As many of you may know, Gundam War (ccg) has been cancelled by Bandai America since December 1st, 2006. However, as some of you may *also* know, the game has a big and growing Japanese card fanbase right here in North America, and the Japanese card game is still going strong, with the 19th Booster coming out around Late August of this year (a new regular Booster approximately once every 6 months, with various other series' coming out inbetween). The Japanese card game has *easily* over 3,800 cards in the 'regular Boosters' alone, and 6,000+ cards in total ranging across all the various card series'.
 
 So with all those cards, and all this popularity, why did Gundam War fail in English?

And what are we doing about it here?


 This will be explained below. Each section has been put in an anchored link so that you may jump to wherever suites you best~

 1. What are we doing here? What is this Project all about?
 2. Why did Gundam war fail in English with such an extensive North American player base already established?
 3. What can we do to help?
 3.a Project Details Explained.
 3.b Recources that need to be gathered and positions of people that need to be filled.
 3.c Means and sites by which we can use for resources and information (including trading sites).
 4. Flexing Our Collective Muscle: What we need to do to bring the game back, and When!


 1. What are we doing here, and What is this Project All About?
 This project, which I have dubbed 'Operation: Revolution Star', is aimed at getting Gundam War back in English!

 There are various factors to consider in why this game failed in English before, and how it was handled that caused the errors, so we're working to hammer out those problematic aspects and bring the game successfully back in English, where I *know* it can and will be a success!

 Bandai has said (recently) that for this game to be 'viable' (make enough money to keep around) it would have to sell out 15,000 ~ 20,000 boxes per series (at 12 packs per box). That tells me there's a chance, and there's Hope!  Now breaking that down, a 12-pack box of Gundam War in English, going according to past prices (Binding Fate), could cost about $40.  If you multiple $40 x 15,000 ~ 20,000, you get a realy high number.  But I'm not going to depress you with that; rather, I'm going to break it down in simpler terms: 5,000 - 7,000 players, on average, buying 36 packs per series.

 Now that sounds alot easier than raising $600,000 to $800,000 per series, neh? :] 

 Bandai America, realisticaly, wouldn't be releasing a series any sooner than once every 6 months (or once every 4 months, if Naruto somehow fails) simply because of how much work would have to go into it. Already they have Naruto (one of the top-5 card games in the Industry right now, according to Bandai America), and that has roughly 120-ish cards per series. Then they have 'Ben 10' with it's 80 cards, and they're 'restarting' Digimon as a card game sometime, probably for the Fall when Savers / Digital Data Squad premiers dubbed, and a series of  Digimon has had, historicaly, about 60-ish cards per Booster. So, realisticaly, Bandai *can't* spend too much time recreating 200-ish English cards from scratch more than once every 4 - 6 months right now.

 So given that, there should be a space of about 4 - 6 months between Booster releases. If a 12-pack box of cards costs around $40 and there's a new series every 6 months, that's like a player spending $20 a month (on a single series of cards) just to keep the game alive. If it's a new series once every 4 months, that'd be like spending $30 a month (per series) just to keep the game alive. Now, of course, there will always be players who spend more and spend less on the game than that per series, but if you take into account the number of players that there is and average out the totals, we *could* easily average out to about 36 packs per person per series (I think).

 So now, the problem of player Numbers: How many players are there, and how do we get more?
Bandai has stated before that the first 2 series of GW in English had both sold out of their production runs, and the 3rd series was getting pretty near to that point. The series' were being released 6 months apart. I also *vaguely* remember it being posted by a SuperMod on Bandai's official GW message board that there's about 100,000 packs per series (with 10 cards per pack), which means 8,333 boxes, approx., at 12 packs per box. That number is a little over half of 15,000, and the player base has been growing since then, not to mention the amount of people who didn't even know the game Existed in English before until after it was cancelled.. 


 2. Why did Gundam War fail in English?

 The answer to this question, when broken down, has several component factors, but mostly breaks down to: A lack of Advertizing, and a Lack of Availability.

 You see, way-back-when, Bandai America released their own 'original' Gundam ccg called 'MS War' (which was apparently based on Gundam Wing, and also apparently wasn't all that great... ). I have had Gundam War players tell me that they, at first, didn't bother even looking at the English Gundam War ccg  because they thought it was another MS War and would rather not go near it. They then later found out about it being Gundam War, ported over in all it's glory, and started buying the game.

 There wasn't enough advertizing to properly inform and reach the already-established Gundam War playerbase in North America and tell them about Gundam War being ported over in English! This resulted in a lack of sales, especially early-on when the game needed it to keep itself sustained (cards that sit in the warehouse and don't move costs the company money because they're taking up the place of something that *can* move that can bring money in faster. Besides that, bills tend to need paying on a monthly bases, and if you can't pay them you either lose money, or pay out of your pocket and lose money for other projects, or run into debt.. ).

