: Absolutely, that's going to happen. The art that's being created for this project is just fabulous. We have an entire series of outside artists that are working on this project. Decipher has been known for the creativity in our art department for years and years, and all of those internal talents are being applied to this project. You've been down and seen some of the stuff that's pasted up on the wall—
[08:52] Mark Tuttle: Absolutely.
[08:53] Warren Holland: You see what's happening in terms of the art. But when you look at the backgrounds of all of this stuff, and you start seeing the card forms develop and the packaging develop and the individual images develop, and all these things start coming together, they come together in these cards that are just really precious works of art. They're just amazing works of art, and I think collectors are going to respond to that enormously.
[09:18] Mark Tuttle: All right. Now, a question I asked you a couple of weeks ago off the air—you've had plenty of time to think about this now. Of the five factions we've talked about, which would you live in?
[09:29] Warren Holland: Oh, I think my personal leanings lean toward the Gongen faction.
[09:34] Mark Tuttle: Oh. I anticipated you would say Maverick there. [Laughter]
[09:38] Warren Holland: No. There are some elements of that in Decipher, I think.
[09:41] Mark Tuttle: I was wondering if the Mavericks were based on the game studio guys upstairs.
[09:45] Warren Holland: No, not really. But they're based on a lot of kind of individualistic people, and we have a lot of those around Decipher.
[09:52] Mark Tuttle: Sure. If the game takes off, where could this go? You see it being developed as a property?
[09:58] Warren Holland: Yes. Absolutely, from the beginning it's being developed as a property that we can take in a lot of directions, and of course a lot of that will depend on how successful the game is and how successful the acceptance of the property is. But we have plans for licensing for this product. We either plan to license or do some things like graphic novels. We'll do a lot of stuff on the website. You had talked about action figures, and that's certainly a possibility at some point down the road. We are talking about the possibilities of TV and film. So there's a lot of energy around what's happening with WARS right now, and we'll see how that stuff develops as we go. But the TCG is the driving force of creating the property, and it's a very unique way to create a property. It gives us a lot of dynamics that just wouldn't happen if we created this on our own, outside of the TCG.
[10:55] Mark Tuttle: But right now the effort is to make a great trading card game.
[10:57] Warren Holland: Absolutely, and it already is. We have a gameplay that people love, and the guys have been working diligently for months and months and months in terms of refining, and all the customers are on the message boards putting input in, in terms of what they like and what they don't like, and that process is going to yield, I think, one of the best trading card games that ever existed.
[11:17] Mark Tuttle: August is going to be a very busy month for us here at Decipher.
[11:20] Warren Holland: And for the fans that are already calling us. Those fans are going to start seeing a much bigger flood of information coming out of us, in terms of art and story and details and tournaments. At conventions we'll be doing gameplay. We've done some playtests outside. We're very close to doing a large playtest inside, where we bring a lot of people in from different areas. And as we go to different conventions, people will get to see more and more of the aspects of the game. Sometimes they'll be focused on art, sometimes on gameplay, sometimes on story, but a lot of information is going to be flowing out.
[11:58] Mark Tuttle: Sounds good. So, you writers out there, your assignment now is to write a Gongen story with Warren Holland as a central character.
[12:05] Warren Holland: Oh, please, spare me.
[12:07] Mark Tuttle: Warren, we expect you to come back in here before the October release.
[12:10] Warren Holland: I'll be happy to do that.
[12:11] Mark Tuttle: Warren, thank you for joining us.
[12:13] Warren Holland: Yep.
[12:14] Mark Tuttle: All right, moving along: it's time for email. [Music] If you'd like to get yours in, and maybe get it right on the air and win a great prize if we pick you as the email of the week, send it to wars.radio@decipher.com. This first one is from James Marshall. James writes: "Okay, Decipher, here's my question: are you open to bribes? Because if so, I think I could find enough people who feel strongly there should not be a four-card limit, or any card limit at all. Just thought I would let you know. Aside from that, I respect all of your decisions for this game." James, I can tell you that we will address the four-card limit very soon; details on that coming up in just a couple of moments. But a technical point here, James: you could possibly have been the email of the week, but you mention a bribe and then you don't actually offer a bribe, so that kind of excludes you from letter of the week. Sorry about that.
