How LucasArts Fell Apart

Here's an interesting behind-the-scenes article about the fall of LucasArts:

http://kotaku.com/how-lucasarts-fell-apart-1401731043

They cover the demise of SW1313 in some detail. It's pretty much a lesson in how not to run a game development project or company.

“It never felt like people at the top cared about making great games,” said another person connected to LucasArts. “A lot of awesome projects never went anywhere because, ‘it’s not gonna make enough money.’”

Typical for this industry - as a whole.

And confirming my theory that games have basically become "tools for gaining profits", not games anymore.

This is one of the reasons why KickStarter is amazing.

It's amazing, really. Why would LucasArts need the likes of Disney and EA in the first place? You'd think George Lucas and LucasArt would have more than enough enough money from the Star Wars movies, their former games and all the merchandise to be able to take some risks in actually releasing a game instead of constantly redesigning them and then axing them.

Originally Posted by PetrusOctavianus
It's amazing, really. Why would LucasArts need the likes of Disney and EA in the first place? You'd think George Lucas and LucasArt would have more than enough enough money from the Star Wars movies, their former games and all the merchandise to be able to take some risks in actually releasing a game instead of constantly redesigning them and then axing them.

It is a lesson on how not give a failed MMO dev a third chance, Bethesda is giving this guy a fouth chance with Elder Scrolls Online. He screwed up DAoC, Warhammer Online, now SW:ToR and next Elderscrolls Online.

Originally Posted by PetrusOctavianus
It's amazing, really. Why would LucasArts need the likes of Disney and EA in the first place?

One Star Wars collecting site probably nailed it down a few days ago :

"Lucasfilm is part of the problem."

There were weird decisions coming from the company itself. And even in recent times.

Why did it fail?

Well because most sw games kind of sucked.

All the sw fans I know loved x-wing series, jedi knight series and kotor series, but lucas arts just kept relasing crappy arcade sw games. And kotor was turned into risky MMO. People cried for sequel to Revan's storyline, but hell why bother listening to sw gamers. What do they know…

As hardcore and nerdy as we sw fans are, we aren't idiots. I love sw. Just put me in a jedi robe and hand me a lightsaber and I feel like a kid in candy store. However I can't stand crappy videogames

Make no mistake I admit enjoying some of their lighter arcade games like force unleased a bit, but the game could have been so much better if it had been more "realistic" and less flashy. SW is such a vast and rich universe, yet majority of the released sw games were quite shallow.

And acording to the article devs wanted to make those complex sw games, fans desired… The openworld rpg idea for example sounded awesome, but like many other sw projects it was cancelled..

Lucas arts had many other great franchises, but they stopped using them. Outlaws for example is considered a cult classic in fps genre, yet Lucas arts didn't bother making a sequel.

And lets not even talk about the wasted potential of adventure titles they had in their portfolio.

Originally Posted by Dez
Outlaws for example is considered a cult classic in fps genre, yet Lucas arts didn't bother making a sequel.

It is banned in Germany, by the way. Or was until a few years.

I got actually sick when I played it, I couldn't stand the in-game geometry graphics. That's a rare thing, but it does happen. Modern games have a more "natural" geometry.

In my personal opinion one of LA's biggest mistakes was not to do any Adventure games anymore - and then nothing but Shooters instead.

They failed to deliver what the buyer wanted , and continued to make one mistake after another. It's no surprise they got sold off and shut down.

the article indicates that George was often part of the problem, requiring changes in the game that set back development for months. At the same time he was a creative individual that could keeps the suits from releasing a dumb game.

But I think theiring lies the problem: it got too big. One game was ready to get hundreds of people on board to finish it? Does that even make sense?

They had the sequel to Sam and Max practically finished, a small game with not many numbers in comparison to anything Star Wars:* but who cares? Small just means profitable. That had to have been a political decision to hang on to resources and push others they didn't like out. ie. too big.

I mean, missing out on a remake of DotT? For me its a hard game to play but its one of the many successes of the early studio that George stressed: IP, IP, IP.

They cancelled this Sam & Max game because someone told them that ALL european adventure players had died out.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
They cancelled this Sam & Max game because someone told them that ALL european adventure players had died out.

they cancelled Sam & Max because Max tried to push a red lightsabre between the ears of the head of marketing.

It's a shame, I was looking forward to 1313.

An short article : http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/2…o_lived_it.php

My favorite Lucasarts game is actually one that wasn't even mentioned in the article… Gladius (for the PS2/Xbox)

It isn't because the article is about the early days of LucasArts …

It seemed to me that LucasArts started slipping badly from crazy management around the time the SW prequels came in. There was that huge push to make a load of games for those awful movies and almost all of them were mediocre. The people who made the LucasArts / LucasFilm Games classics started leaving in the late '90s too.

Oh well. It's a real bummer to hear what the crew went through trying to make interesting new games. It must have been absolutely infuriating to have suits periodically come in and tell you to start over again and again with random new ideas.

I really loved the early star wars games such as x-wing vs. tie fighter, Dark Forces, and Dark Forces II - some really fun games. But for a long time now, I've been uninterested in most star wars games, with a brief exception to lego star wars which was fun at the time.

I found it sad that they had moved more and more to consoles. And away from the PC platform. BUt, in a way that was like going back to their roots, because their very first games were never available for PC, either (Ballblazer, Rescue On Fractalus, The Eidolon).