DESIGN DIARY - 12.21.00

Milady

She has the most extensive collection of Decipher cards in the world.
I mean whole rooms full of cards. Hundreds of thousands of pasteboards at her disposal.
And she's giving it all away.

Jennifer Ketterman is our Customer Service Manager, and part of her job consists in replacing damaged cards. Chances are that at some point or another you've dealt with Jennifer. Perhaps you needed a card of yours replaced; maybe you won a contest and sent your coordinates to Decipher so that you could receive your prize; or maybe you just had a question for Customer Service. But no matter what aspect of Customer Service was concerned, Jennifer is most probably the one who took care of it.

"I joined Decipher four years ago," says Jennifer.
[This is precise enough for me. But Jennifer is the kind of person who inspired poets of old to craft words like "meticulous" and "systematic."]
"My first day here was December 29th, 1996."
[See what I mean?]
"I got here just a tad too late for the Christmas party, but that's okay."

Jennifer was hired as Decipher's receptionist, and soon moved on to become the reigning Queen of Customer Service. And over the course of her tenure here, she has be around many hardcore gamers (most of which work in her department, present company included) who have trapped the normally game-less Jennifer in their devious nets. "I've learned to play the Tribbles 4-player game and Young Jedi," confesses Jennifer with a laugh, "but I wouldn't dare approach Star Wars CCG and Star Trek CCG." Game-wise, that is. Because Jennifer might not know about the rules, but she sure has mastered all there is to know about the cards.

There is one more game Jennifer has learned to play, of course: Jedi Knights. "Part of my job also involves explaining the basic concepts of the game to the people who call me for information," Jenny says. "So I pretty much need to know the game inside and out."

And then, there's the replacement of cards. With Jedi Knights, Jennifer is busily sending out replacement cards before the Premiere set has even been released. "The Vader's Lightsaber cards from the Star Wars Trilogy video boxed set are starting to trickle in, and I'm sure I'll get more and more of them as we move forward toward the release of the game," she says. "I just need to stay ahead of it!"

Now replacing a damaged or misprinted card is usually pretty straightforward: Jennifer goes to her huge - and I do mean HUGE - cabinet, opens the appropriate drawer, reaches toward the cards she has meticulously sorted days, weeks, months or even years before, and removes a copy of the card she needs to replace. But with Jedi Knights, things will get a little more interesting. Because of the stereoscopic pairs, you see. "Rare cards will be marked with a little 'L' or 'R' next to the expansion icon," Jennifer explains, "which indicates whether the card is the left or right half of its stereo pair. That will be my salvation."
I can see Jennifer, walking around with a stereoscope crazy-glued to her forehead, trying to determine what card to send back. That would be worth a picture on decipher.com.

Feel free to contact Jennifer if you have any Customer Service questions about Jedi Knights - or any other Decipher CCG, for that matter. You can reach her at (757) 664-3600 extension 131, at CCGcustomerservice@decipher.com, or go straight to her Customer Service online window. But gameplay questions will go unanswered, even if you include a bribe.
Don't even try.

Francis K. Lalumiere
The Juggler