[13:11] Mark Tuttle: All right, next one. This is from Marian [unclear] from Poland, and Marian writes: "Decipher, I'm curious about a few things. As I understand from information about WARS TCG, players will play only one [deck]. Will it be possible to have a game of Earth versus Earth? So what about uniqueness of characters and starships? How to cope with situations when using generic characters?"—somebody fighting with their copy of the character is what he's trying to say here. Basically what we're going to do—and Tom Lischke talked about this on his designer's chat on the message boards earlier in the week—is that we want you guys to play with the cards that you have. So if you're sitting down playing against an Earth deck and somebody's playing the same cards as you, that's okay. If you need an official line on it, we can say clones, we can say anything like that, but you'll be able to play your cards against somebody else's. So, Marian, thanks very much for that.
[14:00] Mark Tuttle: All right, letter of the week. This is from Scott Reed. Scott writes: "I'm in the process of scheduling my events for Gen Con and notice the WARS TCG preview session is listed as running from 11 a.m. on the 21st to 1 p.m. Can you give us some details on how the preview is going to go?" All right, well, I'm going to do pretty much a whole show, probably in two weeks, on the events happening at Gen Con. Again, the preview postcards are out there in the marketplace right now. They're showing up; they're up on our website now, so you can see what it looks like. That preview postcard is your invitation into this special event that we'll be running at Gen Con from 11 until 1 on that Saturday, the 21st. You definitely want to be there, folks, because you are going to see and hear all kinds of great stuff about the Mumon Rift WARS TCG. So, Scott, good question, because it allows me to promote stuff. I'll set you up with a great prize, Scott, so you just hang tight for that.
[14:44] Mark Tuttle: All right, Big Reveal of the week is coming up in just a moment. First, though, let's do some news of the week. I wanted to tell you about WARS in the media—who's got the good stuff. Here are some issues to look for coming up in the next couple of months. InQuest Gamer, of course a great magazine: you're going to see some more stuff in upcoming issues 113 and 114. Scrye number 75 is going to have some good stuff in it. But Lotus Noir so far is going to have the best stuff: their first North American issue. If you've never heard of this magazine before—there was a French version of this, then they went to the UK, now they're coming over and doing a U.S. version, and the first issue they are going to be giving out at Gen Con. How about that? And they're going to have just a huge spread on WARS TCG. So if you're going to Gen Con, you're going to want to make sure you get your hands on this. If you know somebody that is going, make sure they get a copy of Lotus Noir magazine at Gen Con, because that's going to be some good stuff.
[15:38] Mark Tuttle: All right, also a correction from last week, on news of the week: the August POP kits for the Platinum retailers. I had mentioned that there will not be demo decks in there, but they'll come later. Actually, we've changed things around: the demo decks for WARS TCG will be in the kits that will be sent to our Platinum retailers at the end of August. So if your retailer is not a Decipher Platinum retailer, you need to go tell them to get on board the program. They can sign up at decipher.com. So again, Platinum retailers will get all kinds of great WARS stuff at the end of August, and the Silver Preferred retailers can order that stuff from our retail website. You can have those retailers contact me, and I'd be happy to point them in the right direction.
[16:16] Mark Tuttle: All right, Big Reveal for this week, folks. Get ready. We've got another piece of art, and despite what some cynics on the message boards have been saying, it's not another piece from the preview postcard. This is a nice piece of art from the Gongen culture. Of course, WARS TCG has space battles—you've got to have spaceships, right? So check this out: www.warstcg.com/Articles/Article.aspx?ID=351—forward slash, Articles with a capital A, forward slash, Article with a capital A, dot aspx, question mark, capital I, capital D, equals three five one—and you will see a never-before-seen piece of artwork from the Gongen culture. There you go, that's your Big Reveal for this week.
[17:15] Mark Tuttle: I've got to say, I'm really proud of you guys, because I asked you last time not to post the link up on the message boards, and you guys didn't do it. That was terrific; thank you so much. Again, don't post this, folks. Why? Because we want them to listen to WARS Radio. All right, here's the promo for next week, folks. We've got a lot of big things on next week's show. We'll have a playtest report from the in-house playtest that is going on at Decipher right now—there are actually playtesters roaming the building; it's kind of frightening, actually. Plus, the Big Reveal next week will be art from the Shi faction, and Tom Lischke from Decipher Game Studio will be here next week. We're going to talk gameplay, we're going to talk about uniqueness, we're going to talk about the four-card limit and all that good stuff. That's coming up next week, right here on [Decipher WARS Radio].