 Another aspect was the lack of Availability: The game was restricted to 'hobby-stores only', and that plus the lack of advertizing realy hurt the game... Apparently, Naruto was restricted to hobby stores only at first to, but had higher sales than Gundam War did in it's early time. This stands to reason because the fans of the Japanese Naruto ccg were eagerly awaiting the ccg, and it was released around the same time as the dub aired on Cartoon Network (which was the highest-rated show of the entire week, according to CN) to give it that extra 'oomph'. It also didn't have a screwed-up card game going under the 'Naruto' name that had been previously released and chased away the fans -so that was a good plus too.

 That being said, some people didn't have *access* to the GW cards either because of the lack of a local hobby store, and no credit card to buy Online with (and no viable means of transportation on any sort of regular, consistent basis, to get to a store that *did* sell Gundam War). This is a problem especially out in the Western United States, apparently, which is also where the fanbase for the Japanese Gundam War is growing considerably... 

 The solution to this? The game should have been released to *all* stores -hobby And large chain stores- so that people could have access to the cards, and just having the cards sitting on the shelves for people to see would have been a form of advertizing in itself to let people know that the game is here and in English. 

 Bandai didn't take into account MS War and the effects it would have on the Gundam War player base in general. In short, Bandai America didn't do it's homework (a trend I see increasingly as the Digimon card games go on...).


 3. What can we do to help bring Gundam War back (in English)?

 Advertize. On a most basic level, that's it. :] 

 But then the question arises: 'How, Where, and with What?'  If the English game is sold out now, and out-of-print, what do we use to advertize with?

 Good question, and here are some answers:

 1. English Cards (for those who still have them).
 2. Japanese cards (rough translations for most of them are available, and so is the Japanese Rulebook).
 3. Scanlated cards (more on this in a moment).
 4. Gundam War Online:

 Thanks to the efforts of Kyle81 (for those who remember him) and Stationsig, among others, both Japanese and English cards for Gundam War have been put into an online-gaming program called OCTGN ( / Octagon ) for people to play online with~ There are currently over 2,000 cards available through the program, and all of them have English translations.

 http://invasionx.com/gundamwar/ 

 OCTGN seems to work best on *at least* a Windows NT or XP, but players without a Windows operating system can always still use real or scanlated cards to play through Instant Messengers and such online~ (that is, until a Mac and/or Linux conpatible system comes up... maybe in OCTGN version 2.0? )

 As an alternative to that, there's also the Dueling Arena mIRC channel that will be available on my site (browser-viewing compatable), for all those who want an alternate form of playing online~ ;p

 However, for getting people *into* the game, it might be best to use use Real / Scanlated cards for promo and demo-ing... (unless, of course, the person is online to begin with~ ;p ).

 On that note, 'Dramatic Booster 1: One Year War' is now scanlated in a v1 state (not our final product, but it's there and available through both the 'downloads' and 'Gundam War' pages on this site). We will be releasing a v2 'soon', but not before Dramatic Booster 4 (and then we'll be doing Set 16, which has a nice variety of all the colours in it~ ).

 'Translation inserts' will also be available for the Japanese cards, for those English players who want to use Japanese cards without using translation sheets~ You'd just have to slip the translation sheet between the face and card sleeve of your Japanese card, and there you go!

 That covers most of the 'How' aspect, and 'With what', so now let's look into 'Where':

 Anywhere that you can (reasonably). ;]  Play Gundam War publicly (preferrably with a friend) so that people can see you're playing the game and watch and/or ask questions. (It's always more convincing when you're playing with someone else to advertize the game than if you're playing alone... playing alone asks the question of 'Is the game realy good if he/she can't even find an opponent to play with?' ) 

 Something people tell me is the game plays like 'Magic:TG' (so for getting fans of Magic into the game, it'd probably be best to tell them that the game plays similarily, so that they can have the basic flow of the game and factions worked out easily, and then tell them of the differences to Gundam War that makes it unique. :]  ).

 If you find people buying (or looking at) Gundam products, try striking up a conversation with them and asking them if they know about the card game (and/or if they play card games). Don't try to be pushy, though, like a salesman trying to push a sale.. The last thing this game needs is people pushing the cards and game like they're advertizers desperate to make a sale. you want to *draw* them into the game, not Push them into it... That way, if people come in of their own free will and stay because they love the game, we have a consumer we can rely on to buy cards, and a new opponent to play with. Often times people get put off by people being pushy about something, and then even if they *would* otherwise have enjoyed it, the first initial experience with a pushy/desperate person could have ruined it for them, and they may not get into it for *years* (if ever). So don't be pushy, please. If the person isn't interested, the person isn't interested. 

