While the RPG department at Decipher gains momentum by the day, it looks like their CCG department is having its legs cut out from beneath it. On the company’s website today, Decipher CEO Warren Holland provided extensive quotes from a July 2000 presentation made to Lucasfilm executives. The quotes were “provided simply as an indication of what Decipher wanted to do for our customers in the areas of Marketing and Public Relations, Digital Cards, Star Wars CCG 2nd Edition and more.” The final few sentences of the presentation quotes are particularly interesting:
Lucasfilm can achieve all its goals for this category and more by embracing Decipher as a partner and not abandoning two of the strongest brands and game engines in the CCG industry. Imagine for a moment that our competitor chose a strategy of abandoning Magic: The Gathering… It’s silly brand management. Yet Wizards is asking Lucasfilm to do just that with Star Wars CCG and Young Jedi.
Our customers feel ‘ownership’ of these games… In fact, our customers have nearly a quarter of a billion dollars invested in our Star Wars CCGs. How can you abandon that?
[Lucasfilm did not grant the license extension to Decipher.]
Sounds like we’re just now hearing that license negotiations back in July of ’00 didn’t go so well for Decipher, and WotC may be to blame. To repeat, Lucasfilm has decided not to renew Decipher’s CCG license past the end of this year and Decipher’s current manufacturing and sell-off period is through April 30, 2002
Mongoose Goes On Crusade
Mongoose Publishing just won’t rest. As if they weren’t releasing enough major projects next year, Crusades of Valour: When Gods Collide has just been announced. The 128-page sourcebook will be written by Paul Cockburn and have cover art by Chris Quilliams. According to a post on the mailing list, the book “will introduce religious crusades into any campaign world. Huge, kingdom-sweeping wars erupt as religions clash, knightly orders engage in deadly combat and even the gods themselves may walk the world in order to galvanise their followers into final victory.” Several new knightly orders are promised to be in the book, which is scheduled for a March 2002 release.