Last week at the Tokyo Toy Show, I finally got to meet Steve Warner, where we chatted about Lorcana 1 year in and more!
Thank you for agreeing to chat! Originally I had given up all hope on getting to meet you face to face this year so it was a very pleasant surprise for me to find out that Lorcana would be a part of the Tokyo Toy show. Welcome to Asia!
Steve Warner: Thank you, very excited to be here.
Lorcana just celebrated its one year anniversary, congratulations!
You are definitely a lot more busy now that we are past the 1 year release mark. I recall back in the first chapter you participated in store events, and you had to make time for players (like me) who kept bothering you with ruling questions, keeping you up at night. Thank you so much for all the time and sleep you gave up for us.
Can I ask 1 year in, what has changed for you or the team in general? Are you a lot more busy with all these events you have to attend?
Steve Warner: Definitely a lot more busy. When we first started, It was Ryan and myself, and we had 1 play tester eventually. And now I have a team of 6 designers and we have 12 developers / play testers. We are adding a bunch more to that so it’s become a much larger team than it used to be.
Also before, we were just where we were, there was no public yet. And so now, we have where we are in the office, where the public is, and now we also have where Asia is. It’s a lot to keep track of.
The timing of the announcement for the upcoming release in china and Japan definitely feels like a fantastic way to celebrate Lorcana’s one year anniversary.
The product info for the Japanese release has led to some players wondering though. Is there a reason for the redesigned booster packs to only have 6 cards?
Steve Warner: That one is a bit of a challenging one. I think the best way to put it though, is that each market needs to be treated differently. We can’t treat it as a one size fits all, and we can’t treat it as, you have to take it the way that we feel it should be. We have to adapt to the markets wherever we plan to be, and this is just one of those cases where we adapted.
I have another question that is kinda related to the China and Japan release. On behalf of all my homies back in Singapore and the rest of Asia I do have to ask, are there more regions in the plans for Lorcana, maybe in the upcoming year?
Steve Warner: I don’t have any information on the future releases. We want this to be a world wide game, that’s what I can say.
Thank you, that’s very assuring. In your recent interview with TheGamer, you had mentioned that Wall-E is your favourite Pixar movie.
Totally not creating expectations for Lorcana, since you already said your favourite movie. Can you give us your second favourite movie for Pixar and why?
Steve Warner: I would need to see the list because there is just so many good Pixar movies. Obviously Toy Story needs to be there right? It’s such a fun story of people starting out as enemies and becoming friends, and a lot of the toys remind me of my childhood. It just does such a good job of bringing all of that back.
And for my very last question of the day, to answer a burning question of mine and many others in the community. This needs to be answered or otherwise your cow could face dishonor. So, when will Mushu finally enter the realm of Lorcana?
Steve Warner: That is one of those future questions, we can’t talk about Bruno!