 Other than that, if you still want to help, there's always alot of 'background' work that needs to be done... further explained below: 

 3.a Project Details
 One of the reasons why Gundam War failed in English was due to messed-up card text. Not all of the cards were 100% exactly translated, and the Rulebook in English wasn't either... (the Rulebook in the 'Now and Forever' Starter box was partialy incorrect, and had to get a v2 as an online downloadable .pdf file. However, *that* was checked over by a Japanese player and still apparently had errors in it... not to mention that some of the effects used on Japanese cards are missing from the Englush Rulebook... ). For complete rules, you can go here:

 http://invasionx.com/gundamwar/index.php?board=3.0

 I *will* eventualy be putting the rules on my site here in an online-readable format, but probably not anytime soon (at least not for the next week, or so... )

 So one aspect of this project is to translate *all* the cards and get them 100% correct for English-language playing, so that they can be used as a resource to check against the official U.S. cards for erratas and stuff (preferably before those cards go to print, like the Mods were allowed to do in the old days.. ).

 Another aspect of this is to get the translated card information indexed, preferably in a searchable database kind-of-way, so that checking up on a card can be easy and quickly done. We're also planning on having *all* the Japanese cards scanned and uploaded so that they can be viewed too (as part of the searchable database thing).

 At the moment, I'm looking to get my site reformatted to a database format for card pages, and such, and plan on uploading all the card scans to be viewed from here. However, I may not have enough space and bandwidth for all this... at least not for the next little while. We *do* have access to a server that's much bigger than the one we're on, with vastly more space and bandwidth, but we need a decent interface program to use the thing (and that would cost more than the current server costs to buy or rent one... so we need one that's good and/or cheap, unless more people sign up for hosting from us so that we can bring in some extra funds.. Feel free to e-mail me about that through the Contacts page -link to the left- and put 'UltimateDigimon Hosting' in the subject line. You don't *need* to be a subdomain on ultimatedigimon.com, if you're questioning that -you can use your own URL, if you have one, and just run the content off our hosting.) 

 3.b Resources and People Needed to Help! 

  Card Scanlation 
 We could always use more people helping out with the card scanlation.  :]  

 What we have need of right now, greatly, are Editors and Straighteners.

 Editors apply templates, where needed, and edit the translated card text onto the cards (which is pretty easy if you know what you're doing, and doesn't require any sort of fancy editing programs, although they would help you and make the work quicker... like Photoshop or something. But it *is* possible to edit the cards in something simple like MS Paint.)

 Straighteners are basicaly people who tediously straighten the card scans... It can be done with a program like IrFanView too, which is free to download.It's a Windows-only program, but something like that for Mac should exist too...

 It's a long, mostly boring process, and requires a good eye. Straighteners don't have to be perfectionists, but it may help. ;]  This is something that has to be done at the most basic level of scanlation. If the cards are straight, when the text gets edited on it makes the jobs easier for the people in post-editing who make sure the cards look pretty and do any post-editing that is required. It also prevents the cards from looking sloppy. ;] 

 Card Scan Providers!
 We already have access to *alot* of card scans, and have multiple people scanning cards for us from different series, but we don't have Complete Sets of almost *anything* ><;  I'll be putting up a list shortly of what all we need from which series', and what resolution we need them in. All work will be credited, although permissions for the use of your scans would be helpful to include... we need to know what all we can use them for, and who all else can use them too (we frequently share card scans with the Online GW project too, as it benefits both of us to do so).

 Card Translators! 
 Baron's site is arguably the most complete GW Japanese translation site, with many, many series translated. However, that kind of speed from only 2 people (Baron and Spikes) sometimes causes errors to occur... (we're all only human, after all) and neither of them have tons of free time, so the checking process is going slow...  So we've been working together with them to get a completly 100% correct translation for every Gundam War card -worded as best we can for English reading and playability- for us to use in the Scanlations and for the OCTGN project.

 So far, we have 2 other people helping us: Zeta_Gundam and Kurono.

  Zeta_Gundam
 A top-of-the-line English-Language student who is both translating and re-wording the cards for accurate gameplay. His work in invaluable to our respective projects.  :] 

  Kurono
 "I'm JLPT1 certified. Currently helping the site doing correction on the errata, as and when I'm able to. ... I would suggest people to get the correct translation from this site. Which I aim to make it happen in due time, as I help to fix up the errata, which are already existing. Its not easy, but I believe with everybody's support and help, we can do it.

