Ever since Disney Lorcana was first revealed ahead of last year’s D23 Expo, one of the most popular topics of discussion among fans is debating which characters will appear in the game. Disney is a vast media empire that has spent the last decade gobbling up smaller studios and expanding its IP library so significantly that it now owns everything from 12 Years A Slave, to House MD, to Dog the Bounty Hunter. And while we can be fairly confident that Napoleon Dynamite isn’t getting a Lorcana card of his own anytime soon, there’s still a lot of gray area. How far into the Disney vault is Lorcana going to reach?
Our first clue came from a press release issued by Ravensburger on August 31, 2022. In it, Disney’s vice president of product design John Balen is quoted as saying “Our dedicated Disney product design team has enjoyed collaborating with Ravensburger and our Walt Disney Animation Studios partners to create a unique Disney experience for fans of all ages to take home.” This narrows down the scope significantly, but not completely.
Walt Disney Animation Studios, also known simply as Disney Animation, is the core animation studio that has created shorts and feature films since 1923. It has gone through several name changes throughout the decades, but it is the studio behind the Mickey Mouse shorts that started in the 1920s, and all of the classic Disney films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, up to this year’s Wish. The vast majority of cards from Disney Lorcana - The First Chapter are based on movies and shorts produced by this studio.
That accounts for almost every card, but we already have an exception. The Musketeer cards, like Mickey Mouse, Musketeer, are based on the 2004 direct-to-video movie Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers. This is not a true Walt Disney Animation Studios-produced film, but a Disneytoon Studios film, a division of WDAS known for direct-to-DVD and theatrical adaptations of Disney Channel shows, such as DuckTales the Movie and A Goofy Movie. We are deep in the weeds now, and it’s still fair to say that the Musketeer cards are based on WDAS characters, even if this specific film it draws from isn’t a true WDAS film, but it’s still important to recognize that, even in the first set, the ‘rules’ might not be as rigid as they seem.
When it comes to discussing which character will or won’t be in Lorcana, it’s easy to mistake that for a conversation about which characters Lorcana is allowed to use. Disney owns the rights to its characters, and it has agreed to license them to Ravensburger to use in Lorcana. Some limit must exist with regards to what characters and film Lorcana has a right to use, but no one outside of Ravensburger and Disney knows what that licensing agreement includes, and probably never will. Just because Lorcana is sticking with characters born from WDAS films for The First Chapter doesn’t mean those are the only characters it’s allowed to use. In fact, according to Lorcana brand manager and co-designer Ryan Miller, the narrow focus of the IP used in The First Chapter is a creative decision.
In my interview with Miller for Lorcana Week, I asked why he chose not to include other Disney IPs, like Pixar movies, in the game. The video of the interview is embedded above, but I’ll post his full answer to that question here:
“We decided that we wanted to focus on the animated features and the shorts and start from there. We wanted to lay a strong foundation. One of the things you need to do when you bring someone on a journey is that they need to trust you first. On any kind of journey you can think of. If you’re going along with somebody on some unknown path you gotta trust them a little bit.
This is something I learned as a DJ. I used to DJ clubs in Seattle, and one of the things I learned with that job is that you’d find these songs and think ‘Man, I love this song, it’s so good, but no one knows it.’ You just want to play it, because you think they’re going to love it, but the problem is if you play it too early they don’t trust you yet. They’re like, ‘What is this song? I don’t know it.’ So the early part of the night at a club you actually want to play stuff you know they’re going to like because they know it already, they know the words. What you’re doing in that process is gaining their trust so you can then take them on a journey.
Later on in the night, you can play those songs and they’re in now. They’re like ‘This is cool, I trust you. I’m going to go with you.’ That’s what we hope to do with Lorcana. We want to gain that trust before we take you on that journey.”
Miller is explaining here in no uncertain terms that the decision to only feature WDAS films was a creative one, not one mandated by Disney or the limitations of Ravensburger’s licensing agreement. Maybe this is the line he’s contractually obligated to give; a creative way to reframe the subject and avoid talking directly about business deals with Disney. Developers have, on occasion, lied to journalists for the sake of maintaining mystique, after all.
But, ultimately, this is the co-designer of the game explaining a creative decision he made, and whether or not you think there’s more to it, it does make a lot of sense. Containing the focus of the game helps Lorcana establish an identity and gives the designers something to build towards. It only includes the characters and movies that people are most likely to be familiar with already. Regardless of the why, this seems like the right decision for the game.
Miller leaves the door open for Pixar, and Gargoyles, and [insert your favorite hyper-niche Disney IP here]. His DJ analogy is all about playing the hits first - the classic Disney films everyone knows and loves - so that eventually he can give us the weird, random, underground stuff too. With four expansions a year and 204 cards per expansion, Lorcana is going to grow quickly and expand in a lot of unexpected directions. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before Buzz Lightyear and Lightning McQueen appear in the Inklands, Miller just wants to make sure they get the party started right.
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