LucasArts Run by "Psychopaths"

Couchpotato

Couchpotato

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Two links about the studio Free Radical and there relationship with LucasArts. The article answers many questions about LucasArts and there horrible publishing.

Maybe now people can stop blaming Obsidian for how KOTOR 2 was rushed and in the process ruined. Seems the force is not strong with them.:lol:

1 http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/117088-LucasArts-Run-by-Psychopaths
2 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-05-04-free-radical-vs-the-monsters

After key people left, the executives killed all game development.

Back in the heyday of the 1990s, LucasArts was one of the good guys. Titles like X-Wing, Jedi Knight and Monkey Island were pillars of PC gaming, but then something happened. Star Wars Battlefront, an FPS with third person elements released in 2004, was an extremely successful game for LucasArts and the 2005 sequel performed equally well. But after Jim Ward left the company, the plans for a technically ambitious Battlefront 3 from the British studio Free Radical went sour. Free Radical bosses David Doak and Steve Ellis say every effort was made to sabotage development by the people running LucasArts in 2008.

"We went from talking to people who were passionate about making games to talking to psychopaths who insisted on having an unpleasant lawyer in the room," said Doak.

"For a long time we talked of LucasArts as the best relationship we'd ever had with a publisher," said Ellis. "Then in 2008 that disappeared, they were all either fired or left. Then there was a new guy called Darrell Rodriguez, who had been brought in to do a job and it was more to do with cost control than making any games. And the games that we were making for them were costly."
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Looks like a perfect proof of my philosophical theory :

"If you stop looking at gmes as games and begin treating them as mere tools for getting money into the firm, they cease to be games anymore. All that's left of them are - just tools for getting more money into the firm.
Thoughts are manifesting themselves through the way you handle things."

Seems that they've absolutely replaced creativity with accountancy.

Good riddance, LucasArts.




Bottom note : Cost controlling is - in my opinion - usually a hint towards personal greed of the persons at the top. Because managers usually own the biggest stack of all shareholder value certificates.
And the less the costs, the higher the profits => the higher the personal shareholder profits.
 
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This is not the first time something like this happens. GRIN went under due to their dealing with Square-Enix. They were working on a final fantasy-related game, and after a while Square-Enix started coming with unreasonable and often contradictory demands. According to GRIN's CEO, Square-Enix started to claim that the game "did not look final fantasy enough", and that was they reason why they would not pay GRIN, until they fixed the problem. After several rejected attempts, GRIN just sent in a screenshot from a Final Fantasy game, and it got rejected "as it did not look enough like Final Fantasy". Square-Enix clearly changed their mind about wanting the game to be made, but as they were contractually obliged to fund GRIN's project, they started to look for loopholes in the contract, much like Lucas Art's did here.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110474-GRIN-Alleges-Square-Enix-Forced-It-Out-of-Business
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/05/29/grin-founders-say-square-enix-turned-their-smiles-upside-down/
 
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In the earliest entries of the "non-blog" of Swen Vincke of Larian Studos, thre was such a tale of a company simply ot wanting to pay a a developer studio, possibly hoping that it may run aground, and later perhaps buying theior assets and brands.

I think it was poted in the news here last years.
 
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Wasn't there a change in the management a few years go ? I mean - they finally did a remake of Monkey Island ...
 
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