R.I.P Lucasarts

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Well, its official, the Lucasarts team are no more, Disney has closed the Lucasarts studio and laid off the deveolpment staff. From this point on Lucasarts will be nothing more than a name stuck on the boxes of games deveolped by other companies.

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/lucasarts-star-wars-games-maker-211609670.html

http://www.gamesradar.com/lucasarts-closed-disney-shifts-focus-licensing/

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/walt-disney-shut-lego-star-194849940.html

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/disney-kills-off-lucasarts/0113508


Gone but not forgotten.

 

Flame suit on, but....honestly, good riddance.

I say this as a long-time LucasArts fan; a man with over a dozen Lucasarts-developed games in my warchest (ok, dust-collecting cardboard box of old games).

I've been a willing victim of the George Lucas crappy merchandise ponzie scheme since, basically, infancy. And as such, I've bought a lot of games simply because the Star Wars logo was slapped onto it. Many of these games were magnificent. But even then, the best Star Wars titles - Old Republic series, Jedi Knight series, X-wing series, the LEGO series, Galactic Battlegrounds (yes, I realize it's basically an Age of Empires II mod, but whatever, I loved it) - were all licensed titles where another studio was the driving creative force. For every one of these good titles, LucasArts cranked out dozens of shovelware sh*t shingles that shamelessly cashed in on the Star Wars brand while offering a barely playable, sloppy experience. Starfighter! Super Bombad Racing! Yoda Stories! Rebel Assault! Barf.

Basically, it made them (or at least the bean counters they answered to) incredibly lazy. They knew they could take a dump in a box, slap the Star Wars logo on it, and at least make double their budget back. It is under these conditions that creativity and innovation die on the vine.

Disney will never allow Star Wars games to disappear, so now they can shift the LucasArts brand identity into simply a licensing operation, and allow studios to compete for the chance to crank out new titles in the universe, which will only serve to benefit the fans (EA meddling notwithstanding). Sure it means fewer Star Wars titles overall, but quality always trumps quantity.

I feel bad for the people who lost their jobs, and I hope they land on their feet. But otherwise, I'm doing an Ewok Yub Jub dance about it all.

 

The starwars games were never my big thing, I I'm more of a fan of the adventure games like Grim Fandango, Loom, manic mansion, day of the tentacle, monkey Island, and Sam and max.

Those games will always earn Lucasarts a fine place in my memory.

 

Emphasis mine. And they are still going to do that. The only thing this changes is that Disney won't be making the games. They will still sell the licensing rights to other game developers, and as DR has commented, that might actually result in better games overall. What this definitely is NOT is the end of Star Wars themed games.

And hell, it's not like Disney is this great game developer. They do amusement parks, movies, and oh yeah, they own ESPN and ABC. I seriously doubt that whether or not they make games is going to impact their revenue stream at all.

I imagine ESPN is the cash cow here. It's on every cable package, even the most basic ones, and they make about $0.80 per month from every cable subsrciption in the nation - whether you watch ESPN or not. (It is this revenue source, incidentally, that allows ESPN to bid more for Monday Night Football than they can sell in advertising during the games.)

 

As much as I loved LucasArts games back in the day, I have to second DR's comments. LA haven't produced much of worth for ages. Really, it's amazing they survived this long. Although it's always a sad day when people lose their jobs, at least we can hope that licensing gives us more TIE Fighter and less Star Wars: Kinect.

 

Any of you guys ever play Star Wars: Droid Works? Fantastic little game, had excellent fun on it when I was younger.

 

I liked Pit Droids.

 

Credit where credit is due. LucasArts developed the first Jedi Knight games (Dark Forces, Dark Forces 2 and Mysteres of the Sith). Galactic Battlegrounds should also be by Lucas IIRC.

 

Ah, you're correct. I was under the impression that Raven had developed the entire Jedi Knight series, but in fact they started with Jedi Outcast (thanks, Wikipedia!). I was also under the impression that Ensemble Studios had done Battlegrounds, when in fact LA was licensing the game engine from them.

 

I have honestly never played any LucasArts games so the nostalgia is not there for me so I honestly do not care that Disney shut them down

 

I guess it's time to finally give up waiting for a sequel to Gladius.