Why am I doing so? ... I believe to make GW an International Globe Game, we must have the correct common language, which is the correct translation of card Text."

 (excerpt taken from his introduction on the GW Online site, linked above)

 However, as Kurono said, we need *everybody's* help. If you can translate Japanese into English, are are willing to help us, please do. :]  We could use all the help we can get, and the faster the cards get translated with 100% accuracy, the better it is for all of us. (If your work needs to be checked over, for whatever reason, don't worry -as long as you can contribute *something*, we're grateful. :]  ). 

 Other than that, pretty soon we're going to be needing people to input card data.

 That, and we need Researchers! Look for online Gundam War sites who don't know about our project yet, and Spread the Word! (Don't be pushy, though)  Also, we could use links of all the Gundam War sites out there to put on the links page. Get everyone linked from a central location to spread the news and help people find each other~ ;p 

 Anyone interested in joining the GW Online project as a helper can volunteer here:

 http://invasionx.com/gundamwar/index.php?topic=13.0 

 Anyone who wants to join our Group specificaly, to help out with scanlation and the 'card database' project, can apply here:

 New Recruits:
 http://www.phpbbcity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=53&mforum=crossbonegundam 

 The main page for the Crossbone-Pirates and their forum (where our scanlation group is based out of) is here:

  Crossbone-Pirates:
 http://www.crossbonepirates.blogspot.com/ 

 Forum 


 3.c Resource and Information Sites: 

 Resource sites we're using, at the moment, include:

 Baron's DM Comet
 http://dmcomet.net/gwcomet/ and http://dmcomet.net/ 

 Gundam War Central (one of the best sites on the internet for questions about the game, and translations)
 http://s11.invisionfree.com/Wargames_Central/index.php 

 (sign-up required to view the board)

 Gundam War Online
 http://invasionx.com/gundamwar/ 


 More sites for trading will come soon, as we find them. There will be a General 'Links' section as well at some point, as we find more sites. :] 


 4. Flexing our Collective Muscle: 

 Bandai has stated that for the game to be 'viable', they need 15,000 ~ 20,000 boxes (12 packs per box) sold.

 We have already detailed and outlined the problems, as well as given possibly solutions, for the Advertizing and Availability issues in the game -except the issue of people without the means to buy from Online or Hobby stores.

 The Reason people can't usualy buy from online stores is the lack of a credit card. However, a site called CCG Armory ( http://ccgarmory.com/ ) allows people to pay by money order~ (money orders can be made at banks and post offices by just about anyone~ ).

 We are currently working a deal with them to be the Online Store people go to when we make our move with Bandai. However, they said that they might be blamed for false advertizing and fraud if they take orders for a game that doesn't exist anymore... So we talked to Bandai again, and are awaiting a response from them on whether or not this game will *actualy* be brought back if we can get enough orders in... (if They aren't willing to bring it back, I'm sure another company will~ Or at least we can have the scanlations to work with. :] )

 More word as it happens!


 In the meantime, here is our Basic Master Plan:

 Bandai's financial year begins and ends on December 1st (the day the GW ccg board was deleted, for those who can remember). The original plan was to present our idea to them around October of this year (2007) and then flex our muscles between then and mid-November to give them some incentive to Bring the game Back! ...However, due to needing CCG Armory on board, we've had to speed up the process and let them know some things right now... So we're just waiting for their word on whether or not they'd be willing to bring the game back if we get enough orders for it in. :] 

 On that note, if they say 'Yes', then we want the entire fanbase who wants this game back to place pre-paid orders for a New Series!  :]  (this would happen around October - November, which gives enough time for them to decide before their financial year on whether or not to bring the game back)

 But please, don't order more than you'd be able to realisticaly pay for from a single series... They need to know that there is a *consistent* consumer market out there, and having people saving up for 6 months over the summer and then suddenly dropping a massive order for a series wouldn't be realistic in terms of cash flow for a series, and would give a false impression of what kind of sustainable demand there is for the cards per series as a whole. Even if you *want* more cards than what you can usualy pay for, and have the money to pay for them right then, please refrain from ordering those extra packs you want until a series is confirmed and printed, please.  :] 

 Remember, bills need to be paid on a monthly basis, so if you can't drop that amount of money for *every* series consistently whithin the first few months of it coming out -enough for Bandai to cover their bills- it's realy a false impression that could effect the entire fanbase as a whole, not not get more than 1 series printed (if even). So please, we're aiming for the long run here, not just a single, new series. for that we need sustainability.  :] 

 Thank you for your time in reading this,
 and if you have any other questions, please feel free to use the Contact page on the left!~

 Thank you,


 -CyberDramon