With the Shadows experience now ten years behind him, Roffman is able to look at the campaign more objectively -- a campaign he feels was a success both artistically and professionally. "It was a good story and the products around it were great, so I felt really good about that. The book did really well, and the game did enormously well -- it became our most successful game at that time." Roffman notes, however, that the staggered release of product compromised some of the campaign's initial punch. "It didn't gel the way that we originally planned. The book came out really early, the toys kind of trickled in over the summer, and the game didn't come out until the fall. It worked, but in a different way than we were expecting."
Roffman was able to learn from the Shadows experience, and continues to utilize lessons gained from the "movie campaign without a movie." "I've learned that it's good to get these different media working together, and that's actually a lesson that we've continued to apply in various ways with coordinating our book, film, video game and toy releases. Now, we're going to have a new playground which is very interesting between Episodes III and IV. The beauty there is that you have at least 20 years to play in.
"Obviously, you've got the same constraints as before," he continues. "You know what the situation is when Episode IV opens -- and you can't do anything that violates that. You know that Luke is off getting raised on Tatooine, so you can't really involve him in any of the adventures. So we're all playing with that for something next year, and ultimately George is going to play in that sandbox too."
Roffman feels Shadows was a grand experiment that succeeded on many levels, and provided a compelling new way to serve up the Star Wars universe to its fans. "It was very empowering," says Roffman. "It was the idea of wanting to pull everyone together behind one story, and that was the first time that that had ever been done."
